Now I know what Cat Stevens was talking about. Jet lag sucks. I was up at 2am this morning, after a forcing myself to stay up till 10pm when I wanted to go to bed at 5. Hopefully today will be better.

It's now Tuesday morning. I got in Sunday afternoon and spent some of that day getting to know my fellow trekkers, and some of the time just chilling out from the long flight. Yesterday we went on a sight seeing trip around Kathmandu valley. I want to upload some photos, but I'm having technical problem with the file upload thing. Hopefully I'll get it working soon, but i think the problem is that the connection is just too slow and it times out, so I may have problems uploading photos.

We saw some nice temples. Nepal is a Hindu country, but there are lots of Buddist monuments too. Often they are right next to each other, on the same grounds. There's a bit of mingling between the two religions it seems. We also went to a Tibetan refugee camp, where they make traditional Tibetan rugs by hand. That was kind of cool too. Kathmandu is by far the poorest place I've ever been. The poverty is incredible. That said, the people are great. Except for a few pushy street vendors the people are very friendly (even the street vendors aren't too bad). I feel completely safe, there is no danger from pickpockets or other street crime, you can walk around at night with no problem. I'm happy to say that my understanding of the Maoist situation was confirmed by people who know what they are talking about: parts or Nepal are very dangerous, but Kathmandu, and Khumbu above Lukla, where I'll be going, are both completely safe.

Today we are going to get our gear sorted for the trek, and get a full briefing on what the trek will entail. Tomorrow morning we fly to Lukla, which is a 45 minute flight is a 16 seater plane, on Yeti Airlines. Then start trekking. It's going to be hard I think, hiking 8 hours a day for 20 days, but I'm really looking forward to it.

I'll be online again today probably, but not again until Apr. 18 at the earliest. Wish me luck.

Namaste.

I'm in the Bangkok airport with about 8 hours to kill, so I thought I'd relate the first victory of the trip.

When I checked in at the airport this morning, or yesterday morning, or whenever I started, the Air Canada guy said he could check my bag all the way through to Bangkok. My itinerary was Air Canada from Toronto to LA, then China Airlines from LA to Taipei, then Taipei to Bangkok and Thai Airways to K'du. When I checked in in LA the China Airlines dude said he could change my baggage tag to send my bag all the way through to Kathmandu. I said ok to this, thinking it would be nice to not have to worry about my bag, but then he didn't give me a new baggage claim receipt, even though I asked for one, but said it would be fine. When I got to Bangkok they said I didn't have to clear customs, and my bag would be fine, and I could just go straight to my gate. Anyway, I didn't feel good about the whole thing, so I cleared customs and what was waiting for me on the baggage carousel? My bag. So, a nice little moral victory for me to start the trip. I don't know that the moral is, but I'm sure it's a good one.

Now my bag is in storage here in the airport and I'm just killing time. I should be sleeping, but it's 2pm for me, and I'm a little too wired.

Oh, and 14 hour flights suck.

For those of you just tuning into my blog, here's a bit of a recap of what you've missed over the last few months:

I'm going to leaving tomorrow for 3 months. My itinerary is:

Mar. 25 2005 - Leave Toronto
Mar. 27 - Arrive Kathmandu
Mar. 29/30 - Leave Kathmandu for the mountains
Apr. 18/19 - Return to Kathmandu
Apr. 22 - Bangkok
May 15 - Sydney
June 5 - Auckland
June 16 - Nadi, Fiji
June 25 - Leave Nadi
June 26 - Return to Toronto

Something that's been worrying me a lot is the current political situation in Nepal. For the past nine years Maoists insurgents have been waging a civil war against the Nepali government. It's been getting steadily worse, with the 11 000 people killed in the last nine years, most of those in the last 5 years. Maoists now control 80% of the country by area, mainly because most of the country is very remote, and many of the poor people support the anti-government Maoists. On Feb. 1 of this year the King dissolved the government, put the parliament under house arrest and put curbs on freedom of speech.

Since then I've done a lot research, both about life in Nepal for the locals, and for trekkers and tourists. The bottom line is that life is terrible for the locals, but pretty good for the tourists. The government and Maoists are both committing terrible human rights abuses, but both treat the tourists well. The Maoists ask trekkers for a donation, usually of about CA$20, but in any account I've read it's always a peaceful and mostly amicable exchange. The Maoists even give receipts, so if you are asked again, you can prove you already paid.

So, I'm off. I'll update again when I have access, and something to say.

TTFN,

Luke

I knew I was going to forget something in the mass email I just sent out: If you'd like to receive an email whenever I update my website you can subsribe by clicking the 'Subscribe / Unsubscribe' link on the right.

I got in touch with Anil, a nepali guy who's a friend of a friend who I went climbing with last week. He said that he thinks that being in K'du and flying to Lukla and doing the Everest base camp trek should be totally safe. He is currently living in the states (going to Yale) but he's been in contact with his brother in Kathmandu recently.

So that's good. It makes me feel a lot better.

