A Weekend in Sudan, Nov '08

I find it easy to fall into a certain numbness living in Khartoum – one forgets where one is as day-to-day life goes it normal ways within a little bubble. In that bubble of course there is the knowledge and awareness of being in a place that isn’t quite what it should be. Emergencies, civil war and other political problems are on the front page every day. But life for an expat living in Khartoum can still be a little mundane – I wake up, go to the office, work and attend meetings (generally with other expats), work out and at the end of the day return home to my nice air-conditioned apartment where my biggest problem at the moment is the troops of tiny ants that have decide to wage a war against my cupboard of food.

So the other day, a couple of friends and I decided to adventure out of this little bubble for the weekend and explore some new (well at least new to me) and less media focused parts of the Sudan – the old land of the Napatan kingdom of Kush – around Karima town north of Khartoum.

To get to Karima one must drive out of Khartoum through Omdurman and Souk Libya, a market known for illicit arms trade and also supposedly a thriving drug trade. It is a poor place. Populated mainly by people from the war-ridden western provinces of Darfur. It is a place of strange smells, hooting cars, rickshaws squeezing their way through the most narrow spots, people everywhere and merchandise of all kinds – TVs, stereos, mattresses, pots and pans, jewelry and garments. Like a supermall that lost it’s structure and was rebuilt out of random leftovers on a piece of dirt land.

Moving on, passing the re-enforced security posts and numerous check points that the government sat up after the JEM attack, the city is suddenly left behind and ahead is a flat stretch of land that with time goes from basic dry shrub land to red sand desert. The road is brand new and smooth. The car ran 140 km/hr. Red sand, black stones and the occasional shrub passed my widow. It is a 5-hour drive to Karima (that is if you keep to a reasonable speed). We reached in about 4.

I found it somewhat relaxing driving through the desert. Empty space helps emptying the mind. It is one of the parts I really enjoy about travelling, being it sitting on a plane, train, bus or car. It is the opportunity to do absolutely nothing – a legitimate time to just let the mind wander as the world floats by ones window.

There were the occasional villages. Though I am not really sure one can even call it village – maybe random settlements? They seemed to be sort of accidentally thrown out amongst the stone and shrub with absolutely no logic to why one would settle there. Sam Kinison’s peace on world hunger came to mind and to my travel companions’ amusement I played it for all. It became one of the themes during the rest of the trip – ‘it’s the fucking desert! Why don’t you people go live where the food is??’ (And here one should of course hear the shouting sound of Kinison).

Karima itself is a market town on the Nile with lovely date farms along the river and Jebel Barkal looking over the town. Most of the pyramids from the heydays of the Kush are long gone and remain either as big piles of stone rubble or nothing at all. But some are still intact and have been restored by German archeologists who found their way here a couple of decades ago. These are the royal cemeteries of the Napatan kings. At the base of Jebel Barkal stand the ruined temples of Amun and Mut, which you can see a good outline of lying on the edge of Jebel Barkal looking straight down 700 meters or so to the ruins. I had to carefully lie down on my stomach and peak over the edge. Below I could clearly see the outline of something that once must have been quite a grand temple. I felt a tingling in my legs when I got up again. I will never be very good with steep heights.

As the sun set, Jebel Barkal came alive. It seems that we had landed in the most popular hangout of Karima town. Families, young couples, kids and youth alike were climbing up to the top to watch the sun set, for then to run down the red sand dune on the hillside as fast as possible at the end. As the sun sat over the desert the contours of the pyramids fade and the landscape, which seemed so warm during the day quickly turned cold in colour as shades of blue takes over. By the time we are back at the hotel, the scene has turned black and Jebel Barkal has become only a silhouette against the sky, a couple of shades darker but lit up by the half moon. The evening is pleasantly cool and quiet. Khartoum seemed a million miles away as we sat into the late hours secretly drinking our wine and talking about all sorts of random matters.

