May 9 1990 - Kathmandu - Nepal - Journal Entry

Published on May 25, 2023

Kathmandu is a magical city filled with pilgrims traveling to the city's holy shrines and temples of the pantheon of Asian religions. I haven't seen a single church and with good reason. Jesus might have traveled to Kashmir after his crucifixion, but no one here worships him here. Certainly not this atheist, but I am in wonderment, when I stumbled on a procession for the Kumari, the living goddess, in Thamel. These young girls are chosen from the Newari tribe to serve as living vessel for the Hindu goddess Durga until menstruation. The word Kumari means 'virgin' in Nepali. They are revered for their purity, but soldiers disrupted the holy ritual as the government has outlawed the gathering of people, as the citizens clamor for democracy. The TV announcers are accusing the demonstrators of communism and godlessness. So far there is no bloodshed.

I walked to the Thai Air office on the main boulevard shaded by trees harboring thousands of sleeping bat. The ground is splattered with bat dung. I'm glad to be wearing my sneakers.

Last night after drinks at the Yeti Hotel Lance and I walked through dark streets. He was wearing flip-flops and stepped waist deep into an open-air sewer. Up to his waist. I pull him out. Cursing. I help him back to the hotel at a distance. He smells strongly of shit. I hope he doesn't get a disease from this dip in the city's waste waters.

This afternoon Thai Air wasn't able to confirm my flight from Delhi to Paris.

I might have to fly to Munich. It's been over eight years since I was in Germany. I left in December 1982 on an overnight train to Gare du Nord, having ended my working with the pimps at the BSirs nightclub. I wonder what would have happened, if I had stayed in Hamburg.

I would have continued my affair with Stephanie De Leng.

That year I decided after Christmas in America to return to Paris and work at the Bains-Douches. Stephanie wanted me to meet her in Amsterdam. I was too broke to buy a ticket. I crashed at Julie Cole's apartment with the photographer Arthur Gordon and his Doberman. A shabby apartment behind the Gare De L'Est. Stephanie and I later met in New York. The lingerie model had gained weight due to a chronic illness. I thought she was faking the sickness and brutally said so one night. She wrote me a scathing letter and my friend Andy read it.

"What did you do to this woman?"

"I guess I said the wrong thing." I had no sympathy for her and I remember my older lover Linda Imhoff in 1970, as we were laying naked in bed in my Shannon Street apartment, "You're dangerous, because you don't know what you are doing."

I was eighteen at the time.

I'm now thirty-eight. Stephanie could have been the one, but the only way I could get it up was to pretend she was a nun. I had no trouble with the one Patpong go-go girl I took to the Malaysia Hotel a couple of times. I haven't talked to any females in Kathmandu.

And certainly not the Living Goddess or a nun.

May 14,1990 - Langtang Glacier - Nepal - Journal Entry

Previously published May 23, 2023

2500 meters - Ghora Tabula

This morning Dieter woke up with vomit on his shirt. He doesn't talk about being gay or having AIDS, but he has said anything about spending time in Bangkok. I respect his staying in the closet and told him that we are all sinners. Dieter had been traveling the last three years on $250/month to see as much of the world as he could before his immune system crashed. Dice worries that the German could die on this trek.

"It's his choice. Life. Death all the same," says Dorge.

I tell neither of them of his deadly sickness.

The higher we climb the worst the sun.

Thankfully I have lip balm from Dice and sunblock. Lance's lips are painfully black and face scorched by the sun. I lend him mine. We stopped for lunch without any shade trees.The ports have rigged a shelter from tarps. The cook has once more provided a huge lunch. I had hoped to lose weight on this trek, but I think I've gained a few kilos. Dorge orders us to eat more to have energy. Our bodies are not used to this effort. The porters have been gorging on tsampas, daal bhaat, and Thukpa stew. Eating is the only fuel for our bodies. Our whiskey is finished and I've been sober for a few days.

The hippie teahouse trekkers regard us as heretics on the Asia on $5 a day guide book. All in our sherpas and guides and food cost us each $20 a day. Lance and I share our excess food with the children, who trail us from village to village. We only give Dieter food, because his body has been wracked by dysentery. He still refuses to turn back. Yesterday Miriam left him and attached herself to another group of backpackers.

