Merry Christmas!!!

Being so far away from home, we weren't sure how to celebrate the approaching holidays. Fortunately India found a way to help us out in a rather unhelpful way (some happened to us and some happened to others):

Our Twelve Scams this Christmas

1. In our first scam this Christmas our package home was ransomed. We paid $10 per pound to send home a package, but instead of shipping it, the agent decided to hang onto it for a month until we were 2000 miles away. Then he emailed us and told us that if we ever want to see our package again, we needed to Western Union him $90. No resolution yet...
2. In our second scam this Christmas some travelers were poisoned by a restaurant owner and then taken to a quack doctor who charged their insurance a fortune to "make them well"... the doctor actually continued to poison them so that he could keep them in his hospital longer. Luckily he was caught and this particular scam is over.
3. In the third scam this Christmas, a rickshaw driver lied to us that the prepaid taxi booth at the train station was closed and our only choice was to hire him for 5X the normal price. He had even taken troubles to build a fake prepaid booth which looked closed. We caught a quick glimpse of the real booth (that was open) on our way out of the station.
4. In the fourth scam this Christmas, we were misdirected to an overpriced travel agent by a con artist standing next to an armed guard at the train platform entry. Instead of paying $5 each for a train ticket directly from the train station, they wanted to charge us $100 per person. We left the agent and had to push past the guard to the train platform before we were able to purchase a ticket at the correct price.
5. In the fifth scam this Christmas, we were offered food from a "friend" we met on the train. Luckily we declined (they post signs about this on the trains), although other travelers have been drugged and robbed whilst they tranquilly slumbered.
6. In the sixth scam this Christmas, travelers are asked by local "friends" to transport some jewels back home in order to avoid customs fees and taxes. They request that the traveler pay $1000 as a sign of "good faith." Needless to say, the gems are always worthless pieces of plastic, and the traveler has no recourse to get back the money.
7. In the seventh scam this Christmas, we were met at the train station by a hotel employee with the sign for the hotel that we wanted to check out. It is fairly common for many hotels to offer free transportation, so we thought nothing of it until we were taken to the wrong hotel and informed that our hotel is closed. We were tired and didn't even have a reservation at our intended hotel, so we chose to stay at the place where we were taken. The next day we walked past our hotel, which was bustling with guests... pretty effective way to get customers!
8. In the eighth scam this Christmas, a taxi driver loaded up all of our heavy luggage and drove us away from the taxi stand. He then pulled over and demanded a price which was triple what we had previously negotiated. We finally started to remove our luggage before he agreed to a reasonable price.
9. In the ninth scam this Christmas, a rickshaw dropped us off more than a mile from our intended destination and told us "it's just 100 meters ahead." Good exercise towing around all of that luggage!
10. In the tenth scan this Christmas, we bought a bottle of Banana Boat Sunblock to discover that it was a fake and was filled with Shampoo instead of Sunscreen! Fortunately, we caught on quickly (we are very experienced sunscreen experts) and demanded a refund.
11. In the eleventh scan this Christmas, a man offered Rusty a handshake and then started giving him a hand massage... Rusty tried to pull away, but the man kept saying "no charge." As soon as he finished massaging, he demanded a huge price, so we laughed and walked away.
12. In the Twelfth scam this Christmas, we were given a "free" tour of the sacred cremation ghats on the bank of the Ganges river. At the end of the tour, our guide took us to an old "holy woman" who he claimed had some connection with Mother Theresa. She gave us a blessing, and asked the names of our family. With each name, she would do some holy thing or the other. After it was over, the guide asked that we make a huge donation to a local hospice in order to seal the blessings. Needless to say, we didn't bother, so if you don't feel quite as blessed this holiday season, it might be our fault!

We hope that you are enjoying life and wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Love,
Kelsi and Rusty

India Warm Welcome

Well, until we saw the Mumbai terrorist attacks on CNN, we thought India was turning out way better than we expected. We crossed the northern border a few weeks ago and were immediately invited to several people's homes. We had dinner with the family of Harendra, a student Rusty conversed with on our first bus ride from the Nepal border to Bareilly, India. Harendra wanted us to meet his family for dinner during the two hours we had before our scheduled train to Amritsar. The family was extremely friendly and kind, but unfortunately we didn't have much time to spend with them.