It is easy to forget this part of Sudan in the midst of war and emergencies that grab the headlines every day. Not even the Sudanese themselves have taken too much of an interest in preserving this history it seems. Much has been destroyed and looted with the years. But in between you can find some beautiful gems – like the tombs in El Kurru were the wall paintings still kept their colour. There are no signs in these places. First time one visit it is a hit and miss game to find. And maybe what makes it all that bit more special is that when you do find it, you are likely to get it all to yourself. I guess it goes without saying that Sudan isn’t quite overrun by tourists. Though having said that there was a group of about 10 Italians in Karima when we got there – all retired. We wondered what had brought them here but failed to come up with a good answer, neither did we bother to ask.

Unfortunately – like everywhere – the weekend is always too short and after a visit to El Kurru in the morning we were back on the road returning to Khartoum. Hopefully there will be other opportunities and other small escapes ahead.

Weekend in Ethiopia, Oct '07

Boarding the plane I realised that I was not the only one who thought of getting out of the dry land for the long weekend. Half of the passengers seemed to be international aid workers from the UN and NGOs, using the opportunity of Idd and the two extra days off work to escape the oppressive heat and dust of Northern Sudan to the cooler highland air and comfort of Addis Ababa. The thought of spending another weekend around work colleagues did not entice me, and I was glad when I realised that they all, not surprisingly, were staying within the four walls of the exceedingly luxurious Sheraton Hotel, notorious for its glamour starkly contrasting the surrounding shacks and extreme poverty. Luckily, I did not yield to the temptation and convinced my travel companion that the old, nostalgic and rather rundown Taitu Hotel in the heart of the Piazza area would be much more interesting for our short break. Built by Empress Taitu, the wife of Menlik II, it was once the one and only hotel in Addis Ababa, and must at the time have been a rather majestic novelty. Today one can still sense some of the history left in its creaking wooden floors, its high ceilings, and the staff dressed as if time had stood still since the early 20^th century. It may no longer be luxurious, but it does offer large rooms with clean sheets, a shared bathroom, with hot water and stunning views of the city from the terrace. One can only imagine what it once may have been like in its former grandeur.

Addis Ababa, translated means the new flower, but there isn’t much that aspires to being new in this city, despite the several recent commercial buildings and hotels that have come up over the last seven years since I first visited. This time, like every time I come here I am shocked at the striking poverty; it is everywhere, on every corner and wherever you go. As my travel companion nicely put it “the Ethiopians seems to be proud of what they once had, or what they once were, but unable to appreciate that they do not have it anymore”. People seem to live in the past, unable or not willing to fathom how it all came to be what it is today. The reign of Haile Selassie is glamorised and looks mild in comparison to that which followed by Mengistu. Today people still like to believe in the liberation and the new start that was promised 15 years ago. But although everyone thought that Ethiopia would be on the forefront of democratisation in the mid-90s, the great promises have slowly been washed away and replaced with a regime that is becoming disturbingly similar to the one it once fought and overthrew.

I found the Piazza area more crowded at night then I remembered it to be, and the drunken boys more aggressive. But in the day the familiarity returned and my favourite café for my morning coffee and mixed juice was still where it used to be, the staff still as friendly and the coffee still as good. Young children walked pass trying to sell a small pack of tissues and a variety of bad sugary chewing gum. Barefoot and dirty with big begging eyes, it was at times hard to say no, but how many tissues and how much chewing gum could I possibly need. I smiled politely and gently said “alefellegem” (meaning “I don’t need”) in my rather rusty Amharic. Little by little some of the language came back to me but most of what I once knew has gone, replaced first by Somali and lately by my attempts to learn Arabic.

We walked from the piazza to St George’s Cathedral, down along Churchill Avenue past my old silver shop, passed the young boys shoe shining at the foot the famous Lion of Zion statue, before passing the national theatre and ending up down by the old railway station. In this part of the city it seemed time had not passed in the last seven years. All was how I remembered it to be, and somehow I found a certain comfort in that. As if the familiarity made me feel more at home. I guess with my current lifestyle, the sense of “home” has become a rather relative term, determined more by some sort of peace of mind, than relevancy to where I grew up.

