Tatopani, Nepal, 06 October 1987:  Tibetan pronounced "Chomolangma", Nepalese "Sagamartha", English "Mount Everest".  No photo can do justice to the feeling of being there.

Our 9 day trek (including 7 days of walking) took us over 100 miles.  We stayed in the humble dwellings of Tibetan families along the way, including a nomadic sheep herder's yak-hair canvas tent.  Since they had not much more to offer us than tsampa (barley flour) mixed with yak butter tea, my travel companion, Jeff, a Nevada geologist, and I brought most of the food we needed with us.  Coming to the mountain, our packs were carried on the backs of animals -- a horse, a donkey and a tsoma (half cow / half yak).  Since our packs were much lighter going away from the mountain, we carried them ourselves.

Communication with the Tibetan families was minimal, but we certainly observed a lot between each other.  Home life is at its simplest level and probably hasn't changed much in hundreds, perhaps thousands of years ... our presence being the only difference.  The rooms were small, dark and smokey, with the only light coming from the fire used for cooking and perhaps a candle or two.

I played guitar for them, and in one case, a young man played his Tibetan instruments for us.  The women would cook, using yak or cow pies to fuel the flame, or make the natural wool into thread while watching over their young children or infants.  The men worked with their herds of sheep or cultivated their barley.  They always seem to get a kick out of photos of our family, but I don't think that they quite understand the postcards of the city skylines or of St. Paul's winter carnival ice palace.

Mount Everest is certainly the most magnificent looking mountain I've ever seen.  We went up to the advanced base camp at 18,500 feet.  Several groups (American, Japanese, Irish, and an international group) were in the process of their expeditions to the summit.  Nobody has made it to the top in one and a half years.

I always seem to be traveling at the edge of political controversy.  Things have gotten pretty bad in Lhasa since we left.  They're not letting foreigners in or out of the city without permission now.

Kathmandu, Nepal, 07 October 1987:  Namaste (Nepali "Hello")!  It had been 18 days since I had a hot shower, 10 days since I washed up in any respect -- which must have been a new record for me -- when I stood under the hots springs shower in Totopani, Nepal.  After a month of the barren though very beautiful landscape of Tibet, surroundings me was more green than I had remembered existed on this planet.  From somewhere hight in the troposphere I had come back down to Earth.  I felt warmth again.  After eight days and 120 miles of light-headedly walking on clouds, breathing became an unconcious and passive activity again.  I felt like Superman!  I could climb over the landslide areas of last month's monsoons seemingly in a single bound.

From the viewpoint of the top of a high-clearance truck, while ducking for low power lines and cliff overhangs, in the space of 20 miles horizontal and over 2 miles vertical, we passed along a narrow road through a narrow passage in the world's highest mountain chain and seemingly instantaneously were transformed from the tundra and permafrost of Tibet to the humid tropics of Nepal.  In a flash we went from dust and sand to rice paddies and banana groves, and from shivering like I've never shivered in a Minnesota winter to becoming drenched with sweat like I never have in a Minnesota (or even a Missouri) summer.

There is not a higher place than on the rooftop of a truck on the rooftop of the world.  From there the panorama is the greatest.  If I were king, it is from there that I would rule.

Mt Everest blows people away, figuratively and literally, when they approach it.  It catches winds from outer space and funnels them down into your face.  This, combined with the fact that up in the ozone you're much closer to the sun, does a time-lapse to your skin's natural aging process.  In the course of one week, my hands looked as if they had aged 20 years.  I understand better now that when I'm talking to a Tibetan 60 year old, he's actually around my age.

What time are we leaving in the morning?  That's a silly question to ask a Tibetan nomadic sheepherder who has offered us his yaks to carry our backpacks.  He is fascinated by the funny changing shapes on my digital watch and the moving arms on my travel companion's dial watch, but he has only a vague idea of what any of it means.  He doesn't know written numbers.  He doesn't need to know anything more than that the sun rises and sets, that he needs to work when the sun is up and warm, and that he needs to bundle up tightly when the sun is down and it is damn cold in his yak hair canvas tent.

He is fascinated by our packaged and canned food, by my friend's flashlight (which he wears on his head), and by my pocket knife which also has a fork, spoon, scissors and several other tools in one compact unit.  He's seen travelers with cameras before, and he knows that somehow these devices produce photographs like the one of the Dalai Lama some previous traveler had given him, which he now has prominently displayed in his tent.  Still, he wants no picture taken of him or his family, even though he gets a kick out of the pictures of my family.

