We were prepared for 24 days in the sheltered Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan, 17 days crossing the Himalayas on one of the world’s toughest trekking routes, and about 2 weeks with no connection to the outside world beyond an emergency SAT phone...but the nature of...
From the 10th-15th centuries, Bhutan was a land conducive to spiritual treasure-hunting. Treasure-finders, known as tertons, were generally monks with spiritual powers that allowed them to see and bring forth treasures including ritual objects and sacred texts. The...
Around Paro, the capital Thimphu, and surrounding areas, we can’t pass a temple without my wanting to explore it. I’m gathering stories and looking for interesting out-of-way places to build into future trips...and Bhutan does not disappoint. Dark rooms are...
Bhutan is everything I love about trekking and travel. Endless expanses of alpine wilderness are dotted with high altitude flowers and sacred lakes, and yak herders roam the high country. In the valleys, richly painted monasteries are full of red-robed monks...
Wow. That's what I said nearly every day in Patagonia…"Wow!" Patagonia is an epic landscape, ripe with adventure. What was once the desolate and inhospitable end-of-known-land, filling the hearts of early explorers with trepidation, is today a wonderland of glaciers,...
By horse, by jeep, by plane, and by feet…halfway around this wild and beautiful earth, deep into the Himalayas, and then back again. Just in time to celebrate Dasain in Nepal before catching a flight. Hello sweet San Francisco! Home. Friends Parshu and...
Upper Mustang is mostly a high altitude desert--an expansive, endless sea of land at roughly 12,000 feet. Dendritic canyons fan out across miles. Plateaus with scrub brush end abruptly in fluted columns eroded by weather and time. Caves are everywhere--some ancient...
The culture of Mustang revealed itself not only in monasteries and spiritual places, but also in women weaving, in men galloping horses across the plateau, in friendly faces peeking out doorways and windows, in children saying "Namaste!" on their way home from school....
Early one morning in Lo Manthang, the walled fortress-like capital of Mustang, we visit the monastery to receive blessing from an old monk. He has spent more than 40 years in the monastery and is master of an ancient Tantric rite, one that derives directly from the...
Once part of western Tibet and later subsumed by Nepal, Mustang is an ancient kingdom on the cusp of change. Tantric Buddhism still thrives, yet the first coffee shops have sprung up. Most people are busy with the grain harvest, but many young people have left the...
Day in Pokhara: trek group with Ngawang, a Tibetan guerrilla fighter based in Mustang in the 1960's, and his son Oangdi, our local guide. Our journey began in Pokhara, a lakeside town with sweeping views of the Annapurna range, where we had the rare opportunity to...
Patan palace square with temples from the 16th-18th century. Newari people are the centuries-old artists of the Kathmandu Valley, and our tour in Kathmandu takes an inside look at the old kingdom of Patan and some of its world-famous artisans. The pagoda temples of...