After visiting with Harendra, the invitations continued. At the train station a little boy around five years old invited us to his home. Then another family invited us over on the train ride to Amritsar, but we didn't have time to accept any other invitations than from Harendra. We couldn't believe the generosity of the people in India. It wasn't what we were expecting based on stories we'd heard from other travelers.

In Amritsar, we visited the Sikh's most holy site, the Golden Temple. It may have been one of the most rewarding cultural experiences we have enjoyed during our travels. On the temple grounds, everyone was walking laps around the temple, and they took us by the hand to join in with them. They even took us into the temple to listen to the music and prayers with them. We were also invited to stay in the Golden Temple guest dormitories for free! On top of the free room, the Golden Temple also provides free meals for all guests no matter class nor religion, so we also enjoyed a free meal there of rice, curry, and chapati (flat bread).

Even though one of the main reasons we went up north was to see a border closing ceremony between the Indian and Pakistan borders in Attari, just 30 minutes from the Golden Temple in Amritsar, we actually ended up enjoying visiting the Golden Temple even more than the border ceremony. The boarder ceremony was very exciting as well though. There seemed to be a few thousand people on each side of the border cheering for their country while the soldiers performed a dramatically choreographed stomp-off with loud national music playing on each side. It was pretty fun to be part of the experience. And luckily, we were there the day before the Mumbai terrorist attacks as the Pakistan border may not be so safe now.

From Attari, we spent a full day from before the sunrise until after the sunset on another crowded (more than you could possibly imagine) and bumpy bus to McLeod Ganj, the city where the current Dahli Lamma lives in India. We arrived in time for a nice Thanksgiving dinner of Tandoori Chicken and Spaghetti as well as some chocolate cake for dessert. We visited the monastery there that evening as well before leaving early the next morning again to head to our next destination, Manali, before making our way to a Dec. 3rd meditation course in Sarnath, India, located thousands of miles away in the middle of India.

Manali, India's extreme activity capital, did not disappoint us. In addition to bungee jumping, white water rafting, and skiing, Manali had an unusual activity called "ZORBING." The basic idea is that you climb into the inner chamber of a giant inflatable ball (see the picture). After being strapped inside by a body harness, they roll you down a ski run... kind of like a Gerbil ball for humans.
Fortunately, the ball was big enough to comfortably (if that is that the right word) accommodate both of us at the same time. Needless to say, it was hysterically funny to see each other flopping around like rag dolls as the ball accelerated and began bouncing off the ground. Aside from whiplash (which a holyman yogi cured... no lie), no serious injuries occurred, so we give it our full endorsement. People who get motion sickness should consider sitting this one out, as vomiting inside the zorb would produce a sort of disgusting shake and bake effect.

We've been covering a lot of ground in the last month aside from the things in this update, so we'll try to get caught up with our going ons in the next week or so.

Twighlight

We've been out of touch for a while and have a lot more important things to update on our blog, but we've been going through reading everyone else's blogs and seeing this Twighlight craze and not getting it. We were actually introduced to Twighlight by Rusty's mom. We downloaded tons of books on our ipods before heading out on our trip including three recommendations from Rusty's mom: Twighlight, The Secret Life of Bees, and A Girl Named Zippie. Denise (Rusty's mom) LOVES all of these.

Well, we'd add the last two to our list of favorite books (seriously good books!), but we both CANNOT figure out why everyone is so in love with Twighlight. Will someone please share with us the redeeming qualities of this book? Maybe the movie's better than the book. We haven't seen that available to watch out in Asia. We're glad we at least are both on the same page as each other in this matter :) Our analysis was a plot without any substance with poor authorship: too many adjectives, too dramatic . . . no moral teachings nor great insights into life nor anything profound to ponder . . . ???

Nepal's Bardia National Park

Almost a week ago we decided to exit Nepal and enter India by traveling overland to the famous Bardia National Park. Don't worry, we are in Northern India at the moment and far away from any of the unrest in Mumbai that you are seeing on the news.

Nepal's Bardia National Park was beautiful and well worth the 30+ hours we spent in the back of an explosively bumpy and overcrowded bus. Every 5-15 seconds, the bumpy roads would propel us into the roof and smash our heads. If that wasn't happening, then the bus would lurch forward and whiplash our knecks, or screech to a halt and give our bruised knees one more knock on the seat in front of us. Nonetheless, the park rewarded us with it's beautiful nature and animals.

