Jumlyaha Bhai

Jumlyaha Bhai

Aristotle is famous for his insatiable curiosity and production of ideas and observations of natural science, logic, and philosophy. But if he is known in the popular world at all today, it is likely for his assertion: Give me a boy until he is 7, and I will show you the man. It’s a simple and provocative treatise about fate, biology and the environment and how they create and reveal the true essence of who we are. In 1964, filmmakers set out to put this thesis to the test. They chose 14 seven-year-old children from a variety of socio-economic classes in Britain and made a documentary film titled Seven Up! to capture and explore these children’s lives, their thoughts, and their visions of themselves. Every 7 years since then, filmmaker Michael Apted, who served as a researcher on Seven Up!, has made subsequent award-winning films examining these 14 children as they have grown through adolescence, young adulthood, mid-life and now into their senior years. These children are now nearing 70 years old. It’s left up to the viewers to explore how relevant Aristotle’s vision is.

If Aristotle were alive today, his musing about the truth of human nature may sound a bit different – maybe something like this: Give me a traveler, and I will show you their true soul. My fellow travelers are already nodding and smiling in approval. They know. We’ve seen aspects of people – frequently ourselves – emerge on a long-distance bus or in a hostel that we never knew existed. Stick two people together for days, weeks or months on a journey and all the quirks and obsessions, habits and ticks seem to rise to the surface like bubbles from a scuba tank when extended travel is involved.

This truth may be most evident when people need to catch a flight. Airports and flying culture bring out the best, and worst, in all of us quite quickly. It shines a bright light on our deepest impatience or humility, anxiety or kindness. Who needs to get to the airport three hours in advance of a flight. Who is always late. Who never wants to check a bag. Who packs their own food from home. Who waits until the last minute to board. Who tries to drag on board three carry-on wheelies, a backpack and purse. Who stands up to get in line at the gate when group 2 is called even though their boarding pass says group 7. Who is rude to a ticket agent just trying to do their job or conversely tries to woo one with flirtation and kindness for a better seat or a free checked bag. Who helps someone lift their carry-on bag into the overhead bin. Who has no tolerance for the crying baby in seat 17B. Who rants at an airline employee because their flight is delayed due to a category 5 hurricane. Ok. Show your cards.

And of course, everyone is finicky about their airline seats. They want leg room and the possibility of a speedy exodus in the emergency exit row or a spot up near the front for a quicker exit when the plane lands. They don’t like a seat with a tray that pops out of the armrest or anything too close to the bathroom. The list goes on.

Put me on an airplane and I’m as picky as anyone I suppose. I love a seat next to a window. Period. I’ll do anything for it. I just did it yesterday on the phone sweet-talking an agent into giving me a window seat on a full flight to Seattle normally reserved for “elite” customers, which she kindly told me I was not. While she searched for a seat for me, I chatted her up about how much I enjoy Alaska Airlines. I told her how my daughter had just gotten her master’s degree and I was flying out to help her pack up and move home. She congratulated us with an audible smile as she waited for her screen to refresh. I told her how proud I was of my daughter choosing to become a teacher. She reveled at how we need more good people going into education. I thanked her for recognizing this in my daughter. A few minutes later, bingo, I had my window seat. Her gift to me. I admit I was working it. I was pining for that good guy discount of sorts. The notion goes that customer service people are treated so poorly that when they are treated well, they really want to do something good for that customer. Kindness in all forms sometimes goes a long way despite the opposite axiom: Good guys finish last.

Sure, there are so many other seat preferences. First class – comfy luxury. Aisle – easy exit. Emergency exit row - plenty of space. Business class – nice leg room. Middle seat – who are you kidding? If I ever start an airline, I’ll remove middle seats, install a mini fridge in its stead, and charge a small premium for the window seat. Hordes of fliers will come running to my airline. It’s a no-brainer.

The window seat is where my imagination can run wild. Smoke could fill the cabin, oxygen masks could drop from the overhead compartment, we may be in full descent, but as long as I’m still breathing, I’ll probably still be staring out the window. I’ve always been a wonderer and wanderer this way. To where does that winding creek down below lead? What is that solitary structure at the end of that seemingly deserted dirt road? Where are we exactly? Nebraska? Colorado? I’m sure I can figure it out. Are those green circles inside square plots of land the portions of the field that are irrigated? What crop is planted there? Oh, a stream begins right there in that narrow cut of the land. How hard could it be to hike over that mountain? Does that patch of land appear to be the same light shade of purple to those living on it as it does to me from up here? How fast would we have to fly going west to prevent the sun from setting? (By the way, it’s about 1000 miles per hour at the equator) How different our perspective is from above, where the land seems peaceful and everyday conflict and struggle seem hard to fathom. From a distance, everything is something else. I get lost in the fantasy that distance provides. I stare as the world appears to pass by ever so slowly – though we are traveling at a speed over 500 miles per hour. I can only imagine how these ideas would expand exponentially if I were an astronaut on the International Space Station watching our blue orb revolve and rotate quietly. How mind-blowing it must have been for the Apollo 8 crew to be the first humans to watch our home planet rise from behind the moon’s horizon. It’s trite, but perspective changes everything.

Descending back into O’hare airport in Chicago, I’m always quick to try to locate my house if we are making the approach from the east over the shore of Lake Michigan usually just south of Evanston. I see Northwestern University jutting out into the lake a bit. I follow the lights of a street, probably Chicago Avenue, south to what looks like Dempster Street. Yep. My eyes wander west, and I see the glow of a sports field. That must be Robert Crown Park and Washington School, the neighborhood elementary school that my kids attended. I’ve gone just a bit too far. A couple blocks back southeast. There is my garage behind my house. Yep, there’s the back deck. Bingo! Who needs Google maps.

In September of 1990, my twin brother, Bob, and I boarded our flight at JFK International Airport in New York City and traveled halfway around the world to Bangkok, Thailand, from where we planned to start three months of traveling in Asia. My life was unsettled in New York and Bob was between legal jobs, leaving a clerkship with a federal district judge and soon taking on a position as an attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department. When he proposed that we spend three months together in Asia, I had few other ideas of what I should be doing. I was desperate to be saved from New York. This eventually seemed like a perfect move. I had no idea how this would change my life.

For most of our young lives, my brother and I had not existed on this planet for more than 5 minutes without each other somewhere within a physical or psychic arm’s length. Only during those five minutes when I had emerged from the womb before Bob, did I exist as one until much later in life. We grew up side by side. We shared a bedroom, bunk beds, friends, and many mutual interests as kids. We were dressed in the exact same clothes only in different colored stripes or solids. A lot of BOGO sales I guess before it became a faddy acronym. That’s how young twins were dressed in the 60s and early 70s and often still today. I just espied a pair of 5-year-old twins the other day dressed to illicit a cooing reaction from everyone who sees them. Bob’s sweatshirt was blue; mine was red. My shirt had an orange stripe; his stripe was green. Winter hats. Check. Fancy clothes. Same checkered sport coat. Check. The list goes on. Haircuts. Turtleneck sweaters. Saddle shoes. People love to comment about how cute it is. As young children, it meant nothing to me. I had no consciousness related to individuality or duality.

As we grew, we played the same sports, went to the same summer camps, acted in the same elementary school plays, took music lessons at the same time. We ran around the pool together eager to get to the diving board when the lifeguard told us to walk. We played on the same soccer team able to pass the ball to each other with uncanny awareness of where the other would be. We set up treasure hunts and scavenger hunts in and around our house together. We built obstacle courses and a high jump in the basement. We raced hot wheel cars. We played kick-the-can together in our yard as the summer sun dipped below the horizon.

But in early adolescence, I began to recognize my selfhood, and it was frequently in the world of comparison to my bother. There were times when we fought and grappled a lot. Over what, I have no idea. Perhaps we were processing the emotional disappearance of our mother during her depression. Maybe we were fighting over our roles in the family. Maybe we were two hormone-emerging boys doing what boys do heightened by the natural competition of being twins. Or maybe we were just like so many male adolescent mammals using our bodies to express our inner selves. Two young lions unable to control the testosterone oozing through their bodies. Is this what twin brothers do everywhere? I don’t know, but it felt like more than just harmless sparring. It seemed like deeper anger or fear or sadness or jealousy or emotional hurt transformed itself into the way boys process it all – with muscle and force and sweat and tears. Was it normal? In those years of life, what passes as normal seems to be mostly defined by whatever is happening.

Neither of us ever hurt the other as we wrestled and sweat and raged. We were playing our roles in some pre-scripted WWF wrestling match. One of us got mad at the other. The other got mad that the first was mad. Words flew. Bodies flew. The escalation grew. One of us always wound up on top pinning the other to the carpeted floor with knees planted on biceps. The one on the ground squirming and writhing in anger and defiance. I don’t remember how these battles ended. Perhaps my mother’s nervous laughing threat of what was going to happen when dad came home from work scared the dominant one-of-the-day, who had pinned his adversary to the floor, into some kind of relenting withdrawal. The one on top eventually ceded control once there was really nothing else to do except end it. And then it all seemed to dissipate into the past the way childhood events do…until the next time or maybe much later in life when feelings play themselves out in other relationships.

