October 23, 2009 by pecoskid.

(Writings from my Nepal / China Travels)

“Is it not easy to be a wise man on top of a mountain”.
W. Somerset Maugham —- from The Razor’s Edge

My room was basic, quiet and achingly cold. Begrudgingly, I shuffled my body away from the warm multi-layered blankets and sleeping bag, turning my head toward the window to gaze out into the night.

The prior afternoon, I was climbing the steep mountain ascent that begins above the Himalayan village Namche Bazaar when a series of clouds swiftly vanquished a previously gorgeous blue sky, enveloping the lower peaks and cloaking myself in a sea of ethereal chilled clouds. The stunted alpine trees and grassy hillsides I was trekking through abruptly took on a mysterious tone.
Soon descending, distant human and animal sounds breached my ears, telling me my destination, the Sherpa village of Khumjung, was near.
By nightfall, the fog had gradually lifted over the mountain village, however, the Himalayas, including Mount Everest, still remained a mystery.

I was, for the second night, the only guest at a Sherpa family-operated lodge that I had chosen for my stay. The warm fireplace stove situated in the center of the dining room was a great welcome and relief, especially since heating sources are a scarce commodity. The food was tasty and filling. The family’s husband lent me a book on Sir Edmund Hillary, the book dedicated to the 50th anniversary of his Everest summit. I asked if he and his wife had ever met Hillary and he said Yes, many times, including the big party thrown in Kathmandu three years ago celebrating the 50th anniversary. I said very cool and we shared a cup of tea.
Since the summit, Sir Edmund Hillary had continued to contribute a great portion of his life to the betterment of the Sherpa people, a people he had become so fond of and admired.

Bedtime is always early in this cold region. I scrambled under my blankets and prayed for clear skies in the morning.
My prayers were answered. I was awestruck when I looked out my bedroom window.

A moonlit night, an abundant horizon of Himalayan giants, including the “Big Guy”, Mount Everest, glowed in the near distance, while crystal clear, sparkling stars danced over their heads. The uniquely shaped Ama Dablam was regally crowned with the Southern Cross constellation. The time was 2AM. I could not wait for daylight.

Morning light marked a truly memorable moment. I was staring at the “top of the world”, Mount Everest and friends; Nuptse, Lhotse, Ama Dablam, and other snow-frosted, steel gray masters of the Himalayan range. The grandeur of the landscape was breathtaking, humbling. I shared many respectful salutations with the peaks, ranging in languages from Nepalese to Navajo. I joyfully shouted the Basque cheer and even did an Irish jig. It was, you may guess, an exciting moment.

Near yet still worlds apart from where I stood, these peaks held their court, lived on their own terms far from humanities’ influences, though many mountaineers try. This was the realm of the snow leopard and the Yeti, a fiercely frozen, inhospitable, glorious region.

I thought, if I did come across the Yeti, on the trail, he’d probably freak, immediately reverse direction, hightailing down the mountainside muttering “I’d heard the stories about the existence of the Pecoskid but…I …I really didn’t think he existed!!!”
To no avail, I’d call after him saying “But I thought we’d have espressos!”

So how did I get to this place? The Everest Himalayan trek journey began with a Yeti Airlines flight from Kathmandu to Lukla. The small aircraft rises over the Kathmandu Valley and within minutes is within view of the approaching Himalayan mountains. The journey climaxes with a swift descent to a narrow mountain valley where Lukla’s small inclined runway assists arrivals.

I grab my backpack, say “no guides, no porters” to many an anxious Nepalese, lift the bag onto my shoulders and proceed briskly forward through Lukla to the beginning demarcation of the trail. Even from Lukla, there are dramatic views of several peaks, their shimmering sections of bleached-white snow set against the steel gray granite rock peaking above the green canyon valley I now traversed.

The initial five miles of trail is fairly level sloping first down to the river, past several villages, and gradually ascending parallel to the river. Along the trail, many Swiss-built, reinforced steel cable bridges crisscross the river. They don’t sway TOO much, depending on how many yaks and porters are also on the bridge. Let your eyes drift downward and you realize how small the river now looks!

This particular trail is heavily traveled by trekkers, porters and beast of burden alike. Initially I maneuver pass the large group processions, each accompanied by their guides and porters. These processions however pale in size to the leagues of sherpas, and their labored yaks, that regularly traverse this trail’s steep stone steps to deliver supplies to the trail’s linked villages, some many miles away. You skirt along a narrow section of the trail and bang! you have to find a safe spot to position yourself as a long yak team comes lumbering in your direction.

