None Shall Know Me

Arabian Nights.

2011-07-13T11:19:00.000-07:00

"I speak of Desert without repose
Carved by relentless winds
Torn up from its bowels
Blinded by sands
Unsheltered solitary
Yellow as death
Wrinkled like parchment
Face turned to the sun."
"Landscapes" - Andree Chedid.

Another long adventure, another experience is winding down. I am in my last night here in the deserts of Arabia. It is always a strange feeling to leave a place that has been your home. I have not just visited the Middle East. I have not just passed through the isolation of the Western Region of the UAE, but I have lived here. This has been my home for a year, and I know I am leaving now. I am leaving my home. I am leaving forever. This is not the first time I have left a home, nor will it be the last. It is a different feeling than before. It is perhaps the absence of a feeling. When I left Arizona, I was sad. When I left Utah, I was sad. When I left California, I was sad. When I left the US, I was sad. When I left Korea, I was sad. When I leave here, I will not be sad. I am not sad now. I have lived here, but perhaps I should rephrase what I said before, this has not been my home. This has been so different from other places I have lived. I have had some unique and fun experiences while living here, but the living here seems to be defined by the absence of things. I miss living in a place where I can just take a walk outside. I miss living in a place where I can see something beautiful and find some peaceful spot. Here, there is no place to walk to, no beauty for miles and miles, just an emptiness of flat sand, smoggy air, and electric lines.
Living in a labor camp is an interesting experience. Yes, this is a labor camp, but do not get visions of WWII camps stuck in your mind, or us poor starving souls out digging ditches. This is a camp for day laborers, most of them from poor Asian countries who come here and work long hours in the HOT, HOT sun for $200-$300 a month. Yes, some do make more than that, and we westerners make considerably more than that, but there is a huge inequality in these countries. There is a definite class or caste system. Nationals are automatically superior to everyone and anyone else in the whole of the world, followed by other oil rich GCC countries. Western expats are next on the list, and we are treated well. After us westerners, other Arabic countries, then falling far below comes in the Filipinos, the Pakistanis, the Sri Lankans, Nepalese, Indians, and so forth. The Indians are down at the very bottom of the barrel. This is a country of indentured servitude. Many of the people here are only a rung or two above being slaves. It really is awful how they are treated, disrespected, and looked so down upon. Many of the people at the camp fall in to those lower categories, though those falling in to the very lowest are crammed in to camps and living conditions FAR worse than what we have here. Our camp is not entirely bad, though the atmosphere here does strange things and seems to suck the life and will out of you. It is not a good place to be. Other than a very small handful of us English teachers, the only westerners at this camp only stay for a couple weeks until their company finds them better living arrangements, or they are here on short assignments only. Those I have told I am here for a year have this mixed look of pity and respect. Perhaps we are at least a little deserving of both.
There are perks to the place. We do get our clothes washed, room cleaned, and free food at scheduled times. The room is not always extremely clean, but clean enough, and not too many cockroaches and bugs to really bother you. It is a basic room, as I mentioned in an earlier post, but basic is good enough for me. I can honestly say that I have stayed in guest houses in Asia for between $5-$8 a night that are better than this room, but again, other than the horrible, horrible mattress, I am content with the room. The food is well balanced, but not well prepared or particularly good. We have chicken nearly every night, and it is like chewing on an eraser. I rarely find myself excited about a meal time here, but eat because I know I need to and am hungry. The meat here is so incredibly dry. I feel like I need a gulp of water with every bite. The good nights are when we have these small miniature sized steaks, that are also pretty dry, but not near as bad as the chicken and not as caked in fat as the lamb. Still though, it is better than shopping and cooking for myself, though sometimes I don't really believe that.
There has only been one social event this whole year living here at the camp. There was a basketball tournament between some of the companies who had employees here. We got a team together and played. Most of the games, I was the only white person and the only westerner on any of the six teams. The last two games we got another American guy who lives at the hotel about 30 km away to join our team, but other than those two games, I was it. My team was all Lebanese guys and one Filipino and then me, and all the other teams were 100% Filipino. We did win the tournament. Yep, we are may as well be the basketball champions of the whole Western Region. We weren't the best team, but when you are playing all Filipinos you tend to have a height advantage, and we really capitalized on that advantage.
The rest of the time at the camp you feel like you are in lock down. I think I mentioned this before. I call the camp "prison with a paycheck." We get our work release and we all meet in the dirty cafeteria at meal times, and other than that, you stay in your room the rest of the night. There really just isn't much else to do. I leave every weekend, usually just to the one hotel that is 30 km away, though sometimes I head to Abu Dhabi or Dubai and I actually find it shocking to see a woman out there. Unless I go to the hotel, I don't see a woman where I live, not at work, not at that camp, and not even out walking around. Where I live, the only place to walk on is the dangerous highway, and people in this area are notoriously bad drivers and there is a high traffic fatality rate here.
This really is an interesting country, crippled by their wealth. The government gives the locals everything, free houses, free money, free everything, and because everything is handed to them, most of the people here are quite possibly the laziest and most incompetent people in the world. It is sad really. It is not the Arabia I hoped for. It is not at all the Arabia I envisioned. Eighty percent of the country are expats, mostly from India and Pakistan, and then the Philippines. The locals often complain about too many expats in the country, but they could not survive without these expats. They would not be able to pump, drill, and refine the oil, and in fact, I don't think they would be able to pump their own gas at the petrol station. This country is entirely dependent upon expat labor to do everything. It is good for them they have all this oil.
It has not all been bad. I have had good experiences and done fun things. I have gone out to the desert, gone dune boarding and dune bashing, been on camels, swam in the sea, taken great and amazing vacations to new and exciting countries, seen the tallest building in the world, dined in the world's most luxuriant hotel, toured the world's most expensive mosque, visited old souks and bazaars, bartered and bargained, bought Arabian frankincense and myrrh, and made new friends, and most of the year, the weather here is quite fantastic. Yes, in the summer it can be horribly hot and extremely humid. It was about 122 degrees the last couple days, and very, very humid on top of that, but most of the year the weather is not so bad, and much of the year it is extremely pleasant, with wonderful evenings and warm days. Yes, I will miss those Arabian nights when after working out at the hotel I would stroll the grounds of the hotel out in the dark alone and the weather would so sublimely sift across my body and soothe and settle upon my skin. Those were my peaceful moments, my Arabian nights. I did enjoy that. I have certainly had my moments here, and those moments are coming to an end. I will likely never again be in this country, will never again teach a Bedouin child, or spend hours driving through the blank desert. I am leaving it all. I am leaving it forever, and yet, I am not sad for this. This is not my home. I have had several homes, and this will not be one of them. I am heading soon to one of them. I do not get excited about many things. I get excited about traveling though, and always get excited about going home. I wonder what it will be like this time. I know I cannot top my last visit home and that great surprise. I will not hitch hike home, skinny and starved and tap on my mother's surprised shoulder. Still though, I am excited. I am always excited to see family, and living abroad makes me far more excited. I am not just seeing my family. I am seeing my home. I am seeing my country. I suppose Utah will always be my home, even though I have no home there myself, and have not lived there myself for 6 years, but it is where my family is, and I will always keep a large part of myself there. I will always be a Utahn with a lot of California in me and room left over for Arizona and Korea. I cannot say when I will live in the US again, but I know I will live and die an American and will be proud of that.
Anyway, there is in fact a lot more I could say, but I wake up early for a long day of traveling and still need to finish with packing and wish to write at least a paragraph about my last little venture out of the UAE, my venture in to neighboring Oman.

We had a long holiday weekend not long ago, and I took advantage by heading over to Oman for the holiday. I do typically prefer to travel alone, but I did invite a South African fellow living at the camp to join me, and he did. He has not done much for traveling before, and I think this was his first trip without his mother he has been on. It turned out be a great little holiday.
We left right after work and took a bus to Dubai and spent the night in old Dubai at the cheapest hotel in town. Early in the morning we hopped a bus for Muscat, several hours out east on the sea. We spent a few nights out there just meandering around the city. Muscat is an extremely spread out city. it seemed to be three or four town in one, all separated by mountains. The mountains there reminded me of the mountains on the Sinai Peninsula, though not as large, still they stood tall and craggy and popped up unevenly and chaotically like pointed gopher mounds. The roads curved and swayed and the whole city seemed built with the mountains in mind, from the color to location. Muscat is a beautiful city, far more unique than anything in the UAE. Old Muscat was wonderful. All the buildings were Arabic architecture and the mountains curved around the sea with splendid views. The buildings seemed to be placed mathematically and precisely to accentuate and blend in with the mountains around. I don't know how to describe the city except to say that everything seemed to fit. Nothing was out of place or called too much attention. The city seemed conscious of itself, of its surroundings, especially the mountains and the sea. We spent nearly all our time in old Muscat walking up and down the streets, staring at old forts and watch towers on top of rocky, jutting mountains with brick that blended in to rock. We walked the old souk and shopped and ate and feasted on delicious juices, much needed in the heat and humidity. We saw the Sultan's palace and his yacht, which I mistook for a cruise ship. We drove out to a beach lying in an alcove and sat secluded and peaceful in the sun, surrounded by a desert that seemed so much more alive than Ruwais.
I did quite like it there, and was even fascinated by little things such as having locals work as cab drivers or hotel attendants. In the UAE, locals only work in plush government jobs. They hire poor Asians to do everything else, so you would never have an Emirate cab driver or hotel attendant, so I found it refreshing in Oman to see the locals working and providing a living for themselves. I instantly gained more respect for that country, and the city did seem more genuine and more authentic and it offered a more cultural feel and vibe to it. Dubai can be a fun city with many things to do, but it does not have a genuine Arabic feel to it. Muscat had that. I loved it, the very feel of it.
Anyway, for any of you who read. I am finished. I am finished for tonight. I am finished with my travels, at least for a short time. Soon, new adventures will start, the first being a reunion with my family. I do not know when I may write again. I am never entirely sure if I will write again, but I'll make the effort, and hope to find more to tell than I have been telling thus far.

"O land of ours where our childhood passed
Like dreams in the shade of the orange-grove,
Among the almond-trees in the valleys--
Remember us now wandering
Among the thorns of the desert,
Wandering in rocky mountains;
Remember us now
In the tumult of cities beyond deserts and seas;
Remember us
With our eyes full of dust
That never clears in our ceaseless wandering"

"In the Deserts of Exile." -Jabra Ibrahim Jabra.

The Top of the World.

2011-07-07T10:28:00.000-07:00

"The highest of the world's mountains, it seems, has to make but a single gesture of magnificence to be the lord of all, vast in unchallenged and isolated supremacy." George Mallory


Mt. Everest. This entry will be short, and it will be celebratory. After finishing this entry I will finally be caught up and current in my blog, which also means I will be back to my not so frequent writing. I doubt my entries will be greatly missed or wanted. I’ll be going back home to the US for a short visit soon, and after that starting another year abroad in a new city and new experiences, so still there will be some things to write about, and perhaps I’ll be inclined to begin writing again not just about travel and adventure, but upon my own pointless musing and introspection. Perhaps I will begin my confessionary tales again, things I find it odd I would write in a public space when all my life I have been such a private man. We shall see what happens. I don’t anticipate traveling this summer. I had planned on it, but now my brother is getting married, and I will give up any vacation to be a part of his wedding, and I will want the few weeks’ time I have to spend with family while I can. I’ll have opportunities to travel in the following months, and I will use those opportunities wisely. After Chitiwan I headed back up to Kathmandu for the last couple days. Most of my time in Kathmandu I spent aimlessly wandering the city, stopping at local bakeries and enjoying all the sights and sounds of the frenetic city. I stayed in a cheap guesthouse, just over $3 a night for a private room with a private bath. I tried to get the room for $2 a night, but it was booked up, so I opted to splurge and really spoil myself. The room was better than what those with little experience in backpacking across the less developed countries of Asia would expect for $3 a night, but for anyone with experience, it was exactly what you’d expect. It was a small cramped space with a thin and stained mat lying on top of a plank board and a tattered and old blanket. It was all I needed and slightly more, so I was completely content, and the location was perfect for my last couple days. I loved the shops in Nepal. They called out to my former hippy self, a part of me that still loves to climb out and play in full regalia. The clothes were fantastically amazing for me, and the women’s clothes were exceptionally groovy and interesting. I bought little, but found myself a few small things and two very large spools of hemp to make necklaces and bracelets, which my young students in the U.A.E. have all clamored for. The city was busy and noisy and dirty and many of the streets winded around the deteriorated buildings in a maze indistinguishable avenues and shops. I found myself pleasantly and expectedly lost on many occasions. I enjoyed walking around, perhaps my favorite thing to do in any city, to walk with no purpose, to go nowhere at all, and yet, I always go precisely where I want to go.

