My First Day at School
How long can I stand in the burn until my feet go numb? Too long. Better to keep throwing stones into the deep bit. Maybe I’ll wake up a fish. I wonder where all this water comes from? Up that …
Bizarre Airport Experiences
I travel a lot by plane even though it’s environmentally destructive and increasingly boring. Airports in places like Bucharest or Tirana used to be so different from anything we’d seen in the west – the airport terminal in Tirana, a …
Himalayan Bus Plunge
After several hours hard trekking we reach the mountain village of Syabru Besi. It’s mid morning and the sun hasn’t come over the mountains yet. I look forward to sitting down in a tea house and having a cup of …
The Old Lady and the Guest House
Maya runs a lovely little guest house, four hours walk from the nearest road. She’s a hustler. She sits on her terrace and calls out to the hundreds of trekkers who plod past every day, using her handful of English …
A Trekker from Iran
I was planning to write an article about a trekker and ended up doing one about Samira from Shiraz, Iran. I didn’t deliberately choose someone from the least represented nation on the Annapurna trekking circuit, but she was the person …
The Road to Mustang
Thursday, Kathmandu
My friend Aakash phones and asks “what are you doing this weekend?” I tell him I’m planning to get a bus towards the Langtang area, just north of Kathmandu, and go trekking.
“We’re going to Tatopani,” he says. …