Mount Everest is the biggest rock I'd ever hope to imagine.  Nearly 70 have died attempting the summit.  150 have made it there, though none in the past 18 months.  One member of the current Japanese expedition died last month.  I had to fight tears as I lked at the epitaphs on the dozen monuments at the basecamp to those who died since the Chinese opened their side of the mountain to climbing in the 1980s.  "Friend and mountaineer" or "with him in spirit" are the simplest of phrases out of context, but with a near backdrop of the mountain itself, it is the most chilling of poetry.

Since we left Tibet two days ago, all hell has broken loose.  We knew relations between Chinese and Tibetans were streained, as always, but we saw no indication of the potential for rioting and deaths which have subsequently occurred.  The Chinese have a big investment in tourism for Tibet, but it's possible that it may now become much more difficult again for individual tourists to travel there freely ... only group tours that are filed in and out in a controlled fashion may now be possible.  At this point, nobody is being permitted to enter Tibet.

How fantastic it was to have a stack of 32 letters and cards waiting for me at the Kathmandu American Express office.  I spent the afternoon reading them, laughing and crying.

Namaste (goodbye),
Peace and love,
Deano

Kathmandu, Nepal, 15 October 1987:  Namaste (Hello)!  In 20 months of traveling, I've never felt much need or desire to come home.  I've been too content out here cruising around; but, I would have given almost anything to be home when the Minnesota Twins won the American League Pennant!  I would have loved to have been at the domed stadium with 50,000 other Minnesotans home from Detroit.  What a wonderful celebration it must have been!  As it was, I was celebrating here plenty too, but I had a hard time getting others around me to feel the elation I was feeling.  I hope I can find a way to pick up the World Series somewhere, perhaps at the American Embassy on closed circuit television or at least on Armed Services Radio.

After exploring the mysteries of Chinese canned food, eating barely palatable Chinese army ration bars amd Tobetam tsampa (barley flour) mixed with yak butter tea for a couple weeks while treking in Tibet, Kathmandu has seemed like heaven on Earth.  Whatever food fetish you have ... steaks, Italian, oriental, Mexican, Greek, French, German, and on and on ... Kathmandu is able to provide it to you.  For about $2, you can eat like a king.  I've been looking for an Eskimo restaurant; I wouldn't be surprized if they had several.  I've never seen a Swiss restaurant in the United States, or a Tibetan one, or a Swahili one!  This place is incredible.  Within a couple blocks of where I am staying there must be a few dozen clean, pleasant restaurants, each with extensive menus of incredible variety, and with chefs who know well how to cook.

This would be a great place to gain weight were it not for the fact that this is still a developing country with the kinds of problems you would expect from that fact.  As clean as the restaurants seem, as much as they boil the water beforehand, as much as they say their vegetable salads have been washed in chemicals to kill the protazoans, there are still a lot of Westerners getting sick.  Giardia, dysentary, salmonella and other diarrhea-causing bugs are common.  I had a high fever and chills followed by several days of energy-sapping diarrhea last week ... the only such problem I've had in 20 months to last more than a day).  I had injections yesterday to protect against typhoid, hepatitis and miningitis.  These promise only partial protection.  The trick with food is to keep returning to those restaurants at which one knows illnesses haven't been acquired recently (not always easy to find).  There are about four of those to which I keep returning, each of which has sufficient variety to keep me entertained for months.

In a week, or after the World Series, whichever comes first, I'll be taking another 10 day trek, this time to the Annapurna region of Nepal.  It's not as famous as Everest, but may be arguably a more beautiful area.  This is the height of the trekking season, and there are likely to be thousands of people on the trail.  I don't need to carry any food and only a few warm clothes this time since there are plenty of well-supplied guest houses along the way to cater to one's needs.

Travel in Asia is costing me $300 to $400 a month, stretching my money further than anticipated.

Peace and love,
Deano

Kathmandu, Nepal, 17 October 1987:  Namaste (Hello)!  I went to a Hindu water burial today.  I also observed a cremation.  If I ever get around to making a will, I pan on specifying cremation as the means of disposal for me (after whichever of my body organs have been donated to whomever can use them).  Skip the funeral, the casket and all the other costly trappings.  My father's herse business will do well enough without me.

