Their quiet eyes spoke to me. "Thank
you", they said...when, in fact, I
was the one who should be thanking
them. We took the kids from the
orphanage to a Japanese restaurant
today and we feasted. The behavior
of the children was commendable and
the beauty of the whole situation
had me looking into the future. A
vision of sitting at a large table
with my own offspring.
Alex and Chris were over at the
orphanage this morning taking
individual footage of each child,
getting them ready for school and
walking them to their respective
educational institutions. Awesome.
Prakash dropped a bit of a bomb on
us today, but fortunately we turned
it into a water bomb that nurtured
and flowered new ideas. It seems
that the recent protests regarding
the political status of Tibet by an
American group (and subsequent
arrest of the protesters) has led to
the Chinese government to be less
than keen on hosting people from the
USA. Apparently we are now
unable to take footage and images or
conduct interviews with the people
in the towns of Tibet, since two of
out team members are from the USA.
One of the purposes of this
reconnaissance mission is to meet
the fascinating people of these
remote regions, make personal
connections and to show the
rest of the world the people of
cultures they might otherwise never
be aware of. Being told that we
can't do what we had planned, in
terms of video, led us to formulate
a new plan.
On June 5th...Alex, Chris, Dawa and
Myself will fly to Lukla and connect
with half a dozen (or so) Nepali
porters and begin a trek to
Everest's south side Base Camp.
We'll get a great deal more exercise
on this south side trek than on the
Tibetan trek. That is all good and
we are most pleased about more
activity and less time in vehicles.
We also plan on having our own camps
along the way...rather than staying
at tea houses. 16 days of living
completely outdoors. What could be
better?!
Everest's south side base camp is at
17,500ft(5335m), which is a similar
elevation to Base Camp on the
Everest's north side. We'll be able
to test all our communications gear,
generator, electronics, etc, etc at
altitude. Maybe this is a sign that
we should be pushing for the summit
from the south side in 2008!? Or
maybe I should just do a traverse?!
Time will tell...as it always does.
If you want to compare the different
approaches to climbing Mount
Everest, some really great resources
for information on climbing the
climbing routes on Everest and/or
general information are
www.everestnews.com
. George
Martin at EverestNews.com is really
dedicated to impartial reporting of
things that are happening around
Everest...so there are always good
things to read there.
We head off to Nagarkot in a few
hours. Hopefully we get some nice
clear weather and some spectacular
views. We'll be shooting the
remaining footage for the
www.secretspot.tv Episode 1
podcast...then posting it on June
5th.
I
urge you to take a few minutes to
check it out...=^)
