Daddy Blog #5: 1000 Places to See Before You Die

The book,"1000 Places to See Before You Die," includes Nepal's Royal Chitwan National Park. What they don't tell you is that you have 1000 chances to die on the drive from Kathmandu to the park. It was the most harrowing drive of my life made worse by the thought that my daughter would die as well. (I didn't want Mer to die either.) The highway twists and turns through beautiful mountains and river valleys with picturesque villages scattered along the road. Fortunately I took a lot of photos along the way because there's no way I could appreciate the scenery while contemplating the final moments of my life. The problem is that sleep deprived and often drunk truck drivers pass each other on the winding, turning road. If they're going uphill then one truck is driving 8 mph in a valiant attempt to pass another truck going 6 mph. Its like a glacier race. Which would be so bad but who wants a head on collision with a glacier? I asked our driver (we hired a car and driver for the trip) if he liked his job. The 19 year-old young man said "No." He said the drunk, sleep deprived truck drivers make his a rather hazardous profession not to mention the cost of petrol. He wanted to complete his schooling and get a safer job. After we got to Chitwan I really enjoyed looking at all the photos I'd taken along the way.





Royal Chitwan is almost 400 square miles that were once the private hunting grounds of the King of Nepal and his guests. According to Wikipedia, its one of the finest protected forests and grassland regions in Asia. (That's good because King George V on one trip shot 39 tigers and 57 rhinos.) The best part are the elephants and their capable mahouts (handlers) who stood ready to take us into the jungle in search of rhinos, Bengal tigers and assorted other creatures. (I could have done without the leeches.) We weren't there for it, but one of the guides said elephant polo matches take place during one of their holiday festivals in December. I bet that registers at least a 7 on the Richter Scale.



Happy to be alive, we met one of our guides, Shiva, at the hotel and safari camp. He took us on an early evening walk as the sun was setting over the river where we relaxed and watched dug out canoes floated leisurely by. It was lovely. However, it took a while to get used to Shiva's 'instructions'. His words were friendly but his tone didn't match. He must have been in the military or a dog trainer before the hotel job. It felt like he was barking orders at us to enjoy ourselves: "Sit here!!! Watch sunset!!! Do you want lemonade!!! Enjoy!!!". Later Shiva turned up again as one of the servers in the resort dining area. I was afraid he would be yelling at me to eat my veggies. But no. He was really a great guy and after dinner made a special effort to take us to visit the elephants in their outdoor stalls. Shiva calmed down and we had about an hour just standing in the moon light with the elephants. They are truly magnificent, awesome (I hate that word) creatures and I felt privileged hanging out with them. I resisted the urge to set them free.

The next day after the three hour safari on elephant back into the jungle (we saw a rhino mommy with her cute baby in a muddy little lake) we got to help give them a bath.



After a hard day of carting tourists around the elephants enjoy cooling off in the river and getting a bath. We were allowed to ride elephant bareback into the river with them. The mahouts gave them the signal and they shook us on into the water. Then they filled their trunks with water and sprayed us. It was a childhood fantasy come true. Fortunately when they plopped over for their bath they didn't crush any tourists in the process. At least I didn't see any. I did see some mighty elephant turds floating by but I reminded myself that elephants are vegetarians. Organic poop can't be that bad.



It was reassuring to hear that the new Nepalese government has done a lot to save from near extinction the one horned black rhino. There is also a wonderful elephant breeding area which we were able to visit. Unfortunately, pollution from upstream industries is endangering the rivers flowing into Chitwan. Dolphins have dissappeared from one of their prime habitats and the main species of crocodiles are barely hanging on thanks to special efforts from an environmental group. As usual, tourists are a mixed blessing, but at least our dollars help make the animals worth a little more alive than dead from the poachers and pollution.

The end of our time in Chitwan came too soon. As we got into the car for our return journey to Kathmandu and for part two of "1000 ways to die...", we waved goodbye to Shiva and his enthusiastic approach to herding tourists.

Dad blog #3: Playing Ping Pong with the Yeti

That's right. The abominable snow man loves table tennis...but as usual I'm getting ahead of myself.

We got up at 600AM the next morning to catch a one hour flight to Mt. Everest on Yeti Airlines. Sure, you can spend a minimum of 3 months and $100,000 trekking to Everest but for $150 do the whole deal in 60 minutes. Either way you get a certificate of having done the mighty Chomolungma ("Mother Goddess of the Universe") as its known to the sherpas.








I had recently proven my manhood by enduring the 24 hour flight from LAX to Kathmandu not to mention having finished Peter Matthiessen's "The Snow Leopard" on the plane. Matthiessen's detailed account of what its like to spend the night in a rain soaked sleeping bag in the Himalayas (as he pondered the koan given to him by his Zen Master: "All the peaks are covered with snow---why is this one bare?") is the Eastern counterpart to Proust's 50 page description of a Madeleine cookie.

Back on the ground we faced a danger more frightening than doing Everest without oxygen: the taxi ride back into Kathmandu. There is no other way to do it. We'd been invited for breakfast at the three star hotel managed by two of Lauren's Nepalese friends. I won't give their names or the hotel because then I couldn't say how much I envied their life of managing the hotel by smoking the best Nepalese grass and playing ping pong all day on the viewing deck on top of the hotel. We had a delicious Nepali breakfast and then got out the paddles.