My last day in Nepal I woke early and took a flight in a small plane over the Himalayan Mountains and flew over the top of Mt. Everest, the highest point on earth. If I could say I have stood on that spot, at the top of the world, it would be an invaluable claim, but merely saying I have flown above it, is that worth anything at all? It must hold at least some value, for I have seen Everest, far above clouds and cloaked in the glisten of snow, a sparkling whit pluming over the cold gray of boulders. I have seen Everest and the more impressive peaks standings shorter in a royal march of mighty mountains. I may never stand on its top, wishing to tackle other adventures first, but at least I have seen its very tip high in the cold and cloudless air. At least I have that.

After the flight I walked to the main Hindi Temple in Kathmandu. It is called Pashipatinat, no idea on the spelling, but that is about how it sounds. I walked around looking for Krishna beads like those I use to wear 15 years ago that I bought when I use to visit the Krishna temple back home in Utah to enjoy the Sunday feast and celebrations. The beads at the temple back in Utah were much more to my liking, and during my visit this summer I will have to go back to that temple and see if they still have the same beads and the same Sunday celebrations.

Inside the temple grounds they have a crematorium where they burn the bodies of those passing on to a new stage of a reincarnate life cycle. Those bodies that I saw, slowly surrounded in flames, what will they be in their next life? Did they live their calling well? Will they progress one step closer to a final end of reincarnation and a dissolving in to the oneness and nothingness of all things? Will they become my newborn neighbors? Will they become some poor begging child I pass in some African country ten years from now? Will they remember any of their beliefs? Will they remember their goal and desire of Nirvana, of a blending in with matter? Will it be easy for them to progress if they do not remember, nor any longer believe what they were hoping for? While I do not personally believe in reincarnation, it is a fun thought to let your mind be carried away on, and at moments, I can let myself believe in anything at all.

I specifically went to that temple to see the Holy Men of Kathmandu who hang outside the temple with long beards and longer hair and painted faces. At times in my life I have not looked so different from them. They have a little hippy inside them as well. In pictures they always looked so fascinating, but when I saw them in person, I did not even want a picture myself. At first sight of me approaching they rose from their squalor and stood as tall they could. It was almost like a line up in a massage parlor when a man chooses what woman he most desires. They beckoned and begged and wrapped their hair as interesting they could. These men made their meager living by looking disheveled, and in photos they seemed wise and devout and pure, but in person they were merely homeless beggars living in rags outside the temple, eager and competing for photo opportunities with tourists, charging a fee for a picture of them or a picture with them. They were like the hounding shopkeepers all competing for your business, only these Holy Men competed for the flash of your camera and the required donation. It seemed posing in their straggly hair was their only trade, and I saw nothing holy in it, but instead a sad reality and disappointment. They did not seem like a great indigenous people or religious gurus, but only beggars wasting the day by smoking hash, unshaven and unclean. I do not doubt their devoutness. I do not know it, but like the long neck ladies of Thailand, they seemed to keep up their “authentic” look more to be a tourist site, so I passed up my photo op with the men I had come to the country hoping to get a picture with. I was not disappointed in my decision.

After the temple I went about Kathmandu looking to spend the last of my rupees, and that evening I took a flight back to Abu Dhabi, arriving at night. Once again my entire bag was searched. This country loves to single me out. They unfolded every piece of clothing, turned out every pocket, unscrewed the caps of my toothpaste and deodorant, patted down my body, and even flipped through the individual pages of my journal. It is becoming habitual for this to happen, and it takes over 30 minutes just for the search. That is what I call hippy profiling. Perhaps it serves me right showing up in airports the way I often do. I certainly do look to be exactly what I am not, a pot-smoke, drug smuggling hippy.

I arrived back at the camp at 2:00 a.m. and got to bed near 2:30 a.m., waking up for work at 4:45. That was over three months ago, three long months of life back in Al Gharbia, back with the Bedouin kids and the blank emptiness of Arabia. Soon though, soon, I will be somewhere beautiful again, the mountains of my home. We will talk of that soon.

Mt. Everest.

“KATHMANDU
THE ENERGY OF THE PLACE SLAMS LIKE A SHOCK wave... Kathmandu is so overwhelming, so packed with images, that succinct summaries seem almost impossible- certainly inadequate. I'm tempted to say ‘You'll understand when you get there....’It's a dream. I've never seen anything 1ike it.”
-David Yeadon, The Back of Beyond

Next Time, Ride That Rhino.

2011-07-03T06:43:00.000-07:00

Chitiwan is a large national park in the plains and hills of Nepal with a small town outside the park mostly catering to park goers. There are several guesthouses staffed with friendly Nepali people eager to share their beautiful scenery and life. I met many people there who when finding out I work in the U.A.E. had told me they wanted to move to this country for work also. They wanted to give up their jobs as guides in beautiful national parks and amazing nature to come and work as indentured servants in an ugly and barren wasteland for only $200-$400 a month. However, in Nepal they were only making about $40 a month with little to no time off, so the meager wages and not so pleasant life of the U.A.E. was a life that most of them could only hope for, hoping for a way to provide for their parents or wives or children or siblings. It is amazing to me sometimes how blessed I have been simply because I was born and raised in an English speaking country. My whole life of the last 3 years, my work, my travels, my adventure, all of it is possible simply because I speak English and have a university degree from an English speaking country. Something I had no control over at all is providing me with what I love most in life.

One night in Chitiwan after dinner I went to a Nepali culture performance. A couple men played drums while about 20 young men danced around beating sticks in rhythmic unison, pounding sticks with the person in front of them, then to the rear. There were several dances, one with a fire stick, one called the lady boy dance with a young man dressed as a woman doing a courting dance for another young man. It was an interesting show.

What I really went to Chitiwan though was the national park. I began one morning and walked down to the river and jumped inside a long traditional canoe and slowly sifted through the calm ripples of the river for the next hour and a half. The water was shallow and our dug-out canoe carved from the trunk of a local cotton tree scraped the bottom in several places. Lilly pads and moss dotted the water in forest of kiwi green and birds chirped and whistled and cackled and walloped. For bird watchers, it was an ideal canoe trip, with red and blue and white King Fishers and Igrits and Peacocks, and Hornbills and Swallows and dozens of others that fluttered and flew and sat in hanging branches.

After the slow traverse on the canoe and along with four other people, I began to walk through the park. We walked around the marshy river spying on 15 foot crocodiles and walked through forest ducking under low hanging branches and spotting fresh signs of rhinos and sloth bears and Bengal tigers, but not the animals themselves, just claw marks in trees and fresh foot prints at watering holes and dung still warm. We walked through tall grasses and marshes and past mud holes and prairies and spent hours on foot in the park with the sound of wind and birds and the light snapping and crunching under our own feet. We didn’t see much wildlife, just the signs they were not far away.

We broke for a long lunch and after hopped in a Jeep to make it deeper in to the park, out to the forest, then through the forest and alternating between grasses and trees. We were more fortunate with the Jeep and saw many deer and monkeys and wild boar and more crocodile, none of which is what I had hoped to see. I hoped to see wild one-horned rhinos, Chitiwan being one of the few places in the world to do so. I got my wish, and we ended up spotting 10 rhinos in the wild foraging in the tall grass for a late afternoon meal. I wanted to jump out and sneak my way up closer, but had to restrain myself and be content with staying in the Jeep and watching them run through the plains or munching on grass. I also saw a large sloth bear, its black body running through a field and hiding behind fallen trees. I had come to see the Rhinos, the bear was added bonus. Bears have always been my favorite animal, and while sloth bears are not the great brown bears of North America or wild Russia, still they are bears and seeing them roaming freely in the hillsides of Asia was a thrill nonetheless. I really do need to do a proper African safari. It is high on my list, and perhaps if I stay in the U.A.E a while longer I will. Flights to Africa are cheap from here and not too far a distance.

It was a long day in the park, canoeing, walking, jeeping, and returning late for a pleasant mill and some friendly chat with people I met at the guest house. In the morning I was back at it, up early to head back in to the jungle. I found a ride out to another part of the park I had not yet visited and sat myself on top of an elephant trodding through the jungle for about 2 ½ hours. We went through the thick mass of trees in the park, crossed over a river with swimming crocodiles and into a dim jungle of tall trees and light shyly filtering in through the leaves and branches above. It was morning calm and quiet and animals foraged for breakfast and seemed only half interrupted with the trod of elephant feet through the jungle, as though an elephant were natural there and not to be feared. True, they do have wild elephants in the park, though I do not think they are a common sight.

The jungle was still, with the only noise the crackle and thud of elephant steps on damp fallen leaves and snapping branches and rustling of an elephant’s trunk with the occasional huff and guff of elephant breath. We rode out to a dark and shaded pond where a large rhino stood in the water soaking his skin in the muddy brown pool. He turned and twisted his head and fluttered his ears in photogenic fashion, but his body was ice still. He seemed curious at the gawking hump on an elephant’s back, though not at all concerned. It was the highlight of the ride. Next time though, I want to ride the Rhino. I have now ridden elephants in three separate countries. I have ridden camels, horses, and water buffalo. Now I need a real adventure and try riding something like a moose or an elk and really show up my old man, or perhaps I’ll go for the gold and ride a wild bear or shark. That would be the kind of thrill I’d be up for.

"The River Wild."

2011-06-24T10:46:00.000-07:00

"I gave my heart to the mountains the minute I stood beside this river with its spray in my face and watched it thunder into foam, smooth to green glass over sunken rocks, shatter to foam again. I was fascinated by how it sped by and yet was always there; its roar shook both the earth and me."
- Wallace Stegne

I began and finished my Himalayan trek in the lakeside town of Pokhara, a popular spot for many of the adventure activities and one of the main starting points for many of the treks in Nepal. It is a lovely location, wrapped around one of the largest lakes in the country, and although a relatively small lake, it was beautiful and calm, and hills and mountains nested around the bank with forests of trees and fields of dirt and flowers and manicured gardens of lakeside restaurants. I woke in the mornings to walk around the lake in dawn as the sun slowly sifted up through early morning fog in orange and grey. Paths were slightly damp and the air was delicate with the faint vapor of mud and twigs. The morning air was wonderfully calm in the quiet city, tourists all asleep and locals out carrying small baskets of freshly baked croissants and rolls that wafted through the streets, and for about a quarter each I feasted on warm chocolate croissants and cinnamon rolls that evaporated warmly, jerking tongue and taste buds to an abrupt and eager salute. Lunches and dinners I ate Dhal Bhatt, the typical and standard Nepali dish of rice and curries and vegetables all mushed together with your hands in a sloppy delight and eaten with hands caked and covered in warm liquid and steaming rice, and I found an old lady making fresh chapatti, pleasant reminders of former vacations and the chapatti gently crumbled in my mouth. Yum, it was good.

I walked around at nights looking through shops and exploring the streets and watching the tourist out in search of beer and pizza, as I cheaply ate from small street stalls. It is a lovely city surrounded by hills that lie in shadows of the Himalayan Mountains that lay siege to the city, guarding over the sacred temples and waterfalls and the serene lake nestled quietly in the city’s borders.

I left Pokhara early one morning and took a bus out toward Chitiwan. After a few hours sitting slanted and sideways with my knees smashed against the hard plastic back of the seat in front of me, I hopped off the bus, hours before its destination and began a river rafting journey through of the Himalayan rivers of Nepal.

There were six of us on the raft and we rafted down a large canyon with green water and white rocks, boulders and slabs of stone. All around were tall lumps of mountains thick in trees and richly green. Down the river locals bathed and swam and did laundry in the river with small villages or shanty shacks near the river. The water mixed from smooth to rough and green to white, jostling up and down over rocky rapids that splashed and dashed and dropped. We had time to swim in the calms stretches of the river with the sun peeking out for the first time since I’d arrived. This was like a large Ogden Canyon, one of the canyons near my childhood home in Utah. The rivers cut through the canyon with mighty mountains at both sides, but the river and canyon were long and wide and a size to make Ogden Canyon seem a trickle. I had not been rafting since I first returned from Arizona and went with my dad and brother Dallin up over Lunch Counter in Wyoming on the Snake River. What a trip that was! What a trip this was! We stopped for lunch half-way down and ate on the banks of a river where the water pulled off in to calm lulls on the side. A few local kids dressed in rags and filthy, but adorable sat around us perched on rocks and playing games, seemingly waiting to see if we left any food behind, but they never begged, never approached us. After lunch we continued down, hitting the best of the rapids on the second leg, the white swooshing water that crashed in sadistic blows against the rocks and rolled and bumped through the river as the raft teetered and tottered and swayed, rose and fell and spun through splashing and passionate rapids and rock soaking us in the cool waters of a furious river.

We finished the rafting journey and changed in to dry clothes and waited for a bus to Chitiwan, but a bus never came, so I squeezed in to the crowded cab of an old oil truck. My legs were sideways and bent back with my feet behind my knees and no room to move a foot, a knee, a leg, an arm, or even breathe too deeply. I sat in the cab of that truck for four hours driving through canyons that turned and twisted and bumped across dips and rocks. It began to rain with a fierce wind and there were no windows to stop the slanting rain and fierce wind from pushing and stinging across my face and arms. It was not a comfortable ride, but I have been on many bus journeys before. This was, however, my first time sardined in to an oil truck, so despite the lack of room, it was a better journey than another bus ride.

The outside of the truck was painted bright with colorful Hindu gods and lines of poems and pieces of American flags and what looked like the third eye of Shiva. The inside was even more colorful, with frilly curtains and colored beads and stickers of cars and Disney princesses and sexy women and muscular men and gods and goddesses and lace and yarn. On the dashboard was a long patch of wheat grass with a gnome like a god standing in the middle holding his long sword like penis, and half the lawn had been clipped and eaten. It was a decorative and colorful bus indeed.

We arrived in Chitiwan, down out of the canyon and into a long flat valley. We passed through forests of skinny trees and though nearly all the trees were filled with green, the ground was covered in brown fallen leaves. It was like going through the trees in the mountains back home come Autumn, though Nepal lacked the color, and yet so much seemed the same to me, a carpet of dry leaves and that smell of them, of dry and crackled leaves, crisp and thin and mixed with the odor of dampened dirt held in constant dew from the covering leaves. Even now just writing this I can hear the crunching sound of walking paths of fallen leaves or the rustling of raking piles and the itch and scratch of dried leaves broken to small pieces and shoved against my skin after diving and burying myself in the large piles. Everything I see is so different, and yet it all seems so familiar. Do we constantly seek out way to remind ourselves of home? Of course, I have had many homes by now, though one place lies above the others, and perhaps I’ll only ever have one place that feels like home, that I consider home, maybe two, and perhaps a part of others.

In Chitiwan I hitched a ride to a guest house and was greeted warmly in the dark room with warm tea and a warmer smile and then I settled in to my room. When I first walked in and sat down it was one of those moments where I smiled and said a thank you. I do have moments of living a charmed and lucky life. It is when I travel. The power was only on for a few hours around dinner time, and at night I let down the mosquito net and wrote in my journal by candle light till the last drips of wax trickled down the candlestick in small dribbles of pallid wax with flickering shadows in the soft amber light wavering with the flutters of the small candle flame. It was sublimely pastoral.

“Hitting the Rapids.”

…We await the rumble of rapids before heading

for a few watershed buttes just beyond the next

bend where the faster whitewater is running.

As the afternoon sun starts its descent, we move

gently toward a narrow sluice, shoot through

a sudden drop, then surge over those bedrock holes

and rolling wave trains swollen with the seasonal

release flushed from an upriver dam. By sunset,

we have slipped past the last falls of the gorge:

all that's left is one short stretch of mild ripples

and a small section of beach for landing. Tonight,

we will lie beside this constant sweep of current

that continues as persistently into the future as life

itself, and fall asleep beneath a flood of darkness

marred merely by sparks embarking from some

faraway stars scattered like moments of memories

we'd hoped to hold on to, those shattered fragments

solely able to offer light from times already passed.

Edward Byrne

A Himalayan High.

2011-06-21T10:51:00.000-07:00

the roof of the earth, the emperor of all mountains,

you stand there, a benevolent force,

your arms spread wide encompassing one tall fortress after another,

standing protectively over the lands north and south,

you are not as foreboding as I had thought.

It’s you, every year thousands of people go to meet,

million others live on the foothills at your feet.

So many others want to conquer you,

they take you for granted, scramble all over,

sometimes even have the temerity to trash you.

What do they know?

These pesky trespassers,

for you are the original warrior,

who in the Mesozoic era,

rose triumphantly from the ancient deep bed of the Tethys sea.

Do the mountaineers know they are on a pilgrimage?

After all, you are the abode of Gods,

where the divinity resides,

and watches us mere mortals

go on with our lives.

But you don’t like to blow your own trumpet,

instead, just stand there serenely.

It’s rarely do we hear when you lost your calm,

and a mountaineer was lost in your snow white arm. ..

“The Himalayas.” – http://shirlingtonlibrarypoetry.lefora.com/2009/08/22/three- poems-on-the-himalayas/

Only one more country to write about! Admittedly, I am excited at being caught up. I was a slacker for too long allowing myself to get too far behind, and honestly, I didn’t see the point in writing a blog I was convinced no one ever read. I am still not entirely convinced, but it gives me something to do to pass away the dull moments of Arabian life. Of course, this certainly won’t be the last country I write about, just the last one to get me caught up to the present date. I will undoubtedly travel to many more countries in the future, and already have some possible plans for new adventures.

I really have been blessed as far as traveling goes over the last couple years. In the past 2 ½ years, I have been fortunate enough to travel through 20 countries, the 20^th of those being the beautiful and mountainous country of Nepal. I chose Nepal for a variety of reasons. I was looking at countries not too far from the U.A.E., such as Lebanon, Ukraine, & Nepal, and Nepal seemed it would be the cheapest. Also, with living out in the horrid desert of Al Gharbia in what I consider the most unattractive place I have yet visited on earth, I really, really felt a need to go somewhere with beautiful nature, amazing mountains, rivers, lakes, grass, trees, flowers, etc. The Himalayas of Nepal seemed they would offer all I needed, and sure enough, they did.

I flew in to Kathmandu, and landed at the somewhat disheveled airport. Like most of my travels, I had no itinerary, no reservations, no plans, just an idea that I wanted to see something beautiful. As I had no place to stay that night, I bartered with a cab driver to drive me in to town where all the cheap guesthouses were located and quickly found a place not far from the bustle of Kathmandu. I did not stay in Kathmandu long, just long enough to explore and get an idea of one or two things I wanted to do in Kathmandu at the end of the trip.

The next day, I hopped on a local bust heading toward Pokhara. There was a bus made for tourists, but I opted to ride the journey on the local bus with the Nepali people. I knew as soon as I arrived in the country that I was going to wish I had more time there. Nepal is ripe with adventure sports and amazing treks. I tried to fit in as much as I could, but I suppose you are rarely, if ever, able to fit in everything you want. I started off though with what most people come to Nepal for, a trek through the amazing Himalaya Mountains. I found a local guide named Kamal, and the two of us alone set off up in to the mountains. We began the trek with a two and a half hour bus ride. The first half hour I had to stand up inside the bus, the roof being at least 10 inches shorter than I am. The bus was cramped, and everyone crammed in unable to turn around or shift position. Once we got out past the city, the bus driver, seeing my hunched over uncomfortably, pulled to the side of the road to let me hop on top of the bus, where I comfortably enjoyed the remaining two hours in Asian style. It lightly rained as the bus passed through small Nepali towns and countryside and climbed the mountains and dropped down the back end. The bus was old and rickety and clanky and had all the men gotten out and pushed the beast uphill, we may have moved faster. The road was torn and bumpy and cold have grinded out every drop of urine inside a person, so the bus driver stopped to allow the men to pee at the side of the road. That is something about Asia I still laugh at , men peeing in public everywhere with no worries at passersby or care at all for anyone to see. You can be walking down a busy street in many Asian cities and see a man in a suit unzip on the street and take his leek right on to a building as everyone casually passed, so potty breaks on a bus in Asia means the side of the highway. It was a lovely drive up top, with my unfettered view. Nothing passed me unseen, not the mountains, not the fields not the children on the road with their pants around their ankles, not the lines of hanging to dry; nothing passed me.

Once off the bus we immediately began to hike upward, unable to see the tops of any mountain. We started ascending through a canyon where a river rolled downwards. For some reason, that made me think of Korea, looking down at the river. I remembered the mountain rivers of Korea and their perfect clear green color. This river was different, but still it gave me pleasant memories.

We hiked steadily up passing through small village upon small village, a collection of a half-dozen homes. In one village the men stood outside shooting arrows in to posts with homemade bows in a friendly competition. People tended fields, sat on porches and did what people do. It began to rain on us and I was soon soaked through. We made it to a tea house and stopped for lunch to wait the rain out. Once the worst of it passed, we continued up in the lighter drizzle. The first day up was easy enough. We continued to pass arrays of trekkers, and my guide was a little surprised at our fast pace. I didn’t realize we were going fast at all, but he mentioned we cut several hours off the usual time for each day that we hiked. That gave me lots of free time for reading and staring out to the valleys and mountains of Nepal. The first tea house we stayed the night in was quite, with no other visitors. We ate dinner and breakfast there and chatted with the family. Then I sat alone up on the balcony looking out over rice terraces and potato fields and watched wild monkeys sneak in to steal potatoes and passing oxen try to steal clean greens freshly picked from the lettuce patches. I read from my book and enjoyed the restful and quiet passing of night, and in the morning we continued upward. The next day was much more difficult. It just kept going up, step after step, hour upon hour. I was not sure the climb would ever end. We climbed through forests and jungle and passed over rivers and small waterfalls and hills clothed in trees of red rhododendron, the national flower of Nepal that brightly speckled the mountainsides. It was humid, but not hot. Still though, I dripped with sweat, particularly where my backpack covered my back and rubbed continuously against the fabric of my shirt. I had to wring the sweat from my shirt several times and finally decided to continue shirtless despite the brisk air of high mountain altitudes.

All the way up there continued to be small villages high in the mountains, usually a village comprised of only a few lodges catering to trekkers. The kids in those villages had to climb down the mountain each morning for school and then walk miles and miles steeply up each afternoon. That is dedication. It was a regular occurrence to see a Nepali man with a giant bag or basket thrown on to his back with a strap around his head to place the weight upon his neck and head. They would climb that mammoth mountain with supplies for villages or lodges up to the top, or supplies for long camping treks. Oh, what mighty men to climb that mountain from dusk till dawn with such enormous bags and weight upon their backs and heads as they steeply climbed, up, up, up. Many women also carried baskets up, with goods or crops. I even saw one small girl who looked no more than 4 or 5, a basket to the brim, carrying her load up the mountain.