In the quantitative way life is more easily measured, my brother was better. Full stop. In sports, Bob was smooth and efficient. I was rough and tumble. He swam faster than me at swim meets, shot lower golf scores, and edged me out on the basketball court. I’d flail my arms in the pool, swing has hard as I could with a golf club, and dive all over the basketball court. Bob was fluid and deceptive. He used his brain. I was angular and aggressive. I used my body. He was Larry Bird. I was Dennis Rodman. He was the tortoise. I was the hare. He was brains. I was brawn. He was a natural. I was a grinder. He was measured. I was impulsive. In some realms, the yin and yang are perfect compliments, but here it often felt like a rivalry. Physically, I wanted to be tough and strong and powerful in everything I did to assert some kind of primal dominance. This was my way to the top…or something on top of my brother. I’d try to corral him into massive ping pong matches where I thought I might have an advantage, but he wasn’t biting. He knew the trap. Remember, he was the brains. We were not raised, however, in a prehistoric world where physicality portends success on the hunt, the winning of the finest woman, or the creation and survival of offspring. Like Okonkwo’s outdated brute strength in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, physical prowess wasn’t the ticket to real power.

In school, Bob was just smarter. Not just smarter than me. He was academically smarter than almost everyone. But he wasn’t everyone else’s twin brother. So much seemed to come naturally to him while I was fighting and clawing to try to succeed. In the math world, Bob was a genius. Math club star. By the time we were in Calculus class as seniors in high school, I was lost. If I asked him for help, he’d grow incredulous and frustrated that I couldn’t grasp a concept. It was like someone wondering how another person could have trouble inhaling and exhaling. This world of logic and numbers and theorems and school and sports was involuntary for him. For me, it was a grind. It probably made me a bit of a fighter. Ambitious. Stubborn. Maybe I was out to prove my worth – maybe so busy trying to prove myself in comparison to him in his world, in his domain, that I was barely paying attention to who I was at all and where my strengths may lay.

In all these years though, I can’t remember ever talking with him about any of these challenges or many others that I faced or any he was facing. None of it. We didn’t really share problems we had with friends or family dynamics. I’m ashamed to say it. It sounds so shocking. Two boys in such close proximity physically, but so distant emotionally travelling in parallel worlds. Bound as one like the two strands of DNA – intertwined but never touching. Maybe that’s how young boys and young men are. Maybe that was just me. I never said, “I feel bad every time I lose,” or “I just want to win,” or “I wish I didn’t feel like I had to compete with you all the time.” That wasn’t me. Maybe that’s asking too much of a young teenage boy. I was fighting my battle inside. I’m guessing I was saying, “I can do this. I’ll win and feel better.” I was not a good communicator. I was disconnected from my emotional world and soon trying to disconnect to find myself.

Though we are fraternal twins not identical, people were always curious about our connection. Twins are a fascination of nature. In some societies, twins used to be seen as a bad omen and were taken out of society and murdered or left to die. In other parts of the world, twins are signs of supernatural powers. Universally, the uniqueness of twins is a matter not easily ignored. What’s it like being a twin? It’s an odd thing to explain. It’s like asking a tree what it’s like to be a tree. That’s all the tree knows. I didn’t know what it was like not to be a twin. I had my experience. My brother had his. It’s natural to ask if we were close, if we could read each other’s minds. At that point, I was having enough trouble just accessing my own.

At some point in high school, I felt the oncoming urge to separate more than to compete – to turn the perceived oneness of our world into twoness. Maybe that felt like a place I couldn’t lose. A lot of “maybes”. I felt a surging secretiveness emerge in me – to detach from the other strand of the double helix and see how it felt to be a single strand. I had embodied a life of comparison, one I had certainly created in my own mind. My way out was separation. I don’t think Bob ever felt this need as I did. I wanted to just be me. I would try to go out on the weekends and hide where I was going and who I was going with. You normally do this shit to your parents, not your brother. Where are you going? Out. When will you be back? Later. Well, that was my strategy. Not the strategy of talking about what was going on with me. I was looking for a space I could call my own, something that we didn’t share, my own friends, my own identity. I found a bit of it in my senior year of high school joining a theater production. It was liberating, but being one was new and hard also. It felt unnatural. I didn’t feel whole alone, but I didn’t feel whole with Bob, either.

By college, we had gone different directions, each of us pursuing our own interests. We had both applied to and been accepted to Stanford University. Bob quickly made his choice to go west to attend Stanford. I pined and grinded over the decision, writhing the day before the deadline in my parents’ bedroom trying to find some divine intervention. Who turns down Stanford? I heard this from lots of people. Eventually, I chose a path east to the University of Michigan. And while maybe that would have provided enough space to actually connect us more, I don’t remember that being the case. I was still protecting myself from something. I was still moving away. Not only didn’t I have the emotional language to explore so much of what I had buried with my brother or very many other people for that matter, I wasn’t mature enough to face it.

In college, each spring I would make a visit to see him at Stanford. I would fantasize about what my life would have been like had I chosen to go to school there as well. I was realizing I hadn’t found my people where I was in Ann Arbor. Maybe I would be happier at Stanford. California was beautiful and warm. People were tan and bare. He lived in a cozy fraternity. I considered transferring. But when I was visiting him in the spring, I probably spent more time talking with his friends than I did him. I don’t know what the wall was that I couldn’t jump over or scamper under and race around or just knock down, but it was there sadly.

After school, I spent a couple years in Ann Arbor, MI before moving to New York City. Bob stayed in Palo Alto, studying law at Stanford and then taking a job as a clerk for a federal district judge in Washington, DC. And not long after that, we were together – a lot – in southeast Asia.

Five years after graduating from college, we arrived together in Bangkok, Thailand. We spent three weeks traveling through Thailand before returning to Bangkok to travel to Jakarta, Indonesia. From Jakarta, we boarded a prop plane and flew to the town of Maumare on the far eastern side of the island of Flores, nearly 1000 miles from Jakarta. Flores is traversed slowly by rickety minivan over a solitary pot-hole pocked road, which winds past sparsely populated lush verdant countryside, the magnificent three multi-colored cratered lakes of Mt. Kelimutu, where we watched an elegant sunrise near the village of Moni, and remote villages that weave unique ikat cloth. When we eventually reached Flores’ west coast in a town called Labuanbajo, we gathered with 8 other backpackers to hire what appeared to be a barely seaworthy vessel and its equally questionable captain to sail and motor our way over three days and two nights to the islands of Rinca, where we explored the undersea world in barely functioning snorkeling equipment, Komodo, where we spent some time observing the famous Komodo dragons, and past Sumbawa, where an evening storm put our arrival on the eastern side of Lombok island in some jeopardy. When the rain stopped but the wind still blew, we slept on deck and watched the mast sway 45 degrees back and forth in the gale swiping at stars as they passed in its arc.

In Lombok, we hired scooters to explore the island, once again encountered the ubiquitous Bob Marley guitar-playing long-haired youth that are nearly indistinguishable from country to country in Southeast Asia, later ascended the dormant and spectacular Mt. Rinjani volcano in a two-day trek with our trusty flip-flop footed 4’10” porter Muhli, who carried a bamboo pole across his bare shoulders balancing a cooking pot and gear on one end and various food and clothing on the other as we climbed nearly 7,000 feet straight up to the 8,658-foot rim of the crater lake of the 12,224-foot Mt. Rinjani. We solidified our mastery of the Indonesian phrase “perlahan lahan,” meaning “slowly,” which we uttered repeatedly as Muhli raced up the mountain with the bamboo teeter-tauter on his shoulders. I tried on the contraption for a hundred meters or so slogging skyward up the trail. Needless to say, Muhli was superhuman!

We later nearly capsized in high seas on a harrowing journey to the small island of Gili Air off the coast. From Lombok we took a ferry to Bali, where we avoided the Australian party hub of Kuta Beach and made our way to Ubud, the cultural center of Bali located in the middle of the island and our home for more scooter explorations. Over several days, we’d rent one scooter for the day and ride out into the countryside following funeral processions, exploring a volcano, or seeking out a good bowl of nasi goreng at a roadside food stall. For a few dollars a night, we stayed in a gorgeous bamboo-constructed guest house. Pure luxury by our standards. Elegant, breezy, friendly and cheap. The beds were covered in batik sheets and patch-quilt bed spreads. The papaya and bananas in the morning were always fresh. The staff consisted of kind caring beings who swept the concrete courtyard patio barefoot in their sarongs with a long broom made of straw and weeds and grass. We’d wake to cool breezes, take a mandi (shower) by pouring buckets of water over us, and sit on the veranda and watch the palm trees sway in the morning breeze.

