Ucluelet

At the moment it is early Saturday morning. I am sitting in my sisters
car listening to Eric Clapton and looking at the forest and the ships.
Thankfully I was able to make it on a flight from Hong Kong Thursday.
I arrived before I left so to speak. The flight from Hong Kong was at
4:30pm and I got to Vancouver at around 2:00pm. We spent time at
Coombs yesterday then headed west along the winding road to the mighty
Pacific. We are in the town of Ukee and although I hardly slept a wink
last night due to the cold and jet lag, I'm enjoying the beautiful
coast. I filled my water bottle with hot water so that helped. I ended
up going to the shower house which was heated, and stayed a while to
warm up. Then I felt so hungry because I burned a pile of calories
just trying to keep warm last night. Luckily we had bought some cereal
and soy milk the night before so I chewed through two and a half bowls
of oatmeal crisp with almonds and now I am warm, full, and getting
sleepy.

More Kathmandu

I have a day and half left in Nepal. Hopefully. I have my ticket in
hand now so that's the major difference since last time. Yesterday I
made a lot of friends. I drank Nepali tea with a fellow and chatted
for a good twenty minutes. Today was interesting too. I gave a boy who
was begging on the street half a loaf of bread and some honey and even
though it cost less than a dollar, he looked at me with such
thankfulness that it was like I bought him a new bike. In Edmonton,
you give a beggar five bucks and he hardly acknowledges you. What is
wrong?
I drew this picture. It is a typical Nepali man. The hats they wear
are given to them as a sign of respect. The older ones all seem to
wear vests too.

Still Lost

I managed to find the Dragon Air office after about an hour of walking up and down side streets and back alleys. The jury is still out on whether I am going to be able to get to Hong Kong this week as the flight I had changed from Delhi to Hong Kong is "married" to the Hong Kong to Vancouver flight, meaning cancelling one cancels the other. Hmm.... I'm awaiting confirmation that I am able to do that and wandering around the streets of Thamel listening to monks chanting and street vendors hawking.

Woah dude, I'm back in the 60s

So, I was an idiot and I thought they had internet everywhere. Most importantly in an international airport. Nope! Kathmandu doesn't have internet in the Tribhuavan Airport so the changes I made this week were not noted and I was denied my flight. So instead of waking up in Hong Kong, I'm in a unfamiliar neighbourhood of Kathmandu called Naxal looking for the Dragon Air office. Huhhnn.....

Bahundanda

These events happened on March 24. We left the town of Ngadi, which
although shown on the trekking map because of the three teahouses
located there, is no more than a couple of huts on the side of the
Masange river. Crossing the river by suspension bridge the path became
quite steep and we all reached for our untouched trekking poles. You
know the fancy telescoping carbon ones we bought in Kathmandu a few
days prior. It was slightly less hazy than the days before as we were
starting to emerge from the pollution as we gained altitude. The
valley looked beautiful but as of yet we still had no breathtaking
views of the mountains. We climbed in the upwardly direction until we
clambered into the hilltop town of Bahundanda at lunchtime. After some
less than colossal dal bhat, I had a cold shower and did my laundry.
Laundry on the trail means filling a five gallon pail with cold
water from the one inch PVC pipe sticking from the side of the hill,
grabbing a red bar of the foul-smelling laundry soap and scrubbing all
surfaces of the clothing until they appear clean. You slosh them
around in the pail a bit more then rinse. The clothing is hung usually
without clothes pegs because they are scarce and hard to find.
After a little nap, I played a round of golf and then we all played
PS3 in this village kids basement. Wow... Wait a sec. After a little
nap, I walked around the village and checked to see if my laundry was
dry. Supper rolled around and I brought in my clean clothes. They were
scattered across the hillside because the evening wind blew them there
and clothespins were indeed scarce and hard to find. It got dark as if
someone had switched out the light and I climbed up to bed. It was
then I heard drums. The sound of little voices joined in. I was
intrigued. Grabbing my camera, I stole down to get a closer look. From
the hotel on the hill I could make out shapes moving in the dark
village square below me. I sat on the steps and was absorbing the
music when I was approached by a young boy of ten and a little girl of
maybe three. They grabbed me by the hands and pulled me running to the
village square below. There I discovered about forty village children
aged two to thirteen dancing and singing and drumming (one even had a
guitar). When I went back to bed I could not believe what had
happened. It was just so spontaneous it was great!