Israelis.

These young men and women exit from their occupation service in Palestine with short hair. Their heads have sprouted Samson locks overnight. None of the teahouses will serve them food or allow them to stay in the rooms The Sherpas can't stand these long-haired ex-soldiers, saying that they steal and cheat villagers every step of the way like they had invading another country.

Earlier in the year I had read in the International Herald Tribune how Pakistani tribesmen had kidnapped a group of Israeli backpackers. One of them shem broke free, grabbed an AK47 and killed all the militants and a few of his friends.

At the age of 18 they are drafted into the Israeli Army of Occupation Their army time kills their soul and this afternoon as I drank tea one of them came over to demand some.

Fuck off."

I had heard how the Israelis on this trek all spoke of the Palestinians other than animals. I told this one that was the way the Nazis had spoken of the Jews during the Holocaust. The largest Israeli wanted to fight me. I held a rock in my hand. Lance defused the situation by saying we were all here to be one with the Himalayas.

After the dispute Dorge suggested that we avoid any contact and we let them tramp out of sight.

"Israelis always trouble." Lance, a New York Jew, agreed and doesn't have time for the either.

Miriam abandoned them and rejoined Dieter, who has employed one of extra Sherpas to carry his bag. The two of them would be perfectly cast as a gay monk followed by an insane nun in a medieval movie. It has been said that Tolkien's books had been inspired by the Himalayas.

Miriam attended to Dieter.

It's time for him to turn around.

He threw up blood.

Miriam is a saint for taking care of him. He is very brave to persist in this trekk. Almost as if will die when we reach Langtang Glacier.

Miriam kissed me after lunch behind a prayer wall.

"Thank you for taking care of Dieter."

When we returned to group, the German glanced at my crotch. My zipper was still down. The retired school teacher smiled at me like he wished it had been with him. My left wrist has been broken in a motorcycle crash on the Burma-Thai border. I was lucky to be alive as was Dieter. I had hammered off the cast in a Patpong go-go bar. I lifted my crooked arm. It hadn't healed yet I and said, "This makes everything harder."

"So I see. I'm taking your advice. I'm going back down. Miriam is coming with me."

"I'm glad to see you. Maybe we'll meet someplace else. Maybe Kathmandu."

"Vierleicht."

Lance and I gave them food and we shook hands. Miriam kissed my cheek. Her sweat smelled sweet in the rare air. The three of them walked out of sight followed by a young beggar. That was the last I saw of them.

May 12, 1990 - Langtang Trek, Nepal - 1990 - Journal Entry

Published May 30, 2023

The passing clouds obscure the 6000-meter snow-tipped peaks towering over the Langtang Valley, but the 5000-meter ragged summits cut through the mist with each parting of the clouds.

The tea house serves a good cup of yak butter tea. I'm not liking the salty brew, but it does provide warmth and nourishment. Dorzee our guide is inside the teahouse speaking with a female Sherpa guide and an Austrian woman fluent in Tuchin in Tibetan. I can only speak English, French, and German. I learned a little Bahasa Indonesian in Biak, Bali, and Sumatra. No Thai, Sherpa or Nepali.

Dorzee has been kind enough to translate for us.

He emerges from the tea house and bids good-bye, "Chag-po nang."

We proceed up the steep trail passing head-high prayer walls.

Garz-bo is steep in Tibetan.

I'm sure like the Eskimos the Sherpas have other words for steep.

I have three.

Steep, very steep, and very fucking steep.

English is my only usable language in this valley other than hand signals, which I use whenever I treat people for cuts, festering wounds, and encrusted eyes. My thermometer amazing them, since I have to put in in their mouth. I usually stick out my tongue to show that I am not a demon. The last of my patients at this rest stop are watching me wash my sox. All these young boys and girls are all barefoot eith busted toenails.

They waved good-bye, as we like every foreigner passing their village head higher to Kyangjin at the head of the valley.

