* * Nepal: Checking off my oldest bucket-list item

I'm in Nepal. In the Himalaya Mountains. I know, right? I'm still pinching myself.

I cannot remember a single place that has been on my bucket list longer. Everest. Annapurna. Kanchenjunga. Nanga Parbat. These are fabled peaks, the highest in the world, and they're here in these mountains.

So when Tom Hammett, my friend the forestry professor I wrote about recently told me about a trip he was organizing and invited me, how could I say no?

Tom has been making frequent trips for 45 years since his first experience with the Peace Corps, sometimes taking students along for study abroad and sometimes going alone to do conservation work. He was motivated for this trip to show friends and members of his extended family the country he'd come to love.

Beyond that, he pieced together a few more days in the hidden kingdom of Bhutan, where our tour is going next. Although he’d extensively traveled the world, it was a place still on his bucket list. After a full day of flights from Dulles Airport via Dubai, we landed in Nepal’s capital of Kathmandu just after dark. To say this was a shock to the senses doesn’t adequately articulate what it means to arrive in this city from the Western world.

Through jet-lagged eyes, I watched our bus weave through insane traffic of trucks, other buses and swarms of motorcycles, on the left side of the road. Even in the dark and cold, many people were out in the streets and in the shops, some standing around pots with fires crackling below chilled hands.

Our hotel was in the city of Bhaktapur, once well away from the heart of Kathmandu, but now engulfed by the swelling metropolis of perhaps 5 million. My sensibilities were shattered by what I saw from the bus window, as seemingly everything I’ve come to understand about an urban environment was different, from the extreme poverty to the stray dogs, the litter, the clothing of the people, and the smells. Oh, the smells, the pungent fires, the excrement of the dogs, pigeons, and whatever, and the food spices.

On our first day of exploration, our tour bus was immediately engulfed in a massive, go nowhere, traffic jam. And thus the day went from there, as we explored various temples, stupas, and other mostly religious shrines in the mixed Buddhist and Hindu nation. I was overwhelmed.

A highlight for me was a drive to the mountaintop of Nagarkot for our first true Himalayan panorama. And of course the fabulous antiquities of Bhaktapur itself, a well-preserved mediaeval village with its vibrant street market, architecture, and a festival of native dance and music in the square.

Still, I longed to be in the mountains! We took a 45 minute flight from Kathmandu to Nepal’s second city of Pokhara and then got on an ancient, high clearance bus for the ride up the mountain to the village of Sikles. The journey was perilous, mostly on a mud road, seldom more than one lane, steep in places, where vehicles like ours vied for access with construction equipment.

Perched on the slope of a ridge spilling from the Annapurna range, Sikles is totally without vehicles, with hundreds of humble shacks splashed between stair-stepped pathways.

Our first day there, several of us took a short but thigh-wrenching hike upwards to an overlook of the expanse of the Annapurnas. Back to our lodge (which, incidentally had no heat whatsoever), a storm front arrived bringing hail, thunder, plunging temperatures, and lots of rain, which continued for 30 hours. We were all cold and wet. I was sure the road would be slicker than a peeled onion in a bowl of yoghurt.

But oh, the next morning’s sunrise made it all worthwhile! A layer of fog sat in the valley below while far above, the massif of Annapurna, with its frosting of newly fallen snow, glistened in the orange sunlight, almost 20,000 feet above our already lofty 6300 feet viewpoint!

Our trip organizers thoughtfully hired three four-wheel drive cars to bring us down, as the bus would likely not have made it. We live for another day!

Back in Pokhara, warm, full, and resting for the next phase of the trip, I’m struck by the warmth of the Nepali people. They habitually greet each other and us with lovely greetings of hands in a prayer position and the word “Namaste,” a universal sign of respect. Especially in the village, technologies are primitive and living conditions are harsh and wretched, yet everyone exudes equanimity, unmoved by hardship, discomfort, or the machinations of the outside word.

Tomorrow, off to the jungle.