Rusty decided to try out fly-fishing in the Karnali river for the agressive and often massive fish called "Mahseer." Although he had envisioned something 60 plus pounds, he only managed to pull in a few little minows of (maybe) 60 grams. All the same, we were pleased that he wasn't eaten by the crocodiles on the sandy banks downstream from him (see below).

The wild elephants in Bardia frequently roam into the local Taru villages at night and tear the roofs off of houses and sheds looking for a tastey midnight snack (no exaggeration). The park also has tigers and Rhinos, but we didn't see any during our jungle trampses. This might have been for the best since our guide's only weapon was a walking stick!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Rusty loves Thanksgiving so much he thought it would be fun to celebrate it twice this year! Since we can barely keep track of the days of the week while traveling, we definitely missed the boat on the correct timing of Thanksgiving, but that's OK. We did a better job this time with Tandoori Chicken and Spaghetti :)

Adrenaline Fix

This is Kelsi typing this time. I think I'm all out of adrenaline! After climbing Island Peak (By the way, we forgot to mention - our guide's name was Tenzing Sherpa, named after the first Sherpa to summit Mnt. Everest. We just loved getting such a traditionally named guide!) Rusty wanted to do some more kayaking since our original class was cut in half due to his kidney stone, so we signed up for another 3 day clinic. I barely survived the first kayaking clinic since in third world countries they just throw you in, and on my 2nd day ever kayaking I was going down 2+ rapids on the Bhote Kosi River.

However, the kayak guides here are really good about safety in that they never had more than two of us with one guide and they always had us wear helmets, etc. On the Trisuli River, where we were kayaking during our latest clinic, I'd have to say there were definitely some class 3 holes here and there and so many long trains of rapids, that many were classified on the verge of class 3. Plus, rapids look 2-3 times larger in a kayak than a raft! I'll have to admit that I was terrified - and that's not an exaggeration! The guide even held my kayak through some of the rapids because I was so petrified, and we still flipped together in one of them! Luckily, the river wasn't overly hazardous, and we were easily able to retrieve the kayaks and paddles after flipping over, tearing ourselves out of the kayak, and swimming down the rapids. All the same, I was nervous and felt vulnerable since kayaks have an enclosed top so that when you flip over it feels like you are trapped upside down in the boat with your head underwater. On top of that, I don't have any mastery of Eskimo rolls (which is how a kayaker turns upright after flipping over).

After surviving 2 1/2 days of our kayaking course, I decided to do my last run of the Trisuli river in a raft and see a downstream section of bigger rapids that Rusty had run in his kayak the day before without me. Wow! They were so crazy even in a raft, although the rapids all felt so much bigger after getting the kayaker's perspective. However, the section we rafted was 3-4 level (The highest navigable rapids are a level 5. We read in a magazine that if someone survives a level 6 rapid, it automatically becomes classified as a level 5). I couldn't believe Rusty could do those waves! He'd only been down a river 3-4 times before about 5 years ago. It's weird how guys have so much less fear than girls.

Two other quick interesting parts to the Trisuli river experience: 1) It was a full moon so Rusty joined in for a night run on the raft down one stretch of rapids - pretty cool! I was too sleepy and cold. We didn't get a chance to warm up yet since our climbing - it's still pretty nippy even down off the mountain. Also, Kayaking is very physically demanding and that made me sleepy! 2) We rode on top of a bus 3 hours back to Kathmandu. That's the local way when there's no more seats available and it's better to take what you can get -

My next adrenaline drainer... After Kayaking, there were 2 more unique things left to do before moving on from Kathmandu: Canyoning and Bungee Jumping. The canyoning was pretty fun and very structured for safety. We rappelled down 7 waterfalls with the longest one measuring 150 feet. Our camera battery died so we didn't get good photos. Here's a photo of me going down one of the smaller waterfalls:

Then came the bungee jump... After burning up so much adrenaline kayaking, I just don't know how I managed to jump 500 feet off a suspension bridge upside down! We keep hearing different stats, but the latest is that this is the 2nd highest bungee in the world behind one at Victoria Falls in Africa and higher than the highest one in New Zealand. I seriously don't understand how Rusty just waved with a smile at me and jumped right on the count of 3. The guy operating the jump had to talk me into jumping and count to 3 two times. I didn't know if I could do it. But I did! And it was crazy! Two factors helped me jump: 1) I'd already paid a pretty decent price and it was non-refundable. 2) This was a unique opportunity and it really was quite safe, so what's the big deal (It seemed safe since 20+ people already jumped just that same day). Oddly, it was more scary than skydiving. Maybe that isn't odd? I'm not sure.

