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Nepal to Australia: It’s Time For Friends
Leaving Nepal was not an easy thing to do. After all, we had volunteered with the Nepal Volunteers Council, Trekked the Annapurna Circuit, Kayaked Lake Phewa and caught up on lost time in Pokhara, Launched the OnlyABuck: Notebooks for Nepal Campaign, stretched, meditated and cleansed at Sadhana Yoga Ashram, and Cared for Elephants in Chitwan. Considering our dream list going in, we had more than accomplished our goals but knew deep down we would be returning. OnlyaBuck™: Free Health Clinic, anyone? (It’s OnlyaBuck™ now by the way…long story.)
Hong Kong Sickboy
Our intention was to fly from Kathmandu to Hong Kong and spend a few days with my old friend from high school (and Penn State), Chi Tsang. Arriving in Hong Kong, we were both ill and completely wiped from, well, travel we guess. We just needed rest and weren’t in top form. We emailed Chi and broke the bad news, switched our flight to Sydney (for free, thanks OneWorld!) and after 40 hours of travel, landed in Australia’s beautiful city that we had left behind in 2008. This time, however, we had some friends from San Francisco waiting, Chris Piro and Claire Fabricante, and were hell bent on arriving early, and giving them a surprise. Yes, I am my father’s son.
Checking into our hostel, we knocked on Chris and Claire’s door and as expected, they were out and about exploring. This gave us the perfect opportunity to dive head first into our pillows, get caught up on some
Sydney Food Fest Under Jack O'Randa Trees
quality sleep and try to shake the bug. Nine hours later, we felt great, left a note for Chris and Claire to meet us at the Sydney Food Festival in nearby Hyde Park and most importantly, to bring wine.
The food festival was hopping, and would ultimately begin our foray into the food scene of Australia. From $2 salmon and avocado sushi rolls to $20 all you can eat seafood smorgasbords, we arrived with one mission in Australia: eat what we missed most and eat well. And boy, we were hungry! We opted for steamed duck and BBQ pork buns and roasted chicken and sage pot stickers. Laughing at ourselves for selecting Asian as our first meal after having just left Asia, we sprawled out, enjoyed the meal and cracked into some goon, Oceania’s word for bagged wine. The food was delicious, albeit overpriced, but we’ve become experts in finding value on any menu worldwide. And we realized, just like the USA, Asian food IS part of the Australian food culture. Unless you’re from Europe, Asia, or Africa, we are all just immigrants after all, right?
Yoga Ashram and How To Complete an Organic Gastro Cleanse
Erin Shows the Way!
Yoga? Check. Meditation? Check. Organic Gastro-intestinal Cleanse? Um, check. Yup, we did it all during our 6 day/6 night stay at a yoga ashram and we’re still standing with a few good stories to tell, too. My in-laws are going to get the biggest kick out of this one, that’s for sure. So, Rick and Deb, this one’s for you…
Thanks to generous wedding gifts, Erin and I were able to “check in” to Sadhana Yoga Ashram in Pokhara, Nepal. Perched on the side of a mountain, the 5-story orange, purple and white behemoth is pretty hard to miss, even from town center. With killer views of Phewa Lake below and delicious organic vegetarian cuisine, it felt like we were at a serious health retreat. After the good, healthy living with loads of exercise we had during the Annapurna Circuit trek, we had slipped into some well-deserved indulgences. Comfort food, room service, beer o’clocks and whiskey combined with a steady diet of loafing around and getting caught up on internet became part of the daily repertoire in Pokhara. It was time to clean up our act again and we intended to do just one thing while at Sadhana — get healthy.
The Daily Schedule
5:30 – Wake Up to Gong (so cool)
6:00 – Pre-meditation Practices
6:15 – Morning Meditation
7:00 – Tea Time
7:20 – Yogic Cleansing (Neti Pot)
7:30 – Morning Yoga
8:30 – Morning Walk
Group Shot During Morning Walk
9:45 – Breakfast
10:00 – Steam or Mud Bath
Schneids and JV Gettin' Dirty
12:00 – Pre-meditation Practices
12:15 – Afternoon Meditation
1:00 – Lunch
3:30 – Karma Yoga (Chores)
4:00 – Tea
4:30 – Chanting
5:30 – Evening Yoga
6:45 – Dinner
8:00 – Bedtime
Day 1 is the Toughest and Our Experience
The Annapurna Circuit: The Ultimate How-To for the Epic Trail
The Trail
The Annapurna Circuit has been ranked one of the world’s best treks for countless years and for a good reason; it’s absolutely, 100%, jaw-droppingly amazing. And frankly, that’s putting it lightly. With 26,000-feet-plus peaks, the world’s deepest gorge, the world’s highest lake, and the world’s longest pass, the trail has it all and then some. At times you feel like every mountain range in the world has
On the Way to Tilicho Lake
been crammed here until you reach elevations high enough where you know you could only be in the Himalayas. Originally, when the area opened to tourists in the 70s, the circuit took 21 days, starting and ending in Pokhara. These days, with the abundance of roads (4×4, unpaved, single lane) being built over parts of the existing trail to accommodate trade amongst villages along the way, hikers are much more likely to take a bus for certain sections rather than walk and be passed by vehicles all day. This means the trail can be knocked out in a maximum of 16 days. We did it in 10 and added 3 more days halfway through for a highly recommended side-trip to Tilicho Lake, the highest lake in the world, for a total of 13 days on-trail.