I stayed in small lodges in small rooms of hard beds with blankets clearly made for short Asian people, and particularly the last night up on top, I had to ask for extra blankets, as the below freezing temperatures and the biting and howling wind slithered in to my bones and swooshed across my face. Cooking was done on wood burning stoves and the rooms were typically no more than thin wooden planks loosely nailed together, not much thicker than the glass of the windows. Up on top, the window of my room started out to mountains more than 8,000 meters, or 26,000 feet, high. It was an incredible view. At night I huddled in my bed and listened to some Nepali guy screaming and singing and playing all night long. He was still at it at 4:30 when we left to make it to the peak before sunrise in time to see the sun come up. The sun rose above the clouds. It was foggy, and the thick mist covered all views. Fortunately, the fog moved quickly and as it raced on it left spots of clear open views to the magnificent peaks across the deep canyon. The place I stood is a mountain indeed, but those peaks I stared out to are beyond it. I gazed out hypnotically, calm in the chilling the air and and wonderfully alive and alert in the stillness of damp mountain fog. I was in my own special high in that moment, not just high in elevation, but high, tripped out and dazed; It was a Himalayan high, the adrenaline of perfect scenery and an amazing moment. Those giant domes of white rose craggy and massive to twice the height of the mountain I stood on. One of those mountains, Kachanjunga, is the 3^rd tallest mountain in the world. Oh, how the first two must look! Even with the clearing it was still foggy and misty, as it often is that high up. The fog swarmed over trees and frosted beady drops of dew hanging from thin branches and grass. Moss almost looked like snow covered in the frosty dew, and in the cold, cold air, my breath left no cloud, but instantly camouflaged in to the thick moisture of damp and fog. I stood on top gazing out and braving the numbness of my fingers and toes in the high altitude. I will never be able to get my fill of views such as those on that mountain, and I never wanted to leave, but after a long stay on the peak I turned and began the 30+ kilometer hike to the finish. The downhill was easy, but aching on the knees, and I was sore afterward and earned my sleep. When I left to head down, the fog fell thicker and covered nearly everything. It was like walking steeply down in smoke and haze and slippery rocks. We stopped for food, but otherwise made our way fast down the mountain. My guide continued to be surprised at how quickly we went with so little rest. I may not be in the same shape that I once was, but I do still have the same stubborn determination, and I wasn’t going to let some professional Himalayan trekking guide get the best of me.

It was beautiful down as well as up. We continued down, and down, and down. Had I really climbed that entire mountain in only a couple days? Was I really on the peak of a mountain in the Himalayan range staring out to some of the tallest mountains in the world? The valley below was green with farms and surrounded by hills and mountains in some idealic setting. Down below it looked almost more like jungle, like the mountain areas of Vietnam or the Philippines, but the monstrous Himalayas stood just behind. I went to Nepal for scenery, nature, and mountains, and I got precisely what I went for, though the Nepal journey was not yet over and more adventure lay ahead for me.

Kanchanjunga

In east ,

on a clear day, you can come across

a magnificent and mystical panorama,

detailed in ancient scriptures by great lamas,

an enchanting sight,

in the glow of dawn’s ruby light,

the strawberry snowy peaks,

the mighty cliffs,

a lofty castle in the sky.

It’s the Kanchanjunga.

Even if I were a hotshot scribe,

the emotion I felt

when I first saw this view would be hard to describe.

Looking at the mountainous shrine,

I felt a good kind of shiver

run up my spine.

For even now just its memory,

the warmth and hospitality,

the starkness and beauty,

of the landscape and humanity

of that pristine land,

brings a whistle on my lips and a certain bounce in my stride.

“The Himalayas.” - http://shirlingtonlibrarypoetry.lefora.com/2009/08/22/three-poems-on-the-himalayas/

"On Holy Ground.:

2011-06-16T08:43:00.000-07:00

“And He said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest [is] holy ground.” Exodus 3:5

I entered back in to Egypt and back to Dahab and stayed in a cheap dorm room at the beach, spending days walking along the edge of rocky beach in both directions, enjoying the wind and warm sun, and staring out at windsurfers sweeping over the sparkling blue of the red sea with the desert town creeping right to the edge and brown and barren mountains looming above in the background. I walked several miles in each direction until the pathways ended and walked along rocky uneven beaches with scattered sand. The farther out I walked, the prettier everything became, narrow beaches of stone opening to far stretches of sand, and huddled restaurants and hoards of sun bathers and beach goers left in the distance and traded in for the tranquil hush of seclusion. Is there some direct correlation between solitude and beauty, between serenity and silence? My best and worst moments are perhaps wrapped up and mingled in the lonely moments of being all alone, but the lonely moments of some solitary beach, some walk through a warm wind, or a quiet moment a world away, these are sharply outlined and bunched like bouquets of babies’ breath. They are beautiful; they are the accessories that make a life.

Staring out across the narrow waters along the coast of Dahab, I looked across the sea to the mountains of Saudi Arabia and also Jordan. It is almost painful for me to know I am so close to a country, and yet not visit it, and I had to put off Saudi Arabia because of difficulties with a Visa, and while in Jordan I came within a mere mile of the Israeli border, and yes, it nearly hurt me to know such a place was so close, and yet I would not visit those countries. I still have many travels and adventures to plan and look forward to, and I will cross those borders some day.

One day in Dahab I spent snorkeling in Dahab’s famous Blue Hole, a bumpy ride beyond the city, passing camel camps and tents and the omnipresent mountains of the Sinai Peninsula. The Blue Hole is a deep drop of water encircled by shallow waters of coral causing the sudden contrast of blue in the water, light blue above the coral, and dark blue of the deep hole in the middle. It seemed unearthly, some cosmic creation of swirls in space. It is amazing how the water drops so steeply down from the coral to depths unseen in the clear sapphire water. I swam about spotting colorful fish dashing through coral, and dodging snorkelers and the bubbles of scuba divers below. The water of the sea shifted and trickled in to emerald and indigo, cobalt and jade, such greens and blues that were splashes of paint. I think that God decided to prove how beautiful the emptiness of a desert could be, and so he created the Sinai Peninsula, throwing mountains in moulds of rocky clay and adding bleak and barren sand that extended out to a thousand miles, and then God created a sea, and looked down at the brown and orange and yellow and white of the desert and the water that lapped softly on the shore, and He knew His work was not finished, so He filled water balloons with paint in shades of blue and green, and in a playful and omniscient laugh, He dropped the balloons from high on to the water of the sea, and the colors splashed in to the water in uneven splatterings, thrown and smudged against the canvas of sea.

I also went scuba diving at another beach in the Red Sea, with the clear waters and soft sand, the corals and the steep drop from shore. Myriads of multi-colored fish swam around me, long, skinny, short, fat. The water was so wonderfully clear, so picturesquely blue. It is a pleasant feeling to be under water, freely swimming and staring eye to eye with fish deep below the surface, the feel and sound of breathing through a tank and the rise and fall of your body with every inhale and exhale of oxygen. It is a freedom, staying so long below, deep down in water with the feel of billions of barrels of water and pressure softly folding around your body in gentle divides. Perhaps scuba diving is something I should get in to more.

Another of the highlights of the Sinai Peninsula, and a major reason for my venture out to the Red Sea was Mt. Sinai itself. One night, I caught a ride to the mountain, and in the cold of a desert night, I climbed the mountain. The mountains here are so rocky, so steep, though it was an easy hike. Tents along the way offered Bedouin Tea and blankets to rent to warm up hikers in the frigid and frosty night. I met a Malaysian guy and climbed with him, walking slowly so as not to reach the windy and freezing top too early, though we still did. I hiked Mt. Sinai, where Moses stood and received the Ten Commandments. God Himself stood and spoke upon that mountain top. I have walked the path of prophets and stood in the steps of God, and there I watched nature’s homage to her creator, the sun rising above the mountains, a prelude of primary colors signaling up the fast rise of a fiery sun, glazing orange across endless ranges, casting grey shadows on the back of peaks. A Jewish group stood encircled and sang quietly in reverent tone. What a sunrise! What views! What mountains, so massively barren. A month before I stood where Adam stood and watched the sun rise over a tropical island, and then only a month later in the pre-dawn of early morning I stood where Moses stood, and where God stood, and watched the sun rise over a desolate and mountainous peninsula. What places have I yet to stand?

I stayed up on top as the sun quietly climbed and the mountains morphed and mingled with color. There were “oohs” and “awes” at the sparkling and spectacular sun that shed carrot and crimson hues across limitless views of sand and stone. I looked around at the harsh unfertile land, barren and empty, and laughed inside and wondered that God must have burned all the bushes on that mountain when he spoke to Moses from behind a burning bush. Like Jordan, here was an unequalled simplicity. The folds and lines of mountains rippled in to the slithering curves of more mountains, a hard and ubiquitous stone rising from the all-pervading desert.

I hiked down with my friend, enjoying talks of culture and religion, asking and answering questions, sharing and learning. We passed the crowds of hikers and followed a different path down that wound through skinny uneven trails mixed with brick and stone arches and an immensely wild desert mountain. At the bottom we stopped at St. Katherine’s Monastery, the oldest working monastery in the world, containing what they believe to be the burning bush in which God appeared to Moses. I think they reached that conclusion by process of elimination. It was about the only bush on the mountain.

Sinai was amazing, the hike up in the dark and the biting wind and the calmness and reverence of sunrise on a holy mountain. I enjoyed the rest of my time in Dahab walking alone along the beaches and strolling through the tourist shops and small restaurants. One restaurant was a Russian restaurant. One Russian couple was eating there when I showed up and they told me the restaurant had very typical Russian food, and shortly they left leaving only me at the restaurant. It was hardly a restaurant. It had only three tables and patio chairs around them all located on the roof of a building, out in the air of night. The kitchen was a tiny room also on the roof, and the waitress was also the cook, the hostess, and the dishwasher. Her mother who was visiting on vacation helped in the kitchen, and the father sat at the table next to me and in very broken English talked to me. The food was great, and obviously home cooked, and I had one of the most delicious drinks I have yet tasted, Sahlyab, made from sweet milk and hazelnut, with nuts and cranberries, and other goodies and spices. The Sahlyab at that restaurant was amazingly fantastic, almost like a liquidy tapioca. I wish I could have it again. Oh delicious and yum!

After the mountain hikes and canyon walks, the sandy strolls and the calming swims, I had to leave the Red Sea and her beautiful beaches. I took a night bus up to Cairo and spent more time up there exploring the city. I am not entirely sold on Cairo. Like every city, it has some great areas, though it was certainly not among my favorites. I also went up to Alexandria, having heard so much about Egypt’s second city located on the Mediterranean Sea. I knew I wanted to see the new and modern library of Alexandria, the largest in the Arab world, and certainly a wonderful library. Alexandria was not what I was hoping it would be. The parts of the city directly along the coast were alright, but even two blocks inland it was like the rest of the cities in Egypt, filthy, crowded, and horrible traffic. The ruins of ancient Egypt are an orgasm of architecture and history. Modern Egypt, however, is a smorgasbord of filth and waste. I wasn’t impressed with any of the cities. I spent days roaming around Cairo, looking at mosques and markets, walking small alleys of crumbling buildings and eating schwarma and koshari. I became a fan of koshari, a typical and inexpensive Egyptian food.

I spent all the holiday season there in Egypt and Jordan, roaming about on my own, meeting momentary friends, which comprise all of my friends of the last several years. I live a transient life of a wandering gypsy, and in moments, I wish it to be no other way, though certainly I often wish to share my many moments with someone, and even crave for stability and permanence with an urge to settle down, but not yet finding anything calling out loud enough to force me to stop, not yet finding anything that calls to me in more than a whisper, and with the winds of many continents, I cannot hear the whispers, so I keep going. Perhaps someday, someone or something will want to more than whisper, and perhaps, I will want to listen.