Here's a picture of Rusty and I on the bridge we jumped from. You can't see the creek at the bottom.

Here's a picture of me on the edge of the jump trying to talk myself into going for it. Rusty jumped so quickly that our friend didn't even get a chance to get his picture.

Needless to say, I didn't mind too much that we had to spend an extra day in Kathmandu recuperating my nerves before heading on to our next leg of our journey. The past 2 days in Kathmandu everyone has been on strike since 2 people were found dead, likely from some Maoist crazy mid-level leaders. The locals are upset the government did this and is denying it. So no buses left the city, including ours, and most businesses closed. But we didn't see any riots or anything like that, and the strike gave us extra time for a nice Thanksgiving dinner of steak and pizza... We decided to start our first tradition of having pizza Wednesday night every year before Thanksgiving. We were kind of just in the mood for it last night, but then we thought, hey that's a good idea since Wednesday before Thanksgiving will likely be busy getting ready for Thanksgiving dinner, so let's call this pizza thing our first holiday tradition :) Also, there's no Turkey to be found in Nepal. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!

20,305 Feet and Negative 20 Degrees

We just returned from an amazing mountaineering expedition in the Everest region. Neither of us had climbed with crampons and ice axes before, so everything about it was new for both of us. We climbed a peak known by the locals as Imja Tse and by tourists as Island Peak. We're not sure why it has two names, but it's not uncommon in this region. Mt. Everest is known by Nepalese as Sagarmatha, "Goddess, Mother of the Sky" and by Tibetans as Chomolungma, "Goddess, Mother of the Earth."

We started the adventure by flying from Kathmandu to Lukla. Wow! That was as nerving and exciting as surviving our jeep ride on the cliff edge earlier this month as we finished the Annapurna Circuit trek. Feeling nervous about the flight landing was valid since within a few weeks before our flight there was a plane crash landing in Lukla that killed all passengers aboard. After flying across the edge of mountain peaks with the Himalayas jetting up in the background, we took a nose dive down toward a short landing strip approximately 1730 feet long. One guy we met on the Annapurna Circuit said he'd hiked to Everest Base Camp and that he'd rather land on an air craft carrier than at the Lukla Airport. That seemed like a good claim as we landed, but after getting out of the plane and looking the airport over, we decided the Lukla landing strip is probably at least 2-3 times the landing distance of an aircraft carrier. (After looking up some facts online, it looks like an aircraft carrier landing is approximately 5 1/2 times shorter than the Lukla Airport landing strip). The landing strip in Lukla is so short because right before the landing is a cliff dropping below and right after is a cliff overhead, so there's no room for margin of error. The landing strip is at a slight slope of 12%, so when you take back off it feels kind of like a ski jump - minus the snow. So that was our exciting beginning of our second two week trek. We got some good video footage at the airport, but for some reason, our only photo isn't that great. It still gives and idea of the airport, so we felt like posting it. We're standing part way up the hill that begins immediately at the top end of the landing strip.

We seemed to be used to the altitude since we'd already spent some time in Tibet at Everest Base Camp and spent the beginning of October trekking the Annapurna Circuit that went up to 17,760 feet, so we ascended up the path faster than we expected. Also, after we returned from Annapurna, Rusty had the ureter stint removed from his kidney which had agitated him throughout the two week Annapurna trek, so he was doing much better. We both felt in good health and unaffected by altitude all the way until the night before our climb when Rusty finally caught someone's sore throat, cough and upset stomach. That was kind of disappointing as we had survived the miserable cess pool tea houses of the Everest region all the way up until the most important night; however, after a bathroom break, Rusty braved it and performed better on our climb than Kelsi. Rusty managed to pass his sore throat on to Kelsi, but we're not sure if Kelsi's cough came from Rusty or from heaving in so much cold air at 20,000 feet trying to climb a vertical wall of ice. We got better video of the vertical section than photos, but below are a couple photos during our climb. This photo shows where we're hooked up to the fixed ropes ascending with jumars which only move up the rope, but will not allow you to slide down.

