May 13, 1990 - Langtang Trek, Nepal - Journal Entry

Previously published May 20, 2023

I wish my camera was functional. It had been smashed after a porter chucked my bag from the bus at the trailhead.

The scenery and people are amazing. I speak with two German trekkers. Dieter is in his 40s. Thin and fit. His hiking partner is Miriam. She has decided to not wear boots and go barefoot like some of our Sherpas. She attacks me for hiring them as slaves. Lance says, "We pay them so they can put food on their families' tables."

"I've seen where they live. They don't have tables."

Lance shook his heads.

Our first stop was a little tea shop with a Coca-Cola flag flying on a pole. Lance and I bought Cokes for everyone. The porters happily thanked us, then lit up cigarettes, inhaling deeply. Lance and I were still huffing from the lack of oxygen. The trail climbed along a savage torrent of glacier melt.

This morning Lance and I were passing through a forest of tall plants. The porters were way ahead of us. I stared closer at some flowers. They looked familiar, because they were marijuana. Lance asked if we should take some and I shook my head. The families of this valley lived on less than a $1 a day. When we emerged from the reefer forest, a young boy ran down the slope, shouting, "Hash, hash, hash."

I was glad to have brought small bills and bought an ounce for $20.

His eyes were crusted due to an infection.

I pulled out my medicine kit. He seemed wary until seeing the Red Cross. I washed away the crud with antiseptic eyedrops. He smiled with gratitude and I filled a small vial for his future use.

"I'm impressed," said Lance.

My grandfather was a surgeon for the Royal Canadian Medical expedition in World War I." I doubted any of his knowledge had been passed through two generations, but I was a severe hypochondriac. My paranoia had killed me many time. Never with success. So I possessed a good sense of preservation for myself and others.

At the next stop I showed the other two trekkers the hashish. Ty Spaulding and I smoke some at lunch. Lance refused, saying he needed his lungs for the next stage.He wasn't a smoker and neither was Ty's partner.

The hashish was fresh off the bud and strong, but probably not the best idea, since Dorge warned us that we were crossing a landslide after this.

I'm sure he's right.

He always is so far and I wonder how many times he has trekked this trail.

May 13, 1990 - Langtang Trek, Nepal - 1990 - Journal Entry

Published May 29, 2023The passing clouds obscure the 6000-meter snow-tipped peaks towering over the Langtang Valley, but the 5000-meter ragged summits cut through the mist. 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 and 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 they have other words for steep.

I have three.

Steep, very steep, and very fucking steep.

May 10, 1990 - Syabru Besi - the Himalayas - Nepal - Journal Entry

Published previously May 17, 2023

Before leaving Kathmandu on the bus to Langtang Glacier, Lance and I each dropped two valium. The road was reputed to be extremely treacherous and neither of us wanted to experience the fears upon seeing shattered buses in the chasm.

At Thamel Market the driver loaded about sixty Nepalese onto the bus along with our guide, Dorge. Our Sherpa porters were on top with the packs. People were leaving the city.

Last night the army had cleared the streets with gunshots. The pre-democracy forces were calling for an end to the monarchy. The generals understood change meant them losing money. A strict curfew was enforced by the military. Protestors are arrested and shot at without warning. Lance and I also are glad to be leaving the city and sat on the bus' left side.

The bus headed north on a paved two-laner and climbed out of the verdant valley into a narrow steep-sloped chasm. The road was one vehicle wide without any guard rails. Lance was out cold, but I kept looking over the edge. The drop was a cliff and I searched the gorge bottom for any bus or car or truck wreckage. I spotted several far below the road. The Nepalese didn't seem to care about the danger. The Sherpas even less so. Lance remained in a blissful unconsciousness. After two hours I joined him.

We finally arrived in Syabru Besi at mid-morning surroune by the Himalayas.

Everyone got off the bus.

The porters were tossing down our gear. Dorge directed the effort. One grabbed mine backpack. He threw it to the ground. I heard a clink. I knew it was my A2 Olympus striking the ground hard. I opened the bag and checked the camera.

Broken.

I stuffed it back in the pack, hoping the damage might mend itself during the trek. The valium made delusion easy, as did the altitude. Lance stumbled from the bus. Drool on his chest. I pointed to the stain.

"Look at your shirt."

We were twins.

The Valiums had done their work. The New York architect blinked in the high sunlight. Sky scrapping mountains surrounded the small village. Dorge pointed to a restaurant. We were all hungry and the plan was to set out away after lunch. We walked up to a cafe. I couldn't see inside. Hordes of flies crawled on the glass.

"This place is filthy," I complained.

"Before filthy. Now only dirty," answered Dorge.

"Order food. We eat outside." I shrugged, because from here on in we would be eating our own food. If we didn't get sick from this, we never would.