"Among all the stupendous works of Nature, not a place can be selected more fitting for the exhibition of Almighty power.”

- John Lloyd Stephens on Mt. Sinai.

A Crayola Christmas.

2011-06-13T09:14:00.000-07:00

“Match me such marvel save in Eastern clime,

A rose-red city - half as old as time!”

Petra -- John William Burgon

I arrived in Dahab tired and anxious, knowing there was much I wished to do while in the area. I went to the Sinai Peninsula for many reasons; among them was the ease of crossing in to Jordan. I would not stay long there, but one of the highlights of the trip was there in Jordan, among the many mountains and deserts stretching beautifully in to an infinite blandness. My reason for going to Jordan was to visit Petra, one of the new Seven Wonders of the World, and an absolute must for me while living in the Middle East. I say only a small highlight of Jordan, and it enticed me to want to return and see more. A bus drove me up and over mountain ranges that seemed like giant stalactites, craggy and brown, and barren, cone shaped, mound shaped, rounded, pointy, and they rose and dipped and swayed like a perfect desert mountain range.

Petra itself was spectacular. I hiked my way down The Siq, or narrow canyon adorned in colored walls where the sun leaked in to breathe vibrant shades on to red, and orange, and yellow, and black walls, highlighted by the luminous glow of a warm and creeping sun. The Siq reminded me of southern Utah, or of Arizona, red sandstone cliffs carving out narrow canyons in a hiker’s delight of scenic mazes. The Siq ended at the most famous sight in Petra, called The Treasury, what looks like a giant house carved out of the canyon wall in a collage of autumnal colors. Everything there was carved out of mountainside or cliffs or canyon walls, the hundreds of caves and monuments, the large Roman style amphitheatre, everything. The mountains rose around with donkeys and goats wandering the hillsides and Bedouin people cooking over small charcoal fires and resting in the caves. All of Petra is enormous, and I covered but a taste of it, and wished to camp there among the cliffs and caves and explore for a week in some solitary séance. Give me proper shoes, a sleeping bag, and the necessities for food; give me a pen, a journal, and a book to read, and with that and the freedom of my mind, I could have stayed there hiking each day farther in, new canyons, new caves, to the tops of new mountains, perfectly and wonderfully alone. There are places I have seen where I think of people from my life and how much they would enjoy being there, and in Petra, I imagined my father and uncle with their backpacks, their far-fetched stories, their lively banter and cheerful talk. I could see my father staring at each mountain with some unquenching curiosity. I imagined his gazing eyes in wonder and bewilderment at the streaking lines of bright color, whole canyons a scribbling of primary colors in a child’s coloring book. They would love it there, and appreciate it there, like they do the red-rock cliffs and canyons of southern Utah. My father will never visit Petra or Jordan, and it is a shame, because few people would ever appreciate the beautiful simplicity of color and canyons as would he.

As great as the monuments were, the mountains and cliffs and canyons leading to them were, at the least, equally impressive. It is a touristy place, but at moments it had such authentic charm, and often I caught myself in the canyon with no person in sight, only the red colored cliffs and the silence of a solitary moment. Horse carts drove through The Siq with Jordanian cart drivers singing out Arabic songs, likely Quran scripture. From the treasury and beyond camels carried those either too lazy to walk or those wanting the experience of a camel ride. I walked and roamed alone up the cliffs and ascending slopes. Petra is a panorama of caves and cliffs in a collage of desert colors. I sat in the shade of arches or the hump of some lonely hill and stared out to an extending horizon that stretched out beyond the large canvas of Crayola that is Jordan. I strolled leisurely through and unhurried, the calm and quiet of my own inner self and the still rhythmic breathing of a slowly rising chest connected to and conscious of the swirls and shifting turns of the wind and the silent pulse of canyons and mountains and valleys and miles of a vast and beautifully empty wilderness of dust and stone.

The drive out of Petra was a beautiful sight. The sky morphed shades of red and yellow and orange that crashed abruptly in to the black of coming night rising above dark outlines of a thousand mountain peaks. I pressed my face against the window, crinking my neck so not to miss a single dive and rise of the road, the contrast of dark night and the bright fading light of day that is dusk, the steep drop down to valleys and the sharp rise of mountains that only seemed like smudges and outlines in the retreating light of empty valleys.

It was Christmas that day, and I suppose my present to myself was the smile that comes with new journeys and amazing places. I hardly knew it was Christmas, far from family, far from friends, and walking out through warm deserts of Arabian lands. Holidays spent alone do not seem like holidays at all. It is the time of year for celebration with family and the revelry of friends, and I was entirely on my own, as I most often have been the last 2 ½ years. This part of the world does not celebrate Christmas of course, and there are only a few reminders, and although my family may have been far in distance, never in thought, so I remembered that day, if only because I knew how important it would be to call my family, and my own pleasant imaginings of Christmas mornings back home and passing out the Christmas presents for everyone to open. Some memories never die. Some reasons for celebrating go on through eternities with the enormity of profound blessings. My own particular blessing and gift on this specific Christmas was small in comparison, but small things become grand, and I will always remember my celebrations in dust and sand. I will always remember my own special Crayola Christmas.

“…And thou too, Petra, tho’ the Roman came

And fann’d thy dying glories into fame;

Rear’d the tall column – Spread the stately dome –

And seem’d the founder of a second Rome –

How brief the pageant! On thy dying brow

Men laid a crown – but who shall crown thee now?

A thousand summers o’er thy ruins crept:

A thousand winters o’er thy ruins wept:

A thousand years – and still the very spot

Where once thou wert so glorious, was forgot! ..”

“Petra: A Poem”

By John William Burgon, BA.

Feluca Fun and Kings of Karnak.

2011-06-09T11:45:00.000-07:00

“Night fell on old Luxor:

Then O’er the desert, darkness swiftly crept.

And filled the distant valleys, where there slept

The spirits of a hundred Theban kings…”

- “Night Fall: Luxor.” By R.R. Thompson.

After Aswan and Abu Simbel I found a spot on a felucca and sailed listlessly down the Nile northward toward Luxor. A felucca is a traditional sail boat with a large deck, but no state rooms, no bedrooms or bathrooms, just a padded deck with blankets and the company of a few others. I spent 2 ½ days on the felucca. The first night there were ten of us, plus the captain and one crew member. It was fantastically relaxing. That first night we sailed a short distance and docked the boat on the bank of the river for the night. We played cards and chatted through the night and slept there on the deck of the boat. The night was filled with a brisk wind blowing off the river and the orange moon loomed large and full and splotched in black shadows clouds. We cuddled in our blanket till the cold of the morning woke us. It was much colder in desert winter than I anticipated, and I had packed no cold weather clothes, just a simple windbreaker and a thin long sleeve shirt.

The food was simple and traditional, pita bread with Egyptian style pasta or rice along with vegetables. There are large cruise ships that go down the river, covering more ground and stopping at the various temples and sites in Luxor and around. I would rather do the Felucca. Despite the lack of luxury and comfort, I enjoyed the relaxation and intimacy. It was quite perfect for me.

After the first night, we were down to five, a Peruvian couple, a Belgian couple, and me. It was a great group. The day passed patiently and warmly on, zigzagging the river to catch the wind in the tall sail. At lunch, we dove and swam. Yes, I have both sailed and swum the great Nile of Egypt. I was sad to see the Felucca trip end. It was blissfully calming and I caught myself in moments with that inward smile of contentment. I am happy when I travel. It is the only moments I find myself nearing happiness. I love that inward smile, that sudden realization of the moment and the reality of the life I am living. There is good in it, and excitement, and wonder, and awe. The second night the weather was not the cold from the previous night, but a more pleasant cool and a gentle swaying of the boat. We rose early and crossed the river. We bade the captain and the boat adieu and took a minivan the rest of the way to Luxor.

Luxor is filled with temples and sights. It is the city where ancient Egypt is most on display, and I kept busy with days of walking temples and standing under tall pillars of thick stone. I visited Kom Ombo Temple, and Edfu Temple, which was the more impressive of the two, and like the other temples was a complex of pillars and statues and slate walls carved out in an ancient writing. One evening I made my way to the temples of Luxor as the early dark of a winter’s night set in and lights beamed in a soft glow upon the walls and carved out pharaoh faces and the tall Luxor obelisk. It was nice to see a temple at night, the brown stone glowing. The temples of Luxor were fascinating. How do I describe them to sound any different than the others? The pillars of broken walls and crumbled buildings seemed a coliseum of splendor. How was mighty Egypt able to build such things as this? The soft shades of sandstone gleamed in a faint orange from the soft lights, an orange that grew and faded tall in to the sky to an eventual black of dark night and speckled stars. I walked around alone, thoughts of the temples, of the grandeur they must have been, of the magnificence they still are. I tip-toed quietly through halls and courtyards, as though to imbue a sense of reverence, despite the crowd of tourists in their hustle and bustle. I walked out to the back of the temple, behind broken walls where it seemed no tourist ever came, and stood staring through the columns and arches at the city of Luxor on one side, and the ancient temples of Luxor on the other. I appreciated the contrast, though certainly I came for the ancient, for the mighty and revered, and I stood, I sat, I stared, and I listened to the very walls, hoping to hear the sound of light softly echoing through the carved out hieroglyphics in a subtle reverberating tone. I listened to the hum and drum of the breeze and the pattering of footsteps and the chorus of dozen languages, and when I had my fill, I left the temple and walked the city grounds and through the bazaar and up and down any road I could find. I spent much of another day doing the same, walking aimlessly and purposefully in an attempt to become semi-lost. It is what I do, wander and walk with no other reason than to feel and hear the pavement under me and the sounds and sights of a city that I may never know again.

Luxor has many great sites. One day I rose early and headed over to the west bank of the Nile to The Valley of the Kings. That is where the pharaohs had their tombs carved out into the mountains. Wow!! They are impressive, and it is amazing to think how one man could have so much time and effort and labor put into such an elaborate and extravagant burial place. The longer the man served as pharaoh, the bigger his tomb was, for once a pharaoh died, the laborers would quit working on his tomb and begin working on the new pharaoh’s tomb. The tombs are massive caves and tunnels hollowed out of limestone with colorful paintings still intact and the intricate carvings seen everywhere else. No camera were allowed anywhere on the site, and what a shame. Can you imagine perfectly rectangle tunnels leading a hundred yards or more in to, or steeply down a mountainside, with series of cave-like chambers and everything finely smoothed, carved, painted and chiseled in fine and delicate pictorials? Yes, another great site of Egypt. I walked down in to several of the tombs, the boy pharaoh, Ramses, and others, and it continued to amaze me at what power these pharaohs must have had, what gods they must have both seemed and thought themselves to be. What arrogance!

I stayed out on the west bank visiting the other great sites and temples and met a Japanese family living in Kenya, as the father was the Japanese Ambassador there in Kenya. The eight year old daughter took a liking to me and we were fast friends and spent most of the afternoon playing games and talking with me. She never seemed to run out of energy or things to talk about, but she was a cute kid, and her mother wished I could be a teacher at their school in Kenya. Realizing what my students were like in the U.A.E., I wished for the same.

