I’ve had some very interesting wildlife experiences in my lifetime. I’ve seen dozens of giant Nile crocodiles basking on the shores of Kenya’s Lake Turkana; got way too up close and personal with a few poisonous snakes; and had a few nervous encounters with black bears and a young grizzly in Canada’s Jasper National Park. I’ve watched lions stalking game, feeding on a fresh kill and even having sex in front of my young children as I blushed, speechless. I…
I rolled out of bed a little before 4 a.m., feeling kind of woozy after a short night with very little sleep in a Nepali tea house in Thorung Phedi, better known as High Camp, at 4,746 metres (15,572 feet). It was Halloween, Oct. 31, 2008, but I was not thinking about tricks or treats, or wearing a goofy costume. I slapped some cold water on my face, was careful not to wake my temporary roommate, got dressed, hefted my…
There are some adventurous moments that intrepid travellers occasionally experience which are seared into their memory forever. Moments so exotic, so far removed from their day-to-day life back home, that even decades later those memories seem to jump off the page as if they were written in italics. Chasing such experiences is like an addictive drug for hard-core backpackers, which I certainly was in my younger and not-so-young-anymore days. The episode I am thinking about occurred in January, 1982, while…
When I travel in the developing world I pretty much jump at every tantalizing and slightly crazy opportunity that pops up. Cross the Sahara Desert on the back of local trucks in 1972? Hell yes! Ride the broken-down barge up the mighty Congo River in 1982? Absolutely! Climb up to and over the spectacular 5,540 meter (18,176 foot) Kongma La mountain pass in 2014 instead of taking the easier and less interesting route on the way to Everest Base Camp?…
I loved long distance hitchhiking. It was free, it was fun, and I indulged in it often during the golden years of thumbing, 1968 to 1972, when a lot of ordinary folks hitchhiked and a lot of ordinary folks picked them up. I met many interesting and eccentric people that way and had some wonderful adventures on the road. I had no idea who would pick me up, when a ride would come, or what surprising experience was around the…
The deputy sheriff of Vega, Texas, chewed heartily on a toothpick, his feet up on his desk as he perused a paperback copy of Perry Mason’s The Case of the Rolling Bones. I guess it was a slow day in the justice business. I sat in a chair across from him, fresh from a night in the local jail. Somehow a pleasant jaunt across the American southwest had turned into a Coen Brothers film. It all started innocently enough when…
It was the day of the juga. My nearly two-week trek in the Langtang, Gosainkunda and Helambu regions of central Nepal with my delightful and unflappable 21-year-old guide-porter, Pempa Tamang, was mostly fabulous fun, though very hard work because we walked up and down the hills like happy maniacs. With the good must come the bad, unfortunately, and the morning of September 24, 2014, the next to last day of our journey, quickly turned into a Third World horror film…