I was expecting to be easily beaten by anyone who plays hours of daily table tennis but I hadn't factored in the world's most powerful majijuana. I could have beat them with my eyes closed. I probably had some kind of contact high because I began to see my worthy opponent as a yeti with gold jewelry. Then he morphed into cookie monster. We went back to Lauren and Mer's apartment and took a three hour nap. I was beginning to see the attraction of this place.

Dad Blog #2: Held Hostage for 75 Cents

Day 2 started off innocently enough. We were invited to the rice harvest at a farm about 2 hours South of Kathmandu owned by the son of Lauren and Mer's landlord, Projjwal Khadka. I was looking forward to getting out into the pristine countryside after less than a day in Kathmandu. After being on an cramped airplane for 24 hours and then in Kathmandu (which I swear means "Klaustrophoia" in Nepali) I was ready for the wide open spaces of the green terraced hillside farmland I'd see in travel guides.



So after some embarrassing bargaining with a taxi driver (I felt like the fare we bargained for would probably mean one of his children would starve to death that night) we were off. It was a delightful day. Projjwall is a Che Guevera tee shirt wearing, four gold earring humanitarian farmer (and Kathmandu DJ). Here's Lauren and Proj inside Proj's families house where they're storing and drying the corn they harvested before the rice:



He is trying to introduce organic farming back into his region of Nepal. Through a combination of successful results and his low key charisma he is succeeding is changing decades of destructive farming practices by his fellow Nepalis. We watched the rice harvest where they used centuries old methods for gathering the rice, threshing it using a pedal driven device, and then seeing women carrying 100 pounds of rice up the hill for eventual transport to the mill. Hopefully this blog entry will be accompanied by at least one photo of this backbreaking task (which never seems to break their back and for which they are richly compensated, about $1.50 per day).

Threshing:


Carrying:


We had lunch with the rice field workers that was as good as any Indian (Nepali food and Indian food are indistinguishable for me) restaurant meal I've had. I was completely inspired by our day which felt like an Asian combination of Walden Pond, Johnny Appleseed and a Winslow Homer watercolor painting. I felt all warm-and-fuzzy and very "clean" as we got into the same taxi for our ride back to Klaustrophia.

After about an hour of bumping down pot hole ridden roads a young man suddenly stepped into the road in front of our taxi. I caught the look on the taxi drivers face which gave me a bad feeling, I didn't think the young fellow in the road needed a ride into town. No, he was a Maoist guerilla and he was demanding money. He didn't ask for our wallets, he didn't make us get out of the vehicle. He was extorting us for about 75 cents. I guess his mother taught him not to be greedy, but come on. . . what kind of self-respecting terrorist asks for 75 cents? And then he wrote us out a receipt which would allow us to get back any other Maoists we might encounter on the way home. I think I'll check the receipt for the guys address, I'd like to send him some more money. Feel free to send me any contributions you feel moved to donate. However, it occurred to me that maybe the taxi driver and the "Maoist" were in cahoots and they've developed a small business (shake down the tourist) with a microbanking loan courtesy of Muhammed Yunus ("Banker to the Poor").

Dad Post: Day 1

Below is my father's account of his arrival in Nepal:

I loved every minute of my stay in Nepal, but couldn't wait to leave. But I'm getting ahead of myself so back to getting off the plane in Kathmandu after a 25 hour plane flight from LA. I knew I was in a Third World country when they unloaded the 300 passenger jet onto the runway and we walked the final 100 yards to the terminal (which had the feel of a Midwest high school auditorium in desperate need of repair (and fumigation). All my initial doubt and skepticism vanished however when I saw Lauren's wry smile among the crowd of Nepalese locals waiting at the gate. I knew from that smile that the fun was about to begin. We found a taxi (slightly larger than a MiniCooper but with more of a Neo-Tijuana look and a driver who couldn't have been more than 16) and Lauren started bargaining on the fare. Later I would find out that she was going toe-to-toe with the guy over 50 cents. Would we pay 250 rupees ($3.75) or 300 rupees ($4.25) for a 40 minute drive half way across town? I'd never seen Lauren bargain before but she seemed to know what she was doing. Turns out this was nothing compared to the near sadistic glee Meredith would later show as she trims rupee after rupee off the slave wages fare where most cabis start the bidding. I had a lot to learn and would probably need these negotiating skills given the way the US economy is going. Forty minutes and a harrowing taxi ride later we arrived at Lauren and Mer's apartment in the nicer part of town. When I say harrowing I mean bumper cars with no bumpers, I mean the only thing saving everyone from head on collisions was that there was so much traffic everyone was forced to drive under 35mph. If not there would certainly have been massive pile ups and loss of life. Once in Lauren's apartment everything was calm and quiet. We had some tea in her living room which had a front row window seat to the back of the North Korean Embassy. The Axis of Evil in our back yard! I suddenly felt very Republican. Its not a good feeling. The next thing I know I'm being introduced to Projjwal, the son of Lauren's landlord. He's wearing a Che Guevera tee-shirt, 4 gold earrings (in one ear), and spoke with a British/Southern drawl. I'm told he's a DJ,a businessman, rice farm owner and. . .I forgot the rest. He invited us to participate the next day in the rice harvest at his farm about 2 hours South of Kathmandu. We accepted not knowing we would be stopped by a Maoist guerrilla and shaken down for 75 cents as we returned to Kathmandu from the rice harvest. Again, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Dad Is On A Plane

My Dad left yesterday afternoon for the States. We had a great time and he has promised to write the whole trip up in a detailed account of what we did and how we survived. I'll give him some time to re-adjust and then start pestering. Maybe I'll do my own version too. Here's a sneak peak: