After the initial cringe of spending so much on accomodations, we started exploring city. Such a fun mix of the modern, the traditional, and the just plain weird. Here are some questions I'd like answered by those who understand Hong Kong better than I:

Why is "the Peak" not the highest hill? That's just silly.

We all know that the sea turtles are endangered right?...so why can I buy still buy them in the Hong Kong seafood market?  

How do these traditional chinese doctors really KNOW that flattened lizards on a stick are good for the back?

Can we airlift the HK public library to New York City? I could spend every saturday there for the rest of my life.

Can you swim across the bay from Hong Kong to Kowloon? wait...let me finish...can you swim across the bay without getting cancer?

Overall, I loved HK. My bank account on the other hand is still recovering. We finally departed our dear HK (pun intended) for Yangshuo on the mainland. We're loving it here as well. It's what I thought China would be like before I left on this trip. It's atmospheric, tourist friendly, and cheap (yay!). I'm glad we saved the best for last!

Our first day we walked to the river, which is a tributary of the Ganges, and watched the sunset while sipping banana milkshakes. It was warm and relaxing while it lasted. Our package tour was a bit rushed. As soon as the sun slipped down past the horizon our guide jumped up and told us it was time for dinner. We needed to be done with that before seeing the "Cultural Program."

I've always been more inspired and captivated by natural beauty and wildlife than by other cultures of people. This Cultural Program was no exception for me. We watched as a tribe of Indian/Nepalese people, whose origin is still a mystery in the history books, dance in circles to the beat of a drum. They're performance was different and very upbeat, but the look on their faces characterized my mood as well...bored. The highlight of the show was the dance of a man dressed as a giant peacock. If the manager of the program had any real showmanship he would have booked this act last. After that, the audience became antsy as we sat through 4 more dances. I'd sooner find fault with myself than those performers. I came to the jungle to see...well...jungle. So I was impatient to end the "Cultural Program" and rest up for my 6am wake up call.

The early morning dug out canoe ride along the river was awesome. Not the least exciting part was the lateral instability of the boat. Basically, at any moment I thought we'd tip over into crocodile infested waters. As it turns out, we only saw one crocodile at a distance, so we were probably safe. That is until we saw what our guide called a "man-eating" crocodile. Basically, the gangetic crocs have a long, thin mouth and are more specialized than the generalist crocs that occasionally have been known to attack humans. It turns out, people are not the preferred lunch of a croc. The real reason for these attacks is human encroachment on crocodile habitat. This much I know in my mind, but you couldn't pay me enough money to swim in that river!

We then spent a couple of hours walking through the jungle of the Chitwan National Forest. It was incredible. We didn't see any of the big game - tigers or rhinos - but I saw many brightly colored insects including a huge green butterfly that I didn't get a picture of...grrr! We also wandered into a group of rhesus monkeys that didn't seem to mind us watching them from a moderately close distance. I felt a rush of pride that I was able to identify the species for the group when we saw them. Special thanks to Dr. Altmann at Princeton's Evolutionary Biology program for that!

Finally, we enjoyed an elephant back safari through the jungle. Actually, "enjoy" is a strong word. I don't think I'd take another elephant back safari. When one of the drivers of the group of 25 elephants (Each carrying 4 tourists) spotted some rhinos, the entire mob stampeded towards the spot to surround them. It was an upsetting experience to watch a rhino mother and calf freak out as 25 elephants encircled them. They had no where to run. Neither fight nor flight were options for these two. So they anxiously withstood the barrage of photographs until finally the herd moved on. I swore that if I spotted any wildlife I would keep my mouth shut. Swaying through the forest on the back of an elephant along with 100 other loud tourists I'm not surprised that we didn't see anything else. On our return to the village I was given the opportunity to "drive." Translation: I sat on the elephant's neck. I think we got a picture. After nearly 3 hours, I was happy to finally alight to solid ground.

Our final day we visted the elephant breeding center where I had a hilariously close encounter. I walked around a sort of wall-less elephant stable with about 10 elephant moms and calves. One calf came to the fence expecting a treat. I put out my arm to pet its head, but it quickly wrapped it's little trunk around my arm for a smart, swift tug! We arm wrestled for about a minute which left my long sleeve shirt covered in mud and elephant goo. I also got some warm baby elephant breath in my face. What a cutie...and I only had a few scratces on me. The stout little trunk of that calf gave me further appreciation for how strong adults must be!