In Meskel square (once revolution square) the huge placards of Marx, Lenin and Mao, which once decorated this massive square in the 70s and 80s, have been replaced by a massive advertisement and more recently by kitschy colourful decorations celebrating the Ethiopian Millennium. All, of course, in yellow, red and green, celebrating the greatness of Ethiopia. It seemed all a bit too arranged. And not only in this square, but on every Government building and Ministry; flashing lights and catchy but empty slogans promising freedom and democracy.

Surprisingly, I had never visited the National Museum in Addis before, and I was excited to finally get to browse the museum that some claim to be one of the most important in this part of Africa. Not so surprisingly however, was the over-emphasis on Ethiopia’s great past as the cradle of human kind. Lucy was found here, and a replica is placed in a corner of the dark basement of the museum together with a number of other fossils of strange animals that once used to wander this land. Some of them look like odd mixes of Zebra and Giraffe or extraordinarily large elephants with unexpectedly short teeth. The next two floors showed an eclectic mix of old stone tools, Axumite coins, royal regalia and tribal costumes. On the top floor there was an exhibition of Ethiopian modern art by various artists. Nothing really caught my eye until I had almost finished my round. There in the corner hung a picture, a wooden coloured carving that at first impression made me think of Picasso and cubism; the lines making it hard to immediately capture what is actually portrayed. It was when I read the title and looked back up that I saw, and what I saw made a real impression. At first I did not want to look at it, but something in its bare honesty and cruelness held me to it. Looking back at it I could see a young girl being held down for circumcision. The pain and sheer terror is reflected in the whole girl, her body, her face, and her eyes. I could almost sense it, and my thoughts wandered to all the women I know that most have gone through exactly the same agony I was witnessing in this simple, but such powerful piece of art.

Back out on the street, the crisp, cool highland air woke me up. Walking from the Trinity Cathedral along the road below the old palace, now the residence for the Prime Minister, I passed one of the many scattered slums of Addis. Covering the hill was a carpet of corrugated iron sheeting reaching down towards the centre. The light of dusk giving it a gentle touch. In the narrow streets between the mud-encrusted shacks hung the washing and children were playing, while women were preparing the meagre evening meal of shiro and injera. The local kiosk had just lit its lantern and the boys were playing table football outside the tiny local bar. It all seemed almost like a picture of idyllic poverty, a romance in the growing dusk, but should you dare to venture closer the sharp smell of urine would quickly bring you back to reality. I was astounded by the number of police that were lined up along the sidewalk on the far side of the road that bordering the large slum area. My first thought was that the Prime Minister might soon be passing, but the lack of heavy armament and the fairly relaxed attitude made me doubt it. Looking down the hill I realised there were more of them scattered around the slum too, but no one seemed to have really taken notice; like it was the most usual thing to be surrounded by police on every street corner. I sadly made a note of my observation and too afraid to question it further, not really wanting to know the answers, I wandered along to the safety of the plush Office Bar within the high walls of the lavish Sheraton Hotel.

As I entered the hotel grounds the world was transformed into a glossy scene from a bad in-flight magazine. A trail of wealthy Ethiopians, waiting to attend a wedding reception were lined up to get through the security check. Inside was the bride, posing on one of the Rococo divans while politely greeting each and everyone with a kiss on the cheek. It seemed rather absurd considering the women perspiring over their charcoal cookers only a couple of streets away. The luxurious hotel has become the new ‘in place’ for Ethiopia’s wealthy upper class to see and be seen. Once dominated by foreign business men, the Office Bar seemed to have a majority of Ethiopians, mainly men, as their main clientele. Women in their nicest frocks and men in suits; there were no jeans to be seen here. Well, except for my friend and I. We did not quite blend in; although, with a dry martini in hand, we certainly did try. The men were leaning on the high tables, resting one hand around glasses of whiskey or one of the infamous Ethiopian beers, chatting intensely while occasionally glancing up on the televisions strategically placed around the bar area. I took myself in wondering what they might talk about; latest political developments or just the sports of the day? It certainly seemed to be the place in which one might meet some of the movers and shakers of Addis Ababa.

