Straight to Summer

It seems like I brought the LA weather back with me when I came back to a sunny and warm London!

This May was shaping up to be the worst May in decades (weather-wise), but in a complete 180, the last week has been amazing with temperatures in the mid-twenties and sunny skies. It's some consolation for the fact that J and I had to cancel our big Italian tour due to J being busy at work. *tear* To be honest, I was more than fine with cancelling as I had been traveling for the last one and half months and I was ready to come back home and stay put for a while.

Of course, we had to try to spend as much of it as possible outside while the sunshine lasted.

We had lunch at Pizza Express and then hit up John Lewis on Oxford Street to buy a food processor. Exciting times, I know. A little reminder that the Queen's Diamond Jubilee is coming up soon...

And we walked around Hyde Park where pretty much everyone was out enjoying the weather. I didn't know that you could go swimming in Diana's memorial! Sweet!

I felt kind of bad for dragging J on a long walk through the park on an extra hot day so I bought him a burger at Bar Boulod at the Mandarin Oriental in Kensington to make up for it. I got the Yankee burger - I couldn't figure out what was so Yankee about it though...

Now that I'm back at home and gainfully unemployed, I've been keeping busy with a massive spring clean (a wee bit late, I know), working out, and making healthy meals from scratch for J. So far, I've made the following at his request:

Grilled Salmon w/ Chickpea Salad

Curried Chicken Korma w/ Swiss Chard

And last night, I made some Potato and Quinoa Croquettes w/ Sour Cream, but it got inhaled before I could snap a pic of it.

I seriously think it's harder being a housewife than going back to work. Slaving over a stove on a hot day is not fun - I ended up cooking dinner in my sports bra while trying to avoid getting hit by any rogue oil splatters. It may be time to head back to the office soon...

I'm Going Back to Cali, to Cali

I was back in London long enough to do a ton of laundry, clean the flat, and freeze some more stew for J, before I had to get back on the plane to head to LA.

I wasn't that keen on traveling again after being on the road for so long, but my cousin was getting married and there was no way I'd miss it! So I packed my bags, and I was back at my parents' house after an eleven-hour flight on Virgin Atlantic. Confession: I always fly Virgin Atlantic when I go back to Cali because they serve ice cream as a snack! Never mind the fact that I'm lactose-intolerant. Just keep your fingers crossed that you're not my seatmate.

Anyway, I got to spend a lot of time with my family and tagged along with my mom as she did her thing. Both she and my dad keep pretty busy so I was lucky if they had any time to spare for me! But my mom did take me to the Grove, where I had the obligatory celebrity spotting. It was Slater from Saved by the Bell!

He lost the Jheri curls, but other than that, he looked exactly the same! Anyway, it wasn't anything unusual since they film the entertainment show Extra! at the Grove quite often. In case you're interested in Slater-stalking...

I also got to see my friends and ate a slew of yummy restaurants, some new and some old. I got to try out a new place in West Hollywood known as Grub, and the food wasn't anything to write home about but sitting out in the patio was quite nice.

I was glad that I was going to 26 Beach in Venice the next day because they have every kind of french toast you can imagine, and all of them are amazing!

And for the grand finale of the week, I got to see my cousin getting married! It was a beautiful ceremony, and they made an absolutely gorgeous couple.

I come from a really large family, and it was really nice to reunite with all of my cousins at the wedding!

And that isn't even all of them, but it's difficult to squeeze 30 people into a photobooth. Trust me, we tried.

The week literally flew by, and I was back at LAX before I knew it. I missed J, but it was really tough leaving LA this time. I'm not great at keeping in touch, and the eight hour time difference really doesn't help, but my friends treat me as though I never left, which is fantastic. At the same time, I don't know what their everyday lives are like anymore, I only get the broad strokes.

And I miss my cat, who's still living with my parents since she's too old for me transport to London.

In case you couldn't tell by now... I'm homesick for California.