Desite this idyllic picture, by this time, I was getting irritated. I needed elbow room. No two people travel at the same speed with a seamless flow from moment to moment. Aristotle’s updated axiom that traveling with a partner reveals true colors was proving true. But unlike some well-trained communicator who can discuss what is bothering them and work to find a solution, I was completely emotionally unskilled. I was an inflating balloon ready to burst. And I did at some non-descript moment when we were ready to hop on the scooter for another day. I ripped off my helmet and just blew out a stream of words of anger and frustration and disappointment and unhappiness. I’m sure it seemed to Bob like it came out of nowhere. I hadn’t led on much at all about how I was feeling. I stormed off to just have some space. Bob wasn’t being mean or cruel. He wasn’t cheating me or demeaning me. He wasn’t out to make me upset. He was just being himself. I was the one with the issues. We had spent just about every breathing moment together during the last few weeks, just like we had in utero. Maybe that’s how I blew out of the womb first. I needed air. I needed space. I needed something else. Anger was the easy out. I was scared of expressing other feelings. This was not new. I felt I had little training for what accessing my feelings and addressing them even looked like. These things have to be taught and learned, and I never got those deep lessons in my home. I didn’t have the language or the insight or the awareness or the courage or all of it or something. I wondered why I needed to be separate to feel whole. I had a hard time being myself in the presence of another – separateness and connection at the same time seemed impossible. I would say I was an emotional child, except children express their feelings quite honestly. I wasn’t even a child I guess. I certainly needed help, which I wasn’t going to get here.

We eventually talked out the situation. I never threatened to leave or suggest we part ways. That wasn’t an option. This was my brother, someone I trust perhaps the most of anyone in the world. Someone I know would drop anything for me, as I would for him. The bond is permanent. We were together as we had been from conception. No matter how much we struggle with family, there seems to be some kind of unbreakable tether that always draws us back even in the worst of times, or troubles us if we don’t connect. The bond is forged in our DNA interestingly. It is eternal.

I can howl and bluster and preach, but I’m often hiding fragility in need of support. We were soon up on the scooter again, Bob at the helm, me holding on to him from behind, happy to let him smoothly and quietly lead the way. We ventured way out to the remote northeastern coast of the island riding on sandy tracks on high cliffs overlooking the sea. There was no one else in sight. It was just my brother and me, the two strands of DNA interlocked as one again. All of my trust was in him to lead the way, to keep us from falling. All I had to do was hold on.

We eventually ferried on to Java and before finally reaching Jakarta again on the western edge of the island, we toured the active volcano of Mt. Bromo, experienced the Wayang Kulit shadow puppetry of Yogyakarta, and meandered through the 9th century Hindu temple of Prambanan and Buddhist temple of Boroburdur before eventually flying back to Bangkok. During our time there, we both learned quite a bit of bahasa Indonesia, the official language of Indonesia’s 17,000 islands, which would, unbeknownst to me at the time, serve me very well the following year. We traveled by boat, scooter, minivan, bus, van, ferry, foot, motorcycle, pick-up truck, bemo, tuk-tuk and rickshaw often times crowded in with the chickens, children and chattel of the local Indonesians.

So, when we finally fly from Bangkok to Kathmandu on October 31, 1990 after a day-long delay, I am sure to secure my favored window seat. Luckily for me, I’m on the right side of the plane, which means that as we approach Kathmandu from the east, all I can see out the window to the north is the unbroken jagged range of peaks of the Himalayas in the distance. This is not my first time seeing mountains from 30,000 feet. I have flown across the US many times. I have looked down in wonder at the Sierra Nevadas and the snow-covered Rockies. I’ve flown over the Alps. From a plane, these ranges seem benign and calming. But the Himalayas are something else. Flying parallel to this endless mass of rock and ice piercing the sky in the morning light is more entrancing than passing over giant ranges. We fly alongside this jutting mass like we are driving a country road next to an extra-long freight train unable to see it’s beginning or end. Its protrusions into the sky seem gentle and hopeful. They are majestic in the hazy light, but our distance and perspective hide their ultimate compassionless power. From where I sit, the Himalayas look like a soothing watercolor painting against a dusty sky. At one point, I notice that one peak seems to rise slightly but distinguishably above all others, as if reaching to the unknown with just a bit more effort. This must be Everest, named after a British surveyor, Deva-dhunga – seat of god – or Sagarmatha – goddess of the sky – to the Nepalese, Chomolungma – mother goddess of the world – to the Tibetans. By just these names, it is clear to me that there is more reverence for the mountain among those who inhabit its domain than the foreigners who come to visit. Westerners like to give human names to peaks, as if someone now owns it. The mountains pay no respect to that kind of hubris. Thrill seekers from around the world flock to this peak to conquer her only to be reminded, sometimes fatally, that no one conquers the land, the mother goddess of the world. It’s no wonder that Buddhism and its humility emerged here. In days or weeks, I will be among these peaks I hope – trekking amid and through their grandeur, but today they are just the hosts of my imagination from my window seat until we land in Kathmandu. I’m not sure I’ve blinked in the last 30 minutes staring out the window.

At 1400 meters, Kathmandu is cooler than any city we’ve visited in the last two months. From just the look of the airport, I can tell we have landed in a capital that is much less developed than Bangkok, Jakarta or Singapore. The terminal is made of brick and concrete unlike the shiny newer glass and steel airports of these other southeast Asian cities. Even with all the tourist dollars flowing in for trekking and climbing, Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world with a per capita income of just a few hundred dollars per year. There is only one runway.

We find our backpacks, and as we emerge from the crowded terminal out the doors, there is a jumble of taxis, tuk tuks and bicycle rickshaws pointed in all directions ready to grab the foreigners before honking and shouting and bumping their way out of the scrum and onto the ring road, which circles the city. We are herded by a couple beady-eyed touts to their bicycle rickshaws before slinging our backpacks onto the rickshaw bench, jumping in and plowing our way through the chaos. We crack open our Lonely Planet guidebook and do our best to pronounce the neighborhood “Thamel” and then hope that we’ve guessed right. In truth, we probably don’t need to say anything. Everyone knows where the scruffy young backpacking westerners go in all of these traveler towns. We just need to shut up and follow.

In less than thirty minutes, with our longer hair flying in the wind, our rickshaw drivers pile us into another twisted gaggle of transport machines in the impromptu transport hub of Thamel, just a virtual dead end where narrow alleys spread out like spokes on a wheel. We jump out and scan our surroundings. It’s hard to do because we are bombarded by every hostel hawk in town. They’ll all make a small commission if they bring us to a hostel that we check into. That’s how it works everywhere we’ve been. It takes a minute just to find a moment of peace before we head out on our own up a dusty path to the Gulliver Guesthouse.

The Thamel neighborhood is even more backpacker-focused than Khao San Road in Bangkok, or the beach fronts of Ko Samui, Thailand or the streets of Ubud in Bali. This place is teeming with an insular micro-culture that both caters to and is visited by the trekking civilization within this niche. There are fresh bakeries with names like Pumpernickel’s Cafe with warm cinnamon rolls, Tom and Jerry’s Pub with pop music, restaurants with westernized chicken tikka masala or char-broiled chicken and salads. Unheard of in the other places we’ve been. Italian, Chinese, Indian, Mexican or Japanese food. Storefronts to rent trekking gear and tour operators and money changers and clothing stores and carpet shops. We dance through the tourist shuffle. The locals offer all the services and conveniences that tired and enthusiastic backpackers are looking for. We all play our roles. Hot chocolate and Northface sleeping bags, yak wool sweaters and custom embroidered t-shirts, photo shops, travel agents and unlimited hostels with 80 rupiah beds ($2.50) with hot showers, something we haven’t seen in our two months in Southeast Asia. Fluent English is everywhere along with cool and sexy long-haired Tibetan 20-somethings wooing the western women. I’m sure they play Bob Marley on their guitars. It’s all a well-orchestrated dance and everyone knows the moves.

In Mae Sai, Thailand nearly two months earlier at the Mae Sai Guesthouse, we met two women from Texas with whom we spent a week. In backpacking culture, that’s a long-term relationship. By the end of our time together, we told them we’d meet them in Kathmandu at about this time. This is another beautiful thing about backpacking through Asia. Guesthouses are the church, the public square, and the community center of our micro-population. This is where we all gain insight about all kinds of travel-related concerns and meet others with the same interests. Watch out for this train station. Here is a great off-the-beaten path place to check out. The host of this hostel is the best. You’ll love the food there. Lock your gear here. Avoid the overnight bus there. Travelers exchange stories and already-read paperbacks. People hook up with others for a day trip or a week together sharing ideas, meals, drugs, money, sex and experiences that can forge fast friendships. The backpacking culture has its segments, but being friendly and easy going seem to dominate the vibe.

Aside from Guesthouse culture, the American Express office in the large cities of Asia serve a similar purpose. It’s the one place where travelers can trust that mail will be delivered, travelers’ checks can be exchanged for local cash, and petty thieves will wait for an opportunity to pounce. Many have giant message boards as well. It’s 1990. No Internet. No cell phones. Word of mouth and hand-written messages do the trick. It’s an analog world, but yes young readers, it works just fine. This is how we find out that Barbara and Emily are still here. They’ve left a note saying that they are staying at the Holy Lodge, where we eventually settle in on our second night with Bob’s friend from law school Larry, who has joined us also. Their addition to our duo came at a good time.

I receive a letter as well from Dan Klein, my co-worker and only real friend that I made in my three years in New York City. He fills me in on life at work, and the new films they are making, and the inner workings of the documentary film production company we worked for. It means nothing to me. It all passes through me like a laxative. That’s probably not the best simile given how many times food has passed through me that way already in the last two months. I hold on to none of this information. I feel worlds and years and lives away from where I was just a couple months ago. Something that had been so central in my life is now just an afterthought. I am moving forward. To where and to what, I have no idea, but the past feels like a burden to hold on to now, and so I don’t.

