Everest Knedliky Prosciutto

Whenever I return from traveling I always have the intention of "finishing" the writeup of stories from my trip.  This never happens.  So I'll close my account of summer travels with one last story.

During my trek in Nepal we stopped at Everest Base Camp.

base camp sits atop a glacier

It was still early in the season so there were only three expeditions underway - an American, a Japanese and five Czechs.  The American and Japanese climbers were both above Camp 4 on their way (potentially) to summiting Everest.  The five Czechs had just returned to base camp after being turned back by bad weather on their way to Lhotse (a different peak, but shares the same approach).  I was feeling a bit dizzy from the altitude so I decided to walk into the Czech tent and began mumbling Czech-like sounds...dobry deen, ja jsem mluvim troshku cesky, muzu....muzu, ummm...

 

Czech (& Slovak) mountaineers

I must have produced something that resembled actual Czech as they soon invited me to stay for lunch!  The menu included:

Knedliky (Czech dumplings, made on the spot by Sherpa cooks)

Cesky Zeli (Czech style cabbage)

Sunka (ham)

Prosicutto!!!

 knedlikly & Cesky zeli

mmmm

The food tasted pretty damn good and was probably the best meal I had all trek.  Especially the prosciutto, which they confirmed was authentic Italian (though not di Parma).  I continued talking in broken Czech and English and asked them a bunch of little kid questions about climbing.  Turns out they're serious badasses and have been climbing together for years.  They don't use oxygen and carry as much of their own gear as they can.  By contrast, the lone Japanese climber attempting Everest had twelve climbing Sherpas helping him en route.  The Czechs referred to themselves as "sportsmen."


To cap it all off, the meal ended with a delicious espresso made from an Italian Moka heated over a camping stove - so much better than the instant nescafe I'd been drinking the prior ten days. They reserve the Slivovice for dinner.

Anyway, I think the moral of the story is that the world doesn't really make much sense so you might as well learn some czech if you want to enjoy prosciutto and espresso while trekking in the Himalayas.

the road to Everest

into the Himalayas

[here's a quick note from the present, rather than the usual backdated blog post]

I'm very excited (hangover aside) to be leaving tomorrow morning for a 16-day trek to Everest Base Camp and Gokyo Lakes.  I had initially planned on hiking the Annapurna Circuit after reading a NYTimes article warning of the famous trek's future 'demise' due to road construction.  However, after speaking with travelers and agencies here in Kathmandu I got the sense that the end is already at hand.  Fortunately there are many many other treks, including one to the Mt. Everest base camp.  I'll be following the red route highlighted below, but passing through Cho La pass and stopping in Gokyo on the return.

    

Dali

After Lijiang and the Tiger Leaping Gorge hike I visited Dali, another 'ancient' city in Yunnan province.  Having hiked 25km the previous day, I decided to spend my first afternoon in the city on indulgences - a bagel & lox sandwich for lunch from a wonderful german bakery (Bakery 88) followed by a soul-reviving massage.  I then ambled about the city, had deliciously cheap dumplings for dinner, and retired to the hostel for a few drinks and conversation with other travelers before calling it a night.

Spirits revived, I rented a biked the next day and set off to explore the countryside.  My first stop was the famous Three Pagodas.  I parked my back, discovered that the entrance fee was a shocking $25 US (this is China!), took a photo through the gate, and then carried on.

I spent the next while pedaling along the shoulder of a highway while trucks, motorcycles and military vehicles all whizzed by me.  I then turned down a rural lane into a small lakefront village where I tried to sneak in a few unobtrusive photos of village life.  In general, guilt/shyness tends to stand in the way of my actively photographing people I don't know, so most of these are faraway shots.

That said, throughout my wanderings in China local residents would often come up to me and ask if they could take a photograph...here's a nice awkward example!

Lijiang

Lijiang has a beautifully preserved (ok, reconstructed) old city with winding alleyways interlaced by numerous rivers.  It made for some wonderful ambling before and after my hike through Tiger Leaping Gorge.  Pre-hike I spent a full day eating, drinking coffee and reading at cafes.  Post-hike I had a tasty meal of Korean food with some other travelers I met in the mountains (Jacques and Elizabetta pictured in last photo).

A typical street in the old city

Roofs

Whiskey and Kindle on balcony overlooking the main square

Diners at night

Snacks at the market

Tiger Leaping Gorge

Outside of Lijiang, China (which is itself a pretty cool city) I went on a two day hike in Tiger Leaping Gorge.  It was cloudy and a bit rainy for much of the hike, but the scenery was spectacular and the path was pleasantly un-peopled.

Looking back through the gorge

Goats in the way

One of many waterfalls

I stayed at Tina's (sorry Sean)

View from the bottom

The ladder back up

Landslide on the long road home

Seen at the Chengdu airport

I found this phrase at the Chengdu airport, printed on the back of a few seats by each departure gate.  It reminded me of the awesome Lawrence Weiner exhibit I saw at the Whitney a few years back.

Chengdu

I went to Chengdu to see some Pandas and get a haircut.  Great success on both counts. First, some pandas:

As for the haircut, I went to the nicest place I could find.  It set me back about $4.  The joy of non-tradable goods.

Other happenings in Chengdu included a Sichuan cooking class (Mapo Tofu & Twice-cooked pork), a trip to a Buddhist temple, the spiciest meal of my life (i looked like I did after the Great Wall hike...) and a cake fight.  The cake fight started out as a normal birthday party for one of the hostel staff, but things got messy pretty quick.  Fortunately, there were plenty of bags of chicken feet for people to snack on.

Before

After

Jiuzhaigou National Park

From Langmusi I took a 8-hour 14-hour bus ride to Jiuzhaigou Valley.  Woke up early the next morning and went to the pricey but insanely beautiful Jiuzhaigou national park.  Lonely Planet did an excellent job suggesting an early arrival and immediate bus to the far end of the park.  I spent the rest of the day walking back through the valley past stunning waterfalls and emerald lakes.  Here's somebody else's photo slideshow:

Photos from: tochinaandbeyond.com


After Jiuzhaigou I caught a 12-hour 19-hour bus ride down to Chengdu.

Xiahe and Langmusi

Xiahe and Langmusi are two towns in Western china at the border of the Tibetan plateau.  I spent 5-6 days between the two and went on a few great hikes (two day trips and one overnight), saws lots of Tibetan monasteries, ate more Yak-derived food products than I could have imagined, and hung out with some very chill French and Austrian travelers. 


Right now would be a perfect time for a few photo-highlights :(  Definitely not going back to the black market for future memory card purchases.

Lanzhou

En route from Xi-an to Xiahe, I stopped for a short overnight in the city of Lanzhou.  This wikipedia snippet does a pretty good job describing my experience in the city:


According to the Blacksmith Institute, Lanzhou is one of the 30 most polluted cities in the world, with its TSP (total suspended particle) rating 247% above that of the Gansu State recommendation. The air quality is so poor that at times one can not see Lanshan, the mountain rising straight up along the south side of the city. At one point, a controversial suggestion was put forward to bulldoze a mountain adjacent to the city, in order to let fresh air in to the bowl where Lanzhou is situated.


On the bright side, I did enjoy my visit to a "Western" restaurant in the city where I got to see people eating chicken wings with a fork and knife...cultural symmetry.