The following photo was somewhere below the fixed ropes as we never were unclipped from the ropes near the top of Island Peak since there were steep icy drop offs on both sides from the moment we clipped in all the way to the top. Since we started the climb at 2 AM, we had to stop to put sunblock on right after the sunrise on a ledge where we were clipped in. Rusty managed to loose one glove shell and a water bottle over the icy edge which we weren't able to retrieve. Luckily he had a fleece glove lining and we had superbly warm and unwindy weather, so he managed without freezing his fingers.

Kelsi was shocked that the climb was way harder than anticipated since we were told that it was just a "beginner's peak" and we had just finished the 12 day trek up to 17,760 feet a couple weeks ago so we were feeling fairly strong. However, Kelsi was heaving like a 90 year old and took three hours to climb the final strenuous ascent of nearly 330 feet to the summit ridge. Our guide estimated it would take us five hours to summit, but it ended up taking six and a half hours due to Kelsi bonking the final stretch. After everything, we learned from several experienced mountaineers that Island Peak isn't really a beginning peak after all, and actually has some pretty technical aspects, in addition to the extreme elevation. Here's our certificates for successful ascent:

Below is a photo of Island Peak from the base. We climbed 3615 feet starting at 16,690 feet from base camp. The summit is 20,305 feet high, just 15 feet lower than North America's highest peak, Mt. McKinley (20,320) in Alaska. The peak is actually an extension of the ridge coming down off the south end of Lhotse, which is connected to Everest via the South Col. In the photo below, the ridge to the left links straight up to Lhotse. We liked to think of Island Peak as Everest's baby since it's kind of an offshoot down just two ridges and 8724 feet lower. If you've ever hiked Mt. Olympus in SLC, UT, you may have an idea of how steep the easiest part of this climb is. The first half of the climb was very steep hiking with a lot of scrambling over rocks until we came to the snow line where we put on our crampons and roped to our guide until we reached the fixed line leading up a vertical ice wall to the summit. We had a short break in steepness as we crossed a beautiful glacier just before the fixed ropes.

We had to spend a couple nights along the trail acclimatizing, so we read quite a bit. We were lucky this lodge had a small library since only Rusty brought one small book as we didn't have a porter this time. We felt Rusty was doing well enough in his recovery to carry his own bag this time.

Carrying all your own stuff trekking around for two weeks was quite a work out! The exercise combined with terrible food made us loose a few pounds. Rusty claims to have lost 10 pounds. Kelsi claims to have made up for lost pounds by gaining muscle and is ripped!!! :) We spent a few nights reminiscing about our mom's great food back home naming specific dishes while eating the nastiest food ever since Mongolia. Tea houses in the Everest region are miserable cess pools of sick people and sick food. We went to bed hungry a couple of nights after we couldn't eat more than 2 bites of the stuff they served us. And they charged ridiculous prices for the inedible stuff. We understand we should pay for how hard it is to get food up there as there are no vehicles and only small planes with limited space and weight arriving in Lukla, but it would have been nice if it was at least palatable. We were even willing to pay $2 for a Snickers when the $5 meal of a mixture of everyone else's leftover soup thrown into our bowl made us gag. One night our soup seriously tasted like leftover garlic soup mixed with someone else's left over noodle soup turned to mush mixed with potato soup, kerosene, teflon, salt, more salt, yak dung and bacteria. We tried to not complain too much since it's part of the experience of traveling, but the food on this trek was unbelievably disgusting and expensive! We started getting wise and ordering plain boiled noodles and boiled eggs hoping they couldn't get that too nasty nor masked from being off someone else's uneaten plate. Kelsi's family may not believe this, but she's starting to eat eggs regularly and even liking them! Who knows what part of this is growing up and what part is being so deprived that eggs have started tasting heavenly.