Though it is no surprise, I soon learn a different reality about Nepal just a kilometer or two outside Thamel. Poverty and hunger are ever present. The contrast to the privilege and opportunity that all of us Western travelers have is as disturbing as the poverty itself. In an urban setting, it is even more jarring. Unbathed children caked in weeks of grime with matted hair shuffling shoeless with torn clothes and sniffling colds are all too common. With their mothers, they beg for food and money. I am unable to process the contrast to what lies just down the road in Thamel. I’m bombarded, overloaded. Sure, I’ve seen poverty in my last two months, but not so stark and crowded. Poverty in rural areas seems less dramatic. People seem to have food and shelter. Here it seems to scream in the streets.

A couple days after we settle in, Bob, Larry and I rent bikes and ride 15 kilometers or so out to the ancient town of Bhaktapur, east of Kathmandu. As we pedal out of town and the air clears a bit from the haze that hangs in the Kathmandu valley, the taller peaks of the Himalaya peak more clearly over the foothills. The visibility now seems endless. The mountains are now crisp and defined in the distance. We will be there. Somewhere. Someday soon.

Bhaktapur was the capital of Nepal 600 years ago and retains much of this 15th century feel. Nothing feels new here at all, and activity is everywhere. A gang of young kids gather around a makeshift ping pong game with a wooden board as the table while a few books spread out as a net. When we communicate somehow that we’d like to play, the giddiness of the kids explodes. It’s pure uninhibited joy. They are elated to play with us and laugh at our errors. When we reach into our backpacks and pull out a couple frisbees after that, all hell breaks loose. Every kid wants to catch it or figure out how to throw it.

The frisbee is not just a disk for kids to play with. It is the ultimate cultural ambassador. It is the peacemaker. It is the universal language. It unites all in a simple commonality like nothing else. It removes barriers and borders and reduces us all to our common selves. It is a friend-maker. I won’t claim that it could definitely solve the great conflicts of the adult world, but it would go a long way towards bridging divides. Force Putin and Zelenskyy to toss it to each other a bit. The war would be over soon. The frisbee is like some reincarnated Hindu god. It calls the devoted and the curious with its miracle of flying great distances with just a flick of the wrist. It amazes and awes its first-timers. It mesmerizes all who are in its presence. Travel rule #1. Do not travel the world without one.

We learn about the Goddess Kumari and her tradition in cities like Bhaktapur from a wandering “tour guide” looking to show us around Bhaktapur. The Kumari is chosen to be the vessel of an ancient goddess Taleju. The details seem sketchy, but this pre-pubescent girl is chosen for her perfection and beauty and must pass a series of tests to confirm that she is able to serve in this role. Once proven, she will be purified before the goddess enters her body. From this point forward, the Kumari will almost never leave her home except on days of ceremony. People will pass by the window of her palace hoping that she glances down at them, a sign of great fortune. We are shown where her home is in one of the great squares of Bhaktapur. We are not so lucky to be seen by her. It’s quite a stretch to get my head around this concept, but faith is faith. There is no debating it.

Bhaktapur also reveals a flurry of street activity. The lanes and squares paved with red brick are teeming with people and motion. Women are sifting grain with flat woven baskets. Bare and flat-footed young men are hunched over carrying heavy loads of wood or food in baskets on their backs supported by a strap that loops on to their foreheads. Others are riding bikes with bags of rice slung over the center bar. Old men sit leaning against buildings to pass time. Women outnumber men, whom I assume are working in a field somewhere.

There is also a poverty that is hard to comprehend. It seems more stark and pervasive than what we’ve experienced in the last two months, even in this town located so close to Kathmandu. Mostly I notice its impact on the children. With hacking coughs and dried snot running out of their noses, they scamper about everywhere with only the basics of clothing, which is mostly torn and dirty. Big smiles but no shoes and sometimes a glazed look in their eyes. Their hair seems universally dusty, matted and disheveled. I haven’t seen poverty like this at any other time in my life. It’s startling. I hurt to see this. My privilege humbles me to my core. Nepal is poor, crowded and lacking an educated population. It’s hard to grasp.

The kids are everywhere shooting marbles in the alleys or propelling an old bicycle wheel through the cobblestone squares with a stick. They are teetering on makeshift swings and jumping through a game of hopscotch. Some who seem as young as 5 or 6 are carrying younger siblings on their hips begging for money asking for 1 rupee in exchange for a photograph. They are fearless in their approach to us. I hesitate to hand out money, but of course it is needed. Maybe I should return tomorrow with something more tangible – a bag of bananas or other food. The bombardment of this state of being is overwhelming. These are all just human beings no different than me born by fate into the harshness of their circumstance.

A young girl follows me step for step through the streets pulling at my side and asking for one rupiah. Her hair is a swirling nest and her dress is filthy. Her eyes are deep and offer a penetrating glance at mine. I notice she has a pen clenched in her left hand. When I see it, she seems to want to hide it from my view. I pass by a store that sells paper, and for one rupiah I buy some. With her pen, I show her how to draw and write on a piece. I then extend my arm to give her the paper. She does not reach for it, but takes it as I place it in her hand. As I leave, she stands and stares following me with her eyes. Fifty meters later, she has caught up to me and is by my side again asking for one rupiah for a photo with her pen but no paper. Another young girl who is sitting by herself in the square catches my attention. She sees I have a camera, and she too wants one rupiah in exchange for a photo. I can’t take my eyes off of her face, yet I feel expressionless. There is no end to the compassion that is needed. Larry walks up to me and hands me a pen. There is now a crowd of children all in want of a pen. I try to give it to the little girl, but her timid demeanor is overwhelmed by the more aggressive hands of the other children. I push through to put the pen directly in her hand. I’m happy she has it. In an instant she is gone as the others clamor for another one. In a few moments as I turn to leave the square, I see this ecstatic little girl at her mother’s side showing her the pen. I smile at her and she smiles back sheepishly. My heart is warm, but I also feel helpless. Being here is an emotional assault, but a necessary one. It’s a world away from where I come from. My world of plenty and convenience. My world of food and shelter. My world of education and opportunity. My world of first world problems. Ignoring the poverty and its victims is no comfort. Being entangled in it is no comfort, either. It’s a painful reality. I must do something with my good fortune.

While Singapore and Bangkok and even Jakarta had signs of modernity – things like Kentucky Fried Chicken or glass and steel buildings or wide boulevards – Kathmandu has none of this. There are no signs of the emerging American franchise culture like the capital cities of Southeast Asia. Modernity has not arrived here yet. There are few western products. There are no buildings taller than just a few stories. There are no elevators in the whole country. There is one concrete shopping center with the only escalator in the country. All the buildings are made of brick set between concrete piers of which rebar sticks out the top towards the sky splayed out like a bouquet of steel-stemmed roses that have lost their blossoms waiting for the day when another story can be added or just left to dangle in the sun. Everything seems old on the outside, but behind ancient wooden doors and red brick facades of the tourist neighborhood of Thamel, the culture of catering to western tastes is more developed while the rest of the city lives decades behind.

What is also archaic is the political system in Nepal, which is still run by a monarchy. Yep, the old-fashioned way. The family runs the show and the King’s subjects are just that. But we’ve arrived at an historic time. There has been a growing movement to craft a new constitution removing many of the King’s powers and transferring them to an elected body of representatives. Many people have been marching and protesting to encourage the King to promulgate a new constitution exactly as it was presented to him. In the past months, democracy protests have erupted, violence has ensued, a few people have actually been shot clamoring for political power. The blossoming of citizen movements that have led to the fall of the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall have taken hold here as well. We hear little about this Nepalese movement in the American press. Impoverished and uneducated half a world away, the poor of the Asian world hold little interest for our media highlighting events and places that only affect our economic security. Landlocked and lacking minable minerals, Nepal seems barely to exist on our radar.

But here we are on November 9, 1990. Staring at their radios are packs of people, their typical pointy Nepalese caps forming their own mini-mountain range. Will he or won’t he? Violence is a real possibility if he says no. However, in moments, we determine that he has accepted almost all of the terms of the new constitution except for some emergency powers, which he seems to maintain. Larry and I hop on our bikes to see if we can find some political activity in the streets, but all we can locate are several bored riot police. Elections will be coming soon. Given that the literacy rate hovers around 33% here, we learn that ballots will not have the names of political candidates. Instead, they will be represented by symbols of political parties, like a sun or a moon or a tree, and people will vote for their favorite symbol with a fingerprint of indelible ink to ensure that they don’t vote twice. Where there’s a will there’s a way I guess. I’m sure political parties will be vying for the most auspicious symbols. One should choose the US dollar bill to ensure victory.

Over time, the Holy Lodge becomes a real home. Its owners, two brothers named Bikash and Prakash Shrestha, become our brothers as well. The Holy Lodge is a series of old and newer guest rooms that ring a shaded courtyard, where the family plays and washes sheets and watches travelers like us come and go, but we are the curious gregarious types. We want to know the people we meet, and the Shrestha brothers are no different. Bikash is an easy-going guy about our age who likes to laugh and enjoy life. Prakash is slightly older and more reserved until the evening, when a little alcohol goes a long way with him. We often spend time just sitting in the courtyard with them sharing tea or a meal, which their mother insists we enjoy.