In Luxor I also visited the complex of the Temples of Karnak, 65 acres of pillars and stone walls and piles of crumbling rock and statues. It was a maze of temple sites, beautiful in its size and its fading authenticity, how the crumbling pieces blended in to fine walls and heavy pillars lined in row upon row of massive stone. I was a mouse in search of cheese, slowly scurrying through hallways and tunnels and courtyards and temples. There was too much to see at Karnak, and there, wear and tear and the battling of millennia showed its toll in the piles of battered and beaten stone, and the crumbled rocks spilled in to a scattering of dust. There is a statue there where it is said if you walk around it three times you will get lots of money. If you walk around it five times all your dreams will come true. As I finished my fifth lap, the Peruvian couple jokingly shouted that six times around and I would find a girlfriend, so I made haste to finish one more go around. That was 4 ½ months ago, and I haven’t found her yet. I stayed there at Karnak passing the hours through the jigsaw puzzle of temples. The weather was warm and fine with a calm wind that swirled the sand and dust in slow sweeps. The sun added a pleasant heat of a true desert winter day and the towering stone added the thrill of adventure, experience, and opportunity. I am a hoarder of these things, devouring them wholly, selfishly, entirely, and writing mere memos of remembrance tied up with silly snapshot photos, inadequate and plain. I constantly imagine how much better all these things could be done, and envision what new experiences I will find to hoard and gulf down. Luxor though was finished, and I started off on a painful 19 hour bus ride squished in to the row with the least amount of leg room, despite being the tallest person on the bus. After a tiresome and cold night of cramped legs and banged up knees, I arrived in Dahab on the Sinai Peninsula with the aqua waters of the Red Sea, where I will begin with the next entry.

“Meditation in Luxor.”

By Dibakar Barua

Liquid under the charred brow

of the valley of death

the fabled Nile gleams.

It’s the eye of Horus

shedding a tear for old temples,

peering, joyless, at hot air balloons.

Snake charming pipes regale

tourists on a cruise boat;

the soul grows heavy

with images of bursting planes --

and wary of the judgment

of Osiris – the monster Amemit

eating a meaty, raw heart.

Luxor’s stone tree of life still glows;

one thinks of the ochre moment

of Bardo that will erase all colors,

Nile blue or a childhood rice field green

of billowing waves, and invite all

to a merging with the one --

like pink portals that beckon

to a feast at the teats of Nut.

But the sky and the earth are

a backdrop. We walk the pathways

of desire and fear with a hollow

feathery heart bent on ascension.

This body with its meat sacks,

its iterative propensities,

belongs to none, and this mind that spins

endless spidery filaments

catches nothing.

Sand Castles in the Sun.

2011-06-02T13:27:00.000-07:00

“From the heights of these pyramids, forty centuries look down on us.”

-Napoleon Bonaparte

Make a list of the world’s great ancient sites and amazing archeological finds and I am certain that Egypt will be on your list with the Pyramids of Giza the only of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still standing. It is a site I have always wanted to see, and it is now a site I am glad to have seen. I was in Egypt several months ago and the beginning of the journey I got a ride out to Giza in the morning and bartered for a camel and a guide. My guide, a 25 year old Bedouin, hopped on a small horse, and I on a large camel, and we rode out through the desert and over sand dunes and hills, and though just outside the city, it felt like a real desert experience. Only sand in rolling dunes lay in the views ahead of me, with camel and horses trekking through the emptiness of sand. Camels are ornery creatures, and very large. I felt tall riding on top of his humped back. My camel was the tallest and biggest one I could find and the ride was a bumpy and wobbly experience, but there I was, riding a camel over sand dunes in the deserts of Giza staring at the great pyramids of Egypt. There are many pyramids there, but three stand as the most famous and impressive, sitting tall in the middle, a giant collection of perfectly cut stone the color of the sand so wonderfully surrounding them. I tried to imagine this site 4,000 – 5,000 years ago when it was built, juxtaposed in a harmonious contrast against an endless horizon and a sea of sand. It would have been the tallest building in the world back then, and would have seemed all at once to be a giant geometric sand pile, how it blended in color, and also a great monument worthy only of gods, placed there by some other worldly beings. They still stand majestic, but back then, can you imagine it? The pharaohs were all just kids in the sand box that is Egypt, stuck on building sand castles in the sun.

My camel and I, fast friends, moved along across the desert, snapping photos of sand and sky and monuments to ancient pharaohs. How it must have been to be a pharaoh, convinced of your own deity. Around the pyramids were burial sites of laborers who died in building them, and how it must have been to be a laborer and slave to the pharaohs. Here I am, somewhere in between, and yet, better off than both. Has any pharaoh ever trod the Great Wall of China, or hiked the steep mountainside of Wayna Pichu? These pyramids are some of the greatest tourist sites in the world, and yet how many people will I ever meet who have been there. Al Hamdulilah, Sadiqi. Thanks be to God, my friend. These pyramids loomed large, more impressive than I thought they would be, made so by the blankness and contrast of empty desert, by the camouflage of blending in to orange colored sands of desert. They were massive, and alone, and proud in silence and solitude.

Of course, at Giza, I also saw the Sphinx, part man, part woman, part lion. It sat down in resting pose, knowing it was the king of this jungle, this desert. It seemed to guard over the pyramids, tombs of the pharaohs, patiently sitting as though resting in the shade, only regal in how it sat, how it stared and held its chin and gaze. “Look at me, I am King.” The pyramids were more impressive, due to size alone, though the Sphinx in carved out shape called for more inquiry, symbolic in the very parts of its body, man, woman, and beast. I saw them all, pyramids and statues, tombs and temples. I rode around the city and walked the hallways of the Egyptian Museum, filled with stones and statues, jewelry, board , and sketches made by slaves on limestone tabs, weapons and boats, and sarcophagi of kings and queens, and of course, the kings and queens themselves, their mummified bodies embalmed to last eternity. Have you ever stared at a body nearly 5,000 years old and seen not bone, but skin and teeth and hair clinging to their emaciated frames? They looked like the cursed souls from the Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Their skin was taught and tight, shrunken and stretched out over bone, seemingly nothing underneath. Their teeth were stained and rotting like a smoker’s addicted to sugar who never brushes. The hair was gray and yellow and coarse, and their eyes sewed in. There are reasons that mummies have become creatures of fear and horror, dead bodies clinging obstinately to life, ghastly and ghoulish.

I explored Cairo some, walking around the hectic filthy streets, and decided not to stay long, so I hopped aboard a night train headed for Aswan a long and cold ride through the dark night of a desert winter. I arrived in Aswan and made it to a hotel near the rail station and immediately began to walk the city and the local bazaar. It was different there in the south of Egypt than in Cairo. It was much more traditional. Everyone was dressed in robes and head scarves, following their Nubian traditions. It is such a different desert than what we have in the UAE. It is much more fertile, blessed with the winding waters of the Nile. On the train ride down I stared out the window and it seemed I was back in Southeast Asia, with green, green fields and scattered palm trees around water buffalo and men out plowing and picking the fields in the light of early light of morning. It surprised me to see such lush fields, showing that such immense waters as does the Nile provide can turn even a sandy desert in to a fertile plain. Most of the train ride down was farmland, and the desert reminded me of Arizona, with rocks and hills and the farms and fields, and how the trees and bushes mixed in with the sand and desert. Yes, it is a better desert than we have in Ruwais. It has a pastoral charm, with men in robes and scarves riding donkeys or camels through dirt roads of small stone and clay villages. It is a life from years ago, with horse carts and mules and sand blowing from soft to harsh through towns landscaped around the desert. Camels and donkeys were taken through villages and out to the desert or to markets as the only form of transportation for the Nubian and Egyptian people.

I took a small ferry out to the Temples of Philae, on a small island in the lake created by the Aswan and High Dams on the Nile River. We slowly motored out to the island with the pillars of the temple rising above the reeds and tall grasses and flowering bushes around the banks of the island. I walked around the temples, and inside gazing at statues and carvings of gods and goddesses, particularly Isis and Osiris, gods steeped in an ancient Egyptian love story. The walls were covered in Hieroglyphics and carvings of priests and gods in human and animal form. It was a sacred temple only for the priest who would bring offerings from the common people to serve to the gods. Philae was impressive, but Upper Egypt, as Southern Egypt is called due to the flow of the Nile River running south to north, proved to hold more impressive sites.

I was also able to visit Abu Simbel, several hours south and near the Sudan border. I hate being so close to a country and not being able to visit it. On the drive down, I watched the sun rise up over that empty desert, casting shades of orange and yellow on to the sand, the colors of a genuine desert morning, where wind swept sands gathered and piled in perfect symmetrical mounds that looked from a distance like replicas of the great pyramids, but these were likely formed over hundreds or thousands of years by wind alone. It was desert there, in every sense of the word.

Abu Simbel is a fantastic amazement. There are two temples there, built under Ramses II, and wow, what a sight. Each temple is carved out of the mountain, like an Ancient and Egyptian Mt. Rushmore, only with perfectly carved out rooms going deep in to the mountain, the stone walls inside perfectly preserving the hieroglyphics and intricate carvings and sketches on the flat smooth walls. Many carvings and pillars stood inside the temple, detailed and beautiful sandstone brown, but most impressive were the enormous carvings of the pharaoh and gods carved out of the front of the mountain that guarded tall above the entrance. Everything about the temple was fascinating and awe-inspiring, to think of such detail and intricacy carved in to a stone mountain. Truly Abu Simbel must be among the most impressive monuments and temples in the world. I walked it, and gazed at every inch of workmanship, such sites I have seen, such places I have been to.

Monumental ancient artwork
Burial ground for pharaohs past
Tombs unlike another structure
Built to startle…built to last.
Reaching upward to an apex
Massive stones…each placed with care
Slowly bending to erosion
Centuries old…we find them there.
Mystic shapes claimed to have power
Health and wealth both to be gained
Geometric shape of wonder
Origins…left unexplained.
Filled with artifacts and treasures
Gold and silver, stone and clay
Placed beside the ancient ruler
Meant to help him…on his way.
Living in the plains of rulers
Sandstorms etch away their girth
Future years will find them missing
Lost within…the sands of earth.

“Pyramids.” – M.E. Gaines.

A Safari Sayonari.

2011-05-29T06:11:00.000-07:00

After Adam’s Peak and the tea country we made our way down to Yala National Park. We woke up at 5:00 a.m. and hopped in our private Jeep for a safari through perhaps Sri Lanka’s best and most famous national park. One thing I liked about Sri Lanka is that at times I felt I was back in Southeast Asia, at times, Central America or Hawaii, at times India, and in Yala, it felt like what I imagined Africa to be jeeping through a savannah on a safari. The terrain was much different there from the rest of the country we had seen. It was flat with brushes and trees, muddy wetland and grassy fields, and huge dome rocks and boulders scattered about. We drove over the bumpy and sandy dirt roads and spent hours watching the array of animals. We were even fortunate enough to see the pride of the park, the spotted leopards. We rounded a corner and amid a clump of trees was a giant boulder flattened on top where two spotted leopards sat lazily on the warm surface of stone, their black spots in full view canvassed across their tan fur. They looked out to us as curiously as we looked up to them and then they slowly rose, turned about with their tails curled and walked calmly to the back side of the rock, hidden behind stone and trees. We drove off looking backward at where the leopards had been, knowing I would remember the elegant cats sunbathing on a cool dawn in Sri Lanka’s prairie land.

We drove all around the park, with birds arrayed in rainbows of colors flying above or perching on hanging branches all around us. I am not a bird watcher, but still am awed by their bright colored feathers and elegance, and enjoy their chirping songs and whistling tunes. Crocodiles swam in the waters of mud holes, ponds, and shallow lakes, or basked in the warm mud perfectly motionless, statues of coarse green nobs with cold mechanical stares and eyes that never blinked. I have never seen an animal lie so perfectly still as can a crocodile, and have often wondered and second guessed if the predators I have seen were ceramic or clay, seeming so un-life like in their stillness and silence.

We saw large wild elephants foraging trees and slowly stomping through dry forests. They nuzzled trunk to trunk in a tender touch of animal affection. They must have been long-time lovers, cuddling foreheads with the rub of rough skin. Perhaps it is how elephants kiss, or whisper sweet words in secret. We saw peacocks spreading tail feathers or perching proudly. We saw mongoose and iguanas, dear and wild boar, water buffalo, foxes and more. They rested. They perched. They sung and chirped. They cuddled and kissed, hunted and fished. They basked and they bathed. They stalked and they stomped. This was better than any zoo, any orphanage or shelter. This was no guarantee, no petting or touching, no feeding or riding, but only hope, and uncertainty, and excitement. This was real and wild.