We pass head-high prayer walls erected by faithful Buddhists. The porters mutter prayers and Dorzee says, "They not say these prayers. No one read Tibetan. Not read English. Only lamas read walls. No one here read. No one go school. Not have schools. Before we have many walls. Now not many. Everything not same. No grass, no yaks, no money, no carving."

Something was not right in the mountains. The monsoons came at a different time and the snows were always late. For some reason every year was warmer.

A platoon of Nepali soldiers pass us on the trail heading up to the glacier. The sergeant talks with Dorzee, while the patrol hikes forward. After the sergeant's departure, he says, "Still have trouble in Kathmandu. Most time never see soldiers up here. Government want to tell Sherpas they are in charge. They come and they go. They never stay."

The villagers are Sherpa, Tibetan or Gurkha. They live on the other side of time. Far from the world below. Once the monsoons come the trekking season will be over and the porters will return the shoes and warm clothing to the Kathmandu agencies, then return to up mountain. The villages will retreat into the security of a past lost to the now.

The poverty increases every step forward. Life goes on as it has for millenia. Everyone is uneducated, illiterate, unwashed, malnourished, sick, wear rags, but they always have a smile for us. especially when I give a pen and paper or a postcard of Bali or Thailand to the children. So little will make them happy. I also have sweets. Several Lonely Planet backpackers have ventured reproached me for distributing these candies to the locals. They give no one nothing. Lance tells me to ignore them.

After the next tea stop the porters light cigarettes, swing the packs onto their backs. The loads are getting less and their pace is twice ours. All for $5/day.

Thankfully they are getting all that money, unless they lose it in cards.

The sun is setting over the high rim of Himalayas. It is a little colder than before and Lance and I have decide to sleep in the tea house. Still cold, but it's out of the wind. We have run out of whiskey. Dice and I have switched to the milky millet beer. Tongba, which we drink around a blazing fire. Three cups and I'm feeling okay, glad to not humping on the trail and breathing easier at this altitude.

The porters are playing 'Jhyap', a take and discard card game whose which you play from the three best hands. Money is being waged by everyone. I have no interest n losing money and retire to my room. I am out cold at 8pm.

LATER

Dorge won seventy RPs. Labarai won even more from the porters and villagers. Two-hundred Rupees. About three days of trekking wages and the losers have been losers all the way up the trail. None of them have the sneakers I bought them, but they still have cigarettes

I've worked hard, but not like the porters.

Working at the diamond exchange I never break a sweat. The heaviest thing I lift is a pencil or paper. I don't want to work. I want to travel all the time, but I need money.

I wish I could sell my noVel NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD. Maybe I'll be lucky in Paris, London, and New York. Maybe I'll be able to sherry it to Monty. It really doesn't matter. I'm four days away from civilization.

30,000 Feet over Burma - May 5, 1990 - Journal Entry

Previously published May 24, 2023

I have a flight to Kathmandu. I wish I could stay in Bangkok, but my money is getting low. I called New York from the Malaysia Hotel lobby. A collect call to Rickie Boy, who complained, “I haven’t had anyone to drink with since you left. The city sucks. The clubs suck. The drug sucks.”

“At least here in the Orient there are life”

“Where are you now?”

“Bangkok, the City of the Angels. A paradise for the wicked,” I recounted visits to Patpong the notorious red-light district. Go-go bars and more go-go bars. “I’ve never seen anything like it anywhere else in the world.”

I didn’t mention my head-on crash with a pick-up north of Chiang Mai. I had been killed instantly and just as instantly reincarnated back with this body. Only difference. A broken wrist.

“It does sound like paradise.”

“Yes, but it’s very poor. And they have lepers in the streets. Hiding from the sunlight. Stumps of hands and feet. Gnarled faces.” I tapped my cast. My wrist itched. The plaster cast prevented any scratching.

“Not a pretty picture.”

“No, it is not.” But New York had over 50,000 beggars and madman freed from the closed upstate mental hospitals. The refuse of a nation after decades of wars, poverty, greed, and neglect. There was no saving them nor will Buddha save the desperate souls of Bangkok nor me.

“When are you coming back?”

“I’ll spend time in Paris and London.”