I saw a doctor, had an x-ray and my toe isn't broken. It hurts, and is banged up, but it should heal promptly. My banged up knee is healing nicely too, so it should be ok for when I leave on Friday. I'm going to try to take it easy this week, but nothing too too bad has happened. Usually I'm not this much of a hypochondriac, but I think the fact that I'm leaving so soon is causing me to freak out a bit.

On Thursday night we had our usual ultimate game. At one point I tripped running very fast and slid across the astroturf, removing all the skin from my left knee. It really sucks, but it will heal.

Later that night, at about 3am, my right big to started to throb. About 3 weeks ago I jammed it into the end of my shoe when playing ultimate, and it hurt for a day, and my nail went black, but then it felt fine. This was the same thing again, so I didn't think much of it. By late last night (Friday) my toe still hurt, was swollen, and I couldn't bend it. I think I must have partially broken it the first time, and fully broke it on Thursday.

This really sucks. I can walk on it, but walking faster than about 30% of my usual speed really hurts. And just wearing my hiking boots hurts.

I'm really upset. I've emailed the trekking company to see what they think. There's another trek starting on Apr. 24, I've asked if I could move to that one. We'll see what they say.

I'm moving in about 30 minutes, but after that I'm going to to to emergency and have this looked at.

I was climbing tonight with my friend Chris, and his friend Keith. Keith spent two years living in Nepal, and has a Nepali friend currently living in New York state, who he's going to put me in contact with to get some first hand info on the what's going on in Nepal, or at least in New York state. Also, he gave me some advice about how much to pay for cabs, and where to find a great steak in Kathmandu, which is kind of hard to do since it's the worlds only Hindu kingdom. Keith also gave me some advice on climbing in Thailand. I need a harness for one day in Nepal, but I thought I could just rent one. That kind of worried me, because I don't necessarily trust a third world harness rental, but I wouldn't be falling too hard on it.... but still. Anyway, if there's a good chance I'll be climbing in Thailand I'm going to bring my own harness.

I packed my pack (sans harness) and it weighs about 32 lbs. Really, it's pretty light and comfortable. That included absolutley everything I'm going to bring, so when I take out the close I'll be wearing, and a few things that'll go in my smaller pack, my big pack should be around 30 lbs, which I'm quite happy about.

Is anyone else hoping that my blog will be more interesting once I actually leave the country? I'm not sure anyone cares about my harness, or any of this other stuff.

Oh, Keith also told me how to pronounce 'namaste', which is the Nepali version of aloha. This is good, becasue I wasn't even close. (It's nah-MA-stay, not NAM-aste, if you're interested).

Last night we had a little get together at my place, kind of a farewell party. Not only did a lot of people show up to wish me well, and they baked me a cake/brownies, but they bought me a rather expensive watch/altimeter/heart rate monitor/barometer/thermometer/wrist-top computer. You can check it out here. It tells you your altitude, and keeps track to total altitude gain and loss over a workout. It's got a remote sensor that you strap around your chest that measures heart rate, and transmits data back to the watch wirelessly.

Today I went for a run and did some stairs. Here are some stats:

Total time: 55:06.6
Avg. Heart Rate: 167 beats/min
Max. heart rate: 179 beats/min
Ascent: 416m
Descent: 422m

Pretty sweet, no? The total ascent and descent should be the same, but it's based on the air pressure so if the pressure changes the altitude reading changes a bit. The heart rate monitor is water proof so I can wear it in the pool. Man, I love gadgets. Also, I was looking for a non-descript digital watch for my trip. Even though this is pretty expensive it doesn't look too flashy.

Yeah, thanks very much to everybody who chipped in. Great gift.

There's a site that shows you the path an airplane will take between two airports, the distances, etc. I plugged in the stops for my trip and it came up with this. I'm going to cover 50714 km in the air. Unfortunately, only the Toronot-LA portion gives me points.

MEC let me down. The sleeping bag I ordered that was on back order but was supposed to come in on Feb. 25 won't be here before April. So that one is out. Instead, I bought this one. I think it's way better. It is 900 fill-power down: the highest warmth to weight ratio. It weighs 600g, is rated down to -1°C and rolls up to the size of a grapefruit. I'm pretty excited. Don't ask me how much it cost, though.

I just read a good message board about things in Nepal. People on the board (which is very active with posts up until yesterday) say that things in Kathmandu and Khumbu (were I'll be) are fine, as are all the other tourists spots. They say you should fly from K'du to your destination internally, rather than drive (and I'm doing that) and not trek alone (which I'm not) and you should be fine.

One thing they do say, however, is that Americans are asked for a higher 'donation' than non-americans from the Maoists, and they recommend trying to identify yourself as a non-american if possible. I wasn't planning on getting a Canadian flag patch for my pack, but I might now.

I just bought my tickets for my flights within Austalia. Thankfully, they are e-Tickets. Having to carry around 6 plane tickets for 3 months is going to be a pain in the ass. It wasn't too expensive. 3 flights for a total of about 5500 km were CA$773. Not very cheap, but not too bad either.