She'll Be Trekking 'Round the Mountain

We ended up booking a four-day trek with the travel agency at our hotel, and we piled into the car with our guide to head toward the Kathmandu valley rim for some trekking. It wasn't what we originally had planned for our grand trekking adventure, but hey, plans change when people get the mother of all beat-downs from Tibet.

We drove about an hour from Kathmandu out to Sundarijal. The goal for the first day was to cover 16km in about five hours until we arrived at Chisapani.

The first three and half hours were hell. All we did was climb continuously upward on uneven terrain and it was positively boiling. It felt like being on a never-ending StairMaster in a sauna with four days worth of supplies strapped to my very sweaty back. It was hard to even enjoy the scenery as I had to keep my eyes glued to the ground to make sure I didn't twist an ankle or anything. But I did enjoy the random animal passing by. Why, hello lunch. Beef or chicken - I can't choose.

 



I wish. Our lunch consisted of a soggy tomato sandwich and a croissant, all washed down with a mango-like juice. I've never done so much physically on such crappy food, and my body was feeling the difference.

Anyway, I figured that if we were in too much pain, we could always just pick the marijuana plants that were growing along the side of the path and smoke it. Kidding.



Chisapani turned out to be teeny tiny - just a collection of a few worn down hotels with no more than a handful of rooms each. There wasn't anything to do or buy so we stocked up on toilet paper and water and sat about twiddling our thumbs. It was only mid-afternoon so it wasn't like we could go to bed so what do you do when you've finished your trek in a one-cow town (literally)? Go for a walk, of course! But the views were totally worth it - the valley is beautiful!



After meandering about for a while, we headed back to the hotel restaurant for some dinner and then went to bed at 7:30pm. Cause that's how we roll.

That's when a group of young Nepalese bikers showed up in the middle of town and decided to party it up. Of course. They struck up quite the ruckus and didn't stop all night. I didn't think that you could have so much fun with a few cans of Pringles, some beers, and music blasting from your boombox, but what do I know? At one point, they were doing flips off of the balconies.

They kept that shit up all night until I was ready to march out there and dump some water on all of them. But for the fact that our room had no electricity so I couldn't see where I was going, and it was just as likely that we didn't have any water either. *Sigh*

We had barely gotten any sleep before it was time to get up again to head to Nagarkot. We had a lot of distance to cover - about 24km - and our guide set a hard pace. The weather wasn't as hot as the previous day, and we were making pretty good time. It wasn't as hard and a lot more interesting than the day before - the path undulated up and down, and we even had to go through a small jungle.



I even got to see a goat or two - things were looking up!



That's when everything started to slowly fall apart.

One of us started feeling pretty ill, another complained of a "burning groin," and I was about to get caught in the worst thunderstorm of my life. What started out as little raindrops in the early afternoon all of sudden broke out into torrential rain when we were less than an hour away from our hotel and as tired as I was, I had to haul ass to some shelter. It was raining so hard that I got wet through the rain poncho my guide had lent me. Insanity.

We took cover under a couple of ramshackle refreshment huts to see whether the rain would let up, but of course it didn't, so we finally just made a mad dash for it while trying to avoid getting hit by lightning. By the time we arrived at our hotel, I was soaked to the skin and shivering like mad from being so cold - all I wanted to do was take a hot shower to warm up. But of course the electricity was off at the hotel, which meant no hot water for a shower or tea.

We were all feeling pretty sorry for ourselves by then, and one of us was feeling more and more ill by the moment. Some things are just not meant to be, and we had to throw in the towel and head back to Kathmandu.

Once we were back in Kathmandu, we just focused on getting our health back. I still had my wicked cold that had me blowing my nose until I had no skin left and a cough that would cause any bystander to take one giant step back. And I was the healthy one!

We really didn't do much except count the days until our flight back home. There was one thing that we were keen on seeing before we left, and that was the Monkey Temple!


Obviously, it has the traditional temple stuff since it's a temple...

But we had seen all the temples and prayer flags and wheels before. What we hadn't seen were monkeys!