We’re ultimately in Nepal to trek, and shortly after our arrival and local explorations, we secure a trekking pass for the Annapurna Circuit. Aside from a trek to Everest Base Camp, the Annapurna Circuit is probably one of the ultimate treks in the world in part because its 150-mile 3-week duration is done in a loop. There’s no up and back from point A up to point B and retracing steps back down to point A. This trek heads up the Marsyangdi Khola River until the trail leaves the river to head over the nearly 18,000-foot Thorong La pass, surrounded by the Annapurna peaks, before retreating down the Kali Gandaki River valley on the other side. Endless hours in bookstores in the U.S. and our collection of Lonely Planet guidebooks give us the basics of what we need to know – the distance, the villages, the map.
Before leaving for the trek, we shop around Kathmandu to find some used sleeping bags, wool hats, gloves, and warm yak wool sweaters that we can buy and winter goose-down coats that we can rent. There are plenty to choose from, but I wind up with a blue North Face sleeping bag crammed into a red stuff-sack with the name Tashi Norgay written on it with indelible marker. It seems auspicious. Tenzin Norgay and Edmund Hilary were the first to reach the summit of Mt. Everest. Perhaps Tashi is a relative. Perhaps he, too, has summitted. It excites me to have gear from a local.

Early in the morning on November 10, 1990, hangovers from raksi, the local rice alcohol, are slowing everyone in our attempt to catch an early bus out of Kathmandu to begin our trek. The night before, we had started early and ended late partying on the roof of the Holy Lodge with Bikash and Prakash and their dad. I don’t remember much. Bob and Larry and I were doing a Gladys Knight and the Pips impersonation. Prakash was “flat,” his word for drunk, and barely standing. When Barbara starting challenging Bikash to a drinking contest, we knew it was going to get ugly...and it did. But sure enough, we make it on the 7:00am bus.

Once up and out of the Kathmandu Valley, much of the road on the full day ride west to Dumre hugs the sheer dynamited faces of the mountains that descend vertically into the Trishuli river a hundred feet below. It’s less than 100 miles to Dumre, but the road is constantly under reconstruction. Landslides are the norm. Washouts during the monsoon season also. The maintenance of the road is an ongoing negotiation with nature. No pavement most of the way once we leave Kathmandu. Just dust and bumps and holes and missing pavement and rock slides. So much of the track is supported by large rocks held in place by giant metal wire webbing. It's as good as limited money in unforgiving terrain can buy. The road frequently narrows to one lane due to either rockslides or wash outs or construction. It’s a rolly and bumpy slog as the bus constantly sways left and right, up and down. Fortunately, we’re on a fairly nice tourist bus, so we’ll be comfortable enough if we roll off into the raging river below. It happens more than it should.

My Walkman gets stolen at one of the stops we make along the way to change a tire. My audio diary plans are gone now. That leaves my jammed 35mm camera and my video camera – both bulky space-eaters in my bag – but I’m determined to document the trip somehow. I still have this reporter documentarian mindset. Listen, look, taste, touch, smell and ask.

By the middle of the afternoon, we make it to the transit town of Dumre, where the five of us stay cramped in one room at the cleverly named Annapurna Guest House. I’m sure every village will have one. We spend the night playing Spades and laughing at Larry’s deadpan pun-infested self-deprecating dad humor. It’s goofy, but it works most of the time. It’s his entry into conversation.

In the morning when the sun rises, it gets hot quickly. Shorts and sunburn weather at this low elevation. Our backpacks have little more than the basics and the warm clothes we’ll need later. I have a couple t-shirts, a long-sleeved shirt, a few pair of underwear, a set of long underwear, a pair of pants and shorts, a couple sets of socks, a wool sweater, a down jacket, a hat, a pair of gloves, suntan lotion, hiking boots, running shoes, and some basic toiletries. Not much. We hitch a ride in the back of a flatbed truck from Dumre up to a town called Bhote Wodar with local Nepalese over a dusty unpaved track. I try to brace myself for every pothole and bump while others sing 70s songs as a distraction. The bumps and bruises are better. How axels don’t break is beyond me, but I’ve also learned that if they do in the middle of the road, someone will jump out with a variety of non-automotive parts and piece everything together and we’ll be on our way. A wrench, some wire, an old shoe, a rubber hose, a junked piece of rebar and necessity being the mother of invention seem to have repaired other car and bus issues we’ve faced on the road in the last couple months. It’s magical.
When we arrive, we’re covered in a thick layer of sandy dust, like we’ve walked through a sirocco in the Gobi Desert. I’m ready to unfold myself and put my boots on the ground. We hop out, grab our backpacks and head up the trail for a few hours to the village of Besisahar, a busy little place where we snag a room with 6 beds for 12 rupee/person. That’s 40 cents.

In the morning just five minutes out of Besisahar, we pass a pig slaughtering ritual in the middle of the trail. By now, this offers no surprises. At home we’ve cleverly separated the act of killing an animal from eating it so that this is now seem offensive to our sensibilities. Chicken doesn’t come from a clean neatly-wrapped little plastic Styrofoam tray in the refrigerated section, but we’ve made it look that way. We despise the killing and butchering and the massive cattle ranches and slaughterhouses, but most of us are happy to eat the meat.

We cross a couple wobbly bamboo-and-wood-planked bridges over the river. The sun is out. We’re all in shorts. It’s hot. We fill our water bottles with iodine tablets for purification. We all walk at different paces. It we walk at Larry’s speed, we will be out here for a couple months. The trail is generally pretty flat to Bhulbule, which we walk into by early afternoon. Just a couple miles later, we reach the small village of Ngadi, where we drop our packs at the Himalaya Lodge and pay our 3 rupiah per person for a bed; that’s pennies. After dinner when everyone else has gone upstairs to listen to one of Larry’s ghost stories, I find myself talking to a young 14-year-old named Raju, who speaks English beautifully as a result of attending school in a village called Paudi, 90 minutes downriver. The cost: 16 rupiah per month. He makes the trek 6 days each week. He asks me for an English grammar book, which I tell him I will send to the following address: Raju Gurung / Ngadi, Nepal. His family sits down to eat with trays of rice and lentils and what looks like sauteed spinach. With his head hung over the plate, he feverishly massages the rice and vegetables together with his right hand until they’ve achieved some kind of perfect size, shape and consistency before clenching his morsel, raising it to his mouth and shoveling it in with the back of his thumb. What doesn’t make it in his mouth gets flicked back into the plate to be gathered and clumped and manipulated into the next gulp. It’s fascinating. It’s artful. There is no rest time. He never raises his head. He quickly moves the food from plate to mouth as if he hasn’t eaten in days. I eventually leave the table because this is where the family sleeps as well. I walk out and look at a sky flooded with stars. In the last two months I’ve seen more stars nearly every single night than I saw in three years in New York City. It’s wondrous and wonderful. The space is open unlike the confined concrete canyons of Manhattan. The mind can wander and imagine and contemplate. There are no other trekkers here. And for a moment, it feels like I am alone in the universe.

In the morning, we walk through cultivated fields of barely, wheat, hay and potatoes. There are many Nepalese on the trail bent over carrying loads that are balanced on their backs but supported by a single strap around their foreheads. Their eyes see only the next spot they will place their feet, which are shoeless. We are stopped by smiling women along the way selling small citrus fruits for 1 rupiah. Each is as green as a lime but sweeter than a mandarin. Mule trains packed with gear push us off the trails, their wide loads strapped across their backs taking up the width of the trail. They are frequently followed by young boys with sticks and the ability to holler and whistle and throw small rocks to keep the caravan moving.

The trail gets steeper until we reach Bahundada, where a 12-year-old checks our trekking permits at a police checkpoint. We eat some super spicey dal batt and continue on to Syange. The cool morning air has quickly been overtaken by the afternoon sun. We sweat profusely knowing that this will soon end as we rise higher into the sky and brace for cold. I march along singing random songs to myself peering up at the browns and greens and grays of the surrounding hills. It is quiet. My steps are rhythmic.

We arrive at the cliff-hanging village of Jagat, where once again the frisbee becomes the great ice-breaker. No one in the village can throw it very well, but the smiles it brings to the kids and a shy older woman who gives it a try are priceless. My video camera is like magic to them. Everyone wants to see their image played back in the tiny screen – children and adults. Eventually, Larry, Bob and Barbara get a few people to dance the hokey pokey with them before teaching them how to do the wave. It’s all pure innocent human connection. There is no one pushing us to stay in their lodge. Everyone is smiling and laughing. It’s all just joy.