We savoured our two pre-dinner drinks; a novelty almost after months in Sudan where all forms of alcohol are strictly forbidden by law and only acquired through underground channels. Followed by an amazing three course meal and a bottle of wonderfully balanced red wine at Castelli’s (the infamous Italian restaurant in the piazza), the evening was complete. Back at the hotel, having ended the meal with a luscious hot chocolate, it felt luxurious enough to fall back on the old, small, but clean bed. And not long after I was fast asleep.

At the crack of dawn, the car was waiting for us to take us out of the city to the holy town of Debre Libanos just north of Addis Ababa on the road to Bahir Dar. The morning air was chilly, but after warming up with a milky cappuccino in the old hotel bar we were ready to hit the road. As the morning fog cleared, the crisp highland air gave view to wonderful scenery of green hills, large yellow patches of the blooming Meskel flower, men with their donkeys and women carrying heavy loads on their way to the closest market. We stopped on the way to visit one local market. It was an open patch of land in a village packed with people, at first sight it was in a sort random and disorganised order. But once one has entered the crowds, one realise that there is order to the mess. On one part of the patch were the women selling butter and milk, another was for the vegetables, then another for the donkeys and so on. I stopped by a small stall (four sticks and a thatched roof) with two women squatting on the ground with a huge bag of berbera (the local chilli powder and a stable in any Ethiopian stew). As I stopped, one of them tried to either entice me or challenge me, it was hard to know which, to taste the berbera, by sticking her finger in the bright red powder and patting it on her tongue with a big smile. I sensed a challenge, and to prove a point I bended down and did the same. By this time, a small crowd had gathered around to watch the faranji tasting this hot spice. Certainly faranjis must in general have been a novelty in this little town, but one that tasted their hot spice seemed to create more excitement than needed. After a lot of cheering, I smiled politely to the request for money and bought instead a small bag to support the local trade. As I walked away, crowds of young children followed us through the rest of the market back down to the car.

Just before arriving at Debre Libanos, we stopped at the edge of the Jemma Valley Gorge; with the typical spectacular scenery of the Ethiopian Highlands with its flat, roof like, mountains and deep steep valleys. But my attention was quickly caught by something else – the Gelada Baboons, or as they say in latin Theropithecus gelada. I had long wanted to see these creatures which had so vividly been portrayed in various documentaries, most recently by David Attenborough in BBC’s Planet Earth series. The Gelada are only found in the Ethiopian Highlands. The male Gelada are the most spectacular to watch. They have an impressive mane of silky hair, almost akin to the mane of a lion. On their chest, a red patch shaped as an hour glass makes it look like they are wearing a wonderful fury cape. Showing off their set of threateningly large canine teeth, it is hard to believe that these creatures only feed on grass. They basically spend their days eating, while at night they regroup and sleep in the treeless cliffs, well hidden from any predators.

Leaving my companion and the driver, as well as a large group of children whose curiosity we had immediately caught, I headed down into the largely open area where the Geladas were feeding. Patiently, I slowly sneaked closer, trying to hide myself behind some of the small bushes so as not to frighten them. The Gelada tend to live together in groups of up to 600 with bands of 50 – 300 rummaging together. I was lucky. There were a lot of them around. Vary about my presence they still seemed surprisingly calm and would only distance themselves when I got to close, about 2 m or so apart. Completely fascinated by my new surroundings I lost track of time as I followed the different groups through the bushes. Had it not been for the others waiting up on the road, I am sure I could have stayed the whole day watching these creatures, and what seemed to me a wonderfully relaxed and comfortable lifestyle. Called back to reality an hour or so later by the engine of the car, I bid farewell to my newfound friends and wandered back up the crowd of young children surrounding the car.

