Life of Wry

Trip Day #4

* People say rhymy things about Kathmandu all the time here..  heard this one a lot.

Day 4 was a simple travel day, with lots of time for talking with my travel pals… and many fun and interesting conversations were had.

After all the rejuvenation of the previous day, we’d pretty much adjusted to the time zone, so the 6:00am get up and hustle to the Abu Dhabi airport wasn’t so bad.  We were kind of late, but frazzled nerves were easily soothed by Coffee Costa (the UAE’s version of Starbucks).

Etihad, the airline of the UAE is great–great service, great food  (maybe I’ve mentioned that already).  I’d unfortunately gotten stuck on an aisle in a row that didn’t even have a window, so viewing the creatively shaped man-made islands of Dubai was not an option (have you heard of these?).  Instead, I made great progress in my book (but I’d end up ditching it before our trek because it was too big and heavy to carry).

This was memorable: Landing in Kathmandu, Nepal.  It was very cool to walk down the steps onto the tarmac and 1) feel the warm, humid air, 2) smell the spicy foreign-ness, and, 3) see the foothills of the Himalayas against a brilliant blue sky.  Actually teared up.  It was just such a rush on all senses, we had finally arrived, and it was too magnificent for words.

We spent the rest of the afternoon, it seemed, dealing with third world airport bureaucratic inefficiency.  First, after deplaning, we were directed onto several buses that shuttled us all of 50 yards (I kid you not) to a big brick building with ancient tile floors.  We, and several flights-worth of other passengers, sort of milled about aimlessly before realizing we had some Official Business to tend to.  We crowded a bunch of tall round tables to fill out scrappy immigration forms using dysfunctional ballpoints, then found our way to the back of one of a dozen barely discernible lines, clutching our forms, passports and extra passport photos.  Two hours later (yes), when finally at the front of the line, our forms and passports were processed, we were issued entrance visas (very cool looking), and were then summarily dismissed by surly immigration officers and told to hurry out the door and into the baggage claim area where we would roam the floor looking for our own–among a million–bags.  I’m pretty sure my luggage wasn’t checked (grateful, as I’d anticipated issues with the macadamia pods I was carrying for later delivery to Bill Cavins’ former Peace Corps friend) .

Then, at last, back out to the daylight where an eager crowd awaited, waving signs with people’s names on them.  Such the cacophony of yelling, whistling, and horn honking!  We found the sign with our names, and our guy, Homnath Bhatta, briskly led us through the swarm and across the parking lot to our van.  Homnath hung fresh floral leis around our necks (who knew?) and was all smiles, but also all business.

Then we drove off.

Our driver drove crazily through busy streets (on the wrong side, incidentally) crammed with cars, motorcycles, bikes, carts, people, cows, goats, chickens and even monkeys.  It was exhilarating.

We stopped at an ATM with a guard out front (we would return to this particular ATM numerous times while in Kathmandu) to change some money (rupees), and then checked into the Hotel Shanker–a colonial looking former palace with lovely gardens and impressively attentive staff.

Here’s a fun thing: Traveling half way across the world, checking into your hotel, and acting all cool when the desk clerk says, “Hello Ms. Peterson, welcome. There is a message waiting for you.”

It was from Hari Thapa.  Hari is a friend of my Davis friend Bill Cavins who served in the Peace Corp in Nepal 40 years ago.  Bill has kept in touch with Hari all these years and let him know I’d be visiting.  Further, Bill asked me to deliver a box of macadamia pods for Hari, who will likely become Nepal’s first macadamia grower.  More on Hari later.   In any case, it is nice to have a connection to the local scene.

Leslie and I again shared a room–fancy schmancy– with a granite bathroom and a western toilet (score).  We read a bit of newspaper in the lobby (this is when we learned that the newly married British royal couple was planning to honeymoon at the Everest View Hotel… a place we would visit a few days later), listened to excited people in the bar watching the finals of some cricket tournament (I think a big world event, actually), and after a while had a hotel buffet dinner… not that good, but loved the beer.

So far, so very good!

Trip Day #3

Karen and I had flown all day Wednesday, and through the night, and into Thursday.  The approximately 12-hr clock change messed with our sense of time, so I pretty much lost track of what day it was and how long we’d been up and whether it was a good idea to sleep or not.  In fact, I hadn’t had much, if any, sleep.  It was dark and stormy in Frankfort, making it hard to appreciate that it was, in fact, morning. (Side note: while most time changes across the globe happen in hour-increments, that is not the case in Nepal, which advances time in increments of 15 minutes. I might have thought that was against some global time rule…but it isn’t. So the time difference between Abu Dhabi and Kathmandu is something like 2 hours and 15 minutes.)