After Yala, we drove down to the beach at the southern tip of the island as a fervent rain storm barreled down. I threw off my shirt and flip flops and ran out to the street and to the puddles where I belonged. It was my moment, and I lived it. We ran and jumped in to the ocean, the warm water washing over us as the rain beat and slapped and the waves lapped and crashed. We swam and talked with the groups of locals also enjoying the rain and watched their play and their dances to mamba drums. A group of local guys invited us over to chat and snack with them and they played drums and sang traditional Sri Lankan songs. They were wild and friendly and loud. I wrestled with one in the sand and down in to the water. It was a fun day, right up until one who had too much to drink became obnoxious and demanding and kept insisting I meet him later for sex. That is when it was time to go.

At night, we went out for a cheap dinner with a few others at a food stall and then grabbed a decadent desert on the porch of a nice restaurant with the waves of the ocean crashing against the wooden beams where we sat, entertained by the sound and the smell of salt and ocean. The next morning we drove out to another beach to try surfing. I didn’t do much, but I did surf and hit a few waves. I have surfed California, Hawaii, Costa Rica, Australia, Indonesia, and now Sri Lanka. That isn’t a bad list for someone who isn’t really even a surfer, despite deceptive hair and frame. Some aspects of my life are blessed. I have made them so. It is what I can control, what I can give myself. We continued to drive up all along the coast to Colombo. We stopped for walks along the coast and hopping lighthouse walls, sitting at the edge of cliffs and peering down to the ocean and rocks below. We watched Sri Lankan boys swim and wrestle in the calm waters, and spied a cricket match, the sound of cheers and the sound of waves a blended tune. We arrived in Colombo in time for a few hours of sleep before hopping on a plane back to the U.A.E. I stood out on the balcony in the dark of early a.m. saying my last goodbyes to Sri Lanka, to beautiful drives through tea plantations, sacred mountains and tropical beaches, and my last farewell, to this country called paradise, was a safari sayonara. Anyway, I tire, and am anxious to get caught up to the present date, so let us say fond farewells to Sri Lanka and get ready for the next adventure.

Forty Miles From Paradise.

2011-05-23T08:49:00.000-07:00

“On top of the mountain, God sits on Adam's peak
Throwing his heavenly blessings to our nation
Blessed our country known to the
world as the Garden of Eden.”

“I Love My Country, Sri Lanka.” -Ravi Sathasivam.

“Right now I am writing from the balcony of a guest house. It is dark except for the light above me and the lights from the four other homes or guest houses hidden in the trees planted in the rich soil of the steep sloping mountains. The sound of the river directly below rushing down from tall peaks, swooshing over rocks and low hanging branches chimes in amongst the whistling song of chirping crickets like some iambic poem, all stanzas in nature’s own ode to herself. I am at the base of a sacred mountain in Sri Lanka, called Adam’s Peak. In a few hours I will begin the holy pilgrimage to the top. It is a holy mountain for billions of people. It is believed that it is where the Prophet Adam first stepped after being cast down from paradise, and also believed to be where the Buddha stood on his visit to the Island before transcending in to Nirvana, with a large footprint on the mountain bearing his mark. To the Hindus though, the foot print comes from Lord Shiva, where he stepped as he created the world. Thousands on thousands of Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims all make the sacred trek in a pilgrimage to the top, and tonight, I join the journey, to pray on holy mountains and watch the sun rise and slowly light and warm the mountainous jungles of this tear drop island.”

- Excerpt from my journal.

After the drive over the storming mountain we arrived at our guest house, nestled amongst the mountains, sitting above a rushing rivers and overlooking that sacred mountain, Adam’s Peak. Here too we had a private balcony, looking directly to the scenery of mountain gardens and tall peaks. The air was that perfect mountain air after a hard rain, a cool and calm breeze, the smell of damp earth and trees, rustling of leaves, clouds, and the gushing of a river descending down a holy mountain, carving through an island onward to the ocean. We met two other teachers living in the UAE, and two German gals out traveling Asia. We stayed up and talked and it all reminded me of some of why I love to travel. I love meeting and talking with people the world over. I am a very shy person in my own personal life, and make few acquaintances, and fewer friends. It is difficult for me to meet people, despite any wish for it, but out traveling, out alone in foreign places, I meet so many, and I love it. I got only a couple short hours of sleep and woke at half past two to being the journey up the mountain. The two teachers living in the U.A.E. and the two German gals climbed with me, and the five us headed up the dark mountain. We went up steep and muddy hills through brush and trees and mud in search of the path. It seemed we were lost and traipsing through the brush of a wet mountain jungle brought us presents of small leeches sucking the blood from under our pant legs and letting the blood trickle down our legs. We did make it to the trail and we all began the climb up in the dark of the night guided by the dim flashlight on my cell phone.

It was a hard hike up, thousands of steps reaching up the steep mountain and even in the cold of darkness, the hard journey and humidity brought a labored sweat. The hike was fun though, with great conversations the whole way up. One of the German galls seemed to think her friend and I paired up well and jokingly said I could have her friend for ten camels. That’s a hefty price, as camels are very expensive and prized animals. Throughout the night she kept dropping the number of camels and at the end of the hike she offered her friend for only two camels. I never bartered at all, as her friend was worth the price of ten camels, but she said we seemed too much alike and it was fate, so she couldn’t stand in the way. They were awesome girls.

Adam’s Peak is also called “Butterfly Mountain” because of the numerous butterflies fluttering about the island that come to die upon the sacred mountain. We did make it to the top, no longer protected from the winds that swooped coldly across the high mountain, everyone bundling in jackets and wind breakers and watching the sun rise up above the clouds. It was amazing to see. Adam’s Peak rose so much higher than the mountains around that it cast a large triangle shadow out across the clouds, and oh, those clouds! They lay in thick white carpets that made it seem the vastness of mountains peering through them were but countless islands rising tall from white waters of a foggy sea. I wondered to myself that if this were the place Adam was cast down to as punishment for his transgression, then what must Paradise have looked like? There was a saying that from Ceylon, or Sri Lanka, it was only 40 miles from Paradise, and Adam had been cast to this place as punishment so as not to be too overwhelmed. This place was the place closest to and most like paradise. It is strange to think that a place so fittingly called serendipity, and a mountain peak with such amazing views could be considered punishment for any person. What glories must lied ahead for us then. I loved it all.

We stayed at top gazing out to the 360 degree views with the sun climbing higher and the mountains and jungle below us. It was fascinating, and the cold wind blew hard in a whistling slither across our faces. We waited and waited up top, continuing to look outward, not ready or wanting to descend the many steps, tired from the climb up, and far too restful, far too amazed at the views, the wind, the smell of crisp air, to want to leave, but we did, and made the descent down the mountain through jungle green mountains. Back at the guest house, we all ate breakfast together, and Ruth woke up and joined us. Soon, I said farewell to new friends and set off with Ruth for another destination.

Most of that day we spent driving, though, in a place like Sri Lanka, a drive makes its own memorable holiday. We drove through Sri Lanka’s famed tea plantations, spread out over mountains that swooned with pictures lakes. Each sight was a paradise. Crafted rows of green bushes rolled up and down and across in curved lines of amazing artistry. What craftsman created such garden wonders? It was a symmetry of lines, perfectly filtering the hillsides of dark green, rich brown soil, and blue and clear air, and clean, wonderful waters.

We drove through miles, hours of such spectacular scenery, oohing and aweing at every bend. Women old and young tied large cloth bags to their heads and picked tea leaves from the plantations hills, smiling widely and wildly as we drove past or stopped for views. Were they as happy as their smiles to us presented? I wondered at their thoughts, they who live in paradise, but perhaps numbed of the constant beauty and tired of long and monotonous labor.

We walked around a plantation, through the rows of Ceylon tea bushes, baskets on our heads as we walked the aisles. We toured the factory and tasted the tea with a lovely young guide who explained she was happy she spoke English because that meant she did not have to pick leaves in the fields but got to work as a guide, and that all the women there worked the plantations as an only option, an inheritance and birthright passed down to each little girl. Although near the entire day was spent in a car, it was a fantastic day. We stopped when we wished for quick snapshots or a breath of that wonderful air. We were invited in to a small Christian church made of stone that stood atop a hill with a lake below. We were invited in to walk the small chapel, the old hand carved wooden pews and podium, the colorful stain glassed windows that leaked in light, and outside a small cemetery in the shade of trees. Yes, sometimes a drive is all you need, and writing this, remembering this, calls to memory the many Sunday drives with my mother up over the mountain pass back home to the green valley surrounded by manly mountains, or family vacations where we would use a day simply to drive about the country surrounding us. Sometimes, a drive is exactly what you need.

“In vain. Let doubts assail the weak;
Unmoved and calm as ‘Adam's Peak,’”

“Outward Bound” –Austin Dobson.

Tear Drop Island.

2011-05-20T12:04:00.000-07:00

I think the next couple posts will be more pictures than words, but I’ll still say a few things. I’m still in Asia, but at least I have moved a bit more westward, and this next country was an incredible place. I took a trip down to Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka, or Ceylon, means serendipity, an amazing blend of paradises. It is called Tear Drop Island, looking on a map like a tear fallen down from India landing softly on the waters of the Indian Ocean. My friend Ruth joined me on this trip, and although I do prefer to travel alone and keep to my own entirely unplanned and happenstance agenda, the trip was fine with the two of us. She is quite the opposite type of traveler, wanting plans and reservations and all of that, but we made a happy compromise and we both got we wanted out of the trip, and she did make for pleasant company. See, I can compromise when I need to. I just prefer not needing to.

We flew in to Colombo, but headed out immediately. We found a bus to the bus station. At the bus station we found another bus to the train station, and at the train station we grabbed a train heading down toward Kandy. We spent a good part of the day in transit, rolling out past the impoverished slums and green farms, the shacks and fields. The train was crowded, dark, and dusty, with half the passengers standing for the 4 hour journey.

We got off before Kandy and met a driver who he hired for the duration of the trip. He proved to be rather convenient. We first visited the main elephant orphanage in Sri Lanka. It was one of the things Ruth most wanted to do in Sri Lanka, so I joined her for the visit. I love animals, but I find it hard to be excited at animals in captivity and places like orphanages, shelters, and zoos. There were a LOT of elephants at this particular orphanage, and played down in the river gulping the water in before tromping up through the streets of the town to a green pasture with shrubs and trees to graze on. While I was not all too impressed with the orphanage, the setting was spectacularly beautiful. The river ran thick and wide below an open field of grass and trees with mountains looming in the back drop. It was an ideal setting, and I gazed and gazed at the place and thought I would almost not mind so much to be an elephant, to have such a place to stare upon each day. Nature is my lover, each of her schizophrenic personalities.

At night we saw some traditional Sri Lankan dancers, beating on drums, singing and chanting, dancing, breathing and swallowing fire, and walking on hot coals. It had been a long day with a an airplane flight, two bus rides, a train, and a long trip in a van, so after the show, we went to a guesthouse in Kandy high on the top of a hill peering down on the ancient city of culture. At night, I sat out on the balcony alone, half hanging over the balcony that steeped down the hill with soft pellets of rain and lights from the temples and Buddha statues and the total sound of pleasantry. It was a fantastic feeling, the solitude of the air, the darkness broken through with the glow of temple lights, the outline of mountains in the dark, and the city below us. I love such moments, and the more of them I have, the more I crave them, the more I love and need them.