Debre Libanos was once home to a famous saint of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church called Tekle Haymanot. He founded a major monastery in Debre Libanos in 1284 which became one of the most important religious institutions in Ethiopia and its abbot became one of the principal religious leaders only second to the abuna (the head of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church). Tekle Haymanot is typically depicted with wings on his back and only one leg visible. The latter allegedly is attributed to several years spent as a hermit, standing on one leg and praying in the cave up on the hill behind the church. We were told that today he is buried under the current church built by Emperor Haile Selassie in the 1950s. The church and nearby cave continues to be a place of pilgrimage, and as we witnessed, a famous burial place for many Ethiopians. There must have been at least three funerals taking place during our visit; all strangely happening outside the church, with women wailing loudly, mourning the dead. The procession was quite different from the Western traditions of wearing all black. Here, the mourners were covered in white shawls and the priests wore their traditional colourful gowns embroidered with gold thread, a most spectacular sight. The inside of the church had some wonderful glass paintings, but frankly little else to offer. A lost pigeon was flying around up in the roof. After visiting the church, we decided to the little walk up to the cave. In my mind I was visualising a large dark cave dripping with water (they say the water is holy and can cure all sorts of illnesses), but when we finally reached I was admittedly rather disappointed. The cave had been closed by a concrete wall. Inside, the ground was covered in bad laminate flooring taken straight out of a 1960s home. The cave was much smaller then I had anticipated and packed with huge buckets to harvest as much of the ‘holy’ water as possible. It smelled of cheap cologne, the bottle strategically stored within the colourful cloak of the priest. To be on the safe side I sprinkled some water on my face. You never know…

When time came to return to Khartoum the next day, I was longing to stay behind. It had been a wonderful and much needed break. Despite the complexities and terrible poverty of the place, I had felt more at home here than any other place in Africa. As the plane took off, leaving the green hills behind, I slowly but reluctantly got ready to face the oppressing heat and flying dust back in Khartoum.

Invasion of the crickets

I used to always associate the sound of crickets at night with summer holidays in the Mediterranean as a child. There was something exotic and relaxing about it. I never thought then that one day the sound would fill me with panic.

As a child I was never very good with insects, in fact I would refuse to go to bed if there was anything flying around in my bedroom or a tiny harmless spider hiding in a corner. To my parents delight and surprise, this seemed to have passed over the years, and although I still may utter some noise should I find a cockroach crawling up the inside of my sleeve, I am fairly calm about the fact that all sorts of insects are inhabiting my home these days. The most beautiful being a bright green Praying Mantis I once had as company on my terrace. But that was up until a few weeks ago.

I remember well how it started. I was on the phone to a friend a few days earlier, and while talking I had to occasionally brush away a few crickets that had made their way into my apartment. I did not think much of it. They had gradually increased in number over the last week, but not to the extent that I had really taken much notice of it. And so I lightly joked about it to my friend in London, who, not surprisingly, wondered how I was willing to sacrifice so much (I believe this was a reference to the lack of western luxuries) to do what I am doing. I just laughed. Little did I know that in two days all I would want was to get as far away as possible, back to the sterile cleanliness of the Scandinavian culture I grew up in.

Nothing really seemed out of the ordinary the following night when I went to bed. At around one in the morning I woke up feeling something jumping on me. Surprisingly, several crickets had made it in under my mosquito net. Being still half asleep I kill a few, brush them down on to the floor and drift off again. But it is not long until I wake up once more. Again I have crickets jumping on me. This time I wake up realizing that this is not quite normal. There are seven or eight of them and as soon as I get one, another one is there. I decide to get up. And that is when I realize; my whole house is full of crickets, and not just ten or twenty, but at least a hundred. The bathtub is covered in a carpet of loud crickets and they are jumping around me everywhere. Three in the morning and still not fully awake, I panic. There is absolutely nowhere to hide. I turn on the light at one end of the room and retire to the opposite end with a broom in my hand fighting them off as they come. It is only in the morning hours that I dose off for an hour or so, hidden under a blanket on one of my spare beds. At six o’clock in the morning I decide to take a change of clothes and a towel and head to the office to use the guesthouse facilities since my bathroom is impossible to enter, thinking that certainly it will be much better there.