On a lighter topic, I want to write about a thing a psychologist friend of mine calls the "lattice of coincidence".  It's a phraze he uses to describe a whole series of interrelated coincidences.  Certain themes keep reappeaing in my life.  For example, there are the three saints (where I've lived or spent time) -- Saint Paul, Saint Louis and San (or Saint) Diego.  The other day, I received a single funny postcard signed not by one, but by two women with whom I travelled and shared affection.  One signature was that of  Brenda, from Minneapolis, with whom I traveled for three months in Africa, and who later traveled with me on the study/tour of the Soviet Union.  By that time, however, a romance was developing between myself and Amy, another study/tour participant (from Pensacola, Florida) whose signature was also on the postcard.  Anyway, the two have been traveling together recently in the San Diego area, and have probably had some opportunity to compare notes about me.  Amy got hired recently by my former employer, the U.S. Defense Department.  Brenda and I have a number of interesting things in common -- lefthandedness, guitar playing, same birthdays, membership in the same obscure organizations, such as Amnesty International, Servas, etc.  With Amy, perhaps it is not so strange that she is the third Jewish woman with whom I've had a romance, but she is the second one who subsequently moved to San Diego.  Aside from Cathy, whom you know also moved to San Diego, I recently heard from Cookie, who has coincidentally moved to Minneapolis, after previously having lived two doors down from me in St. Louis (also coincidentally in the same building where another girlfriend, Marilyn, later moved).   Three other previous romances, Yoly, (another San Diegan), introduced to me by Hatem and Kathy (St. Paul transplants to San Diego), Marilyn (St. Louis) and Agnes (Paris), each of whom are not Jewish, but are soon to marry their Jewish boyfriends.  It's the "lattice of coincidence".

For more coincidences, try this.  I put up a notice on a hotel board for a trekking partner, and who answers it but yet another woman from Minneapolis -- Patty.  I met her briefly on two previous occasions, once in Lhasa, and once on the trail to Mount Everest.  She didn't know that it was me who had posted the notice.  We will trek for 10 days.

Amazingly enough, just in time, I found two additional people from the Twin Cities with whom I could share the joy of the Minnesota Twin's pennant victory.  Now, if I could just find some people from St. Louis to share with me the joy of the Cardinal's pennant victory.  I find it absolutely amazing that I have two home teams playing against each other.  I've been going nuts here trying to find someone with a short wave radio so I can listen to the games.  I've called the American Embassy, the Peace Corps, and a couple five star American hotels, and nobody seems to have a means to listen to the World Series.  I'm about ready to just start asking tourists on the street if they're traveling with a short wave radio.  My allegiances remain with the Twins, but I'm pleased as hell that St. Louis is in it.  I know the St. Louis team much better having shared that city's joy when they won the Series in 1982 and suffered with them when they experienced embarrassing defeat in 1985.  Whoever wins, the victory will be bittersweet for me.  I like both teams, but the Twins more.  I hope that you are recording at least some of the games.  I can watch them on video at the American Embassy in two weeks.

Peace and love,
Deano

Kathmandu, Nepal, 22 October 1987:  Namaste!  What an incredible news month this has been -- Tibet riots, Persian Gulf confrontations, stock market crashes, and the Twins and the Cardinals in the World Series.  After having been starved for news I wasn't getting while traveling in the Communist countries, I now wait everyday at the newsstand for the daily papers to arrive.  The day after the stock market crash and the Twins had won two games, I looked like a walking newsstand as I carried the International Herald Tribune, U.S.A. Today, the Wall Street Journal and Time Magazine.

In 20 months of travel , I've met about eight Minnesotans.  Half of those have come from three separate instances in the past week here in Kathmandu.  Twice it occurred while getting the newspaper at the newsstand, and once when a woman responded to my notice posted for a trekking partner.  Patty, a nurse from Tomah, Wisconsin, later Minneapolis, who has been working in Cambodian refugee camps in Thailand for several years, will be trekking with me for 10 days to the Mount Annapurna basecamp.

I sold my guitar the other day to lighten my load for traveling through India and Southeast Asia.  I bought it for $200 six months ago and sold it quickly for $100.  It paid for itself multiple times, even in the brief time that I played it at the youth hostel bar in Athens and in the streets of Budapest.  It bought me a lot of beers, etc., and introduced me to many people.

Some crowds have been incredibly receptive in Athens, Budapest, Moscow, Beijing and Lhasa.  They blew me away with their enthusiastic responses.  For example, the last night that I was in Athens, a night in which I hadn't played, as I was leaving the hostel and walking up the street, about a dozen of the regulars surprised me when they came to the balcony to give me very rousing cheers and applause in one of the nicest sendoffs I've ever received.  A similar thing occurred my last night in Lhasa, with the loudest and most extended cheering I've ever heard.

It is wonderful to make others feel good, and they certainly made me feel good.  Still, I've been doing significant damage to my voice over the years by singing so loudly in order to be heard in noisy, crowded places.  It's been becoming increasingly frustrating for me.  Also, there are some people whom I've disturbed with my music, either because of our differing tastes or because they were trying to sleep while others were encouraging me to go on.  Some are too kind to speak up if it disturbs them, but they sit and fester in their anger.

Anyway, whether it brought good or bad, I'm probably going to feel naked without it; but I won't miss lugging it around one bit.

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