In morning I woke and stared from on high to the city, dark replaced by sun, and the soft sounds of night traded in for honking cars and busy streets. We drove and walked around the city, visiting statues and shops and then began our van journey with our driver, Laal, through the countryside, first stopping at the beautiful Botanical Gardens where Sri Lankan couples walked hand in hand and hid out in the shade of drooping trees stealing kisses in some secret space. We walked around through corridors of tall trees and open fields of green grass and hallways of ivy with fragrant flowers hanging from trellises and vines. It was a park of romance, like many I have seen and wandered, and though I was not alone, the potential of the park was kept from me, like some subtle fragrance. I did not walk hand in hand, or fight the urge to steel a kiss. I had my moments there, and I had great moments with a friend, but a such a place is a place for lovers, or a place for solitude and meditation. It covered acres and acres of trees and fields with gardens of all kinds and flowers from across continents that bloomed in bright colors with the buzz of bees. How I do love flowers, and the memories of them, memories of planting flowers with my mother, deadheading roses and daisies, and bouquets of fresh cut flowers from my backyard garden as a gift to my girlfriend. All of those things are fantastic memories to me, and I will never look at a flower with the remembrance of such things.

After hours peacefully strolling the gardens, we continued onward through such green and glorious countryside. We climbed tall mountains and winded down steep dirt roads with an island storm of heavy rain with waterfalls and streams and rivers crashing down muddy hillsides. As we carved our way down sharp curves winding through trees and cliffs with pouring rain, pounding on the roof as the van splashed through brown and dirty puddles of scenic mountains. It was such a fantastic storm, violent and maddening, the smashing of heavy drops battling the mountainside, torrents of rivers dragging the dirt and the soil and tearing steeply down with deep puddles that we splashed through on bumpy, winding roads that dropped down deep to canyons far below. We swerved quickly around sharp corners splashing through water and mud, dodging cars and trucks that poked out from behind the blind corners of a spectacular mountain road. It was a great drive, all the rain, the water, the pounding on the roof, the puddles and water splashing up against the windows, the fear and thought of sliding off the mountain side. Sometimes I think I am excited about the possibility of the worst thing happening, a part of me my mother wishes I would grow out of, but seem instead to grow further in to.

I had only been in the country a couple days and already it seemed I had traveled through and seen so much of it, but the best of the memories were still to come, as is my recounting of them.

“Sri Lanka.” – Jack Jersey.

Sri-Lanka

you are my Shangri-La

Hidden in the sun

Recalling the land of my roots

When my life began.

Sri-Lanka

you are my Shangri-La

From this moment on

Take me away in dreams to the

Place I've been born

Recall all my memories

That nearly have been gone

I say hey

This place I wanna stay

Me and my baby

I'm sure I don't mean maybe today.

I say oh

Wish all my old friens would know

I'm almost in heaven

Sri-Lanka so don't let me go

oh no.

Sri-Lanka you are my Shangri-La

A golden memory.

Paradise

regained in the sun

Where I've found my key

Sri-Lanka I'll spek your sinala

From this moment on and let me keep

Pretending you're the isle where I've been born

Secret paradise

For dreamers like me on the run.

Bedouin Bad

2011-05-18T08:57:00.000-07:00

I may have finished with Southeast Asia, but I certainly have not finished with Asia as a whole, and I am still far from behind caught up. I have gone back to my slacking ways, but my goal is that before I leave this country I am now living in for my summer holiday, I will be caught up to the present date, which means I still have several countries to write about.

My visit back home with family and friends in the US last summer was amazing. It really was a fantastic time in my life. Where my parents live is a small agricultural town without a whole lot for a young single man to do. I have often felt before I would be too bored there for any extended visit beyond a couple days, but last summer, I have to say I loved every minute of it. I genuinely enjoyed mending fences, chasing cows back in to the pasture, hauling hay, climbing and chopping trees, and mowing acres of lawn. I loved lounging around in my parents’ comfortable living room chairs, talks with my mama, wrestling with my old man, playing with their dog Pogo, riding four wheelers and motorcycles, and taking our bicycles out for long strolls through miles of farm and country. I was perfectly content. I have an extraordinary relationship with my parents. Of course, I have extraordinary parents, and I only get closer to them as time edges slowly on. Even with my distance and rare visits, still our bond grows, and I talk with my mama typically several times a week.

I also loved visiting the rest of my family. My brother Dallin, who was out of town working when I arrived back in the US, made it home a week or two later and the family was all complete. Unfortunately, he did not stay in town long, as his job calls him away frequently.

While back in my home town of North Ogden, I split time between my brother Dustin’s house and my sister Chandi’s house with her family. I have already mentioned the special relationship I have with my sister, and it is far understated. She was my best friend growing up, and we still share a closeness rarely rivaled. Perhaps I was not as close with my brothers growing up, but no one in my life have I ever looked up to more. Someday, I will write a blog about each member of my family and what they are to me. They deserve it, and the guarded man that I am, and perhaps because I am a man, I do not ever truly tell them the things they most deserve to know. In writing though, I can be any man but me, and most importantly, I can be more of me than I otherwise am.

While in Utah I visited a few friends, mainly Jeremy, my friend, business mentor, former boss, and old traveling partner. I also hung out with my best friend Jason. There are certain people in your life who perhaps you may lose contact with and rarely if ever speak to, but they will always remain your best friend. Jason is that person. I have known him since I was one year old and his mom has a photo of the two of us out in the front yard in our diapers playing swords. He has always been my best friend. He always will be. We went kayaking down the Weber River and swimming up at Pineview Damn, jumping and swinging off the rope swings hung from tall cottonwood trees. That summer was what every summer should be, and I packed all the things I wanted in to my short visit home. Then, I was off again to a new country, a new adventure, and here I am now.

I moved here to the United Arab Emirates the first of September in 2010. I took a job teaching at a public school in Al Gharbia, or the Western Region. I am a 4 hour bus ride from Dubai and a 2 ½ hour ride from Abu Dhabi. I knew that I would be living out in the desert in a small community, but I did not expect things to be as they are.

I don’t live in any town at all. I live about 30 kilometers from the closest town, which is small with only a few thousand people in it, no mall, no movie theatre, and only a few small shapes for basic items. I am surrounded by miles and miles of sand, with telephone and electrical poles and lines swaying through the blank desert. The sea is about 20 minutes from where I live with clear blue water and soft white sand, but the beach is only accessible at the one hotel in the area. I go there several times a week to work out and get away from where I live. This is not a pretty place. In fact, I would undoubtedly consider this the ugliest place I have yet seen, and I have seen a lot of places. It is flat, dirty, polluted sand with only those obtrusive electrical lines and the grimy air filled with dust and smog that comes from one of the world’s larger industrial complexes. I have heard that where I live has some of the worst air quality in the world, and while it is bad, I find it hard to believe it is among the worst, though with the plastic plant, rubber plant, natural gas and oil refineries and dredging stations, there certainly is a lot of ick and blah spewn in to the air.

I live in a labor camp with about 600 day laborers. Living in a labor camp is a unique experience. It is exactly like what it seems it would be, living in a labor camp. I have a private room and bathroom with basic furnishings. It isn’t much, but I do not need much and I find the room comfortable enough. I have a TV, a small table, a pitifully dull lamp, and a mattress that lets out loud groans and creaks with every move I make and has, I fear, given me permanent harm to my back. I have not had a good night sleep since I have been here.

I have no kitchen, but there is a cafeteria with free food at scheduled meal times. The food gets old and tiresome, but I eat more than I would if I were cooking and shopping for myself. It is a bland and boring place to live, but a good place to save money and use my paid vacation time to travel around in the region. I work in a primary school teaching Math, English, and Science to first grade boys. I admit I had the misconception that kids in the Middle East would be well disciplined and behaved. Wow!!!! I could not have been more wrong on that. It is a 90 minute bus ride each way to work, waking up at 5:00 a.m. every day to ride out through a long and bland stretch of desert, no towns to pass through, just 150 km of sand. I have two separate classes, and I could never have imagined children could behave the way they do out here. The first few months of school were particularly bad. My students are only six years old. They speak no English at all, except to tell me to F**K myself and flip me off. I have been bitten, kicked, hit, slapped, spat on, had desks and chairs thrown at me, had my stuff constantly being stolen from out of my bag, and the kids would take their off and show me the soles of their shoes or throw their shoes at me, which in the Arab world is considered one of the greatest insults you can give to a person. The first two months were a nightmare. From bell to bell the kids would scream and shout and run around the classroom getting in fights, and I would spend my whole class time breaking up fights, screaming at kids to sit down and trying to teach a lesson during all of it. Teaching out here is like turning on a television show of a bunch of young kids on speed out on the playground, and then trying to teach to the kids on the TV show. They don’t seem to even recognize that you exist at all. After about two months, I did begin to gain control of the class, though they still can act out of control. In most countries, I would think that half of my students would have been permanently expelled for violent behavior. Teaching here is enough to frighten anyone away from ever wanting children. Still though, I do.

I have had huge piles of blood on my class room floor, kids with permanent teeth marks in their arms, knocked out teeth, and constant crying. The classrooms are filthy. The kids are filthy, and there seems to be no respect or discipline instilled in these kids from anyone. They always get what they want, and the only form of discipline they ever get is when they are beaten by adults. The Arabic teachers beat the kids and constantly hit and kick them, but it doesn’t phase the kids at all. They are out of control and crazy with lots of psychological problems and most are years behind academically, but they are tough.

Teaching here is difficult, not only due to behavior and the complete lack of attention, but the kids here are definitely far behind where they are expected to be. Out where I live it is a Bedouin community, an area where for thousands of years people lived in the desert with their camels and sheep and small desert farms or fishing boats. They ran wild, did what they wanted to, and never even thought of education, and all that still persists. They have that Bedouin mentality still in them, a lifestyle that has been handed down to them through generations, and this is the first year this school has had a native English speaking teacher. It is difficult, and I do feel like enduring this will act as penance for future sins I may commit. Surely God must forgive me for things when I have proven myself with the patience that this place requires.

In fairness, the kids have calmed down some, and I do have some very bright kids, kids who I only feel sorry that they attend this school. I have a few students who I do think could do a lot with their life if they went to a proper school and were not stuck with classmates as wild as most of the kids here are, and many of the students have learned a lot and progressed incredibly since I have been here. It has been hard work though. About sixty percent of my kids are expats from countries such as Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, etc. The U.A.E. nationals are definitely the worst behaved and the furthest behind academically. They are also the ones most stuck in tribe mentality and the Bedouin mentality. In the future, when I think of or see people truly misbehaved or disrespectful, I will laugh and smile and think to myself that they are Bedouin bad. It is unfortunate, but it is the reality of this place. I have heard that my school is one of the worst in the region, and I have heard there are two others even worse. I feel really bad for teachers at those schools. If you have never taught at a place like this, you cannot imagine what it is really like. Sixty percent of the teachers in my area have quit, several in the first two weeks. The rest of us have often wanted to. I wish I could say it was something less than awful. It certainly isn’t teaching.

As impossible as it is to try and teach the kids collectively, and as horrible as they are as a whole, many of the kids can be fun and adorable individually, but pack mentality, or rather tribe mentality, takes over. The kids LOVE attention, and many love to try and answer questions, even when they have no idea what the answer is, or even were listening to what the question was. They love to play, and crave for attention, and violently fight over it. Throughout the year, I have developed my favorites and become attached to a few specifically. It is common here to greet each other by rubbing noses, like an Eskimo kiss, and some of the kids will come and nuzzle their nose against mine or kiss my arm or stomach, or put their arms up in a plea for me to pick them up and hold them. They fight to hold my hand or sit on my lap, and some come and rest against me and try to sleep with their head on my chest or shoulders and wrap my arm around them. It is those moments that I love here, those moments that helps me to remember how much I want to be a father and have kids of my own someday. ‘Nsha’Allah, as they say here, God Willing.

I only have 5 ½ weeks of teaching left, and we expect the kids to stop showing up a week or two before the end of the school year. I hope they stop coming before that. I will miss some of my kids, but the classes and the job, I won’t miss at all. It has taught me a lot, and I am ready to learn new lessons now. I leave for summer holiday in two months, and next year will come back, but to a different school and to a different city with my own apartment. I’ll write more about the country and my life here in general before leaving. Next though, we’ll begin with more travels and trek our way through whatever we can.