Another bus pulled into the village. Mostly Nepalese, but two more westerners. They were younger than Lance and I and looked in good shape and their equipment seemed to be their own, instead of rented like ours. We were far away from our homes and I ordered a beer. Lance shook his head. He was Jewish and the Tribe don't have a reputation for drinking like the Irish. We are always home as long as there is beer.

Altitude - 1400 meters

May 15, 1990 - Langtang Glacier - Nepal - Journal Entry

Published May 26, 2023

The trail has left behind the trees and flowers. Spring millet and sorghum fields surrounded the villages. Beyond this cultivation are rough pastures of high-altitude grass. Yaks lazily chomp their cuds under the watch of young masters. They gather the yak paddies to dry in the sun. The main source of heat in the Himalayas. We have been transported back five-hundred years. Still no sign of civilization, except for bottled beers. Not a single TV antenna spout over the sturdy stone houses. None of them are made of wood. I have no radio reception on my Sony Word Band radio.

At the first tea stop I wash my filthy sox in the raging river, careful not to fall into the savage torrent. Such an accident risked serious injury. Hiking with dirty sox in my boots feels like I walking in mud. I switch to flip-flops, same as the sherpas. The trail is easy as we have entered a broad valley.

My thoughts of losing weight by trekking were ruined by the constant eating to fuel the uphill trek. I have gained a few kilos and will have to be careful to not pack on more in Paris.

Still I'm in the best shape I'e been in after the months in Bali, Sumatra, Malaysia, and Thailand. My heart faithfully pumps blood into my oxygen-starved brain. I pissed and shit like a Sherpa. All my organs seem to be in working order and I've even relegated my brains down to my fifth favorite.

LATER

Another village. More doctoring. A lama has asked to see me. I go into a small house. the room is illuminated by yak butter oil lamps. Ancient prayer books and scriptures are stacked on the wood planked floor and the mud walls are covered with a pantheon of demonic illustrations. The lama is in his fifties, only a little old than me, but he looks eternal and serene.

Dorge translated his blessings.

"Some of the demons are good. Some bad. Nothing in between,"

"Like human beings."

He has heard of my quack doctor routine. No one I treated has complained of my remedies to infected eyes, festering wounds, or my other gentle minstrations. I try to gie the lama my flashlight. He refuses with a smile saying he doesn't want to defile the earth with discarded batteries. I'm probably one of countless foreigners who think giving is good, but there is no way anyone up this high could ever afford the batteries needed to use anything electric.

My father drove us a few times to Mt. Monadanock in lower New Hampshire. It's height was less than three thousand, however the top was above the treeline and the taller White Mountains were visible to the north. My father entered the summit hut and read my words. The Maine native was instantly angry by my writing in the humble mountain's guest book, "The view in for the birds."

My father was very straight and regarded my sentences as anti-social behavior. He was right. I was on the path to ruin. I had never been higher in my young life and was hurt by my father's lecture. The trails on Monadanock were well-traveled, yet every year someone dies stepping off the trail.

Here we are 3000 meters above the sea. Danger exists here from avalanches, falls, wild yaks, the winter cold, rock slides, and demons. I bow to the lama and step into the brilliant sun. Not a cloud in the sky.

I am a day's hike from the glacier.

Last night I could read a book by the starlight.

I am as far as I will be from civilization on this trip.

Yet I am no uncivilized by this trek.

I'm just glad not to be in the white world.

I haven't spoken to my family in Boston since calling them collect after my head-on motorcycle accident north of Chaing Mai. I said nothing about the crash. I chopped off the cast in Kathmandu and the morphine pills killed the pain. I still had a few, but I'm saving them for the long flight to Paris.

My parents didn't mention any mishaps on that phone call.

No bad here.

No bad there.

Whatever is happening in Kathmandu is happening in Kathmandu.

I intend on finish writing THE BEST IS YET TO COME this summer.

Maybe someone will read it, so my parents know there second son is not a ne'er-do-well. Then again thee people up here think I'm a doctor. As was my grandfather. I join Dice and Dorge and Lance. We set off for the last stage.

The Langtang Glacier.

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, Rinche - Lama Hotel - Langtang - Journal Entry

Published previously May 18, 2023

Day two Lance and I dined with the Sherpa porters, cooks and guides by a campfire outside the guesthouse. There is no electricity in this valley other than our flashlights and my Sony World Band radio. I turn it on, finding a scratchy Nepali station playing local pop sounding much like Indian music. The Sherpa are happy and break out their cigarettes. Damn, they love smoking tobacco. I think about joining them, but my lungs are torched by today's trek.

There was culture clash of endurance. We were hungry after the hard steep climb. The Sherpas seemed fine. It had been a hard trudge on the trail. They were carrying forty kilos each. Our load were small backpacks. They hadn't even broken a sweat.

