The Immigrant

The fact that Barna lives in Baltimore is a pretty big deal.

The first door we tried was the wrong door, and a Pakistani woman wearing a bright green sari answered. She didn’t speak English, but invited us in for tea so that we could wait for her husband to come home, as he would certainly be able to help us. This is the kind of hospitality that we came to know in South Asia, and being in Baltimore made it stand out even more. In America we’re skeptical of door knockers, a deep seeded reflex that is a result of generations of door knocking Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Girl Scouts, and Avon ladies.
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Welcome to the Jungle

We stood at the water’s edge in our shorts and flip flops along with a horde of other Western and Asian tourists. Six massive elephants rested on their sides in the cool river water of the Rapti. Every day the elephant’s masters, or mahouts, brought them out to the water to be washed, and we were invited to help.
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Langtang Phooey

A while ago in the Andes mountains of Argentina we passed through a place called Uspallata, and thereafter began our ill-fated international food smuggling debacle, which saw us retreating to Uspallata. Uspallata, as it turned out, was the home base for the filming of the movie Seven Years in Tibet, turning the surrounding Andes into the surrogate Himalayas. As we drove from Uspallata to the Chilean border, passing the iconic Aconcagua and other imposing Andean peaks along the way, we just kept thinking, wow, these mountains are just like the Himalayas. Imagine. Just like Tibet.
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The Maoist Revolt

You may recall a reference that I made a short time ago regarding Nepal’s turbulent recent history involving the fall of the monarchy, the rise of the Republic, and the persistent problem with those rebellious and violent communists, the Maoists. You may also recall my mentioning that the country is still plagued by periodic Maoist assaults. It should come as no surprise then, that as a function of Murphy’s Law, no sooner had our friends Nathan and Claire booked their plane tickets to visit us in Nepal for a ten day vacation, that the Maoist rebel leaders announced that the entire country would be completely shut down for a period of—get this—ten days, by force if necessary, coinciding perfectly with our friends’ visit.
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Around Annapurna, Part 3: Little Tibet

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We stood atop the roof on the edge of Muktinath and hung our laundry from the lines, glad to have put the grueling Thorong La behind us. A chilly wind cascaded down the canyon from the direction of the pass, stirred our hanging socks, and then swept into the canyon below. Behind us the Himalayas towered miles high, and on the other side of the canyon in front of us was a different world altogether: the former Kingdom of Lo.
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Around Annapurna, Part 2: Snowbound

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For the second consecutive day in Braga the rain continued to fall. Plan A had been to make a three day diversion to Tilicho Lake, the highest lake in the world at over 16,000 feet. The mountain shelf on which Tilicho sits was visible from the dining room of our lodge, and it wasn’t looking good. Word soon trickled down that the trail had been closed due to avalanche danger.
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Around Annapurna, Part 1: Into the Wild

Before we left on our trip I met exactly one person who had hiked in the Himalayas.  That happened to be Baroon, our dear friend whose family we had just spent a week with in Kathmandu. I was green with envy when he told me about his adventure; just imagine! The person sitting in front of me had trekked around the Annapurna range and seen the exact things my eyes dreamed of seeing.  Our discussion had the sealed the deal, I was going there, damn it. Somehow my mind was even able to skip over the minor details, like the part about the hike being three weeks long.
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