I had no reason to be in America yet. The Knicks had knocked out the Celtics. I had friends in Paris and London. I had worked in both. I could get a job at a nightclub on my fake carte de sejour.

“But I seriously thinking about moving out here. If you want to join me next year, then start saving your pennies. Departure date. Jan. 2, 1991. Although I don’t know, if I can last that long in the USA. I’d love to leave forever.”

Not that America was heaven on earth, however I knew its evils too well.

“Good luck in the Himalayas.” Richie laughed, “I’m stuck with my father and so are you. Your job will waiting here.”

“Thanks.” I kept it short having covered the reason for the call. Back in New York I still had a motorcycle, an apartment, and a job waiting in New York.

I hung up and joined Dawn on a lobby couch. The diminutive go-go girl had been a good companion over the last week. She actually looked sad to see me go. She caressed my cast. I couldn’t feel her touch. I slipped her another 1000 baht. She wai-ed me and said, “You come back. See me. Love you long time.”

I wai-ed her back, wishing she was coming with me. I am a fool.

The ride to the airport through the traffic took an hour. I had another hour and a half until my flight’s departure. I grabbed a Bangkok Post and a Singha beer in the lounge area. The itch was worsening. I couldn’t reach it and downed another Dilaudid. Men were saying good-bye to girlfriends. Some are sad. Other men are greeting their friends. They are happy. This must be the Hello-Goodby Lounge.

The terminal loudspeaker called for all Kathmandu passengers. I finished my beer and proceeded through customs and passport control. None of the officials paid me any mind. I was just another farang or foreigner leaving the Land of Smiles. The Thai Air flight plane took off on time and I left Thailand for the first time. I would be coming back soon.

LATER

Ten klicks below are the arid rice fields of Burma, burnt brown and begged for the monsoons. The rumors of the military’s corruption, forced migrations, massacres, and starvation are not rumors. I had been on the northern Thai-Burma border. Drug lords and Karin rebels fight the junta. No one wins these wars, but there is too much is at stake to surrender. Neither Thailand nor the USA have cut off ties with Myammar. Heroin was why the French and America fought long wars to control the drug trade. They never stood a chance. These countries are not France or America.

I saw one temple in Bangkok.

Wat Patpong. No Buddhas. Only near naked girls dancing above a bar.

Why did I leave?

An hour later I sight the Himalayas to the north. Snow capped peaks stretching for hundreds of miles. I had seen them in National Geographic. Never this close. I had enough money to trek into them and I was dying to see the Himalayas closer than at eight miles high.

LATER

A golf course is next to Kathmandu airport. Soldiers are everywhere. The pro-democracy wave has washed over Asia. Students are calling for the abolishment of the monarchy.

This evening I met Lance. A New York architect. We have hired a trekking team through the hotel. Te most popular trek is the Annapurna circuit. I don’t have enough money for that sixteen hike. We chose Langtang Glacier. Only ten days. I purchase two Kingfisher beers and sit on the roof, watching the sun light up the Himalayas.

Dorge the guide, has arranged trekking permits in less than an hour. He points out the peaks. We have a Nepali cook and Sherpa porters for an early morning departure in two days, which is a good thing, because I hear gunfire. The army is shooting students.

“We were stupid, “says Todd, another trekker from Hawaii. I had told him about Bangkok.

“How so?”

“You should have brought go-go dancers from Pat-Pong.”

“So they can ask, “Where Tee-vee?” No thanks.”

I am here for the mountains.

The highest in the world.

May 11, 1990 - Brabal - the Himalayas - Nepal - Journal Entry

Previously published May 17, 2023

After lunch on the trail I left the stop and continued up the path. The forest is thick and the ascent isn't too taxing. I've been at it for an hour and haven't seen a single soul. Waiting for the porters, Lance, and Dorge to catch up to me.

Maybe I've taken the wrong trail, except I see the bootprints of trekkers. The Sherpas are either in flip flops or barefooted. I had bought our crew sneakers, but they attached them to the loads, wanting to save them for sale back home. I don't understand a word, but they are carrying heavy packs smoking cigarettes and joking all the time. A cheerful crew.

