food

Adventures in Nepal XI, Into the Sky, Part II

This is my favorite poem about flying:

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, –– and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of –– wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air…
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark or even eagle flew ––
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

–– John Gillespie Magee, Jr., “High Flight.”

Emma and Elizabeth’s paragliding session lasted for about 30 minutes.

What a rush!

The girls chilled for a while by the lake…

…and then took the shuttle van…

…back to the paragliding company’s shop in Pokhara to get the flight pics transferred from the pilots’ GoPros to their own devices.

Then back to Paljorling Camp, where they reviewed their image files over lunch in a Tibetan restaurant.

After the meal, they visited a camp artisan who weaves colorful jewelry, keychains and other trinkets for the tourist trade.

They bought bracelets for themselves and small gifts for friends and coworkers back home.

Here is an interesting decoration over a doorway in the camp.

Hello, picturesque camp sheep!


Much more to come!

Categories: Animals, Artwork, food, Friends, Holidays, kids, Life, Nepal, Poetry, Travel | Tags: , | Leave a comment

Adventures in Nepal, Part X: On the Mountaintop

Shanti Stupa consists of two levels.

The upper level features depictions of the Buddha at various stages of life.

The middle veranda offers spectacular views of Pokhara and the surrounding countryside.


In the center of the next photo, a narrow dirt road winds up the mountain. Visitors to the World Peace Pagoda who are unwilling or unable to climb a gazillion stairs have the option of driving up.

At the base of the pagoda, there are other patios at different levels.

In the shade of a temple tree, Emma and Elizabeth pause for a healthful repast…

…and then continue exploring the mountaintop.

What a colorful country!

Zen Emma is zen.

Smol Buddha.

“Should we explore over there?”

“Look at all those stairs.”

“Yeah…uh..maybe we shouldn’t disturb that guy trying to meditate.”

“Yeah, good point.”

And at last they headed back down the mountain in the golden light of afternoon.

To be continued!

Categories: food, Friends, Holidays, kids, Life, Nepal, Travel | Tags: | Leave a comment

Adventures in Nepal, Part VI: Paljorling Camp

Emma and Elizabeth stayed with Sabita and Bee Striit from January 15th to the 18th, and then stayed with friends at the Tibetan refugee camp from the 19th to the 28th.

Paljorling camp has a beautiful monastery.

After the girls had settled in, they went into town to get some lunch.

Adorable Emma is adorable.

Apparently the reason why the power lines are such a clusterfuck in Nepal is because when one stops working, they just string a new one up to bypass it instead of searching out the old one and repairing it. Crazy.

This handsome fellow is decorated for a local festival. We can’t find any info on what festival it was, but our best guess is that it was a local version of Kukur Tihar, the Day of the Dog.

Or, as Emma said, “It coulda been a temple dog that had a birthday, for all I know.”

To be continued!

Categories: Animals, Celebrations, Dogs, Family, food, Friends, Holidays, kids, Life, Nepal, Travel | Tags: | Leave a comment

Adventures in Nepal, Part II: The Road to Pokhara

While I wait for Elizabeth to sort out more favorite photos from the 100 bajillion or so she brought back, here are more impressions from the bus ride from Kathmandu to Pokhara.

One thing that struck Elizabeth about Nepalese culture is that there are corporate logos literally everywhere. She got the impression that many of them aren’t even paid advertising, people just like the designs and paint them on their stuff. One example was this small Shiva shrine, which had Castrol Oil logos on the sides and back:

Another thing was the haphazard way structures there are built anywhere they can be squeezed in, seemingly out of whatever materials are on hand.

Tata freight trucks. Like everything else about Nepal, they are bright and colorful.

Breakfast smoothie on a pit stop.

Snowy Annapurna Massif in the far background, the section of the Himalayas that borders Nepal.

Adorable Elizabeth is adorable.

And finally, they arrived at the home of family friends, Sabita and her son Bee Striit.

By happy coincidence, they arrived on Emma’s 23rd birthday! Sabita was ready with a beautiful Ganesha cake and traditional trimmings.

What a warm and gracious welcome!

More to come!

Categories: Birthdays, Celebrations, Family, food, Friends, Holidays, kids, Life, Love, Nepal, Travel | 2 Comments

Palo Duro Canyon State Park and Other Stories, Part II

Read Part I here!

We stepped out of our tent the next morning into a world of impossible colors. Nature seriously cranked the saturation up to 11 that day. The sky was so intensely blue that the horizons looked like bad photoshops.

This “hoodoo” is one of the first notable rock formations you see on the iconic Lighthouse Trail. To me it looks like a muppet wearing sunglasses:

Lighthouse is an easier and more pleasant hike than Rock Garden, and has a much better payoff at the end.

The mapped trail officially ends at a small clearing with a picnic table and a bike rack, some distance from the eponymous rock formation. From there, a few desire paths lead up from the clearing to the Lighthouse itself. This time we had accounted for the dry desert air and brought extra water, so we chose a path and kept climbing. This ended up being my favorite part of the whole trip.

You can go a bit higher here and get some great views of the canyon.

When we were ready to go back down we took a different, more direct path than the one we had come up on.

We reconnected with Lighthouse trail at the clearing and backtracked to the trailhead.

The only thing left on our Palo Duro to-do list was the Cave.

It’s not deep, but it’s a world of fun to climb around on.

Once we’d worn ourselves out at the Cave, we treated ourselves to a surprisingly fresh and tasty supper of burgers, fries, onion rings and root beer floats at the park Trading Post. Then we returned to our campsite and called it a day.

We woke up early the next morning, broke camp…

…and drove back up into the flatlands.

On the way home we got to see all the scenery that we had missed during our night-time drive out to the canyon. Still mostly just corn, cotton, cows and wind turbines, though. Our next home has to have mountains. We are not flatland people.

Since I’m apparently blogging again, I might post a few of my favorite Austin pics from the past year. Or maybe not; this might be my last post for another year, who knows. I’ll leave you with a few lines from Cohen’s “Anthem,” which is basically my theme song these days:

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in

That’s how the light gets in.

Categories: A Plethora of Parks, Animals, environment, Family, food, Holidays, kids, Life, Road trip, Travel, Weather, Wildlife | Tags: , | Leave a comment

Blog at WordPress.com.