The layover in Frankfort was short and, after some snacks, we boarded Etihad Airlines for a 6-hour flight to the United Arab Emirates.  They are an extremely classy airline with great food and service and it seemed a good idea to stay awake.  It was interesting as we flew over places like Bagdad, Tehran, Kuwait, and Bahrain, and dark again as we flew into the UAE.  It looked beautiful at night: orderly, well-lit, modern, developed.  We got through immigration pretty quickly and were greeted with excitement by Laura and Leslie (Leslie had come in from Norway a few hours earlier).

Wuhoo! Now we were four.

It was awesome walking out of the airport and into the very warm night air.  The exhaustion made it all the more surreal.  Laura took us on an informal tour of the city on our way to her place.

On the way, we stopped for a quick look at the Emirates Palace Hotel (oh my), and saw our first gold vending machine.

Laura lives in an apartment suite in a high rise luxury hotel in downtown Abu Dhabi (this shot is from the following day):

When we got to her place, she set out some olives, dates, bread and cheese with thyme, and champagne.

But of course.

And after being up for Ican’tevencountthehours, we finally crashed. Leslie and I had our own room down the hall, gorgeous and modern, and pretty soon were buried under our respective piles of down for what would be an indescribable, lusciously deep sleep.

This is what we woke up to on Friday morning (their Friday morning; we were still twelve hours behind).

Sunrise over an inlet on the Arabian Gulf (we call it the Persian Gulf).  Note lots and lots of construction.
Laura said the sky is never a pure blue, even though it’s always cloudless (last year’s rainfall: zero).  Sand is everywhere… there is a light haze to the air caused by the constant presence of sand.. though I didn’t feel it.

And it’s warm: temps in early April were high 80s and 90s.

I stepped out on the balcony and shot these…  an early morning pair of cricket games in progress on the desert sands.

A bit to the left was an expansive view of oil wells and tanks. That is, afterall, their source of significant wealth.

The country unified its 7 disparate emirates in the late 60s after oil was discovered. Pretty much all of the development seen today is new since the 70s.   Amazing.  Abu Dhabi and Dubai, UAE’s two largest emirates (and cities) are built on oil money.

We had a great breakfast buffet downstairs that included pita bread, hummus, olives, salmon, cafe latte, and a veggie omelet–heaven–then walked over to Laura’s health club where we hung out on lounge chairs under swaying palms, read and talked, had lemon/mint drinks, and were treated to jetlag-fixing, pre-trek massages, sauna, steam, jacuzzi… the works.  Kind of amazing, really.  We also learned that nudity is forbidden, even in the women’s locker room.

For lunch, had more of this: pita and hummus, tabouli, kibbeh, eggplant.. lovely beyond words, and even some rose wine. Not bad!

That evening, we taxi’d to the largest mosque in the UAE–the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque–which is named for the founder and first president of the UAE, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, for whom countless things are named, and who is also buried next to the mosque. The whole mosque was finished and opened for worship just 4 years ago.

It’s the 8th largest mosque in the world (it has 4 minarets and 57 domes, and can accommodate up to 40,000 worshipers!) and has the world’s largest single slab o’ carpet (this was an impressive worship room; it alone holds 9,000 folks).

It was quite beautiful, and a treat at night because of the lighting. We saw lots of marble tile work (from Italy) and some incredible chandeliers (from Germany).

Much pretty floral tile work, gold columns, expansive plazas, and more. Walking around required appropriate cover, which they provide.

Afterward, we went to dinner with some of Laura’s expat friends (90% of population of UAE is expats) in a casual local restaurant.. another great middle eastern meal (more cuisine happiness for me).

We’ll take off for Nepal in the morning.

Trip Days #1 and #2

Our first day started on March 30, but ended on March 31.  So, this is a post about the first and second days.

After a couple weeks of committing to the trip, un-committing to the trip, and re-committing to the trip, I had only a month to make lists, read travel books and blogs, plan, shop, get shots and prescriptions for all manner of maladies, train as best I could–in flatness and in rain–and acquire and pack embarrassing amounts of gear.

This being Nepal and a trek among the highest mountains in the world, I also wanted to have certain info handy:

– I made a chart of our day-to-day itinerary–mileage, mountains we’d see, rivers we’d cross.

– I made a schematic of all of our elevation gains and losses along the way.

– I made a list of the peaks we’d see on this trip and their world ranking in terms of elevation (for the record, we’d see the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 15th, 20th, 24th highest.. wowowowow!).

– I made a handy conversion chart for both meters-to-feet and celsius-to-fahrenheit.

(Nevermind I also felt compelled to clean out the refrigerator, sort the coins in the spare change basket, call the dishwasher repair guy, finish up the unsent Christmas cards, file all the items in the to-file box, clear out the hat and coat area, sweep the porches, plus things up to which I will not fess… all to ensure that was leaving an orderly world for Peter and Jim while I was gone.)