The scenery along the trail is simply beautiful; crystal clear blue river, occasional waterfalls, interesting villages draped in prayer flags, and the occasional appearance from one of those Himalayan guys.
To my surprise few people, trekkers and locals alike, bothered to take a moment to find a spot to rest their gear and marvel at their surroundings. I did as often as I could.

The scenery directly on the trail usually consists of gray slippery stones, gravel, loose dirt, wet mud and plenty of yak dung! Several Buddhist stupas are positioned along the trail, offering comfort to those laboring sherpas. The sherpas, men and women, all ages, carry everything; four full cases of beer and whiskey, propane tanks, beds, wooden beams, you name a product…it’s on their backs!

I spent a very pleasant first night with a Sherpa family. Besides the spectacular moonlight enhanced views of the mountains, waterfall, river, and forested canyon that night, I also gained a friend…the family’ pet dog. He took a liking to me and sometime in the middle of the night, he had pushed my poorly latched door open so he could sleep on the bed next to mine.

The second day included a steep 2000 foot climb to Namche Bazaar, the veritable metropolis (there’s a lodge with electricity) within the Sherpa Khumbu region.
Always the day’s highlight was gazing upward at those massive snow and rock monoliths, the day’s altering light and moonlight providing different shades and moods to the Himalayas.

This was still an ancient landscape, watched over for centuries by the regions traditional mountain people, the Sherpas. Even here, the encroachment of the modern world provides amusing dichotomies as young Sherpas’ ogled over their cell phones after they’d spent the afternoon grinding corn the same way they had for centuries. The old and the new worlds colliding again.

Each year, more people attempt to summit Mount Everest. Each year, more large groups of ill-prepared, ill fit hikers attempt the trek to base camp. Each year, more red rescue helicopters fly out some of those ill-prepared hikers, at considerable personal expense. On my return, ninety marathon runners passed, upward bound to run a marathon, a route that passed Everest base camp, crossed a 18,000 ft. mountain pass that circled over to Gokyo and back down to Namche Bazaar. More power to them, I thought.

Back in Kathmandu, I smiled when a young Swede told me he decided to see Mount Everest by plane. As his plane passed Mount Everest, he was going to raise his gin and tonic glass, look out the window and toast the poor fools down below struggling up the mountain.

For me, the sweat and struggle of the trekking journey just makes the view of the “top of the world” that much sweeter and a heck of a natural high!

To see more of my Nepal photography, travel books, and more, please visit www.michaelmcguerty.com

Posted in Nepal Travel, Travel | 4 Comments »

October 1, 2009 by pecoskid.

(Writings from my recent Southeast Asia Travels, sometime in mid-March)

Remember, when exploring Angkor Wat, it’s best to arrive at the crack of dawn. That’s the bewitching hour when the Khmer ancestral faces embedded in the temple rocks come alive!

While other tourists waited patiently in front of Angkor Wat to snap a picture of the morning sun rising over the temple’s shoulders, I continued riding my bicycle toward the “great city” Angkor Thom. The path led me across the moat and through the first stone gate that guarded the great city. A light mist rolled across the mischievous stone faces that encompass the legendary Bayan temple towers.

Several hundred yards up ahead, I could see a dozen elephants lumbering through the tall trees, each driven by a determined master. As I closed the distance on the temple, to my puzzlement, I could find neither elephant nor its driver in sight. Had the dawn’s flickering beams tricked my eyes?

Suddenly, the temple’s smiling faces burst into laughter, generating such a force the very foundation that held the stone walkway where I stood quaked. The reverberation sent a fleet of small, nimble monkeys clamoring from the temple’s westernmost shadows, gaining momentum as the monkeys scurried in my direction.

Now the laughter turned ugly as the stone faces’ eyes narrowed. In unison, a low frequency baritone mantra followed: “Boom Shaka Laka Boom!”; a low frequency mantra that stirred earthly objects. Within seconds, enormous tree roots flowed forward, carrying themselves and panic-stricken monkeys dangerously close to me.