As I turn up in front of the office entrance a sight awaits me that I never thought I’d ever see, and I suddenly realize that I am in the midst of one of the biblical plagues. The entrance to the office, a small white container where the guard sits, is completely covered with crickets, to the point where the inside walls are black and humming. The guard has moved his chair out on the street and is wearing a mouth cover. The crickets are everywhere, on his clothes and in his hair. He shakes his head and mutters ‘mushkila, mushkila’ (problem). But when he sees the panic in my eyes he laughs, and tells me to wrap my scarf around my head and face and just run through it, but warning me that it is bad inside too though in the slow process of being cleaned. I decide to wait outside, and I, who generally only smokes at social occasions, gratefully accept the cigarette he offers. Standing in the middle of the dirt road, looking around me in a combination of horror and surprise, I try to gain a sense of calm. With a stuttering conversation in part Arabic, part English and part sign language of some sort, I discover that the crickets all came from Eritrea and are likely to stay for some days, maybe even a week. I suddenly have a feeling of being trapped in a Hitchcock movie.

The rest of the day is spent mostly cleaning up the office. I continue the cleaning job at home in the afternoon, realizing that electricity and water is off. It seems that the authorities turned the lights off so not to attract them all. I go to bed steaming hot and rather paranoid. Around me all I hear is the sound of crickets.

I am delighted and relieved when I the next morning jump in the car and head for Khartoum leaving the armada of crickets behind. I don’t think my R&R could have been timelier.

Kathmandu June 15, ‘07

Bloody Mary at a posh hotel bar! I believe I have reached Kathmandu’s expat haven… I have only been travelling for ten days and it seems rather scary, though I know this life all too well from Nairobi.

I woke up this morning to the drumming of the rain. Looking out of the window, the hills were covered in lush green forest. Crossing the border and driving down to Kathmandu I felt like I had entered a whole new world. The landscape, the smells, the people – all so completely different from the Tibet that I left last night with its barren, desolate, harsh landscape.

Two days ago I arrived at Drepung Monastery, situated about 8 km from Everest Base Camp at an altitude of approximately 5000m. Arriving in the evening one can see the peak of Everest sticking up above the clouds. With the stupa of the monastery in front, it makes for great postcard photographs. After eight hours of fairly rough roads from Shigatse, I am pretty tired when reaching my destination, but also excited to finally have arrived. It is still light, though it is almost eight in the evening and I manage to walk the kora (a minor pilgrimage circumambulating a sacred site) clockwise as one should, up the hillside around the monastery before the sun sets. The landscape is bare and the wind is cold. I wonder why anyone would settle up here. The only thing that really seems to thrive in this cold barren place is the yaks. And those there are several of.

Staying at the monastery over night – a place cannot become much more basic than this. Rooms are lined up along a dark corridor, each with four beds, dirty sheets, yak blankets, a small tin bowl balancing on some wooden sticks presumably to function as a wash basin, and last but not least; a candle for those dark nights with no electricity. There is a small common room where basic noodles, biscuits and tea are served. It is the only room with heating as the old stove where the tea is heated is placed in the centre of the room. The heat is welcoming and several thermoses of hot milk tea are emptied during the course of the evening.