We hired a porter named Krishna through the Sisne Rover trekking company in Pokara. Fairly young, 27, Krishna had been a porter for 11 years. He spoke decent English and was patient and mild mannered. Our first day, we took the local bus to Nayapul. There we were forced to pay a fine to the Maoist rebel forces before proceeding with the trek. Having just finished Wild Swans by Jung Chang in which I learned more the details of Mao's unprecedented crimes (or as the Communist party calls them, "mistakes") against humanity, it was painful to fork up dough to a group with Mao as their namesake.

I didn't realize this before, but trekking is just the word for walking on trails in Nepal. Of course, there's no flat part of these trails. It's either steep up or down, so the verb "to walk" doesn't capture the challenge as well as "to trek." The first day was a bit hellish because I haven't formally exercised since I embarked on this trip 4 months ago. I sweat buckets, ached everywhere, and was absolutely ravenous when we stopped for lunch. Once I got over the initial pains, I really enjoyed the fresh air and the scenery. I was not encumbered by a pack, thanks to Krishna, and by day two I was eager for more.

We saw incredible views of Annapurna I, Annapurna South, Dalleghieri, Fishtail mountain, and others. After our visit to Poon Hill, a famous viewing point, Aaron awarded me with a merit badge in trekking. It was a proud moment ;)

On day 3 we were literally surrounded by monkeys for a spell, and learned later that they were the common Langur. They were really large, as big as a German Shepherd, and lept across the trail path when alerted to our presence. I didn't have time to snap a picture, but I'll never forget that moment. The late morning involved a torrential down pour that culminated in our extending the trek by a day. We were already at a high altitude but the weather made it even colder. We spent the day at a lodge trying desperately to get warm. I slept with a bottle of boiling hot water at my feet and still shivered all night long.

The next day was all down hill, and my feet and knees were aching when we arrived in Ghorepani. We decided to spend a more lazy day, finishing the hike at 11am. I read while Aaron planned out the remainder of our trip. An interesting feature of the day was the Nepalese festival of Dapaoli. It's called the brother sister festival, which coincidentally falls on my brother's birthday. During this festival people celebrate their dogs, then their cows, and finally their siblings. Quickly we realized that the celebrations mostly involved children "singing" toneless songs and asking for money. Actually, as time went by the children demanded money. Hordes of children stopped our bus by blocking the road. If the bus plowed through or didn't pay, they would throw rocks as we passed. A little obnoxious, n'est pas? While we were on foot we got away with giving them sweets or ignoring them completely.  

Our last day of the trek had a couple of hours walking on relatively flat terrain. This gave us a chance to have more conversation, which was perfect after 4 days of thinking to yourself during the hikes. Finally, we rode back to Pokara with Krishna, who bought us green oranges on the bus. Yeah, in Nepal oranges are green. Weird, right?

Not to give the wrong impression, there's nothing dangerous about these people touting goods and services of one kind or another. It's just that they are annoying, time consuming, and if you give them an inch, they'll take a mile (make that a kilometer, we're in Nepal after all!). Consequently, our first two days in Thamel were spent being dragged into tourist offices by Shree and Bisho. What's worse, they were fiercely competitive with each other and tried to make us feel guilty for being with anyone but themselves. As if I wanted to be entrapped by either of them! A warning to the starry eyed traveler of Nepal...brush up on your cold shoulder technique if you want to have any control over your time and money.

We weathered that storm, and I'm even starting to recover from the realization that all of these friendly Nepalese people only want me for my money. These days Thamel is more mobbed by tourists anyway and this takes the attention off of me. Now I'm free to window shop and walk the streets at my leisure. I'm also very willing to shop for people back home and send it. You can email me if you're interested!

You don't buy tickets at the entrance, you go behind the third stupa on the right and through giant red doors. There a man will write a number on your arm and inform you to return at 2pm. When you return you must make your way through countless bead vendors, pilgrims, and children playing Tibetan instruments very poorly before you arrive at a line of benches. The benches have seats numbered to 200, the quota of tickets sold to the palace each day. We were 126. You then stand on the benches for another hour, because sitting on the benches, well, that would be just silly. The line moves and maneuvers and occasionally people move forward or back displaying their number. When you get to the front, contrary to expectations, you don't buy a ticket. You get a piece of paper with a time written on it. Ours was 3pm the next day. That's when you go the Palace entrance the next day. When you enter the palace, you don't pay. You walk up those amazing winding steps for about 30 minutes in the brutal sun. It's really fun, actually. I enjoyed the outside most of all. When you finally enter a building  further up the mountain, you still don't pay...in fact if you're cheapity cheap, you could turn back here for free and still have an amazing experience, but I wouldn't recommend that unless you're flat broke. Finally your arrive at the ticket window. There was at some point a student discount, but someone crossed that out in pencil, so there are only discounts for the handicapped now.

