Italian Journalists

Wednesday, June 21st, 2006 | No Comments

For those of you that read Italian or know how to use babelfish to translate webpages, here’s a link to a story that appeared by an Italian journalist I met on an island called Pula Wei…here here is is in English

The history of Tibet

Sunday, June 18th, 2006 | No Comments
As some of you may know, the peaceful land of Tibet has not always been so. It has quite a history of violence and tyranny (think karma on a national scale). Just fyi I’m pretty sure that China’s current claim to Tibet is actually fueled by an ancient edict in which Tibet declared itself part of China. You may wonder at the incredulity of this radical statement, but Tibet was taking over China at the time – so I’m sure it seemed reasonable to the Tibetans. Anyway, for those of you unaware of Tibet’s great history of religious war (one historian told me that the Tibetans in their heyday made the Catholics look like nursery school children…), you might find this video from the NYTimes interesting… the article is here.

Poon Hill

Thursday, June 15th, 2006 | No Comments

Here you go. Poon hill is the “must see” spot for people doing the Annapurna circuit. It’s pretty obvious why.

sunrise poon hill

You’ve gotta get up at around 3:30am, then trek like a Banshee (well, I guess actually more like a Sherpa) to the top of this “hill.”

annapurna range

Now I’ve seen hills and I’ve seen “hills,” but I ain’t never seen a hill like this. I was thinking they should have a defibrillator at the top. It’s around 45 minutes straight uphill. Luckily you don’t have to bring your pack. They have the most delicious piping hot, instant hot chocolate you’ve ever had. No tiny little dehydrated marshmallows, but hey you’re in Nepal!

mountains of mist

Wow! Has anyone ever told you…

Thursday, June 15th, 2006 | No Comments

…that you should write a book? You should put a contract out on them! It never seems like it’s never going to end! It’s like a black hole. The more you give, the more it wants, the more dense it grows, the greater its pull. Lots of excuses for not getting around to THIS for a while. I’ll try and update it in the next few weeks.

Nepal really threw me off for a couple of reasons. There was NO internet access. It was freezing in the evening when I usually would have written (remember I had just come from Thailand – yeah, don’t give me any of that “life is tough” stuff either). And I took WAY too many photos (around 500). Going through them is truly overwhelming. And I’m not even a good photographer…

Okay, maybe I’ll sneak one post in here for good measure. I’m so bad sometimes… heeheehee…