It's forty-four kilometers to the Glacier. Thirty miles. We could probably make it in a day on flat grown, but Dorge said the trek will get much steeper tomorrow and no one is in a rush. I like this pace fine.

I wish my camera wasn't broken.

Altitude - 2100 meters.

May 21, 1990 - Flight from Kathmandu to New Delhi - Journal Entry

Published Jun 17, 2023

30,000 feet over the Himalayas. Flight 205 Kathmandu to New Delhi. Mountains scrapping the sky to the north. The 727 landed in New Delhi. A six-hour lay-over in the transit lounge. Thankfully the bar had bottles of cold Kingfisher beer. Todd aka Dice gave me Newsweek to help kill the hours till boarding.

When I originally set off from NYC, I had John from PanExpress Travel add Dehli to my itinerary, I wanted to trek in the Kashmir, however the political situations had heightened in the divided kingdom with the threat of war between Pakistan and India. Yesterday Indian security forces killed six Muslim militants outside Jummu. The Indian press called the dead 'terrorists' as is the practice for any nation seeking to legitimize their oppression of another culture. Doctors are on strike to protest the arrest of a compatriot who sympathized with the native inhabitants. A hypocritical President Bush, who had conducted the secret Iran-Contra war for Reagan, inflicting thousands of deaths of Mayans in neighboring countries, has called for a truce. Each nation claims the high morale ground running into the Himalaya. Both might not want a war, but they are spoiling for a fight. The monsoon season has ended. Peace is all up to Ms. Bhutto. She is a good woman unlike her husband, and knows the risks of failure, since her father was hung by the previous government.

LATER

$100 might last 10-30 days in Delhi. The temperature is 104F is in the shade. Plus there are too many people. 640 millions in total. The massive population of China is the reason why I didn't go to The Middle Kingdom.

Next year I will book another round-the-world ticket from John at PanExpress.

NYC-LA-Honolulu-Manila-Hong Kong-Nabgkok-Sri Lanka-Nepal-Paris-London-NYC.

We might have to return to Biak and Bali, although Sri Lanka might answer that itch to be in a Buddhist country as opposed to a Muslim land, since the religious strictures apply to everyone even infidels.

How and when I return depends on earning money this summer and fall. Over the phone Richie promised me a job in late August. A long time away and I only want to work three days a week now, while writing THE BEST IS YET TO COME. Then work like a dog in the fall to gather up $6000 enough to stay away from America for months.

BLINDED BY THE SUN - KATHMANDU - NEPAL - 1995

In 1995 I traveled with a lapsed Catholic nun from Lhasa to Shigatse. After several days Dorothy returned to Lhasa. We woke at dawn and breakfasted on Momos or dumpling and butter tea. I wanted to get an early start and Dorothy accompanied me to the southern edge of town. The Asia Friendship Highway ran as a two-lane dirt road west across the Tibetan plateau to Nepal. There was no bus service between the two nations and I stuck out my thumb, even though I had seen no Tibetan traveling by this ancient mode. Traffic was non-existent that morning and the sun spread across the sere highlands. Not a tree to the south. I waited an hour contemplating my folly. Around 8 a tourist van driven by a Nepalese stopped and offered a ride to the turning for Mount Kailash. The Tibetan guide was picking up foreign tourists at the holy peak the source of four rivers; Indus, Sutlej, Brahmaputra, and Karnali. I handed him $10 and sat in the front.

We proceeded along a broad treeless valley imitating the surface of the moon. I divined our location from a Nell's map, as we crossed the Xiabu river and skirted a tributary of the mighty Brahmaputra, the Yarlung Tsangpo, Dirt, rock, and more dust. No traffic. The van stopped for tea at Lhakse for lunch, Thukpa, Tibetan noodle soup.

South of town they dropped me at a T-bone intersection. G-219 led to Mount Kailesh 1300 kilometers in distance. The driver said two-three days by van. Maybe more. Never less. He said $20. I knew the road and the food got worse off the Friendship Highway and I bid them, "Kah-leh phe."