Inside the palace is the most Buddhist of Buddhist temples. I wish I knew more about the religion before going in. After a while I experienced ornate, gold statue overload. Also, if you're Buddhist , be sure to bring loads of cash to throw at these statues. The floor, walls, and practically every crevice were covered in money. It really neat to see monks sweeping a money ridden floor as though they were cleaning rubbish. There were about 20 rooms open to the public, including the  incredible, gold encased, stupa tombs of past Dalai Lamas. There are really educational descriptions, helpful monks, and plenty of gift shops inside. The big downer is that no pictures are allowed. You can buy one of their tourist books with pictures for the low price of...oh wait, that price isn't so low...in fact that's highway robbery. Crap.

But for the casual Christian visitor, I don't think it's a big deal. Just visit Amazon later on and buy the same books for a fraction of the cost :).

A bit euphoric. Every western tourist I met seemed to exude the same pride in being there that I felt. It's so hard to get into Tibet, so you're a genuine adventurer if you make it. At least that's how you feel. It's how I would imagine it felt to arrive in California during the gold rush. There's golden opportunity waiting for you if you are willing the make the perilous journey to get there, and we did.

The Chinese influence on most of the city is intense, but there is still a part of town that retains its Tibetan feel and architecture, perhaps mainly for the benefit of tourism. In the center of this is the Jokhang temple, the most of beautiful Buddhist temple I've ever seen. It is surrounded by pilgrims all day prostrating themselves on the ground and circling the temple clockwise. These are the most devout people I've ever seen. I guess except for becoming a monk, which women can't do, this is the most religiously devout path you can take; a striking contrast to the Calvanist Christian work ethic that shaped the American psyche.

If you do become a Tibetan monk, make sure you are very comfortable holding hands with complete strangers and smiling a lot. Also, sit with your fellow monks on street corners, indian-style and say nothing. These are both very effective and subtle begging styles; much less offensive than yelling "GIVE ME MONEY" and shoving patrons into submission, the traditional Chinese child begging style. In Tibet we gave more alms to the poor than ever before. They were just so gosh-darn polite about wanting my money that I felt so much more inclined to give it to them.

There is so much to see in Lhasa that you could spend weeks there. Unfortunately, our visa did not allow this. However, I think that in only a few days, we got a good feel for the atmosphere and saw the major sights. The people are wonderfully docile and friendly. Most of them speak some English, French, and Spanish. I would recommend Lhasa to more experienced travel enthusiasts. Because of the hassles of entering and exiting the country, this trip requires either a lot of time or money...actually...both.

Every bed had an oxygen port on the wall, and tubes were handed out. I sucked down oxygen whenever I felt woozy. Everyone has a different strategy. Some preferred to deal with the altitude sickness as it came so as to acclimatize faster. Already symptomatic with my monthly peril and plagued with motion sickness, I was not ready for oxygen deprivation.

The restaurant car was good enough, although they had a tendency to run out of food...not a good strategy for a restaurant. Incidentally they never ran out of beer or cigarettes...gotta have the essentials, right?

There were amazing views from the train...I took so many pictures...sheesh.

We had watched some CCTV propaganda about how environmentally conscientious the construction of the Railway had been. Considering the fragility of the Tibetan tundra ecosystem, this was encouraging. Unlike other Chinese trains all of the windows were sealed. This means that the regular Chinese practice of tossing garbage out of the window was abated. The grassland around the train tracks was demolished in some areas, pristine in others. I was pleased to see that although the tracks were raised (increasing runoff potential), the concrete was arranged in a grid pattern with grass interspersed. This was the surface is permeable for rain. Clearly some intelligent and educated efforts were made to spare the environment during this construction. Then again, next to the railway is the old road to Tibet on which old diesel trucks carrying coal ran alongside us. Sigh...

It was a fun trip overall, although completely exhausting. If you plan on taking the trip yourself I guarantee it will be amazing, but be aware of the altitude sickness, the lack of privacy, and the constant noise that comes when your room doesn't have a door!