Seven Summits

After Nepal, im dreaming mountain dreams. I'm in love with mountains, all the snow and ice and clouds and peaks up 8000 metres into the clear blue Himalayan sky. Falling asleep in the sanctuary, Macchapucchare, Annapurna South, Fang, Gangapurna, Hiunchuli, around the little cosy lodge, surrounding it, rising to the heavens. Like a baby in a (cold) cradle of ice we slept, coccooned under two layers of thin mattresses (aka blankets, in Nepal) and pashminas, sprinting to bed after warming ourselves in the kitchen where the only source of heat in miles was; a brazier placed under the dining table, and everyone seated meditatively in lotus position around it, playing cards, stoning, reading (Shantaram apparently flavour of the month), talking...

Good morning...

Ive learnt to know my mountains - going out for a (very cold) wash up in the morning it was usually Macchapuchare's distinctive fishtail peak that greeted me first, amidst the rolling seas of white clouds. Then we started to see Annapurna South's blunt peak, then Tent, the lower peak beside it, and Hiunchuli and Singachuli soon emerged. In Nepal sunrise was usually the coldest time of the day - we made the dash into the mess hall after the sun rose, sitting content with our hands around our (2 dollar!) mugs of hot chocolate and authentic Nepali wood fired pancakes/bread/pizza - which is awesome, by the way - the Nepali Margherita is a revelation, with fresh creamy yak cheese, rich tomato paste (no basil though) and the wood fired crust. If i made a food list one day this would certainly be in the contention for top spot. Plus coming in hungry from the trail, dhaal bhaat for lunch - dhaal i.e. legumes with rice really gives you wings on the trail, but after 10 days you start to have meat hallucinations... And tought, leathery (not to mention hairy!) buffalo meat doesn't cut it at all - in fact i found it hard to swallow; you have a right feast in the making.

Thought i might start with Kosciuzko (ok, ok i'm a wimp i know (but at least i finally got my tetanus jab) and actually, ahem, i do stand with the Carstenz Pyramid crowd on this one), Kili, and then graduate to some of the tougher peaks - maybe do a technical mountaineering course, and then try Elbrus before going for the big boys of Anconcagua and Carstenz Pyramid (Puncak Jaya - a nicer name). And then (i like to dream) Denali in Alaska, the Vinson Massif in Antarctica and the holy grail of Everest.

I will try, actually, for Kilimanjaro next year, and maybe it will be the start of it all, after i get some funds from my internship - something good has to come out of it, no? (As much as i dislike waking up at 7 and being a part of the morning crawl to the office, and in all probability learning all the skills needed to make a good coffee while resisting the urge to poison my superiors...)

The Mont Blanc Technical Mountaineering Course (TMC) is on the cards, maybe in the next few years when i have more cash but less time - would be a perfect 2 week European jaunt from the office and then back. I am already mentally prepared for cubicle life for the next 5 years to pay off debts and save up enough to have my own little bistro, somewhere that catches my fancy, where i could stay for a while. To those who know, the Nepali guesthouse scheme is still on! (it has already replaced the sugarcane plantation in Argentina plan...)

Current status check: 0 out of 20,000 USD.

Random memories...

Varanasi.... the river Ganga, sunrise, from the rooftop of the Shanti Guesthouse.

Sitting cross legged on the second floor of a Varanasi bakery, one of those places that i suspect was "twice as old as history" - no, but isn't that everyone's favourite quote on Varanasi? I made another one up while in India -there are two types of people on this world, those who have been to India and those who have not been to India.

Ok the place was probably, judging from its peeling paint, lobby magazines (circa 1980s) and signed guestbook, a throwback to the heydays of the 70s where hippies sought paradise beside the great mother Ganga (or the river Ganges, more commonly, but amongst the Varanasi folk at the Shanti who linger for weeks/months, dabbling in language lessons, yoga, ayuverda, tablar/sitar classes, it will always be the former - it actually even feels like home, now)

Still, the bakery was one of the best places to eat in Varanasi. We chewed on tough, homemade wheat bread with yak-cheese from the Himalayas, downing tall glasses of heavenly, iced coffee, talking and teaching/learning languages - over the sound of the excruciatingly loud coffee machine, swapping travel plans and stories, planning to meet up again in Kathmandu, another legend on the road to nirvana.