I could finally say, for better or for worse: I’m ready to go to Nepal!

In uncharacteristic fashion (on time even!), we (Jim scored lots of husband points for driving me to the San Francisco Airport) left home in a cloud of calm and headed to Starbucks for the traditional road trip coffee & pastry.  At Starbucks, I chatted with people I knew in line, saying things like, “Me? Oh, I’m on my way to Abu Dhabi.”

All was good.

Mostly.

Before we’d even gotten to Dixon, I spilled non-fat cafe au lait all over my new fleece jacket.  A few cinnamon swirl coffeecake crumbs, too.  Let The Dirtiness Begin.

But then.. this happened.

We ran into a major snag around Richmond: a huge, miles-long traffic jam on I-80–the result of a big rig fire.

This traffic jam–which had brought the westbound lanes of I-80 to a complete and total, panic-inducing stop–threatened all my careful planning.  I might now miss my plane to Frankfort, which would result in my missing the connection to Abu Dhabi, which would mean I’d miss all that camaraderie-building and pre-trek bonding, plus, missing my flight might even screw up my Kathmandu arrival, which would mean I’d potentially miss the orientation and welcome dinner,  and hell, I may have to rethink the whole trek to Everest Base Camp…. this is BAD.

So, yeah… I sent a panicky stream of update texts to Karen, who was already at SFO, already at our gate.  And all I could do was stare plaintively at the traffic, trying to will it to move, and think, really?!  REALLY universe?  A TRA.FICK.JAM? Today? Now?

And, in the end, it was all ok, because they cleared a couple of lanes after about an hour, and traffic again flowed, and my texts to Karen–who was frantically texting messages back to me with lots of exclamation points and instructions to breathe–got less hysterical, and it was all fine.

Then, at the airport, after bidding a happy and relieved goodbye to Jim, I ended up in the wrong check-in line.  An honest mistake, as I had a ticket to Frankfort on Luftansa, dutifully stood in Luftansa’s Frankfort line with lots of other Frankfort-bound, German-speaking travelers, but, in fact, I should have been standing in the United line–for reasons that still baffle me.  After 30 minutes of blissful (if unwarranted) confidence, Luftansa officials kindly told me to go to a whole nuther check-in station two bays down. But, thankfully, it turned out to be a non-issue as United had no line at all (because I was so late) and I checked my bags uneventfully and took off to find Karen… with whole minutes to spare before my gate would close.

Meanwhile, she’d been texting me all along with excited sentence fragments like, “They’re calling your name” and “OMG, a double decker!!!,” and other things like that.

I arrived at the gate and saw Karen immediately, a beacon of green, which I would later learn is her color, and we were all, “Hi! How ARE you? YOU MADE IT! You look great!  How long has it been? Is that all you’re carrying? Are you ready?  WOW! Are you excited?  I knew you’d make it. I thought I’d never make it. Where are you sitting?  Which boarding line do we get in?  I got an aisle.  Are your bags checked through to Abu Dhabi? This is going to be great. I got a window.  You can relax now. I can relax now. Whew!  Whew!”  ETC.

Moments later, we boarded the giant, double decker 747, I dashed off a Facebook status update (of course), and we were off.

I didn’t see Karen again until we landed in Frankfort, Germany…. sometime the next day.  (Here we are having a snack in the airport in Frankfort.  See?  Green!)

As it turned out, this first day of travel would be a very well-orchestrated first day–a string of perfect connections.  The incidents that lead to the pair of near misses were the last close calls on the entire three and a half week trip.  Thereafter, we’d make every bus, plane, appointment, event, tour, meal, meeting…all of it.  Our itinerary would unfold exactly as planned, unaltered by weather, injury, sickness, traffic jams or failed alarm clocks.  Amazing!

But.. I’m getting ahead of myself…..  let’s move on to trip day #3…

Read the rest of this entry »

Even though Peter is ignoring me here (and, adding insult to injury, is probably watching a re-run of one of those animated shows that makes him laugh ’til he cries but runs utterly contrary to everything we’re trying to teach him about humanity), I’m totally going to miss him.  Going to miss Jim too, and our sweet home (as the saying goes), and my friends and coffee mates, and baseball, and Mishka’s poppy seed muffins, and a whole bunch of other things.  In the course of three and a half weeks, I’m expecting some world record home sickness.  But also, of course, expecting to have my mind blown.

Very excited.

So, no time to write this morning; got a plane to catch down in San Francisco.  I’m taking a journal and will jot down a few (gazillion) things (visions of my former self, pre-laptop days).  Have six very sharpened pencils — wheeee!  But, I may also post a time or two from the road, and trail, and various world capitals, as I stumble into wifi zones… we’ll see.

In any case, Life of Wry is on break.  I will back-load some photos to make up for it upon my return.