"The first thing a westerner learns in Sherpa is 'Lo ngi' or "Carry this." The next is 'seng t'a nyi' or "Carry me."

Dorge says tomorrow the trail will become steeper and we will cross a landslide. I wonder if the Sherpas have as many words for steep as the Eskimos have for snow.

Lance and I drank two glasses of whiskey. Dorge said none for the porters or anyone else in our crew.

After dinner Lance and I went to our separate rooms. Our legs are noodled and neither of us are acclimated to breathing at this altitude.

The trekking crew remained outside by a fire. They smoked heavily and play cards. Laughter and cursing. I can't decipher the swears, but I can discern that they are all in good humor.

Working in nightclubs had taught me the menacing tone of calling someone something bad.

I turn on my Sony Word-Band radio

Nothing, but static in this deep valley.

No one here knew anything of the troubles in Kathmandu.

Several nights ago Lance and I had stood on the roof of our Thamel hotel. The protestors ran down the narrow street. The police were behind them. The soldiers trapped them and started shooting. They spotted people watching from the roofs and aimed up, aimed, and pulled their triggers. The officers had told them that this was a communist uprising and they were going to kill the king.

Kathmandu didn't exist here.

There was the trail and the villages and the river and the Himalayas covered with snow.

After this I was flying to Paris with stop-overs in New Delhi in Frankfurt.

No one was waiting for me at either terminal.

I had friends in Paris.

I would call them once back in Kathmandu.

There are no phones here.

Only word of mouth.

All I am is a trekker in a lodge by a cataract raging through the valley. I open the window. A billion stars are overhead. Something strange about the ground. Millions of fireflies carpeted the grass. Blinking like the stars. This place is magic. I breathe in the thin air scented by pines and fire. Only the earth, the river, and the smoke of a smoldering fire.

We're heading higher tomorrow.

No one on the way but us and Sherpas. Yaks too.

The poverty here is crushing.

Porters are paid $2 a day.

We're paying ours $5.

They're carrying forty kilos. My pack weighs five.

Just so I can see a glacier at the end of the trail. The room next door is quiet. Lance is asleep.

Outside the Sherpa have fallen asleep.

It's only 9.

I lay my head on the pillows.

Dreaming of the Cafe le Flore in Paris.

May 12, 1990 - Langtang Trek - Journal Entry

We lunch next to a roaring cataract in a small inn.

Flyblown as usual, although not as bad as the restaurant at the trailhead. We are three hours out of Syabu where we lodged last night. Lance and I are not roughing it like the foreign trekkers huffing under the weight of their packs. At $25/night we have three squares.

There are nine of us. Lance, me, Dorge, Lasabhari, the cook, Den, the second cook, and four Sherpa porters. The porters cook us a good lunch. We sip whiskey. Lance brought two bottles of Johnny Walker from Kathmandu. A great idea. Healthy pours into the cups. Whatever you consume, you don't have to carry.

The porters get a shot of whiskey at night after which they settle into smoking cigarettes and playing cards. Once the whiskey is finished it onto beer, which every tea house along with tea and Coca-Cola.

Altitude - 2400 meters

South From Tibet 1995

In early November 1995 I had hitched a ride from Shitgatze, Tibet south on my way to the Nepali border after spending a month in Lhasa. After a few hours on the Friendship Highway I was dropped at the t-intersection of two dirt roads; National Highways 318 and 219. The van disappeared west and I stood in a sere valley without any vegetation in sight. 

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

A Tibetan driver in a empty van picked me up. He was heading to Zhangu, the last Chinese town on the highway. I paid him $20 and the road climbed over the Lalung La 5,050 meter. The Himalayas spread across the southern horizon with Everest's snowy peak towering due south. 

We stopped at a tea shop just past the Thong La and we all ate a bowl of noodles. It was the only meal on the menu.

Millions of flies covered the walls and windows. I said, "This place dirty."

The driver replied, "Before dirty. Now clean.”

I slurped down my noodles with my eyes on northern face of Chomolungma.

The next day in Kathmandu I damn near died.

Giardiasis. An parasitic intestinal invasion.

After two weeks was well enough to a motorcycle across Nepal to Jomsom.

The trailhead to well-traveled Annapurna circuit.

I was too weak to attempt the sixteen-day journey, but sat at a tea house watching the comings and going of yaks, Sherpas, trekkers, snot-nosed children and lamas.

Ne’er-changing life in the approaching shadow of the winter.