The van roiled a trail of dust into the thin air. Within ten minutes there was no sign of Man save the untraveled road. Not even a turning sign pointing south to Nepal. The highway rose from the valley and I found out to where when another tourist van stopped to ask if I needed a ride to the border town of Zhangmu. It was a simple stupid question and I answered yes.

Two tourists slumped in the back overcome by the high altitude. They spoke not a word throughout the passage of G-318 to the Himalayas. We stopped for a bowl of soup at a forlorn filthy caravansary with a broad panorama from Everest to Phurbi Chyachu and farther to the east and west. The foreigners were barely breathing. The guide said this was 16500 feet. "From here down."

After traversing the unpopulated plateau we dropped through avalanche-ravaged ravines to sleep in Zhangmu, altitude 7600 feet. The increase in oxygen revived the foreigners, but something was amiss with my stomach and intestines. I self-diagnosed through my Rough Planet guidebook I had a giardia infection. By the time we reached Kathmandu the next day I suffered from severe diarrhea, gas, stomach cramps, nausea, and dehydration. I booked myself into the Snowlands and stay in bed for several days on a brown rice soup and beer diet. My lips turned yellow from the Sulphur bubbling from my guts. I was really sick, but after four days I felt strong enough for a tour of the city. I had last been there in 1990. The hotel staff were happy to see me on my feet. Giardiasis was responsible for 500,000 annual deaths. I wasn't one of them and was grateful to have the strength to walk upright, until I stepped out into the green sunlight. The walls glowed with an eerie emerald shine. Something was wrong with my eyes. I was wrong. It was a partial eclipse. I lifted my eyes to the union of sun and moon for a second. A solar eclipse. I had never seen one. not even a partial eclipse. It was October 24 1995. Kathmandu.

I celebrated with beer with the hotel's Tibetan and Nepalese staff.

Suk-bo de-thang or cheers in Tibetan.

Thankful to be alive.

Tibet T-Bone 1995

This road ran between Lhasa and Kathmandu. Twenty miles farther another dirt road diverged to Khailash. The van stopped there and drove off to the Holy Mountain over a thousand kilometers away to the west. I stood at the t-bone intersection and hitchhiked south over the Himalayas to Nepal.

I couldn't have been happier in such desolation whereas I freak out in airports. Safe and sound from the elements.

Another Tibetan driver heading to the border picked me up. trump, indictment, federal charges, The dirt road crested a 5000-meter with the horizon filled by the Himalayas trump, indictment, federal charges, We stopped at a tea shop and ate a bowl of noodles.

I got guardia.

I damn near died.

The next week I spent in a Kathmandu hotel puking out my guts.

When I was strong enough to leave my room, I walked outside headed to the Yeti Hotel. Something was wrong with the eerie green light and I thought my eyes were fucked up, but the sun had been eclipsed by moon.

I was alive.

No freak out.

Never-changing life in the rain shadow of the monsoon.

NOTHING BETTER THAN PIZZA by Peter Nolan Smith

Back in 1995 I left the USA after the death of my younger brother. My plan was to visit the holiest places in Asia. I was a non-believer, but believed this pilgrimage would help Michael's soul in eternity.

By late August I had reached in old Yunnan city of Lijiang in Southern China. My hotel room had a view of the Jade Snow Dragon Mountain farther up the valley. Most travelers visited the old stone city with its traditional Naxhi influences and then headed off to hike the Tiger Leaping Gorge on the Yangtze River.

I skipped the hike down the swollen gorge. It was rainy season and the footing was treacherous on the dirt paths.

Returning backpackers reveled each other with the legend of a lone Israeli hiker who fell from the trail and broke his leg. His cries for help were drowned out by the rushing rapids and he died of starvation within 20 feet of the trail. The story sounded like a myth, since the nationality, sex, age, and year changed with each telling.

Still I refused many offers from passing tourists to join their trek.

I was happy in Lijiang and became friendly with two Frenchmen laying fiber optic cables between Lijiang and Dali, another tourist destination to the south. They asked why I was here. I explained how my younger brother had died of AIDS. We drank beer to Michael's memory. They said that they had been working on the project for a half-year without a break.

I suggested a day's holiday.

"And go where?" Jacques had traveled most of the roads of Sichuan.

