Nepal FINAL CHAPTER: Departures

Daniel 17 Comments

Wow! One year and 111 chapters later, I’m done with this project!! What a ride. Thanks everyone for coming along with me on this journey. I’ve appreciated each and every reader more than you can know. I’ll drop some more in-depth thoughts about the process and what’s next for me next week, but for now, just enjoy the closing chapter of this story.

And if you’re new here, I guess you can read the whole story now, start to finish, right here.

**

I awoke early on my final day in Nepal.

Some animal instinct warned me of impending change.

Sunlight was streaming onto my pallet-like bed in my room at the Annapurna Guesthouse. Dust shimmered in the sunbeam, leading the air an ethereal solidity. It looked like I could reach across the room and pluck the sunbeam straight out of the sky. It was a strangely beautiful sight.

Dust was inescapable in this city. Already, after only two days back in Kathmandu, my cough had come back.  It would linger with me long after I returned home, a half-welcome reminder the damages wandering could inflict on a person.

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Nepal 110: Fuck the Money

Daniel 6 Comments

I bussed back to Kathmandu.

I returned to the Annapurna Guesthouse, which was just as empty. The owner had kept my sneakers for me. When I asked, he smiled from behind the reception desk, opened a low drawer, and handed them to me, wrapped up in a blue plastic bag.

I would be a little sad to be leaving my blue ‘North Face’ hiking boots here in Kathmandu. We had some memories now, they and I. But, since I had worked so hard to negotiate a rental deal on them here in Kathmandu, I thought I should at least return the boots and reclaim my $30. That money could buy souvenirs for everyone back home.

I swapped the boots for my sneakers and struck back out into the maze-like streets of Thamel.

I had written two sentences of directions on the back of my rental receipt, but these proved to be woefully inadequate. I wandered the streets of Thamel for two hours, looking for the shop from which I had rented the boots. All the trekking outfitters looked the same, and none of them would admit to renting me a pair of hiking boots. Once, I was pretty sure I had found the correct shop, but the woman I had made the agreement with wasn’t there. The young Nepali men minding the shop said no, absolutely not, they didn’t rent boots.

That was as close as I got.

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Nepal 109: Goodbye to Lin

Daniel 2 Comments

Linjon and I descended down the other side of the mountain from the Stupa. We had been told there was a waterfall to see, and truth was, really, we were both too cheap to pay for the water taxi back to Lakeside.

We walked for a long time, talking all the while. We saw the falls, saw a cave, and touched a more local side of Pokhara. By the time we returned to Lakeside, hours later, we were both sun-stricken and exhausted. But, in some way, we knew each well.

Travel friendships can be like that, sometimes.

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Permaculture in Panama

Daniel 12 Comments
Habla Ya Spanish School Bocas Del Toro

I don’t know how to slaughter an animal. I don’t know which plants are edible and which will kill me. I don’t know much about gardening. Heck, I’m a barely competent chef. I eat out more than I’d like to admit.

Growing up as a kid in the suburban U.S., if I wanted something, the solution was always to buy it. If we wanted food, we bought it. If we wanted furniture, we bought it. If we needed a service provided — oil changed in our cars, say — we bought it. And usually, whatever it was, we threw it away soon after. I knew no other way of life.

Capitalism, eh?

That is not how they’re living here at Habla Ya Spanish School in Panama.

Panama is blessed with an incredibly lush climate, where things grow like mad. The seas teem with life, trees practically sprout out of the asphalt, and rain falls frequently. Here, the climate is basically perfect for sustainability. And yet, still, many multinational corporations have done quite well in convincing people here that they need to buy things.

But here in Bocas Del Toro, Habla Ya Spanish School is pushing back on that idea, bit by bit. Check out some of the cool sustainability and community building efforts they’ve got under way here in this tropical paradise:

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Nepal 108: The Stupa

Daniel 17 Comments
The Stupa in Pokhara, Nepal

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid-in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming: “Wow! What a ride!”

—Hunter S. Thompson

The day after the interview, I got the email I knew was coming: After further consideration and review of your C.V., we have decided not to… blah, blah, blah.

I wasn’t sure if I should be relieved or devastated.

I didn’t feel much either way.

I had known I was not getting the job.

I knew I didn’t have the energy to remain abroad much longer. I was thoroughly used-up and totally worn-out. All that remained was to skid across the finish line: a bus to Kathmandu, then a flight home.

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