From Everest to Arabia

Happy New Year Everyone!

The last time I posted, we were resting up after hiking 120 miles in the mountains around Annapurna, and preparing for another long trek up to Everest base camp and the surrounding valleys.

The pictures and stories from the months (!) after that are on their way, but in the meantime…

Mount Everest

The Lukla runway, as seen through the airplane windshield just before landing

We made it to Everest!  After seeing how we all did in Annapurna, I wasn’t worried.  But there were a couple of additional complications this time.  First we had to survive the flight.  Not much of an active role there, at least not once we elbowed our way onto an airplane.  (Turns out the flight numbers are all fake; they’re only assigned because that’s what the Westerners expect.  In reality it’s more like boarding the parking shuttle at an amusement park at closing time).  The nearest runway to Everest (in Lukla) is on the top of every list of scary airports, with an otherwise impossibly short runway made possible only because it sits on a steep slope – that ends abruptly in the mountainside.

After we arrived we had to endure a parade of people telling us it was not possible to do the trip we had planned with a family (ages 7 to 72), including the agent who had arranged our porters and told them we were going only halfway for 9 days, instead of the 15 days we had planned (and paid) for.  (Of course, this is not the first time we’ve been told what we’re doing is impossible.)  A week of walking up the mountains and we were at Everest Base Camp.

Ethan walking through ice towers on the Khumbu glacier, near Base Camp and just below the Khumbu Icefall

Unlike Annapurna, which is a circumnavigation of the high peaks, in the Khumbu (Everest region) you are surrounded by the Himalaya.  This is the real deal, walking and sleeping among a half dozen of the highest mountains in the world, and it feels like it.

Just another day of walking in the Khumbu

We then crossed over the Cho La Pass (and Glacier) to the Gokyo Valley.  This is where our good fortune, healthwise, began to run out.  First Aaron’s stomach rebelled violently.  (Turns out our UV sterilizer is no match for visible sea monkeys in the water.)  That was a quick recovery.  My father came next, with a more debilitating version that included a couple of days of crippling fatigue, timed to perfectly coincide with the longest, hardest climb of the trek.  When it was my turn, I could have sworn at first it was food poisoning (away from civilization, self-diagnosis is as necessary as it is ill-advised), but it eventually turned into a long, severe flu.  None of these illnesses seemed related or passed to one another; they were each pretty different.  And thankfully all of this came after reaching Everest and the best parts of the trek.  My illness – the worst I can ever remember – persisted for a couple of weeks without improvement, and would have gone on forever if we hadn’t eventually managed to escape the filthy air of Kathmandu.

Crossing the Cho La Pass

We needed a vacation.  So we flew first class to Dubai, in what must be among the greatest possible contrasts on the planet.  Nepal is one of the 10 poorest countries.  UAE is… not.  While the sense of cultural whiplash was tempered a bit by my focus on recovering, it was entertaining (and for the kids, educational) to experience the sudden shift from a prohibition on beef (in South Asia) to a prohibition on pork (where the breakfast buffet included “beef bacon”).  That seems to be the only religious element that Dubai doesn’t set aside with a wink and a nudge – it’s a place where burkas and bikinis are side by side, and abstention is accompanied by weekly all-you-can-drink brunches, advertised on the radio as featuring “grape” and “hops.”

We flee the Himalaya for Arabia, and 3 days later are back in the snow.

Blowing the budget out the window, we went skiing (indoors, of course), went to a water park, a beach resort, feasted (I was down to 126 pounds after our treks), went to the top of the world’s tallest building, and even spent a night in an honest-to-god international luxury hotel.   It was a real vacation.  (Though, perhaps not one I’d fly from the US for.)  We needed it, we deserved it, and we got it.

Building sandcastles on the Persian Gulf

And then across the border to Oman – effectively the only open border on the Arabian Peninsula, and our first experience with a land crossing.  All I knew about Oman was that people who like what I like – deserts, canyons, mountains, coastline – love it.  In a bit over two weeks there, it was easy to see why.  We got a Landcruiser – the real 4WD kind – and after a couple of days in the capital (Muscat) and a day of diving (finally!), we loaded up on camping gear at the local Wal-Mart clone and headed for the mountains.

Our first of many “Wadis” — seasonal river canyons — in Oman

We explored countless ancient forts, camped on beaches and in deep canyons, went “dune bashing” across the sands, swam through a cave, drove through all kinds of terrain that cars were never meant to travel, and spent our evenings cooking and eating around a campfire.

And got one heck of a carwash before returning the Landcruiser.

Sunrise over our campsite

Four kilograms of dates later, it was on to Bangkok.  This is our first re-run; Thailand was one of our first big trips together, 18 years ago.  It is a city transformed.  We slid easily into ex-pat mode, hanging out in local parks, watching Rogue One in the local theater, and treating the city as a giant street cart buffet, rather than going to see the sights.  (Also, the palace and most of the temples close at 3 and we’re pretty lazy).  The beloved king (and by some counts the world’s longest reigning monarch) died in October, and the country is still within the one year mourning period but has finished the first month of prohibitions, which makes it a fascinating time to experience daily life here.  I also got to have my first medical tourism experience (nothing serious), and for now I’ll just say that the next time you get a runny nose, head for the airport.

Back on the move!

Thailand also represents the latest chapter in our ad-hoc course in world religion.  We’ve bounced back and forth between Buddhist and Muslim areas, with a bit of Hinduism (and in Japan, Shinto) blended in.  But more enlightening has been seeing the different expressions of Buddhism, from Japan to Mongolia to Nepal to Thailand (and especially seeing where the Chinese influence shows up).

Now we’re in Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand for the Christmas-New Year’s week, eating, going to festivals, and sending the kids to a cat cafe and [computer] gaming house while we try to figure out where to go next.  And maybe even catch up on a bit of blogging…

This is how we keep the kids busy when it’s time to write a blog post