The crowd in India, especially in the (weirdly late) monsoon (and apparently they, the Indians, bet on the monsoon) is different from the mainstream, gap year party crowds that you see in Thailand or Vietnam. Here, virtually everyone travels alone, for months on end, freaks of the 00s, and every other lone traveller you meet is a friend, a co-traveller, co-experiencer (cliche cliche but i really met a lot of amazing people who were so warm and open and full of insights and so unpretentious.) We would have these lazy, long talks, discussions, debates over meals that drag on for hours - US presidency being topic of the month. As we all know now, Mr Obama won (and i lost...)

Beloved Varanasi.... why i came to India in the first place...

Football in the mountains...

Playing football in the foothills of the Himalayas in Nepal, Macchapucchare's snowy peak in the background. Running in jeans with borrowed, ragged boots, 2 sizes too small, on a pitch that was more swamp than grass, thanks to the monsoon. At least they said i looked like Cantona, even if i obviously don't play like him. And we had to (illicitly, i suppose) climb down a large drain to get into the field - reminds me of those good old days in Malaysia =)

The Nepalis, like the Indonesians, like to "buang" (clear) the ball from defence, punting it up for their strikers, who seemed to have mastered the first touch, pushing the ball instantly past you at an awkward angle and then sprinting after it. And boy are they fast.

We lost - i think the score was 2-0, and i played terribly - after too many steak and wine evenings on Lakeside, i suppose, but everyone had fun, and it was good exercise prior to tackling the base camp trail. I really was in terrible shape - the "triathlon" with my Dutch friend up the World Peace Pagoda, just on the outskirts of the lake - a challenging row, climb, and (almost) swim (if we had flipped the leaky wooden boat...) approach left me stoned and half-dead on top of the hill - polishing off Shantaram, sharing a smoke and talking with a wizened old Nepali farmer, who it seems, had a brother in Malaysia - which instantly makes you their new best friend, like cool (or was it the smoke). And then us rushing back again before 3 - the official time when the skies open, punctually, and inundate everything in sheets of water. Its funny, one of the first question everyone asks when they first arrive in Nepal mid-monsoon is do you think it will rain tomorrow. The answer, invariably: Yes. 3 o'clock. Why? How do you know? Guy points to the sky, wobbles his head and smiles. And tomorrow, at quarter to 3, when you smile to yourself and think ah but he is wrong, (damn i wished i had went paragliding today) the sky empties. Without warning. No thunder, no lightning - just sheets and sheets of (alpine) water sweeping down over the town, over Pokhara, creating so many silvery ripples in the flat-mirror surface of the lake and falling leaves....

Long termers count the number of monsoons they have been through. My neighbour, the Russian (with his cute 2 year old daughter) is a 5 monsoon-er. I am now a one-monsoon guy. And i absolutely loved it, the rain, everything. It was magic.

Loreena McKennitt - Nights from the Alhambra

Caravanserai. Raglan roads. The mystic's dream. Cymbeline. Marco Polo. Dante's prayer. the Bonny Swans. Huron 'Beltane' Fire Dance.

Putting the CD on, lying down on my bed for a siesta on a hot, timeless Malaysian afternoon, the last orange rays of sunlight permeating in a warm glow from the drawn curtains, somehow, too sweet, already cold but nevertheless great teh tarek on the battered wooden desk where i used to assemble my plastic scale models, attracting armies of ants (black, tiny, and acrid-smelling when you squish them). Its funny but this is what i think of, of Malaysia, and home, when i am abroad - that cosy room that is too hot (and orange-y) in evenings, the call to prayer at 5 in the morning just as i start to get into bed, having fun making supper at 2 a.m., pasar tanis (morning markets) with my father, the chilly morning air on my face, driving, picking greens...

***

I had let my thoughts wander and it instantly, always, runs back to magical Nepal, a flood of memories - that night in Belahiya, getting drunk on Royal Stag whiskey and coke, celebrating "graduating" India (What happens in Belahiya, stays in Belahiya), strolling the lakeside at Pokhara with a few really cool guys and gals, staying on for 2 weeks, lazy late breakfasts at the Pumpernickel Bakery's pretty garden by the lake, a 10 day journey up into the heart of the Annapurna Range, an awe inspiring amphitheatre of ice, snow and giants rising out into the sky. The route up was psychadelic, from the Macchapucchare base camp (i hope almost a year after Nepal, i can still spell this right. I used to pride myself for being able to spell, and pronounce it correctly, instead of the lazy ol' "fishtail", as it is also known.) on, walking through the shifting clouds, swirls of mist dancing around tors, a sea of flowers, red and yellow and purple and pink, and me, walking/floating through it all, no end and no other person in sight. Psychadelic, amazing, breath taking - its what i only use those words for now.

