So in playing little buddha boy in the last post, I can follow it up by playing little boyscout in this one. In retrospect there were a lot of things missing from the past post, and a lot of things overstated. And I'm sure, for anybody who hasn't had the experience themselves, that any connection between observing bodily sensations to my realization of impermanence would be based purely on "sure, OK Andrew" principle. There are plenty of books written on the subject, I'll wait 'till I can append an MD to my name before I write my own. For now suffice it to say that in addition to learning how to hold concentration longer (which will definately help me for the next 4 years), I got to experience some neat feelings. I've been trying my best to meditate as much as I can out here on the mountains, but I feel like a complete idiot meditating if I'm sharing a room with someone, and I'm usually too tired to stay awake anyway. Lately, I've had a room to myself and, in the case of the night before the pass, it was the only thing to do when I couldn't sleep and there's no electricity to read by. The best places are the temples scattered throughout the trek. They're just really nice places to sit and be quiet, and usually have some sort of floor cushions to make meditating a bit easier. One time this guy I was traveling with came into a temple while I was meditating and tried to meditate next to me because I, by sitting there like a doofus, had already broken the taboo. One step closer to being a guru. Ha. Right, so anyway the past month had been fantastically productive. First got into mental shape, then into physical shape. It was so healthy, I felt fantastic.

But OH, MAN the beauty of breaking fast. Yesterday I had a Yak burger and Apple Moonshine after a month of being a sober vegitarian. Ah, the release. I guess I should back up, since I've been spending the past 2 weeks trekking through some of the most beautiful, and also some of the ugliest, parts of the world. I'll condense everything because internet is rediculously expensive out here because it was carried up to this place on the back of a mule. Or maybe a Sherpa. I'll tell you, after passing a dozen mule caravans every day, they have about the same look in their eyes as the Nepalis with refrigerator-sized loads every day. Which is not to say that sherpas are dumb, it's that mules can be really smart. I was walking along one of those cliche Indiana Jones long, extremely high, really really rackety and unstable suspension foot bridges the other day when, out of nowhere, a mule walks onto it coming towards me. Then another mule follows. Then another. No herder in sight, they just kept coming like they knew the entire 50k trail as well as they knew the ass of the mule in front of them. They knew to pass on the left, as the Nepalis do, and they also knew that I had no chance of actually passing them without being pushed off the bridge myself. Assholes. So I had to go back the way I came and wait for 20 minutes while the slow-ass caravan, and its herder all the way in the back, came through. I think they'd do well driving in New York.

So the first few days kinda sucked. The canyon we were following was covered in smog that completely precluded the beautiful white peaks looming high above us, and it was hot and the villages were all new hotel dens. The second day I learned what an absolutely wreched idea it was to prepare for a 2-week trek by sitting completely still for 10 days. My muscles had not only atrophied, but I had no stamina other than the determination to follow the group I was tagging along with. For lunch the second day we went to this restaruant at the top of this mountain, and on the SECOND-LAST STEP up, my calf went into a full charlie-horse and I almost fell all the way down from the pain. For the rest of the day, every other muscle in my leg threatend to cramp up every time I stopped I felt and I had to be super-super careful to keep moving them. My bag is also way too heavy because I thought it would be "challenging" to not drop anything off in Kathmandu. So while other, smarter, people had tiny day bags and never changed clothes, I was packing 8 months worth of traveling. I couldn't keep up with the group and collapsed at some hotel along the trail. At least I had the whole place to myself.

I woke up the next day and felt better, and the next day after that I felt well enough to do a double-day, hiking from 9AM to 6:30 and covering 24km and 2000 vertical meters. By then I was into it. That night was the last night I'd spend in a modern village ('till today). At least at this town I met some cool guys my age I'd spend the next few days with, until I caught up with my original group and realized they were really annoying anyway and left them.

I really need to send some pictures, because on the 5th day we entered the Kingdom of Rohan, for anybody who saw or read the Two Towers. The resemblance was striking, and gorgeous, and also a little desolate and ghost-towny. Each village at this point was made of rocks and wood, perched on top of a hill or along the side of the canyon, in the high desert (2500-3500 meters up). It did feel a little awkward walking through "someone else's" village every time, but the feeling from the people was that there really weren't enough of us. Of all the hotel spaces, maybe 10% of them were ever occupied. This way I almost never had to pay for a room, on the condition that I ate dinner and breakfast there. It's definately a buyer's market out here.

