The Top of the World.

"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