The village-dotted hills that cover the landscape up to Jagat give way to steep rock walls on either side of the river, which carries the glacial run-off of the Himalaya down to us. We begin to ascend a few hundred meters immediately past Chamje. At times, we seem to be a couple hundred meters above the river, which we can always hear and usually see. Waterfalls reaching one hundred meters are not uncommon. Plant life has become pretty sparse. Earth-colored grasses and brush blanket some parts of the rock while other sections remain bare to the wind. Not far out of Chamje, we round a turn and regain sight of a snow-capped peak in the distance. From this perch, we see a cliff 100 meters ahead of us that the path is carved into. Straight down below us, much of the rock has slid to the valley floor. Though unlikely, it feels like too much weight on the path would send the entire mountainside careening to the river below. With my fear of heights, I hug the rock wall trying not to look down as we approach a massive landslide of boulders that has covered the trail and the river. We can hear it raging below, but we can’t see it anymore. On top of the boulder field, there is a lake. When we crest the ridge, we have a spectacular view of Tal, a village whose name means lake, which is just a 10-minute walk across a plateau between the ridges on either side. A waterfall roars down the ridge just behind Tal. The whole feel of our trek has changed now. There are no more solitary homes between the villages anymore. The citrus fruit sellers have disappeared. We’ve left the foothills and we’re in the mountains now, but the sun still sears us during the day, the sweat beading down my brow, some beads resting in my eyelashes slightly blurring my vision at times. And though the trek is more strenuous today, I feel like I’m gaining energy from the power of the land, water and sky around me.

Before dinner, we play a game of ultimate frisbee on the open plateau with Chris and Laurie, a couple that we have been leapfrogging on our trek. We scuttle over the rocky terrain with flip flops or our hiking boots. The sun sets behind the mountains long before it will meet the horizon in a planer place somewhere else on the planet, and the temperature drops quickly. Back in our tea-house lodge, we eat a miserable meal of noodles that tastes like it has been sauteed in kerosene.

On the morning of November 15, the sky lightens. The peaks to the north are the first to receive its light. It will be hours before the sun is high enough in the sky for it to shed its light on Tal. The waterfall roars on without the sparkle of our first encounter. The wind whips down the valley picking up dust. The children rise with sounds of crying, chattering, singing and hurrying like they do everywhere in the world. It’s not all idyllic, though. The non-biodegradable plastic packaging that has visited this village in the last 15 years remains in the narrow sewage path that runs down the middle of this town of 20 to 30 stone houses. It’s a stark image. Chickens scavenge for food. The women begin to wash in the ice-cold water from the faucet in the middle of the village.

We get our first view of Annapurna II today as we enter the quaint village of Bagarchap. I decide to wash my itchy head and hair with water from a mountain-fed stream. I feel it freeze my brain for an instant, but I’m relieved to stop itching. We wind through pine forests whose scent reminds me of the north woods of Wisconsin and whose tar odor makes my eyes tear and my nose run before a substantial climb of 2500 feet on switchbacks to Lattemarang. With a persistent wind and no sun, it finally starts to feel cool. By the time I arrive, my stomach is in knots. It must have been the kerosene from last night. I can’t eat or sleep at night. I try to talk myself into better health, but no luck. I develop a fever. I get out of bed when the light finally appears in the sky. By the end of the next morning, it feels like I’ve sweat it all out. We keep the day short – only a couple hours through pine and blue spruce to Chame. The days are still warm. None of us have broken into long pants yet. It’s our first time running into anyone really on the trail. The crowd in this tea house in Chame is full of smokers. The dining room fills with a gray cloud. Stay away from crowded tea houses.

On the hike the next morning, Larry starts to feel the stomach bug I had in Lattemarang. I take his backpack and carry it for him for the day on our way to Upper Pisang. I’m happy to do it. It feels like training for when we get even higher. After some ascending in the morning, which causes a cascade of tears from the pine aroma, we emerge in a huge flat plain above the river. A sheer-faced mountain is at our back topped with a Buddhist monastery. To our left is South Lamjung Himal.

Each day is more splendid than the next. It’s dusty and dry now with gusty winds all the way to Upper Pisang, which seems like a different world. Here it feels emptier. Maybe residents have already started making their way to lower elevations for the winter. The children are caked in dirt. When we stop to wash our hands and face at the village faucet, our skin goes numb from the nearly freezing mountain water. A young girl watches us wash and reaches for some soap. Her palms clean up a bit, but the rest of the grime on the back of her hands and face don’t budge.

Just a few minutes after reaching the Yak Hotel, we see one of our hostess’s goats giving birth. We return for a meal of delicious macaroni noodles and potatoes. After dinner, everyone has a book in their hands, but only a couple of us have turned a page. We’re exhausted and mesmerized by the fire.

It is much colder up here at 10,000 feet. The elevation makes it harder to sleep as well. For the second night, I wear my hat to bed and wake a little more slowly because of the sub-freezing air.

In the morning, we take our time waking, dressing and getting out of our warm sleeping bags. We tape up the torn shoe of a child in our lodge. Our biggest ascent so far happens today. Larry and I are still dragging a little bit from our stomachs, but in the afternoon after an hour of walking we make the 1300-foot climb over endless switchbacks to Ghyaru. It’s steep enough for steps, but there are none. Just the back and forth of the switchbacks to conquer the incline. I’m sure I hear my heart beat through my sunburned and chapped lips. It pounds in my ears.

The views behind us along with the thinning air when we pause to rest are breathtaking. Ghyaru is a mystery when we get here. Why here, a dot on the side of the mountain? Hand-piled stone buildings. Goats live on the ground floor of the homes. There seems to be no source of food. We continue on during the day. Looking back, we can only make out the homes of Ghyaru and Upper Pisang as sand-colored villages amidst a sand-colored landscape by their geometric shapes and the disappearing trail that leads to them. We are high above the river now. We hear the rumbles of an avalanche on Annapurna II. We push on through Ngawal at 3pm and descend to the village of Braga. The sun has dropped behind the mountains and the air is cold. The cooling sweat on my back is chilling. I pull out my long-sleeved shirt for the first time to stay warm.

Ghyaru has electricity. I expected we had seen the last of it in Chame. With a generator running, we play a game of charades with Chris and Laurie. All laughs.

In the morning, we see how deserted Braga is. It’s only a village of a couple dozen structures, but it feels like no one is here. I make a hike up to a monastery on the top of a hill on the north side of Braga to look for a monk to marry Chris and Laurie, but no luck.

The peace and quiet are magical. By now, nearly a week into our trek, I feel a buoyancy, a rhythm. This pilgrimage, like all pilgrimages I suppose, has stripped down all the values and culture and clutter and expectations and demands of everyday life to some kind of basic existence. There is only waking, eating, hiking, conversing, being, listening, watching, seeing, touching and sleeping. There is quiet. There is time. There is emptiness. I feel lighter. Well, I am physically lighter for sure, but spiritually lighter. My existence is simpler. I feel myself more. I can hear better. I speak less. The movement and the mountains and the momentum and the Marsyangdi Khola have awakened something else, something calmer, something quietly peaceful. I am just one of thousands who have realized this. All along the trail are mani walls, short walls comprised of mani stones, flat rocks engraved with Sanskrit or Hindu symbols expressing the Tibetan Buddhist prayer Om mani padme hum, roughly translated to mean Praise to the jewel of the lotus. The lotus representing wisdom. All travelers are required to pass on the left-hand side of these walls. Similarly, rows of prayer wheels appear as we rise on the trail. The locals spin them while fingering their prayer beads and offering verbal sacrifices to the gods.

By evening, we are in Manang. The 360-degree views are awe-inspiring. Barely anything looks like it can grow up here. The mountainsides are barren except for the snow. My depth perception has disappeared. I have no idea if a mountain in the distance is 2 miles or 20 miles away. Either way, the power and force with which they rise is overwhelming. Down by the river, there is a ribbon of green still following along.  We are still spoiled by good food – something magically like pizza here! It’s a good thing. It’s starting to get cold. My yak wool sweater is necessary now. We bundle up in our cocoon sleeping bags – hats, gloves, long underwear and blankets for the night.

In the morning, we debate whether we should hire porters for the hike over the pass in a couple days, but we decide against it. For me, it’s a pride thing. I want to prove to myself that I can do it. Hardheaded. Youthful. I want the physical challenge. I like the euphoria that it brings like a runner’s high. The way I felt running and then finishing the New York City Marathon two years ago. I broke down in tears when I crossed the finish line. The wailing flowed from every cell in my body and then filled me with some kind of endless energy and a smile I couldn’t erase. I want the bragging rights, too. Hubris and ego can be a dangerous duo, but I’m not stupid – I don’t think. With these kinds of goals come expectations and thus the potential for disappointment. I am susceptible to that.

In the morning in Manang, we have a great view of a sunrise since the valley from the village stretches back to the southeast. I’m anticipating a hard day climbing nearly 3,000 feet from 11,600 to 14,450 feet at Phedi. In minutes, I’ve taken off my down jacket on the hike on this windless day. After climbing to the village of Tengi, the trail leaves the flow of the Marsyangdi Khola for the first time and follows a small tributary to the village of Leder, 3 ½ hours from Manang. By lunch, we have our first cloudy day and first snowfall. The Annapurna peaks are shrouded in white. Time for the down jacket again. Without the sun, it’s cold. It’s another hour and 40 minutes until we finally reach Phedi after descending down to the stream and climbing again up the opposite side.

Phedi is no place to spend an extended period of time. It consists of one stone structure with an eerie feeling inside. Trekkers are tired, light-headed, sleep-deprived and hungry. The staff is bristly. At dinner there is only reading, writing and card playing. Not much chatter. There’s a collective contemplation about what the next day brings. It’s easier not to talk about what could happen compared to our hopes. From Phedi, it’s straight up to the Thorong La Pass.