It is freezing cold at night and the wind howls through the window cracks. The cold makes even traditional butter tea almost drinkable, the heat and fat being just what the body needs to keep itself warm. Outside the stars have never been so close and bright, covering the sky like a thick carpet. If it had not been for the cold penetrating wind I could have stood there for hours – just gazing up at this wonderful spectacle of millions upon millions of small lights. Back in my room I prepare to go to sleep, excited about the hike up to Everest’s base camp the next morning. I start with thermal underwear, woollen socks, a huge knitted jacket with fleece inside, which I was smart enough to pick up one day in the market in Lhasa, my warm pashmina and my woolly hat. Crawling into bed I start pulling the other layers over me. First a yak blanket, then the duvet, and then another yak blanket. I am still cold. The wind is blowing through the windows underneath which my bed is placed. I reach over to the bed next to me; another duvet and two blankets. I pull it all up to my chin and eventually, to the squeaking noise of the wind, I finally fall asleep.

The next morning, I am up before sunrise. What I thought was a brilliant idea, namely to get up and see the sunrise over Mount Everest, turned out not so brilliant but a rather dark, quiet, cold morning. The sun rose much later then I thought, and packed in thick fog there was little to be seen. The brisk air makes me wake up quickly and as the fog cleared, the mountains appeared with their massive peaks covered in snow. It is a rather striking sight. One feels rather small and insignificant in the midst of this powerful landscape with Mount Everest towering above them all. As the weather gets warmer, I start to walk the four kilometres up to the Everest Base Camp.

Mt. Everest rises a massive 8,848 metres above sea level. The Tibetans call it Chomolungma, meaning “Mother of the Universe” or “Goddess Mother of Snows”. A rather fitting name for this awe-inspiring piece of massive rock, softened slightly by its layer of bright white snow, it is apparently still rising. It is a powerful sight. Chomolungma demands respect. She is merciless and moody, though some seem to have an urge to challenge her superiority. Among the first to set out to reach her peak, were George Mallory and Andrew Irvine. On June 8, 1924 they started their ascent. A year earlier, Mallory had famously responded to the question of ‘Why climb Everest?’ by simply stating ‘Because it’s there’. It seemed that this was him the justification to do so. But Mallory and Irvine never returned, and it was not only until 1999, that his body was found in the ice high up on Chomolungma’s steep slopes. No one knows if he ever reached the top, but the general agreement amongst climbers appears to be that he did not. The first successful ascent did not happen until 29 year later, when Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay finally reached the top on May 29, 1953. As I stand by Mallory’s memorial, looking up at Chomolungma, something tells me that I would never want to challenge her. In 1996, 15 people died trying to reach her peak, 8 people on the same day – May 10; a day that has been since documented in books and movies. It was the deadliest year in the history of Everest. And since then the Chinese have become much stricter in terms of access beyond the first Base Camp. Walking back to Drepung Monastery, I am content that I was granted this spectacular audience with the “Goddess Mother of Snow”, and with no further need to linger, I jumped in the car and start the long drive ahead towards the Nepalese border.

It is the next day, several hours drive and a long hot shower later, that I find myself sipping a Bloody Mary while waiting for my friends and scribbling these notes down…

Lhasa, June 9, ‘07

It’s my last day in Lhasa. Time seems to fly and I sometimes feel I can barely keep up; it is like holding on to it by the tip of a rope. A week has passed since I left NY and arrived in Beijing. Since then the days have been filled with new impressions at a speed that, at times, has made it hard to digest them all. When evening comes and I think I will write I am either too overwhelmed or completely exhausted or both.

This evening, though exhausted and with a pounding headache from the altitude, I forced myself out to get a bite to eat at the Islam Restaurant around the corner from my guesthouse. It is my second time and only locals seem to come here, which is what I like about it. I can sit by the window looking out at the people and activities in front of what is Lhasa’s only mosque. The entrance is a rather unusual one, with a big gate decorated in traditional Tibetan style and inscribed with words in Arabic, Tibetan and Chinese.

I have ordered Muslim tea and some noodles. The former is a strange concoction of tea leaves, large sugar cubes, dates and some other unfamiliar fruit that I do not recognize. So far it only tastes of hot sugary water.