The suffering was still worth the climb and the experience in the Everest region. We didn't take the 5 extra days to hike up to Everest base camp from the Nepal side since we'd already been there in Tibet and we're ready to move on to warmer weather! (Since the torturous Utah winter last year, we only had about one month of summer in July before taking off to Mongolia where we had snow August 18th! Then we've been chasing cold weather in the Himalaya's since. Rusty's finally as tired of being cold as Kelsi).

Here's another cool photo from the trek up to Island Peak. This is in Tengboche, which has the most famous monastery of the Everest region. The highest looking peak on the right side of the photo is Ama Dablam, our favorite peak aesthetically. You can see Everest peeking up just to the left of the farthest left monk. There's a ridge just below Everest's peak that follows along up to the right of the same monk to Lhotse. You can't see Island Peak in this photo, but it's located just below Lhotse around behind Ama Dablam.

The photo below was from a really fun festival that began in Kathmandu the evening before we took off to Lukla. It was called the "Light Festival." It was kind of a combo of our Halloween, Christmas and New Year's. It was like Halloween in that all the children were going around singing and dancing for money - kind of like trick-or-treating except they didn't wear costumes. It was like Christmas because everyone decorated everything with lights, flowers and other things to make everything festive and decorative. It was like New Year's in that it was one of the local religion's New Year. Different cultures sometimes go off different calendars than ours.

Himalaya Trekking

Since Rusty had ten days to recover from his Kidney Stones, we thought it would be nice to get out of the CRAZY streets of Kathmandu. We decided to sign up for a 14 day trek (done by some in up to 21 days), but last minute thought we ought to at least hire a porter to carry Rusty's pack. It wasn't just the walk-a-about Kelsi had in mind, but rather a rigorous lengthy climb from about 4,500 ft. elevation up to nearly 18,000 feet. The trek was called the Annapurna Circuit, covering well over 100 steep and rugged miles. We started the trek in the monkey jungled forests of the Himalayan foothills. The photo below is from a temple nicknamed "The Monkey Temple" since there are so many monkeys found there.

Because the Annapurna region is geographically isolated, all food must be packed in by Mule or Human porter... as you can see here. It was a constant source of amazement to see skinny, 120 pound Nepali porters carrying as much as 80-90 pounds, all resting on their heads. Talk about needing a chiropractor!

Kelsi originally wanted to name this blog "Waterfalls Forever." The steep Himalayans constantly drain off in thousands of waterfalls along the entire distance of the trek. It was gorgeous. Any ONE of the waterfalls could have been a destination.

For the same reason that waterfalls are so plentiful, rockslides are equally common. A porter had been killed by a falling boulder 6 days before we passed one section. Although the government is trying to build a road in the next few years, we will be surprised if they ever build a functional road that isn't buried each monsoon season. Here's a picture of one section of the enormous rockslide on the road near the end of our trek.

Tibetan influence can be seen everywhere. To stave off high altitude sickness and acclimatize, we stayed in one town an extra day and hiked to this stuba.

One of the highlights of the Annapurna trek is crossing Thorong pass (almost 18,000) feet. We woke at about 5:00 am and reached it after almost 4 hours of slowly climbing.

At the end of our trek, we stopped off in a town on a lake named Pokhara. We decided to brave the crazy traffic on a little motorcycle and found our way to these "bat caves." Aside from being an excellent source of Batman and Robin jokes, they are loaded with thousands of boomerang bats, clinging to the stalactites.

Nepal

Entering Nepal was gorgeous and dramatic. The Nepalese and Chinese are working on paving the Friendship Highway, which will forever change the experience of crossing from Tibet to Nepal. The current road is a bumpy drive over a washed-out, one lane dirt road on the side of a cliff. It reminded us of 4-wheeling the White Rim trail in Utah's Canyonlands National Park. The new road will cling to the side of the same cliff, but instead of getting washed out each time it rains, it will be reinforced with rock walls, and has a drainage system to channel run-off water into culverts, which will cause waterfalls to cascade from the mountainside and onto the road; a sort of natural car wash. It might be comparable to the Highway to the Sun in Glacier National Park.