My instincts keen, I swung my right hand to my side and miraculously whipped out a paintbrush and a can of green paint. I wildly swung, painting everything green in my path; first monkeys, then giant roots, progressing forward toward the temple. Every stone face gasped as I covered them in green paint, swiftly sequestering them into silence.
At a fevered pitch I continued, adorning Bayon, then the Terrace of the Elephants and the Terrace of the Leper King in a fresh coat of emerald green. Finally reaching exhaustion, I stopped, resting on a stone elephant. So exhausted I must have dozed off for I was awoken by the gasps from a crowd of stunned tourists staring at me and the shining green temples. “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE !!!!!”, they yelled.

The scream in my head awakened me from my incredulous dream. I glanced about my hotel room and sighed. “Wow”, I thought. “I guess I shouldn’t have gone to bed with Angkor Wat and St. Patrick’s Day on my mind!”

The ancient Kmer kingdom Angkor Wat is Cambodia’s heart and soul, a revered heritage and symbol of Cambodian pride that can be seen on everything from the Cambodian flag to its premier beer.
The Angkor Wat complex is vast, spreading across a level plain for many miles, the largest structures being Angkor Wat and the “great city” Angkor Thom. The rectangular moats that encompass these two complexes, the intricately carved bas reliefs and rock sculptures, the architectural complexities and the impressive city planning layout of the entire kingdom represented an incredible achievement by its artisans, engineers and architects of not only their time, but any time in man’s history.

Angkor Wat’s prominence primarily came from its strategic position along the pilgrim trade route that connected India with China, reaching its pinnacle in the 13th century. Quite interesting how so many of the world’s great ancient kingdoms reached great heights during this century. While Europeans were still stacking dung in the countryside and chasing rats away from their dinner plates, wealthy kingdoms such as Kmer’s Angkor Wat, Siam’s Sukothai, Peru’s Incas, the Mongolian Empire ruled by the Khan family (Kubla, Ganghis, and Shaka), the Ottoman Empire in Turkey, and the Anasazi Indians in the American Southwest were all flourishing.
Yet look at today’s societies in Peru, Mongolia, Cambodia, or even Italy or Greece today compared to their Roman and Greek Empire heritage. What rises, falls, nothing is permanent, and what falls may rise again.

Where Angkor Wat reign supreme, ruling lands that included parts of Thailand and Laos, today’s Cambodia ranks as the poorest nation in Southeast Asia, still struggling to get on its feet after the devastating effects of its 1970s civil war and the Kmer Rouge reign of terror.

Strange how in a poor country such as Cambodia when you’re driving through the countryside in a bus how much more picturesque the villages and landscape appear; ample rural scenes, villagers still living in wooden huts on stilts, animals in the family courtyard, oxen in the fields and pulling carts of wood, naked kids running around in the yard laughing, moms preparing dinner as the intense rays of the sun start to fade. One man’s picturesque is another man’s poverty. Yet is it poverty and how would one define poverty.

The Cambodian Buddhist monks I met in the wat courtyard in Siem Reap live life modestly, performing work around their wat while also relying on food from others’ generosity. The fellows I met were all well spoken, speaking English, smiles broad and explaining how they hope to pass on their education by teaching Cambodian kids English and other life skills. One even bid me goodbye in French.

My best conversation while in Siem Reap came just hours before I had to leave Cambodia, speaking with a Cambodian man, thirty years of age who managed a nice small restaurant. He’d seen me order my morning cup of coffee the last three days and that morning sat down to talk. He grew up in one of those same poor picturesque villages I had witnessed through a passing bus window, a village where his family had farmed for a modest living.

They moved to Siem Reap in 1991. It was still a small village at that time. There was no markets, no goods for sale, one lone foreigner hotel, few motorbikes, fewer cars. Clothes were old traditional sarongs, shoes were made from old tires. Yet his family was large and no one went hungry, well not too hungry. He said soldiers would occasionally fire their rifles at birds in the trees for a source of food.

His family and friends made ends meet through bartering of food and services. His grandfather had escaped Cambodia to Thailand with many of his uncles and aunts during the Kmer Rouge purges, coming back in the early 90s to Cambodia with some money to invest in a restaurant. With the early 90s recent renovations and tourist promotion of Angkor Wat, investment money came to Siem Reap and the tourist economy grew. He wears good shoes and good clothes now. He’s lived poor and now lives well, at least by Cambodian standards.

And so I thanked him for his story, a very Cambodian story, and we wished each other well.

To see more of my travel photography, and travel books, please visit www.michaelmcguerty.com

Posted in Travel, philosophical | 5 Comments »