One More Day Everywhere by Heggstad Glen

Author:Heggstad, Glen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ECW Press
Published: 2012-08-23T04:00:00+00:00

It’s the People You Meet

April 5, 2005

Katmandu, Nepal

My first encounter with real adventurers was beneath flickering neon on the dark, steamy backstreets of Hong Kong. In 1981, China had only been open to the West for a year, and the line of visitors to be first at anything was growing. Striding through swarming crowds of five-foot-tall Chinese were a dozen broad-shouldered mid-30s American athletes sporting bright yellow T-shirts with purple lettering on the back — Upper Yangtze River Expedition. With bulging biceps tearing at their sleeves and the disproportionately enlarged lat muscles of oarsmen, they were out to define what made them men.

As a competitive martial artist, I was there to match skills with local kung-fu fighters, but while witnessing such audacious legends in the making, I could only stare and dream. Mere mortals were left to envy and fantasize about slicing through crashing rapids of uncharted mountain gorges. Images of those adventurers never vanished.

Similar legends appear in Nepal. In the polished wooden lobby of the Katmandu Guesthouse, an American team of stouthearted mountaineers carefully stow climbing gear into idling minibuses for transportation to an airfield. Soon, a twin-engine Sea Otter will drop them halfway into the Himalayas for an ascent of Mount Everest. Vibrant spirits permeate cold morning air as they methodically test and repack equipment that their lives will depend on. Each man knows his job, and they silently mingle only with each other in somber understanding of the task ahead. It’s almost too late in the season for decent visibility without a cloudy mist, but they are taking the shot anyway; rearranging their lives for a future opportunity is unlikely. It’s mind-boggling to consider that, if they’re lucky, in a few weeks they’ll be fighting blizzards at the lung-searing summit of a 29,000-foot peak.

And there is no forgetting the 20-year-old Dutch girl who had been backpacking solo across southern India when it struck her that two-wheels was more challenging. Nine riding lessons later, she was en route to Katmandu on her first motorcycle — alone. The last I saw of her, in a Thamel District backstreet hostel, she was double-checking her saddlebags, heading for Tibet.

World motorcycle travel is nothing new. Swilling down Indian beers in a Chitwan Park café, an 82-year-old Scotsman recounted his adventure of 1956, riding from Sri Lanka to London on a German-built 49cc one-half horsepower scooter — cruising at a thumping 22 miles per hour. His mesmerizing tale prompted obvious questions: “Tell me sir, do you ever miss the two-wheeled thrill?”

“Aye, that I do, I do. That’s why I’ve rode ‘ere now on me bicycle.”

Wherever you travel in Nepal, when you’re not basking in local hospitality, you’re meeting people coming or going somewhere with purpose in their lives. Off to India, back from Africa or beginning a multiweek high-altitude trek into the Himalayas. Other Westerners here are aid workers — soldiers on missions of peace battling ignorance with olive branches of care and personal sacrifice. From UN personnel here to negotiate ceasefires to Red Cross workers caring for war victims, the world community loves Nepal.

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