The scenery surrounding the road is lush green and follows the steepest river in Nepal, which is visible way down below. Just when you think you should be reaching the bottom of the canyon, the canyon bottom drops even more. You'd be shocked how you can keep dropping in elevation along a cliff edge following a river forever. We ended up rafting that same river for 2 days where the rapids settled to consistent 3+ with sporadic 4s - no flat spots. We flipped our raft several times, and barely managed to to regroup everyone before launching into the next run of rapids!

We enjoyed the setting and people running the river trip so much that we decided to stay for a kayaking course. Kelsi had never kayaked before, but was consistently doing beautiful Eskimo rolls in the resort's practice swimming pool before Rusty got into the groove and remembered what he had learned from a kayaking course he took 5 years ago. However, as soon as Rusty figured it out, Kelsi lost her magic touch and couldn't roll any more! "Easy come, easy go," Rusty told our instructor, who seemed a little frustrated by Kelsi's regression.

Rusty even succeeded in eskimo rolling while floating upside down in a class 2 rapid section of the river. Kelsi did everything possible to keep from flipping over while going down the river, which generally consisted of paddling forward at a feverish pace the entire time we were on the river. This made the river trip WAY too much work for her, but she succeeded in not rolling over during the river run. Thank goodness!

When we finished our float down the river, we had to hitch a ride back to camp on a farmer's tractor because the local bus drivers were on a strike. The bumpy ride took 25 minutes, with the driver in the front seat between an Australian lady and Kelsi. It's not the best quality picture, but look closely and you will see how hilarious this rig was with all of our Kayaks and the Kayakers piled on top of each other. It was one of our favorite parts of the whole Kayaking trip - experiencing the local "git 'er done-manship" culture.

On the 3rd day of our plans for Kayaking, Rusty got a kidney stone, so we took a three hour ambulance ride from the resort to a Kathmandu hospital since the pain was so excruciating & we didn't know the cause at that time. We spent 2 nights at the hospital on pain meds, and then had a minor procedure to extract the stone, which was completely blocking Rusty's right ureter. Rusty has been recovering fairly well since then except we've been resting up in Kathmandu because anytime we do much walking or activity Rusty seems to relapse slightly in his recovery. At least we found out the cause of the pain and know he's improving.

It was a little unnerving before we were certain what was wrong. Rusty had kind of beaten himself up during the rafting and kayaking, so we thought the cause of sickness could be from so many things including: 22 bug bites on his right ankle, ripping off a fingernail then covering the open skin with super glue (Kelsi had done that before, but we thought that maybe some chemical in the Nepalese super glue caused a reaction), not changing into dry pants for 4 days (Rusty's one pair of zip off pants is also his swimsuit - unlike Kelsi, who always brings spare dry clothes), and drinking lots of sewage in the river water - not intentionally, but it happens when you get thrown out of the boat in a third world country.

However, when we found a kidney stone and read the scandalous news about melamine in Chinese milk, we think that we might have found the cause. Rusty had just drank 1 1/2 gallons of milk purchased in Xi'an, China in one week's time... not his smartest move. We're thinking we'll blame the Chinese milk since that's the hype right now and Kelsi didn't drink any and has no problems. Too many coincidences. Expensive milk!

All the same, it's possible that any number of things might have caused it. Rusty's mom, who has also had kidney stones, pointed out that kidney stones can take several months to form and are often from dehydration. Rusty and Kelsi had hiked Mt. Olympus about a month before heading to China and became fairly dehydrated when they forgot to take sufficient water. So who knows the cause for certain? At least we know why Rusty was in so much pain and it's not some weird virus or bug bite.

The down time has given us an opportunity to rest, read, and catch up on our blog. Even in Rusty's recovery, he's tried to do a few things here and there. We took an opportunity to walk around Kathmandu's Durbar Square. This is the same place where the Beatles and many hippies have hung out when they visited Nepal. The place inspired the Beatles to write the song "Across the Universe." We got offered weed about 20 times while we were there (which we resolutely refused). Here's a couple of our favorite pictures: Kelsi with a holy man and some holy cows.

Seven Days In Tibet

Now that we are far away from the squadrons of riot-gear-wearing, machine-gun-toating Chinese soldiers occupying Tibet, the 700,000 Chinese Internet police censoring Internet content, the Chinese secret police bugging foreign tourist hotel rooms, and Chinese spies disguised as Tibetan monks listening in on our conversations in Tibetan temples, we decided to post some pictures and commentary on Tibet.  This really isn't an exaggeration! It was quite an interesting experience.