Not only do the buildings look like something out of Lord of the Rings, but we got to this first Rohan village as they were holding some sort of archery competition. They all sucked. Most of them were drunk, but each person had his own arrows and the bows were hand made but extremely effective. So some great pictures of Rohan are to come when I get back to Kathmandu. I got a cheap film camera but I'll have the pictures burnt to CD to send off anyway. I spent 3 nights in the district capital of Manang, where I spent two days doing some absoultely stupid and rediculously fun day trips up the sides of the mountians. The first day I went out in Birkenstocks and wool socks (yeah I know, but I had blisters and it was cold!) to try to find some cave somewhere. I don't think I found it, but I ended up climbing up to 4000 meters, at times with knee-deep snow, until I hit some completely abandoned monastery-looking village with a giant eerie looking gold Buddha that must have come on the back of some poor Sherpa. There were some more prayer flags further up, and from the distance it looked like they were accessable. By the time I got close enough to not want to turn back, I realized I was scrambling up a black-diamond slope with either snow-ice or sliding rock to grip on to with my faded-soled sandals. I guess the really stupid part was that if I'd fall/slide down and broke my leg, I'd be a 3-hour trek to any kind of help. But in the end I got to the prayer flags, found them absolutely littering this remote rock outcrop overlooking these giant mountains and canyon. I guess it'd be a good place to sit and meditate for 7 years, especially since it'd be so hard to get back down. I sat there for maybe 30 minutes before I got bored and went down anyway. The boyscout in me made me make my own trail down, since it was impossible to get lost (any way down hill was the right way), which involved a lot of fun, dirty slipping and sliding in the mud, snow, and ice. My sandals are now completely torn up, but are still somehow together despite that day and a dog chewing through 75% of one of the straps in Vietnam. The next day was a bit more conservative, but involved another few hours of scrambling up the side of a mountain trying to get to this temple in a cave somewhere near the top. At one point I lost the trail and found this other cave that was covered with these little plaster prayer-things (again, the pictures will help), it looked just like some archeological site you'd see on the Discovery channel. This was actually the perfect place to sit and think about things, since it was so obviously "the space" for many others. I eventually found this "temple," which was more of this 90-year old Llama's house. I walked in, felt really awkward at having entered somebody's house, and he told me to sid town and then annointed me with some holy sugar water and tied a string around my neck. It was a whole lot more awkward than exctiting, but I guess a cool thing to have done nonetheless.

The next three days were spent acclimatizing to the Throng-La Pass, the highest pass in the world (meaning the highest you could get without climbing a mountian). 5416 Meters tall, about 17,800 feet. I don't know how that compares to the mountains in America, but it's damn high. Really, really high. 2/3rds of the way to the cruising altitude of a 747. Altitude sickness was a big deal, so on the approach I was warned to only climb 2000 feet or less per day. My breathing was doing wierd things, according to the people I'd be sharing rooms for those 3 days with. I'd breath heavily about 4 or 5 breaths and then stop breathing for 20 or 30 seconds altogether. It scared the shit out of 2 different groups of people, but apperently is a perfectly normal way of handling the acclimatization. By the time I got to the high camp where I'd spend the final night before the climb, I had a pounding headache and even started to get a metal taste in my mouth--two signs of mountian sickness. But I was there already, I fell alseep and woke up just fine.

So Yesterday I woke up at 1:30 in the morning because I just couldn't sleep anymore. I'd heard sleep is hard up that high (I was at 4800m) and it was freezing anyway, under two thick blankets, thermals, hat, scarf, and sweater. Breakfast at 4:30, out the door as it got light enough to see at 5:30. Absolutely beautiful day. There's something really cool about sunrise when you haven't been up all night drinking, and spending surrounded by white is even cooler. I got to the top around 8AM and, at 17,800 feet I did the most American thing I knew how to do. I scrambled up the hill another few hundred feet until I was certain I'd reached 18,000 feet. Yeehaw! My brother might have set the family depth record at 160 feet, but I'm pretty sure I now have the altitude record. Take that, Dima!