: سي يو ليتر.

(I couldn’t find a Nepali translator quickly enough, so please settle for Arabic.  In English: see ya later, aligator!)

Should have known when this turkey fluttered across my path this early morning it might be some sort of omen on the day.

It’s had its high points for sure, but oh my lord what a difficult day. Somehow, by tomorrow morning, I’m to be ready to ship out to Abu Dhabi and beyond?

Ok, 7:00pm.  Let’s get this packing thing wrapped up, shall we?

A flat tire.

As if to say, whoa there, cowgirl, take a breath…

For the last few weeks, I have definitely been in that manic pre-trip state of mind… you know that world of lists and errands and last minute acquisitions.  Reading all the travel books and travel blogs.  Thinking about what to take, what to wear, what to see, how best to get the most out of the experience.

If you’re me, that manic place is made more frenetic by my tendency to over-plan.  For example, I’ve made a nice chart of our day-to-day itinerary–mileage, elevation gains, mountains we’ll see, rivers we’ll cross.  I’ve done a schematic of our elevation gains and losses.  I’ve written the addresses of all who shall get postcards and all who shall get gifts.  I’ve made a list of the peaks we’ll see on this trip and their world ranking in terms of height (for the record, we’ll see the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 15th, 20th, 24th highest.. wowowowow!).  I have a handy conversion chart for both meters–>feet and centigrade–>fahrenheit.. because, well…   I like to know these things.

It gets worse.

I tend to organize and prepare for my departure in a way outside-the-lines kind of way.  I’m the one who, before she goes on a trip, has to clean out the refrigerator, sort the coins in the spare change basket, finally call the dishwasher repair service, finish up the unsent Christmas cards (the ones that were owed long personal messages), file all the items in the to-file box, cull the hat collection, sweep the porches.  Plus things up to which I will not fess.   I go fully, deeply, painfully, into the detail and logistics zone.  And the clean, cull, organize and straighten up zone.  And a whole bunch of other places that make me feel ready, and confident I’m leaving an orderly world for Peter and Jim while I’m gone.

But.

With only a day and a half before departure, I’m also, gratefully, in the what will be will be zone.  I’m finally in that window where things are coming OFF the table.  There is no more time to train.  There are no more electronic gizmos I could possibly, reasonably expect to acquire and learn before I go.  I can not make any more trips to REI.  I cannot lose another pound (which means I can eat that piece of shortbread because one piece of shortbread is not going to make a difference now).  I’ll have to make do with what I’ve got and let the rest go.

It’s almost like the trip has begun.  Not quite, but almost.

Taking a deep breath…

I’m really just going to let this go without comment.  Well, except to say that using one of these things is an acquired skill.  And I guess I need to be a little more patient with Peter… realizing now just how challenging it is to hit one’s target.

Definitely need more practice.

I will also say there are no shortage of products out there designed for this purpose.  (Really, do a search.)  I ordered two–P EZ (above) and P-Mate (below).

Helps to have a sense of humor.

May I just say, I am grateful for the school’s music program.  The quality of the program was on shining display today as we sat in a beautiful, acoustically sophisticated performance hall, listened to a very classy selection of music, and gazed upon our children, smartly dressed in their finest white shirts and black slacks, looking so very elegant and grown up.

This was the annual adjudicated festival for 7th, 8th and 9th grades bands from three schools.  Each band was given an hour.  During this hour, they performed three practiced pieces, received critical evaluation from two judges, replayed those pieces under a guest conductor, and sight-read a brand new piece.  We sat in the audience very duly impressed.

The whole time I thought, wow, what a great education.  This is an experience that will serve Peter well his entire life.   Laughed to myself, too, realizing he knows way, WAY more about music than I ever will.

As I said, grateful.

Conversation went something like this, maybe an hour after Peter had gotten home from school:

Him: Oh, by the way mom, don’t pack milk in my lunch again.
Me: Why?
Him: It exploded.  I don’t know how it happened.
Me: What exploded?
Him: The milk you put in my lunch.
Me: Wait, what?
Him: It just exploded and there’s milk all over. I don’t know how it happened.
Me: You said that. Where’s your backpack?
Him: Um, I don’t know.
Me: Get your backpack.
Him: [Gets backpack, brings it to me, dripping white liquid.]  Here it is.
Me: Aaaaahh!  Peter!
Him: Sorry!
Me: [Takes backpack. Rushes it to sink. Opens it.]  Oh my god. There’s milk everywhere..
Him: That’s what I told you!

And there was: A pool of milk at the bottom of the compartment where the lunch goes.  Milk soaked through papers and books.  Wet pencils, binders, granola bar wrappers, erasers, felt pens.

It was gross.

Backpack’s now soaking (above).

Papers and books are drying.