Above: My home in the clouds - notice the little cabin, bottom left... Taken 9 June 2008, Macchapucchare Base Camp - which isn't really a base camp cos you arent supposed to climb it. The locals consider it sacred, the abode of Gods. It wasn't hard to see why.

Above: Macchapucchare looming magnificently right in front of us. See the tiny people at the bottom of the photo? The awe, the grandeur... 9/6/2008


Above: A beautiful dream. Through the clouds on the way to Annapurna base camp. 9/6/2008

And also legendary Kathmandu, the end of the road for me, and the hippies who made it, 30 years ago, overland, from Europe. A fanless room at the south end of Thamel, next to Thamel High School (???) and breakfasts at Helena's rooftop - 99Rs (a dollar and a half for 2 eggs, sauted potatoes - which are the best, ever, and a banana, grilled tomato, sausages, toast, jam, butter and tea/coffee...), going for those long walks out of town into the Kathmandu valley, to the Swayambunath monkey temple, Patan, Pashupatinath...


p/s - the CD was bought for 30 Nepali rupees at a music shop in Pokhara, near Camping Chowk.

The hobbit

It has been one and a half years of travelling and blogging - I thought a change would be refreshing, hence the new layout (themed the hobbit - kinda reminds me of my adventures, leaving my little, cosy hobbit hole with a rucksack and thats all and heading out into the world. Just a kid with his rucksack on his back. (and Sting. No, of course not =)).

So adieu boxy 90s template that i've had for the past one and a half years - it has been a great time, but its also time for a new start. Just to be picky the font is a bit on the small size, and there are perforated lines around all my pics, for some reason. Other than that i quite like the clean new interface and the pasture-green (is this a colour? i mean, since peach is a colour...) background and the font.

Mission: Istaanbul

Just 8 months ago i was in a dingy Delhi guesthouse room suffering from (appropriately enough) Delhi belly flipping through some glossy magazines - and this caught my eye. Suave. =) I wished i could go to Istanbul - just the name itself sounded magical, exotic, faraway.

And its barely 3 months now before Istanbul. Mission begins 8 May 2009.

I will be doing the classic Istanbul to Cairo route, and then back again, in about 7 weeks. And i have circumvented my Israeli problem - apparently there is a ferry from Aqaba in Jordan to Egypt, Nuweiba, where i will make my way through the Sinai to Cairo, and then take a looong ferry ride to Cyprus and then on to Turkey. Or as my friend suggests, do the long way round by flying to Germany for a coffee (and free lodge) with some friends and then flying back to Istanbul, inexplicably cheaper at 150 euros or less than to fly direct for 20. Weird. And the best part: I just realised i don't need a schengen visa!!! How cool is that? I mean, the whole application can take up to months, even a full year, so i realise how lucky i am. (and how lucky us Malaysians are not to be slapped with a visa requirement for the UK even though we are not exactly a rich "first world" country...)

Oh and as an aside i really want to get Rory McLean's Magic Bus to relive the "magic" (in more ways than one) journeys in the 70s that started in Istanbul all the way to paradise in Nepal, but i don't think it's available yet here. Oh well, i might just have to get it online. Check out the journey here.

Current things to do:

1. Get a (real) ISIC card. I had wanted to get one in Bangkok (Oxford law faculty) along with a false passport to placate those dodgy guesthouse owners who insist on safekeeping your passport in case you do a runner (who probably have a lucrative sideline forging "books")...

2. That tetanus jab that has been postponed for years owing to my very manly fear of needles.

3. Renew passport - darn lucky i checked and found that Turkey has recently imposed a 1 year validity requirement for all visitors. Wouldn't want to end up with a Pasport Kecemasan (emergency passport) and pissed off embassy staff.

You know you have been in rural Southeast Asia too long when...

1. You instinctively hesitate, just for that split second, before throwing the piece of toilet paper into the toilet. Should i or should i not? A lesson learnt from overflow(n) toilets in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, where the pipes don't digest toilet paper too well and choke on it. The result, a wet floor which further (desperate) flushing in the hope of clearing the system only aggravates.

2. A patch of overgrown grass and you think to yourself "Achtung minen". And then smile stupidly (ah those fond memories) to yourself while other people stare at you as you try to take the safe way across by skirting the overgrown clumps and stepping on the worn bits, walking in zig zags with a silly self indulgent smile on your face.