"Chengdu is twelve hours away." Yves had recently driven back and forth to pick up a transformer. "The roads through the mountains were scary and the food is the same as here."

"My guide book says there is a ski slope on the Snow Jade Dragon Mountain, but none of the locals know anything about it."

"Pas vrai? Le ski ici?" Yves laughed in my face.

"Maybe they have a chalet with fondue."

"Fondue. Je reve du fondu," Jacques whimpered with an often dreamed desire. "Could it be possible?"

"Only one way to find out. We can drive there."

"Non, let's bicycle." Each of us had rented a bike to travel around Lijiang. It was a fairly flat town.

"On Sunday?"

'Pour-quoi pas?" Yves and Jacques had off both days of the weekend.

"Weather permitting." The Snow Jade Dragon Mountain related to the Himalayas. Storms brewed in the high peaks at all times of the year, but Sunday morning the clouds had cleared on the summit and the three of us met for a quick breakfast of rice and eggs.

"On y va."

Yves was very fit and was soon out of sight, while Jacques and I pedaled leisurely up the gradually ascending road with the wind in our faces.

The Snow Jade Dragon Mountain gleamed in the sun. We reached the top of the pass in three hours. At the base of the mountain a badly weathered billboard announced our arrival at the ski slope, which was actually was a chute for toboggans. Skiing in Yunnan had been a lie, but that came as no surprise, since the Chinese adapted many western trends to their culture without shame.

Yves waited at a restaurant serving rice and noodles in a chicken broth. The Chinese tourists happily slurped at the warm food. Jacques oared noodles from the bowl to his mouth.

"So much for the Jean-Claude Killy ski resort."

"At least they have beer." Yves had built up a good thirst after the long bike ride.

After several beers the Frenchmen and I descended on dirt trails through ancient villages and our conversation turned to food.

"The food here is better than most of China," I said, but after a month's stay in Lijiang I had punched two extra holes in my belt.

"I am starving't on noodles and rice." Jacques came from Nice and sighed, "I am dying for bouillabaisse and a bottle of vin blanc."

Yves countered by extolling the oysters of his native Normandy, while I praised Lobster Newburg from Boston's Durgin Park.

"Oysters, bouillabaisse, Lobster Newburg." Jacques spat on the ground. "China has none of that."

"They don't even have simple foods like a baguette and cheese." Yves licked at his lips with a dry tongue.

"There's no cheese in China or baguettes, but there is a pizza shop in Kathmandu."

"Kathmandu? That is a thousand miles away." Jacques frowned at this choice. "We will not be going that way."

"But I will and I'll write to tell you all about it, because there is no better food in the world than pizza. My younger brother and I ate pizza at Villa Rosa in Wollaston once a month. I hoped that they served it on the other side of life.

"Peut-etre." Yves wasn't a true believer in pizza, but Jacques said, "J'adore le pizza."

"Moi aussi."

A month later I bid fare-well to the Frenchmen. They were stuck in Lijiang for another half-year.

"Write us about the pizza. We will be waiting." Yves wished me well.

"Better yet, mail us one. Stall pizza can't be any worse than noodles." Jacques was serious and gave me $20.

A day later I traveled north to Chengdu, where I caught a flight to Tibet.

I stayed in Lhasa two months.

Everyday I set fire to aromatic fir branches and circled the Jokhang Temple every day counter-clockwise and clockwise. I taught English to rinoches or reincarnated monks and workers. I told them about my dead brother. They graciously offered to pray for Michael. I wrote a letter to the Frenchman telling them that the food in Lhasa was even worst than that of Lijiang.

"Burnt hairy yak meat and rancid butter tea loaded with salt. Next week I'm heading to Kathmandu for pizza." My visa for China terminated in seven days.

I hitchhiked on the Sino-Nepal Friendship Highway across the bone-dry plateau to the Himalayas. A tourist van picked me up in Gyantze. The highway wound along the Bum-Chu River. The only signs of civilization were the Chinese checkpoints. After Tingri the road climbed 16,900 feet to the Yakrushong La. The snowy peaks stretched from east to west without a break. The pass was higher than any mountain in Europe. It was almost impossible to breathe.