Apparently China needed some living room, so they took over Tibet, which is over 3X the size of Texas. Millions of Chinese are flooding in at a rate of 3,000 per day by the new trans china train, and many are encouraged by the Chinese government to settle in Tibet. Much in the same way that the US encouraged settlers to move West.

The Chinese are extremely heavy handed, and extremely progressive. Tibet is undergoing an economic boom, and the Tibetan people are experiencing opportunity and prosperity they never before enjoyed. In fact, the Chinese are baffled at Tibetan ingratitude, and favor themselves as liberators of the Tibetan masses. They feel that they abolished a Tibetan regime which enforced a rigid caste system that cared nothing for the poor and even enforced feudal serfdom (basically a type of slavery). For all that, the current Dalai Lamma (who's picture can't even be displayed privately in Tibet) considers the Chinese movement into his former kingdom to be a cultural genocide against the Tibetans. The truth probably lies somewhere between the Tibetan and Chinese version of things. Despite all of the current turmoil, Tibetan culture remains alive and we were very fortunate to see and experience it before more change takes place. Below are a few pictures of our travels through Tibet.

Traditional Tibetan dress is, fortunately, still the norm. This shopkeeper is representative of many Tibetans, both men and women, who adorn themselves with a wrap-around hair braid and turquoise jewelery and earings. Kelsi even tried out the braided style at Everest Base Camp :) (No picture posted).


Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, is a place of pilgrimage for Tibetans. Many Tibetans spend up to years crawling on hands and knees to get to the temples. (The crawl is a constant prayer action, not out of desperation). These women are spinning Tibetan Buddhism prayer wheels. (Nice photo composition Rusty!) We also got a great video clip of a girl around 9 years old doing the ritualistic down to the ground and up again pilgrimage, but uploading video really doesn't work abroad. She covered ground really well by doing a kind of running slide instead of just going to the ground, up again step, step . . . It was adorable and hilarious.



You might recognize this as Potala Palace from the movie "Seven Years in Tibet." It was the home of the Dalai Lamma, the religious and spiritual leader of Tibet, before he fled to India.

Rusty riding a Yak at 18,000 feet elevation along the Friendship Highway, which links Nepal to Tibet.

Rusty and Kelsi with monks during a religious dance festival. This was a really neat experience. Monks were playing Tibetan long horns, beating drums and playing several other types of instruments while other monks danced with swords and in formations. Many other monks and locals watched.

The Yellow-headed monks are the most common sect of Tibetan Buddhists.

Tibet has precious few trees, so they are forced to build using mud and, well... yak dung.

Kelsi and Rusty at Everest Base Camp. The altitude made us loopy & kind of crazy. We both twitched all night like what we think a recovering drug addict might experience. It was a little freaky. We barely slept that night in a crowded hut of Tibetans, huddled around a fire made from... you guessed it... yak dung.

Traditional Chinese Diaper

China has a population of over 1.3 billion. Considering this collective wisdom in raising babies, Kelsi and I thought it appropriate to pick up on a few child rearing techniques before starting our own family. We thought that the most brilliant idea was the Chinese way of diapering... or the lack thereof. Just in case you didn't notice at first glance, take another look at the pants these kids are wearing. We call them "Pee Pee pants," and about 95% of Chinese children wear them. Imagine the savings on diapers! Not to mention no arguments about who has to change them. We'll understand if you cover everything in tarps when we come to visit with our future children.

New Blog Posts

We published a bunch of new posts - as you can see, we finally had time to add some pictures while waiting for our Tibet permit, but they posted out of order. The best viewing order for making sense reading & chronologically is:

1. Chinglish
2. Everest Base Camp Training
3. Huashan Mountain Photos
4. Huashan Love Lock
5. The Bar & The Gold Medal
6. Terracotta Warrior Photos
7. Pingyao Picture
8. Beijing Pictures
9. More Mongolia Photos
   

1. Chinglish

When English and Spanish speakers attempt to speak in their non-native language, the resulting language is often called "Spanglish." Spanglish is usually full of humorous mistakes and mispronunciations. Similar things happen between Chinese and English. This post is dedicated to humorous signs written in Chinglish.