It doesn’t help that Phedi also has just one disgusting outhouse. Some things can’t be ignored. There is no field to walk into for a private moment, no tree to squat behind. This is it. Our plan is to leave early in the morning to give us plenty of time to climb the 3500 feet and make it to Muktinath on the other side of the pass by dinner. That’s a long day made even longer by the altitude. At 14,000 feet, there are about 43% fewer oxygen molecules to breathe in than at sea level. If we make it to the pass, there will be just about half as many. Nope. Breathing faster won’t make up for the difference.

Sleeping is a relative term. As we’ve gained altitude, it feels more like lying horizontally in the dark. Headaches, some nausea and a depressed appetite follow. When we finally get up the next morning, we wake to a blizzard. There’s probably a foot of snow on the ground. A couple dozen people have set off already even in the storm. That looks like a foolish idea, but some say this is the beginning of the winter snow and today is the last chance to cross the pass. Some say it’s actually easier in the snow than the hike back to Manang, which hugs a narrow ridge much of the time. Some whisper that this will all melt in a couple days, giving us a better shot at the pass. Of course, everyone has a different opinion, all uninformed. We are a bunch of strangers listening to strangers and trying to assess which strangers are worth listening to. It’s a fool’s game. This is when an oxygen-deprived brain makes bad choices. This is when ego and hubris can overwhelm rationality. This is when smart thinking has to take over if it can. We’re not climbing Mt. Everest, but risks exist here, too. People get frostbite. Waist-high snow from the pass down to Muktinath can be nearly impossible and impassable. People get altitude sickness. There are injuries. People get lost. People die. People make bad decisions when oxygen is thin. I’m in no rush. I’ve got nowhere else to be except where I am. We decide to wait.

By 10:00am, a British woman who left a couple hours ago is back in the tea house. Very steep and slippery today. She was just trusting the footsteps left by the first group. That didn’t feel good. The altitude was getting to her as well. Coming down felt harder slipping and sliding down the path they had created on the way up.

By mid-day, we are in a different world. The sun is out! Blue sky. Even at this elevation, the sun warms us. The down jackets are off and the sun is baking what’s left of our crowd in front of the lodge. It’s a reminder how quickly conditions can change in the mountains, for better and for worse. Larry, Bob and I are playing in the snow, throwing snowballs and building snowmen. The ridges which were bare just a day ago and then blocked by the falling snow are in clear view now, dusted with what looks like a fresh layer of powdered sugar. Snow melts off the roof and drips furiously as water. The birds are back and tweeting again, and we’ve settled into our assumed roles. Emily is reading. Bob is making sure we are ready for tomorrow. Barbara is laughing in the snow. Larry is telling bad jokes. I’m not sure what my role is exactly. I’m just in awe of this place and time I’m in. I’m living a life of fantasy I know. Opportunities are within arm’s reach. So humbled by it all. Grateful. A bit undeserving. Unconcerned about what this outpost looked like just hours ago.

In the afternoon, a few trekkers make their way up to Phedi from Manang. One is gasping for air as he rolls in. We ask if he’s Ok. He can’t speak. His beard is frozen with saliva. It’s a bit frightening. It’s a reminder that shit can get bad quickly. Humility is important.

In the evening after dinner, Larry opens up his backpack and reveals all the first aid, pills, medicines, bandages, soaps, eyewear and other random things stuffed inside. He pours them out on his bed and begins organizing them into small zippered plastic bags. I thought we had all packed lightly until I see this menagerie of fixes. It’s stunning. It’s neurotic. It’s comical. If something goes wrong, Larry has something for it. He narrates a story about what each item is for and why he has it. I’m not sure if he is making fun of himself or just trying to make light of his obsession.

We settle into our sleeping bags to try to get some rest before we plan to leave in the morning at 6:00am to give ourselves the most time possible to make the pass and reach Muktinath. Everyone is cold. I trade sleeping bags with Larry so he can have my warmer one. Emily has my long underwear. Barbara has my socks. Adrenalin will get me over the top, I hope. My lack of sleep and nutrients won’t.

The plan to leave at 6:00am has come and gone. At 5:45am it is still dark and cold, and the cooks in the kitchen are still asleep. We haven’t really slept much. Eventually, we get our backpacks set and swallow some calories. Larry has his security in his plastic bags, and we finally head out and up the 3000-foot ascent. It’s 7am, later than I want. Sunlight is everything, especially on a hike that may take us 12 hours to complete. It’s not rocket science. The sun is light and light is warmth. Without either on a high mountain pass at nearly 18,000 feet, things could get ugly quickly. Fortunately, it’s a sunny morning unlike yesterday. The rays bounce off the snow making this ascent impossible without sunglasses. The reflection is blinding. There’s a small path in the snow made by the few people who left before us, and without ceremony, we follow it up. It gets hot quickly. It feels like we are going straight up. With the sun and sweat, soon I am down to just my worn-out Ko Samui t-shirt and my long-sleeved shirt on top of it. I’ve rolled up my pant legs to my knees. I pause to catch my breath at times and continue. The path is snow-packed, but there is a path. We trust we are following in the footsteps of people before us who know where they are going. We don’t have any other choice. The peaks to our sides rise with unimaginable force. The banging of two tectonic plates, the Indian and Eurasian, over millions of years have made the Himalayas what they are – massive symbols of force and power. Despite my youthful bravado, I am not so naïve as to believe that this show of force and beauty beholds any compassion. Though life has worked out up to now for the most part, which leads to a certain overconfidence that it will continue to work out, I know we are just tiny pawns in a much larger game.

In less than two hours, we take a short break where the path seems level for a few meters. We chug on our water, crunch on some leftover cookies and pause to soak in the beauty. Puffy white clouds tinted a magical orange through my sunglasses race across a blue sky. There is not a breath of wind. We stand in a little bowl surrounded by the basic elements of snow and rock. Peaks reach up boldly to puncture the sky. It’s awesome, in the true sense of the word actually. I am nothing, meaningless, insignificant while at the same time something and meaningful and significant. It is even more evident how Buddhism took hold in the shadow of the Himalaya, where it seems impossible not to understand the humility of existence.

We pack a few snowballs, which we hurl at each other before slinging our backpacks on again. We are giddy with the endurance we’ve built up over the days since Dumre and the awe and beauty that surround us. We traverse over a small ridge, down a bit to a small stream flowing through the snow, up to another ridge and then higher to a spot that again has a few yards of flat ground. I wait for everyone to catch up, but Larry is not with them. I call to him somewhere unseen over a small ridge and he says he’s OK, just taking a short rest. Larry is the always the slowest among us, so I pay little attention. I move on another 20 minutes and when no one emerges below me, I drop my backpack and skip back down the mountain. I’m feeling fresh and energized in this paradise. Larry is moving very slowly, more slowly than normal. Barbara has switched backpacks with Larry since hers is lighter, so I grab her backpack so Larry can walk without any weight and ferry it back up the mountain. I am feeling strong. I don’t think twice. Larry keeps saying he’s OK, just a little lightheaded, so we push on. I am focused on the task. That’s it.

When I reach my backpack, I drop Barbara’s, pick up mine and head up to the next ridge. I can feel how much heavier my pack is. I’ve also got a small day back on my chest with my camera equipment. With the lighter pack, I feel like I’m flying up the mountain, but soon I begin to feel the exhaustion of the altitude. I need to concentrate. I count steps. 200 and I stop and rest. I need to move slowly and steadily, like a tortoise. Being a hare is not going to work here.

I continue this routine up and down and back up with the two backpacks trying to keep pace with Barbara and Emily while Bob inches up slowly with Larry. But even without his backpack, things are not getting easier. Larry still says he’s OK, but I have my first flash that the altitude is making him sick. Though he sounds tired and a little out of touch, he insists he’ll be fine after a rest. A guide passes us and tells us it is about an hour and a half to the top. I think we can make it if he starts feeling better.

I continue up and back down ferrying the backpacks in the snow, but now I’m concerned about my own strength. I can still go up and down and back up, but I don’t know when that will catch up to me. The air is much thinner. My steps are a bit slower now. My breathing is a bit heavier. I hadn’t planned on climbing to the pass twice, which is what I’m doing.

On my next ascent, I reach a point where I think I see what might be the pass. When I come back down and tell Barbara and Emily, they continue up. Larry is looking worse. I begin to think we should go back down, but Larry insists he’s OK. It’s hard to know what to believe. Is he OK? Is he delirious and saying he is OK. Are we being foolish? Should we step in and end this? Are we even clear-headed?

Something quickly changes. Larry now says he wants to sleep. This isn’t good. I’m getting scared. He looks miserable. Bob and I debate what to do. Time is passing. My body feels cold when I’m not moving. It is already 12:30pm. High clouds are rolling in. We’ve been at this for over 5 hours. Going on might be dangerous. We think about going down, but then I still have to deal with his backpack. I think about just leaving it with a note for anyone coming down to try to bring it with them. I don’t think I have the strength to carry it back. I know Larry doesn’t. We need to act.