A monk sits down in front of me. Although he does not look me in the eyes when he smiles, it is nice to have some company. He starts chanting. Actually it is more like a humming sound. I like it. Ha! There we go, I caught his eye. He smiles as he gets served his steaming hot soup. I wonder if I should attempt to talk to him, but something tells me that monks do not talk when they eat here. Food should be eaten in silence. Outside the mosque, women are selling vegetables while the men hang around chatting. My newfound friend, the monk, receives a second bowl of steaming hot soup, identical to the first that he just started. He slurps. They do that a lot around here. The young waiter keeps filling up my teacup with water so it is constantly overflowing. It is starting to acquire an interesting taste. Though awfully sweet I quite like it. The monk spots some white girls outside our window. He looks at me and laughs and points outside. The girls look back curiously and then move on and disappear.

There is something fascinating about this place and its people. At first glance it appears as a perfect peaceful and spiritual place. Peaceful it certainly is. Tibetans seem only to give you friendly welcoming smiles. But after a while I cannot but notice the unspoken tension here. No one talks about it. If one lives in the bliss of ignorance one could easily travel through without ever understanding what this place really is. However, the basic fact that you cannot find a single picture of the 14^th Dalai Lama should make one start questioning things. The bookstore I went to earlier today only sold books about Tibet written by Chinese authors and my local guide here has never seen a copy of the Lonely Planet for Tibet before. It contains a foreword written by the Dalai Lama and some details of the history that I guess the Chinese did not particularly agree with and so they thought it best to ban it. Ban it might be a strong word, but there is not a single place in China that would be selling it.

My silent friend is about to leave and so it is time for me too to go back to my guesthouse to pack up and get some rest before the long drive tomorrow. I am leaving for Gyantse and going up to an altitude of approximately 5000m on the way. From now the ascent starts till we reach our highest point at the Mt Everest Base Camp. Stocked up with oxygen and some local herbal mix in tiny medical flasks I am ready for new adventures.

Beijing June 4, ‘07

Venturing out in this massive city is at times a slightly daunting adventure. Clearly booming, the first impression reflects the non-stop traffic, high-rises and masses of people on bicycle. Not necessarily that different from other large metropolis I guess, well, that is except for the number of bicycles. What makes this place so alien though is that it is absolutely incomprehensible – it is impossible to understand and communicate with the majority of the people and finding ones way around by bus or subway becomes hopeless since one cannot read the names of where one is supposed to get off. I have therefore had to accept that my feet and taxis (the latter with hopeless attempts of explaining where I am going) are the best way to get around for the next few days. That concept of ‘lost in translation’ suddenly gets a real meaning here.

I wandered around the famous new shopping strip of Beijing while waiting for my camera lens to be fixed. It had taken me almost an hour of pointing at my camera to finally find the place and now that it was confirmed broken I had a good two hours to kill while some tiny little man was dissecting my camera lens to a hundred tiny pieces just to put it all back together again.

I had some greasy pork in a small restaurant in one of the side streets. It was past lunch time so the place was empty. The food was not very good and I left half of it and got back to the strip. Wangfujing Dajie is a bustling street cut off from traffic, overly crowded with flashing billboards and incomprehensible script. Occasionally something familiar sticks out, such as McDonalds and Adidas signs. I wander into a couple of shops selling all sorts of nick nacks and kitsch at its best. I only want to look around but as soon as my foot is in the door I am surrounded by 3-4 shopping assistants, all trying to grab my arm and saying “Miss, very nice – you want buy??” Needless to say it is not long till I’m back out on the busy street.

Eventually I find a quiet tea room hidden on the second floor of a tea shop. The place has no windows and there are hardly any people there; 3 local Chinese and me. I order some green tea and sit staring at the glass with floating tealeaves, wondering when they will start to sink down to the bottom of the glass. After I’ve sat there for half hour the leaves are still floating on top making it difficult to drink. Surely they are meant to sink so one can enjoy the tea with out all the leaves in ones mouth?? Well, I still have another half hour to wait till my lens is ready so I might as well sit here and enjoy the oasis of tranquility before I again venture out in the hustle of Beijing’s busy streets.