Somewhere over the hills, in a place called home......

Overwhelmed by Kathmandu's gritty chaos, I look back over my shoulder for M. I follow his gaze and catch just a fleeting glimpse of who he is smiling at- a hunched little man wedged into a decrepit wheelchair. The man's body is twisted and frail, but his face is glowing with pure joy, as he's propelled faster and precariously faster, down a miraculously empty street, leading the avalanche of bleating motorcycles and fume-belching micro-buses in his wake. This is one of

Some people are smitten with the fear of flying. The opposite happened to me: On our trek into the Himalayan foothills I developed a bad case of what I call Dread of Descent, (which quickly trashed the notion I'd been toying with, of a far distant past as a hardy Sherpa or a peerless first ascender). Dread of Descent manifests as an immense reluctance to give back a single hard-begotten uphill meter while hiking, and typically induces short-term outbreaks of mumbled

Everything felt just fine, 'til we stopped for lunch.... Rafting this section of the Karnali River is effortless- like drifting into an impressionist painting and elicits only a very occasional, faint trickle of adrenalin- even in the most timid of travelers *ahem*.... Put-in point is the sweeping one post suspension bridge at Chisapani where the river is still broad and deep enough to trundle us along with only slight encouragement from our four(!) trusty helpers. The sweeping, elegant bridge, the longest of its

I bet nobody visits Bardia National Park on a whim- the logistics need serious attention! To opt for a 17+ hour bus ride- or a pricey 360$ flight? Fall back on the painless version- a smooth four hour ride to heavily touristed but accessible Chitwan National Park- or book a car? Or go for a package tour?? After trawling the travel agencies in Pokhara for a few days and crunching some numbers, we chose Bardia and put together our very own

In the soft, dusty light of evening the old city of Bhaktapur, with its pagoda roofs and its harmonious blend of wood, mud-brick and copper, looked extraordinarily beautiful. It was as though a faded medieval tapestry were tacked on to the pale tea-rose sky....  (Travels in Nepal, Charlie Pye-Smith). In spite of its status as a much-visited Unesco World Heritage Site, daily life in Bhaktapur still unfolds against the same pastel backdrop and the lack of electricity most evenings only accentuates the otherworldly

The endless blue sky fell steeply all around us like a bell. To have reached the peak was glorious, but the nearness of the sky was overpowering.* (Herbert Tichy, Cho Oyu: By the Favor of the Gods) * The peak of Machapuchchhre, on the left in this photo, is said to be sacred to Shiva and has never been summited. Nepal and I go back a long way- back to the ten or eleven year old me, at the biggest bookstore in Bern, Switzerland

I did it. I made it. I saw my first today. FINALLY! After days of staring into the haze, and worse, staring at stained guestroom walls, nursing a fevery strep throat, on the road in Nepal, I made it to the roof of the Namaste Guesthouse in Bhaktapur. And lo and behold- distance not diminishing their substantiality, their grandeur, I’ll dare to say, I saw the big guys, the 7000m+ guys- I let my eyes rest on the splendor that