They were pretty much running around wherever they pleased and dive-bombing into their pool to cool off.



I had a lot of fun watching them, especially since I had my rabies shots, thank goodness. It would entirely be in keeping with the tone of the trip if I had gotten bit by a rabid monkey. This one looked pretty chill - monkeys that do yoga probably wouldn't bite, right?



As awesome as the monkeys were, I was ready to go home. I had been away and out of touch for over three weeks, and it felt like Christmas morning when our departure day finally came around. The power outage at Kathmandu airport, the six separate pat-downs I got on the way to the plane, the ridiculous rules at New Delhi airport and the bother of obtaining an Indian transit visa - it all felt worth it when my plane finally touched down 21 hours later at London Heathrow after leaving Kathmandu.

Damn, it felt good to be home.

Namaste from Nepal

We woke up early the next morning to make the border crossing from Tibet into Nepal. I was looking forward to it, despite the fact that we had decided to scrap our original trekking plans with everyone being so ill and beaten down from Tibet's environment.

I had heard that the border checkpoint was especially gruelling, and it wasn't far off the mark. The Chinese officials examined our luggage pretty thoroughly, taking special care with any books and papers to make sure that we weren't carrying any "forbidden" literature. They even looked through our various travel books to make sure that they didn't have fake covers! At that point, I was glad that I had decided to leave my guidebook behind instead of trying to smuggle it underneath my clothes. Although it was incredibly useful, I found that our guide and driver would get in trouble if I was caught with that book, and it just wasn't worth that risk.

A group of young Nepalese men waited right outside of the building, and we bargained with the least unsavoury looking of the bunch to take us to Kathmandu. The driver took us through the Nepalese immigration office to get our visas, and we were soon on the road to Kathmandu.

The drive was absolutely terrifying. It was so scary that it became ludicrously funny. It was four hours of speeding through winding mountain roads and narrowly dodging buses with loads of people strapped to the roof with Miley Cyrus blasting on the radio. Um, yeah. We had to go through multiple military checkpoints, where they checked our luggage for who knows what, until we reached Kathmandu. If possible, the traffic there was even worse. Cars, motorbikes, buses, trucks all sped around each other at top speed while trying to avoid the cows standing in the middle of the road and honking all the while.

Tibet had pretty much near killed us so we decided to get some R&R at the Crowne Plaza, which had a pool. The hotel was awkward - it was trying to be posh, but it hadn't figured out how just yet. Our reintroduction to fruit and vegetables was the high point, but other than that, it was a disappointing experience.

After one night, we ditched the Crowne Plaza for the Kathmandu Guest House, which is practically an institution in Kathmandu, and caters perfectly to the backpacking set.


It's located in the middle of Thamel, which is the tourist ghetto, and everything you could possibly need is within 5 feet of the outer gate.

You couldn't beat the joint for convenience, and its outdoor spaces were pretty nice too.

After we settled in, we roamed around the twisting streets of Thamel while trying to avoid getting hit by a car and chasing off any street urchins that wouldn't leave B alone. I couldn't believe how polluted and dirty the city was. Every time we stopped for a break, I couldn't help taking out a face wipe and trying to clean off some of the dirt that felt permanently ingrained in my skin.

The plus side is that we figured out the mystery of where all of the hippies have gone. They're all in Kathmandu, wearing harem pants, beads and leather bracelets while sporting a turban on their head. Dreadlocks are de rigeur for men as well as some kind of facial hair. They seem to spend most of their time at embassies getting visas to other Asian countries or eating at OR2K, the local vegetarian Israeli restaurant. I went to Berkeley, so I'm used to hippies, but these were pretentious hippies. Ugh.

OR2K was the only restaurant that didn't make us sick, and we ate there more days than not despite the black lights and hippies that were laying down on the cushions. Is it even possible to digest like that? Anyway, the food was pretty good, and I highly recommend their breakfast and babaganoush.

We couldn't spend all of our time in our room or at OR2K, so we decided to do some sightseeing around the city. For some reason, we couldn't rustle up any excitement for sightseeing but we caught a taxi to Durbar Square to check out the sights.