I got down to the next village by 1, checked into the Bob Marley hotel (?), and checked right out after being creeped out by the first Nepali Ladyboy I'd ever seen, but not before having a delicous Yak Burger. I'm still trying to figure out why I left, but I don't think it's entirely the ladyboy's fault. I was almost out of money, and I had enough to make it to the next village where there's an ATM, but I think once I had the Yak burger I got hooked. I wanted nice food, nice beer, and a nice bed with a hot shower. I was ready to splurge, but I didn't have the money on hand. So I packed out and left at 3 for a 4-hour hike to the ATM. It was stupid. Real stupid. But I had my Ipod on and set to my workout gym music and just felt fantastic so I kept moving, totally high on the massive amounts of oxygen in the air, completely forgetting that I'd be stuck after dark. The land after the pass, by the way, turned from Rohan to Nevada. It sucks on this side. It's desert. Not even cool, death valley desert, just dry Nevada desert badlands. No trees, just a little grass. Not even cacti. So I walked faster. Then the sun went down. Then the rain started. Then the lightning started. Eventually I saw the village off in the distance and walked even faster, but somehow the rain made everything look closer than it actually was. No matter how long I walked, it seemed like I never got any closer. Eventaully it got really dark, really rainy, and I was surroudned by swamp somehow. I was almost, really almost there, and in these last 5 minutes I had to walk calf-deep in mossy, swampy, suction sludge to finally get there. Then the village turned out to be gigantic, but there was a whole giant strip of hotels about 10 minutes away. By now it was really dark and rainy. I started walking past the "old village" on the long road to the "new village" where all the hotels were. There was a giant barbed-wire barricade blocking my path, but I was so tired, cold, wet, and certian I was on the right path that I just walked around it. Two minutes later I was surrounded by Nepali military men shining flashlights at me, asking where I was going. I said, "HOTELS" they said "NO HOTELS, go back!" I told them I was absolutely sure the hotels were this way, and they had no idea what I was saying and motioned me to get the hell out of there. I was so pissed off, but who's to argue with guys in camo gear with guns? I went back there today and apparently it's the army barracks of the "Royal Nepali High Altitude Mountain Warfare School" and they close the road outside at night, isolating the two parts of the village. So I went back to the old village to find one of the old, rustic hotels. To risk making too many Lord of the Rings references, I felt like the hobbits coming to that first little dirty Man village and pleading for a place to stay. I was covered in mud, soaking wet, and aching all over. I did feel accomplished, on the other hand, at having covered at least 25 miles that day, but I don't think this came across in the negotiations for a room. Instead of that rustic old romantic hotel with a chimeny and a fire place, I found some place called the Jimi Hendrix hotel (apparently he stayed there once) that just looked like a piece of crap all over. I was in no mood for negotiating, so I'm paying for the room now, 75 cents big whup. Fortunately, they have fantastic home-made boozes. From Wheat Wine to Aprocot brandy to millet seed Sake, I got DRUNK. Oh, how wonderful! And I met some Japanese trekker and got him drunk while telling him about how the Japanese have invaded the East Village and Inuyasha was taking over the pot-smoking college scene.

So I'm still here today. This town sucks as far as trekking is concerned; it's supplied with power and phones, and you can get here by motorbike and there are even some trucks driving through, which means I'll most likely be following the road for the next few days. But I got here just as the storm started, and now it's really, really raining. At least I'm somwhere that's well supplied and cheap until the storm dies down, but I'm not moving 'till it does. I hear there are nice hot springs two days downt he road, and I'm considering extending the trek back into the mountains. I am 2/3rds around the Anapurna mountians, which are arranged like a giant horseshoe. I can spend another 4 days getting into the middle of the horseshoe, the view's supposed to be rediculous. Otherwise, I can be back in Kathmandu in 3 days if I want. I have 'till the hotsprings to decide.

Anyway, the rain stopped momentarily so I'm off to have myself a Yak Steak. I passed by YakDonalds on my hurry to get to this village, but I hear the food's better here anyway. I'll post again from Kathmandu.

-andrew