A few minutes later, we spot a person racing down the mountain towards us. Is this someone climbing ahead of us that Barbara and Emily told to come back and help us? No. It’s a guy named Paul descending to Phedi after crossing the pass from Muktinath, a far greater climb in elevation than the ascent from Phedi. Nobody does this. He has only a small canvas day pack. No sleeping bag. Less than the bare minimums. He appears as if heaven sent him at the right time and place. Karma. He tells us it’s still about an hour and a half to reach the pass. What I thought was the pass above us is just another of the many false passes.

It’s obvious now that Larry is not going to make it. He’s sitting, exhausted and wanting to sleep. I’m weaker, too. I haven’t eaten much all day and I’ve been pushing myself twice as hard. Along with us, Paul convinces Larry that it’s too far for him to make it and that he will carry his pack back down to Phedi. If Larry doesn’t take this chance now, Paul will be gone and our choices will be limited again. Though it’s only mid-day, I’m getting even colder, probably from not eating or drinking enough and now not moving. We need to make some decisions. Larry is barely responding and in no shape to make his own decision, so we make it for him. We tell him we will wait for him tomorrow in Muktinath. I feel bad that we are not going with him. Larry encourages us to go on. He's completely exhausted. Somehow, we rationalize that there is nothing we can do for him that Paul can’t, but this is ridiculous. He doesn’t know Paul, and we are trusting him with our sick friend. Why is climbing this 18,000-foot pass more important than staying with Larry? What if Larry gets sicker and Paul can’t stay with him? I have little time now to consider the bigger questions of our selfishness or how I will feel if something serious happens to Larry. If we are going to make it, we need to move, too. We load his pack on to Paul’s back and watch them descend together.

From way up the mountain, we hear Barbara yell, “Are you coming?” “Yes,” we holler back, but I’m out of energy. My feet are cold. There is only one way for me to make it to the top – relying on my brother. This requires a humility I do not readily possess. To rely on my brother is to surrender my self-reliance, my need to prove my independence, my superiority, my iron-clad lack of vulnerability – so much of what I’ve spent my conscious years trying to establish. My separateness. My oneness. Myself. Bob doesn’t know this. He is just my loving brother willing to do anything for me at any time as I would for him. I have no choice. I tell him I’m exhausted and that I need him to help me. Doubt is creeping in. He tells me we will do it together step by step. The tortoise is helping the hare. I keep telling myself I can do it if I use my mind and not my body – if I become my brother.

Here on this mountain, cold and tired, somehow I realize something new. None of it is related to whom my brother is. It is about how I see myself and how that opens me to my brother. It is not about needing to be separate to be whole. It is about needing not to be separate to be really alive. This person I entered the world with, whom I have struggled to separate from, whom I have kept away – he is the one I know I can rely on. He is the one I can always lean on. He is the one that I need more than anyone in the world. Without him, I do not exist. It is my challenge to understand this when I am not desperately trying to climb a mountain pass in the middle of the Himalayas with no energy left. It is for me to feel whole only when I can be in concert with my brother and with others. I do not embody this in my daily life of routine and responsibility but at my most vulnerable, my most desperate, my most alone, my weakest, the truth is clear. I will perish without him. I will perish alone.

The beauty of the surroundings no longer exists. I have no energy to pause and admire, to feel how fortunate I am to be amidst such majesty. What were friends this morning have turned cold and indifferent. All the musings about being the mountains, surrendering to the mountains, finding oneness with the mountains are all just words. The mountains do not care about us. We lay all of our hopes and aspirations and meaning on the mountains, but the mountains feel none of it. They don’t fight for us or help us or want anything for us. They don’t root for us to survive. There is no compassion for our human condition, for whether we are good or bad people, how much we helped or didn’t help Larry, whether we feel guilt or peace. They do not care if we realize our dreams, become spouse and parents, live to see old age. They do not want us to enjoy anything, to feel the satisfaction and elation of friendship or camaraderie, to tell our family about our adventures, to stay healthy and live a long life, to avoid frostbite. They are now just a huge pile of rocks. I need to put my head down, muster some physical and emotional strength, lean on my brother and get moving.

Bob suggests we take is slowly, count steps and pause. 75 steps. Stop. 50 steps. Stop. It doesn’t matter how big or small the steps are. They all count. We reach the top of a false peak in 20 minutes or so. We descend and climb up a small valley again, all the time counting steps while my feet feel frozen, while the air gets thinner, while my energy wanes.

The human condition functions at its most supreme when the body and mind are one with each other. Sitting on a comfortable couch with a great book, the two are perfectly synchronized. A slow walk on a sandy beach in the summer melds the two into indistinguishable parts. But here on this mountain with thinning oxygen, a somewhat delirious mind and an exhausted body, they couldn’t be further apart. My now irrational parental mind tells my body, “Let’s go. We can do this. You ran the New York City marathon a year ago. Come on!” But my toddler body is a terrible two-year-old. “No, I’m not going.” “Put your shoes on. We’re going!” I reply. He just stares back at me, stomps his feet and wails for attention. Maybe if my mind leaves, the two-year-old will eventually follow, scared to be left behind. We need to go. Just ignore the kid. It’s a battle both are dug in to win.

I tell Bob we just need to keep moving. I’m worried that my toes will get frostbite. We top another false pass. We spot Barbara and Emily’s bright red parkas far above us in the distance climbing higher with a few other people. We trod slowly. We gasp. We pause. We look up. The time is passing. We hope we see the pass. We don’t. We put our heads down. We move. We plod on. We repeat. At some point, Bob says he thinks he see some cairns marking the pass. Whatever he says. I have no idea. I’ve given myself to him.

We continue up slowly. I place my footsteps directly into the ones Bob is making a few steps ahead of me. I am one with him. He looks back and checks on me. I’m moving. Step by step. Singularly focused. In synchronized rhythm like two strands of DNA dependent on the other for life.

At some point, we spot prayer flags flapping in the wind above us. Barbara and Emily are standing facing us with their arms in the air. That’s it. The pass. I feel a burst of energy when I realize we will make it and the rest of my steps today will be downhill. We imitate what feels like running the last 50 meters and we are on the top of the world. From the top and re-energized, I can enjoy the views I have ignored for the past couple hours. I scream with joy. I cry tears that freeze on my cheeks. I hug and kiss everyone. It’s been almost 7 hours since we left Phedi. Days of anticipation and a day of exhaustion lead to an expulsion of emotion. I slide out of my backpack and pull out my camera for the ceremonial photos. I tell myself this is the last time I’m dragging this camera over this pass, as if I’m certainly going to be here again. Ahead of us to the west, miles and miles in the distance, I think I spot a village buried in the bare mountains somewhere out there below us. There is not much time to extend the celebration. The cold is feeling colder. The adrenalin is wearing off. The sun will be setting behind the mountains long before it sets in the plains, which means colder will become even colder. I grab my pack, sling it over my down jacket, snap the belt clip and pull it tight. I don’t care how bad my knees will feel on the 4500-foot descent. I look my brother in the eye and tell him how grateful I am to have him at my side. I tell him I wouldn’t have been able to make it without him. I tell him he was my better half today. I tell him that the tortoise always wins the race. He says little but gives me a hug. Then I tell him we should get the hell out of here before we freeze to death.

Epilogue

Hours later and long after dark, we stumble into a guesthouse in Muktinath. We probably don’t shock the staff with our zombie-like expressions. They must see this every day. Food and shelter are all I can think of. We are warmed by hot coals underneath the dining table. I pile as much as I can into my mouth and then doze off into a deep sleep.

In the morning, the air is cold, but the sun is out. We amble around this frigid outpost – something at least resembling a village unlike Phedi. We wonder about Larry. I harbor guilt. Will he make it? How many days should we wait? I wander alone to a hilltop west of Muktinath to contemplate and relax in the solitude.

By early afternoon, the clouds begin to roll in along with a few trekkers from Phedi. We ask if they have seen Larry – tall guy, blue parka, American. “Oh, yeah. He’s ahead of us. We took some pictures with him at the pass, but he said he was in a rush to get here, so he took off.”

It seems impossible. Can’t be Larry. Waking up at 5:30am to get out the door by 6:00am. Nope. Larry doesn’t do mornings. Up to the pass by 11:00am and down here by 3:00pm. He seemed nearly dead yesterday. We had told him to meet us at the North Pole Guesthouse, so Bob headed off to see if he was there. Sure enough, there are the two of them ten minutes later in their matching blue parkas with hammer and sickle chest insignia walking back towards me. I’m shocked. Larry is walking strong and easy. He looks fresh, much fresher than he should after yesterday. Says it must have been something he ate because he made it up to the pass painlessly with a porter before descending alone. I kid him that he had plenty of practice the day before, like he had been trying to open a jar of pickles but couldn’t and when he tried it a second time, he easily unscrewed the lid. He doesn’t say so indirectly, but I feel his frustration at our decision to move on. His humor is tempered. The enthusiasm the rest of us had at reaching Muktinath was not in his voice. His gratitude for how we had helped him yesterday balanced by some anger maybe. I wonder if he resented that we had doubted some of his resolve along the whole trek, that we hadn’t had more faith in him. Actually, he said was worried that we had already left Muktinath because when he arrived, we weren’t at the guesthouse and hadn’t left a message as we said we would. Of course, we weren’t there. We didn’t expect him this soon.