The driver stopped at a caravansary.

Noodles and broth.

The inn's walls were carpeted by fat flies. I ate nothing. Even the beer looked dangerous.

That evening we arrived at the border of Nepal and booked a cheap room in a cheap hotel in Zhamgnmu. The filthy dining room served rice and noodles. I drank beer from the bottle.

In the morning caught a mini-van bound for Kathmandu. I refused all food on the road. Pizza was on my mind. We reached Nepal's capitol within five hours. I checked into the Yeti Hotel. The cheapest room was $20. I asked about pizza. The desk clerk gave me directions to the restaurant and a rickshaw conveyed me to Fire and Ice located in a new building close to the Royal Palace. The clientele was divided between rich Nepalis and homesick westerners. I ordered a small l'Americano with pepperoni and a large bottle of Kingfisher beer. The waiter brought a glass filled with ice. Ice could be deadly, but I had survived yak meat in Tibet.

A half hour later the pizza came with a knife and fork.

I stared at the plate for several seconds. The pizza looked nothing like the pie from the Villa Rosa.

"Is there anything wrong, sir?" The waiter must have seen my expression of disappointment on the faces of other pizza lovers.

"Nothing at all."

The pizza was nan covered with clouts of goat Nepali cheese topped by a thick ketchup sauce. The pepperoni sweated on the heated pizza. I lowered my head to the plate. It smelled like pizza and I picked up a piece. My first bite told the truth. This was Nepal and there wasn't any better pizza within several thousand miles. I took a bite.

"How do you like the pizza, sir?" asked the waiter.

"It's the best this side of the Himalayas." I ate every crumb. My younger brother must have been laughing from the other side and I asked the waiter, "Can I have two to go and packed them really well."

"Yes, sir."

I got to the Kathmandu Post Office ten minutes before closing.

The clerk secured the pizzas in a shipping box and I wrote the Frenchmen, "I love pizza."

And the pizza in Kathmandu certainly tasted better than yak meat, then again anything tasted good when you're hungry.

Three days later I was stricken with giardia. My intestines had been poisoned by bacteria. The source of infection couldn't have been the pizza and I blamed the ice for the beer.

It was the usual suspect in the Orient.

For a week I suffered from diarrhea, abdominal cramps, nausea, loss of appetite, passage of gas from more than one orifice, and horrible weakness. My planned trip to Annapurna was postponed by the illness. The hotel staff was very helpful. They dealt with stomach ailments on a daily basis and knew of one cure.

Tea and toast for seven days.

Once I was better, I put myself on the scales at the hotel.

175 pounds.

I had lost nearly fifteen pounds.

And my first real meal was pizza l'Americano at the Fire and Ice.

Plus three Kingfisher beers.

No ice.

Nothing was better than pizza and my younger brother, Michael, knew that too.

Both in this life and the Here-After.

Rhododendrons Of Nepal

In the spring of 1968 I won a rhododendron from my sisters' high school south of Boston.

I didn't think much of the prize.

My father planted the bush by the garage.

A month later light purple flowers burst from the branches. The neighborhood girls admired the rhododendron's scintillating beauty and I proudly declared to having won its beauty in a raffle.

I was a boy with a flower in the Age of the Flower Child.

The bush survived the the End of the Hippies, the Silent Majority, punks, Reaganites, harsh winters, and sweltering summers, but after my parents' sold the split-level ranch-house, they left behind my rhododendron.

Several years ago I had my sister drive by the old house on Harborview Road. The new owners had renovated the old place, but the rhododendron was larger than ever.

Maybe a good ten feet tall.

They can grow even higher.

Nepal's Solu valley fifty kilometers south of Mt Everest is much more meteorologically forgiving than the surrounding Himalaya peaks and the Sherpas' terraced slopes provide an ideal botanical refuge for the giant rhododendrons of Asia.

Some are reputed to be over 90 feet tall.

And the best time to view them is now.

If only I could be so unlucky to get on a plane and fly to Kathmandu, but no one is flying the empty skies to anywhere in the Spring of 2020.