Sniff, Sniff

Partly due to the book I am reading, and drawing upon past literature
and experiences, I was called to notice a certain of my six senses;
smell. The book is "Perfume: the story of a murderer" and is set in
France in the 1700s. The main character Grenouille although gifted
with super human smelling abilities, possesses no natural human scent
himself, therefore other people, not realizing that they can't smell
him, can't put a finger on what's different and are afraid. He is a
strange little man and so obsessed with smell that he commits murder.
It is a strange strange book. I believe that it was translated from
the orignal French.
So as I'm reading this book, my nostrils are flairing, the sense of
smell is tingling! I smell the stronger smells of cut grass and the
subtle smell of cooking rice. In the book Grenouille can walk around
in pitch darkness just using his sense of smell. This got me thinking
of smell-chitecture. Architecture of the olefactor. Common
architecture uses visual as the primary means of impressing the
audience. There is architecture designed for sound, even touch. The
sense of smell is all but neglected.
I was in a store in Edmonton that was selling a line of perfumes with
scents like garden tomato, freshly turned sod, or the smell of the
forest. I was instantly transported back in time to my young years,
helping mom cut tomatoes for salsa, my grandmas garden shed, and lying
under an old tree listening to the sound of birds and breathing in the
musky smell of decaying leaves. Is it possible to create a subtle
smell-scape in an area to set a mood, or to even guide the blind
through a space? Or maybe an art gallery of scents. Not typical
alcohol based perfumes, but natural smells, both pleasant and
revolting to stir an emotion, to create an atmosphere. The art would
appeal to smell itself, like a room that smells like a pumpkin field
in October or the seaside near the pier.

Kathmandu

So the last couple of weeks have been interesting for sure. The summit
of "the worlds largest pass". It's not the highest, most trecherous,
or any of that, just the largest. Whatever that means. I saw three of
the over 8000m mountains. I ate too much apple pie. I lost my shampoo
and didn't wash my hair for weeks. I fought a yeti, battled food
poisoning twice and saw enough prayer wheels to make my head spin.
We climbed this hill called Poon in the early morning to watch the sun
rise over the Annapurna range. The locals were up partying with drums
and chanting the night before until midnight. Shortly after 2:00am the
rooster crowed and awoke some eager tourists ( I was convinced they
were elephants and could have sworn I heard trumpetting as they
crashed along the corridor to the squat toilet). Just as the noise
quieted down, our faithful Sherpa Tak knocked on our doors and
informed us that it was time to go. And this point I noticed a dull
pain in my stomach but thought it was most likely intense rage bottled
up inside rather than a bacterial invasion. We marched on Poon by the
light of our head lamps. Myself, still irked by the unexpected lack of
sleep invented a song to commemorate the pilgrammage to the top. It
was difficult to sing whist running past hundreds of elderly tourists
of all nationalities but I sang with vigor. The vigor was cut near the
top when I experienced a pain in my side. By the time I reached the
bald top of Poon (now covered in a toupee of tourists) I was in need
of a toilet, and quick. Luckily the outhouse faced east and the door
had a crack in it wide enough to offer the full benefit of the
sunrise. I managed to finish up before the blood red sun showed her
face over the Annapurna mastif and celebrated by yelling "Hey look
everyone! It's the sun! It's the sun! Yeeeeaaahooo!" I then threw the
water from my water bottle around like freshly uncorked champangne. By
the time we reached the bottom of Poon, I was quite ill. I cancelled
my breakfast order and settled for a vomit session instead. I felt
much better, brushed the bile from my teeth and started my hike down
the mountain. We saw a mongoose dash from the tree by the trail and it
was about then I fell sick again. We stopped at the next tea house and
I collapsed on the bed and slept for five hours. Feeling a little
better with the assistance of Tak I moved to a lower camp that
evening. I felt better the next morning.
We are now in the big city of Kathmandu. Fun fun.

Ronando

Tatopani

I'm still alive. Crossed the Thorong-La Pass two days ago. I'm now in Tatopani, home of some famous hotsprings. It looks like a couple dugouts with a fence around it. We finish our tour on Saturday back at Kathmandu. I saw only one Stupa with eyes on it but I've seen nearly a hundred without eyes. Today was really hot. I thought I was going to get sun stroke.