There was some kind of event going on, but we couldn't figure out what. I read that Durbar Square is frequently the setting for political demonstrations, and that tourists should stay out of those situations. Not reassuring. And the sight of tons of policemen lurking nearby with long sticks didn't do anything to calm my nerves.

There were some interesting buildings...

Incredible wood carvings...

Strange statues...

Even a monkey or two...

But we just couldn't get that excited about it. Maybe it was because it was on the heels of Tibet, where we saw so many amazing things. We also realized that there really that wasn't much to do in Kathmandu, so we decided that we should try to go on a short trek since everyone was feeling much better since we had left Tibet. Woohoo!

A Walk in the Clouds

Upon arriving at EBC, we quickly dropped off our things at our yak tent and headed out for a hike to the actual base camp where the climbers set up their camp. It began to snow on our way up, and I was freezing despite wearing 6 layers on top (heavy weight thermal, technical shirt, sweater, puffy vest, down jacket, waterproof windbreaker), 2 layers on bottom, and 3 pairs of gloves and socks.



It's only a 4 km hike, but it usually takes about 2 hours due to the altitude. It's just so much harder to breathe, and everything feels like an incredible effort. Well, unless you're a yak, in which case you practically prance up the mountain with 100 lbs of rice strapped to your back.



Luckily, I acclimatized pretty well, and we managed to make it there in a little over an hour. We had to register (again!) at the police checkpoint, and then I was finally allowed at the top!



It started snowing during our hike, and the snow was coming down in earnest when I got to the top so I rushed to tie on my prayer flag before my fingers froze and I also caught a glimpse of the climbers' tents.





It had been a while since I last felt my fingers and toes so we hurried back to the tourist base camp. Of course, this is when the storm decided to break. Just my luck. Only a light mist remained, which gave a dreamy look to the landscape. It was just so beautifully ethereal, and it was hard to believe that it wasn't just some Hollywood backdrop.



Back at our yak hotel, we dashed off some postcards to send from the world's highest post box and discovered that the toilets were even worse than what we had encountered thus far. Some good advice: just go behind a yak. They're pretty docile so they don't mind much, and their large size provides ample coverage for privacy.

We hunkered down in our tent for the night and it wasn't too cold as long as they kept feeding yak dung to our fire. It got pretty smoky in there so it was difficult to breathe, and the air outside at the campsite was even worse. I would've put up with the smoke for the warmth of the fire, but they put it out when it came time to sleep. The wind sounded like there was a freaking hurricane outside, and I just prayed that I didn't need to go outside to pee in the middle of the night.

I had a rough time sleeping as I had pretty bad insomnia and a racing heart rate from the altitude. On the plus side, I was awake to see Everest at the buttcrack of dawn before anyone else was awake.



It was the coldest I've ever been in my life - and this is from a girl that survived three Michigan winters - and I rushed back to the tent to get some piping hot tea. Everyone else had gotten up, and we packed our things and were soon on our way to Zhang Mou, a trading city at the border of Nepal. Unfortunately, we had another four hours of off-roading, and we got stuck a bunch of times in particularly difficult terrain.





The drive was relatively boring, and the landscape was quite desolate except for the occasional nomad and his yaks.





The weather was mercurial, snowing one minute, raining another, but we managed to make it into Zhang Mou. The drop in elevation was amazing - all of a sudden, we started seeing trees and plants, and it went from being dry and arid to wet and humid. Unfortunately, this meant lots and lots of flies, and we fought a losing battle to keep them off our dinner. Disgusting.

Zhang Mou itself sucked. It's a soul-less trading town, and our room at the hostel was a horrific experiment in seeing how many different kinds of mold could grow in one room. We had put up with a lot of crappy conditions, but this was just beyond the pale, and we negotiated with our guide's agency to move across the street to the much cleaner hotel across the road. 

Thank goodness we would cross the border into Nepal the next day.