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 19, 1990 - Kathmandu Nepal - Journal Entry

Published Jun 16, 2023

A sunny day in Kathmandu. I rose early and climb up to the roof to sunrise over the foothills. I am down to my last $100. If I had money, I would join Todd and fly to Bangokok, instead I'll catch a flight in two days to Paris. My last stop on my first circumnavigation of the world. My great-grandaunt Bert had sailed around the earth on her father's whaling ship in 1868. My uncle Dave had fought on a destroyer Biak in the Pacific War. My Uncle Russ had served in the Occupation of Japan, and my Uncle Jack had battled the Chinese in Korea as a Marine. My travels were strictly peaceful.

I'll try to show NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD TO some producers in Paris through friends, although it needs a serious edit. My typing is excretable. Back in New York I'll try to complete my comedy script THE BEST IS YET TO COME. I've basically been touristing since Bali. I had hoped my comedy about hopeless love would have been completed, but I hadn't prepared for the allure of the Orient; Java, Sumatra, Singapore, Penang, Koh Samui, Koh Phangghan, Bangkok, Chiang Mai, the Golden Triangle, Nepal.

I wish I could travel forever like a letter without an address on an eternity stamp.

Back in New York it will be time to work. To fill the coffers. To schlepp diamonds on 47th Street, while writing THE BEST IS YET TO COME in my spare time this summer.

If the muses are with me.

My writer's block builds a wall on e I'm down to my last c-note.

I am there now.

Curfew has been lifted and people are crowding the streets. Dorzee complained about the slow trekking season. I had tipped him an extra $20. Lance said our guide probably said that every year same as the diamond dealer on 47th Street remarked every Christms season.

Last night I went out drinking with Todd aka Dice. I told him to stay at the Malaysia Hotel in Bangkok, recounting the tale of Charles Sobhraj.

"He murdered travelers all along the hippie trail in the 1970s and stayed at the Malaysia. It's a fun place. Cheap and cheerful. I'll be there next year this time."

"It's a small world."

"And a long life."

"I'll be in Paris." He intended to learn French. I suggested going to the cinemas and reading the subtitles of French movies and sleep with French women

"Les dictionaires couchant. They worked for me."

I can't stay in New York. I was out of control there. Like there's no reason to live, but there is now.

There always was.

The road.

May 16, 1990 Langtang Glacier - Nepal - Journal Entry

Published on May 28, 2023

We have reached Langtang Village.

3500 meters.

This is the highest I've been in this life.

The porters and cook are busy smoking cigarettes and drinking hot tea heavily dosed with yak butter for strength and sustinence. Breakfast on the trail had been mostly oat porridge, eggs, chapati, pancakes with jam, or peanut butter for breakfast, while dinners have consisted of Hindu Dal Bhat, curry, pasta, spaghetti, soups, fried rice, and momos with the Sherpa favorite fried dried yak meat and yak cheese.

Todd broke open a bottle of Johnny Walker Red.

"This is high, but last month I climbed to the top of Kilimanjaro. 19,000 feet. I stayed an hour and came back down. Worst thing about being at that height was shitting below zero."

The nights along this trek have been cool, but the temperature has never been below freezing and during the day we are blasted by the sun. I never sweat, as the sun evaporates off any moisture from my body. I am constantly thirsty. My lips cracked by the sun. A team of film makers descend from the glacier. They have been filming Yuichiro Miura, the first person to ski down Mount Everest. Back in 1970. Their Sherpas are happy are happy to be off the ice fields. Too much sun to be safe. Dorge says they said nothing to the film crew and prayed not to die a movie. We give some of them a little taste of whiskey. All is better, especially when we give none to the film crew, but Yuichiro Miura got a full cup and I gave him my lip balm. His lips were bleeding. And this is only 3500 meters. I look up to the peaks. All over 6000. Dice and I look at each other and give up going any further. It's smart to know when to quit.

May 18, 1990 - Dunche - Langtang Glacier - Nepal - Journal Entry

Published Jun 14, 2023

Back in Kathmandu at the end of the Langtang trek.

Before we reached the trailhead, Lance, Todd, his friend, and I bathed in a pool safe from the river rapids. We toweled off in the bright sunlight, glad to be clean for the first time in over a week. My towel bore the image of my dirty face like the Shroud of Turin. I gave it to one of the porters along with most of my filthy socks. They were stiff with sweat. I was sad about returning to the modern world. I wish I could have continued trekking into Tibet in search of Shangrillah. The mythical valley from the novel LOST HORIZON. I don't have enough money to keep in pursuit of paradise. After Kathmandu, a short flight to New Delhi and a long trip to Paris then London and New York. Around the world in more than eighty days.

Standing on the dirt road I heard a truck. The first mechanized noise in ten days. The tires crumbling over the rocks. A plumb of dust in the air. The modern world. The end of the illusion of another time. Lance said said that the land behind us had inspired Tolkien to write THE LORD OF THE RINGS, but the Sherpas aren't Hobbits. Farewell to yaks, Sherpas and the Himalayas. Next year I will be bacK.

To Annapurna and the rain shadow.

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.