Erin and I combined forces to write this, with inserts from our travel journal to never forget the magic we felt and saw each and every day, and partly as a practical guide for all intrepid travelers who may want to follow in our footsteps and may need honest, objective, budget-minded advice on how to plan for what will definitely become a highlight of any trip. Read the rest of this entry
Update to OnlyABuck: Nepal Notebook Campaign
Education is the Answer in Nepal
A quick update on our OnlyABuck™: Nepal Notebook Campaign. We’re just over 44% to our goal of $4,200! This money will enable 30 students in Nepal who have applied for need-based scholarships to attend school for one year. We are working together with the Nepal Volunteers Council to create a sustainable platform to ensure that those students selected will never miss a day of school again; not this year, not ever. We are not alone in believing that education is the answer for Nepal as it is the only way to break the cycle that currently exists.
Healthcare in Nepal: Volunteering at Bageshwari Hospital in Kathmandu
Bageshwari Hospital
While Erin was teaching during the morning hours I would hop on the packed local bus everyday to shortly arrive at Bageshwari Hospital for four to seven hours of volunteering. The hospital is a two-story “L” shaped brick building on the dusty, heavily-used road leading to central Kathmandu, serving a predominantly poor community and emergencies that needed immediate attention. It contains a ward with three beds, an out-patient room, a pharmacy located street-side, an ER, and an x-ray lab. It was eerily reminiscent of the very hospital I stayed in 3.5 years ago in India but much, much (much) cleaner.To be honest, once there, I mostly chatted with the doctors, comparing and contrasting the multitude of differences between our respective healthcare systems, and having them answer my questions about physiology and diagnoses. While I believe every healthcare system is riddled with problems, this experience strengthened my convictions that healthcare in the U.S., despite all of its alleged flaws, is in really, really good shape. I’m proud to say, “Hey USA, we’ve got it gooooooood!” Read the rest of this entry
The Mad Dash to Kathmandu
“Jay, wake up! It’s 8:00!”
“What, huh, what does that mean?”
“Wake up! It means our flight leaves in 55 minutes!”
I immediately reached for my phone to double-check the hour. After all, we have been having difficulties keeping time, the iPhone getting mixed up among time zones. The time was correct.
“How did this happen? We set two alarms,” I said. Both for 5:30 am. Mine never rang and Erin’s we somehow didn’t hear. Our flight was in less than an hour, the airport was 50 minutes away, and now we were leaving during Bangkok rush hour.
“We have to go for it,” Erin hurriedly said, stuffing things into her backpack. “Maybe they can get us on the next flight?”
Traveler Profile: Steve McGrath
Every so often in your travels, you come across one of those travelers that just knocks your socks off. They’ve been to the most obscure places in the world and have typically done it the hard way–by boat or overland. Their stories are jaw-dropping and inspirational and leave you thirsty for more. Steve is that traveler. We met Steve McGrath while preparing for our wedding in Sayulita and were fortunate to spend several weeks with him (and another traveler Cat, who will hopefully be featured here soon too.) Over some fresh fruit-smoothies in Steve’s “penthouse-by-the sea,” he humbly had us reeling for more when he said the following things: “I’ve traveled for 11 of the last 20 years” and “I went from Vancouver to Hong Kong starting with $900.” That’s $900 Canadian, folks…about $600 buck-a-roos at the time!
Steve McGrath
Monks, Bodhi Tree, The Soup Prayer, and Teaching English– Luang Prabang, Laos
How can some people say, that there is just one way? – Mason Jennings
Sisavangvong by Night
One morning in Luang Prabang, Erin and I rose early to witness the alms collection of over 300 Buddhist Monks. Once off of our hotel’s street, a quiet side street with guesthouses and local families, we were immediately asked by enterprising women if we’d like to buy rice for the monks. We passed with as much politeness as we could muster at this hour, and moved on. Read the rest of this entry
Volunteering with the Free Burma Rangers
While Erin was learning Thai Massage in Chiang Mai, I spent my days volunteering in the medical office of the Free Burma Rangers (and was Erin’s practice “dummy” by night…rough, I know.) Erin’s friend Kate, an expat teacher living in Chiang Mai for the past 6 years, invited us to a BBQ during our first day in town. There, amongst others, we met an Aussie named Mon who introduced us to her mission with the Free Burma Rangers. My ears perked up upon hearing of the atrocities taking place on Thailand’s western border and immediately expressed interest in helping out while in town. Two days later, after researching the situation on the internet to ensure my comfort level, I joined the team for their Monday meeting and agreed to spend 5-7 hours per day for the remainder of the week. Day 1, with ample amounts of coffee in tow, was spent helping with bookkeeping (ah, bookkeeping, how I love thee so), while the rest of the week was spent packing medical bags, organizing supplies and creating manifests for everything which would be going “in,” a term they use to mean “Inside Burma.” There is inherent risk and things could go–and have gone– terribly wrong, with villages being attacked, burned and pillaged by the Burma Army while the FBR are there. Read the rest of this entry
Traveler Profile: Richard Gordon
This is an interview with Richard Gordon in El Nido, Philippines that took place at The Alternative Hotel. Richard is a well-seasoned traveler and has good bits to share.
Richard Gordon in his finest Traveler Chic
Name: Richard Gordon
Nationality: British
Sign: Scorpio
Sex: Male
Single/Married: Single
Where are you now?
El Nido, Philippines
Where are you off to next?
Indonesia
