the patient seoul

right!

so i am presently halfway through my trip home. or, if you want to look at it another way, the completion of my trip around the world, which started last year and had a bit of a layover in Nepal. so far i've been travelling for roughly 22 hours, and i still haven't made the big jump over the Pacific. mostly it's been long layovers first in Bangkok and now a ten hour wait here in Seoul.
interestingly enough, Burgle is actually flying back in the opposite direction. we'll be landing in Vancouver about half and hour apart. Nepal really is on the other side of the world if you live on the West Coast, She's flying Kathmandu-Muscat-London-Vancouver, and I'm going Kathmandu-Bangkok-Seoul-Vancouver... i guess right about now Burgs is doing some word puzzle during her Muscat layover.

according to my schedule, i should actually be arriving in the Nanaimo airport in, hmm, one hour. the international date line is a mysterious, magical thing.

anyway, that's about it. for a while in bangkok it looked like my luggage was going on vacation without me, but a team of staff finally tracked them down and apparently they've been corralled into following me on to vancouver. or at least i have the stickers to show that's what they're doing.

oh yeah, and you know what sucks? that my birthday is going to be forever known as the day before tom and katie's wedding day. what this means is that in the future, when the Scientologists have taken control, my bday will be known at Tomkat Knot Eve. it will be a happy day, when wide-eyed recruits will gush happy, memorized platitudes about the alien saviour's parents. could be worse.

... and back again

Ok so, I haven't put up a post in a while since things have been fairly hectic down here for the last month and a bit. Me sister came down last month (not long after Owen left) and it's been great.

So Burgs and I went off and did the Annapurna Circuit, which is another good reason for why I've been incommunicado: for about three weeks I had a grand total of twenty minutes of internet access + television + video game time. It was tough, I'll admit. For a while I was pale and shaky but I came through the other side a changed man.

The circuit was absolutely breathtaking. Pisang and Manang were like cities out of Lord of The Rings, y'know, the capitol of the riders of Rohan: windswept, low rooftopped houses, flags fluttering everywhere, all perched on the side of a mountain.

Being able to stammer my way through Nepali, I got us into a few adventures: one day we walked with these sweet little girls, one of them carrying a massive basket of mushrooms using a nylon strap across her head. They rolled up some of the abundant marijuanna growing along the trail and tried to sell us 'charras' (hash). Very sweet.

At Pisang I got in trouble from some of the locals for taking their pictures as they were working in the fields. I apoligized to them and ended up earning forgiveness by joining them in beating the chaff from the wheat.

Anyway, after the slog through Thorung La (5416 meters!) we met up with Ciara and Claire in Jomson. So many incredible cities- Kagbeni, one of the outpost cities for the ancient salt trade out of Tibet. Muktinath with its shrine and eternal flame. Tatopani with its fantastic hot springs for sore bones after two weeks of trekking.

Definitely the highlight was getting invited to the evening puja with some Buddhist nuns in Muktinath. Burgs and I had to sit crosslegged for an hour and a half as they read from their prayer books and played their instruments (big drums, enormous horns, conch shells, etc). It was really an amazing thing to sit in on. For the first half the entire scene was hypnotic, trance inducing. By the second half, however, all I could think was 'it's be really nice to stretch my legs about now'.

Anyway, back in dirty, noisy ol' Kathmandu now. In about a week I'm off for the west coast once again! yikes!