Calcutta: visiting a printing workshop

still being worked on ...

Linda wanted to get hand made curtains for our house and for years she has obsessed over a little store we came across in Kolkata.  So when travelling to Asia last year we made a special stop in the city just to go to this shop.  Kolkata is a shocking city to arrive to. Hot, disheveled, congested, we drove under the flyover that recently crashed to the ground killing dozens of people. Linda had booked us at an Air B and B housed in the top floor of an artist who had turned his studio into a small apartment.  The flat had an amazing terrace that had a view over a slum below.  I could stand for seemingly ever staring over the balcony at a universe unfolding below me.  



The streets of the city can be overwhelming.  Leaving Linda in the store I went exploring, and while walking I tripped over the sidewalk and knocked myself quite hard on my head. Quickly I was helped up, sat down, and given a scalding hot cup of chai.  The kindness aside the intensity of the streets, the trees growing out of masonry, the old facades of the crumbling city, the press of people has a unique intensity about it.  Our only respite was to retreat into an icy modern refrigerated mall and watch a bollywood film.  Although not in English, the movie was entirely understandable, with its universal themes of love, marriage, friendship, getting ahead,  and family.  










On our last day in the city the owner of the store and print studio Pria an amazing artist and business person picked us up in a cab and took us to the "factory"where the curtains where going to be produced.  Th photographs here are a testament to the creative and functioning space it is.




Everest

 


This series of photographs were taken while walking to the foot of Mount Everest.  The pictures are influenced by the act, the experience, of walking past the most remarkable vista’s in the world.  They are driven by a combination of awe for the immensity of the towering structures that surround one on the trek, and fascination for the tiniest of details that comprise these landscapes. 


Glaciers are aesthetically charged in particular as massive ice structures made up of endless folds and layers and even more particularly their movement tears away an infinite number of stones and rocks that in turn cover and surround and replace the glaciers movement.  These pictures are a representation of the monumental and minuscule. 



All though these are not all the pictures from trip they represent different phases of the overall experience.  From the trees, greenery, and rushing water below Namche, to the ever-present image of Ama Dablam that contorts itself in ever changing positions as you walk around her, to the glacier fields under Lohtse, and finally peaks at Everest herself


pictures:
1) Lohtse and Everest (behind)
2) Supension bridge at the foot of the climb to Namche
3) Amadablam 
4) Glacier in the Khumbu valley
5) Lohtse and hiker in the late afternoon
6) Everest

I posted traveller's version of the post following after I returned from base camp.  So the reference below http://paultravelling.blogspot.ca/2014/03/kanada-hockee-champions.html  is the original telling.


Saturday, March 15, 2014

"Kanada ... hockee champions"



Everest poking its peak out from behind Lohtse. View from Kala Patther.


This blog entry was imagined as the pictorial climax of my 6 months.  I took photos each step of the way to record our legendary ascent to the highest place in the world.  Then at base camp, at -15 degrees and 5400 m the SD card failed. So I will annotate a truncated version of the events.
waiting and waiting and waiting
Day 1-3: The airport.  First flight into Lukla is gold, we were on the second flight, and Katmandu fogged over and the flight was cancelled. Day 2 we got to the runway, sunny weather, step onto the plane, the pilots step off, share a smoke, and get into a truck and drive away.  Bad sign.  We spend the rest of the day in the airport, at 4 the flight is cancelled.  Day 3, we are determined to fly somewhere, Lukla sure, but if by 10am we are not in the air, refund, and fly to some other part of Nepal.  We get a boarding pass at 8, miracle, as we are only booked for 11, wait in the departure lounge (which smells of urine, you can imagine how intense that smell was at 3 pm the previous day) we pass through the gate, onto the little bus that lurches toward the plane, onto the runway, get on the plane, the pilot starts the engine we taxi, takeoff, but I know only when you land is a trip to Lukla real.

Landing in the most dangerous airport in the world is an experience in itself.  You drop over a ridge, wind buffeting the small plane, the runway appears below, looking to be vertical and very short. The plane lands hard, brakes are applied, and very quickly a rock wall appears in front of the plane, which marks the end on the runway.  The plane pulls into a small parking area, passengers are whisked off ,one propeller still turning luggage tossed off and then on, 12 new passengers are quickly ushered on, and the plane leaves within 5 minutes.  Takeoff is a terrifying descent down the short tarmac and liftoff as the ground descends into a gorge and the plane begins a precipitous ascent to scale the nearby mountain range. 
Mani Walls and Buddhist script carved onto rock slates
A dog followed us for the first day
view from one of the 6 suspension bridges
Finally in the Himalayas we look for a porter.  We decided to forgo the travel companies and hire a guide porter directly. The men that confront us at the airport are mangy and shifty, not like the clear faced, nice men that helped the other trekkers at the airport, the ones vetted by the companies that hire them. We walk across the one street of Lukla with its dirty hotels and take safe haven at a tea house, and then I walked alone without my bag, and successfully navigate finding a reliable guide for the trip. (I asked some nonchalant men sitting in the sun and guickly a 12 year old boy appeared, I have to decline, and say I am looking for someone your age, and I am introduced to an experienced guide, Pemba, phew).


Walking is the best part of the trek and as we walk out of Lukla the green mountains, villages, river, and small gardens quickly shake off he grime of three days at the airport.  

Day 5-6: Walking requires crossing 6 suspension bridges as you crisscross the milky blue river below and climb 600 m into the base of treks into the Everest region, Namche Bazaar sitting at 3500m.


I get sick.  I have had a fever and a head cold for 4 or 5 days, probably exasperated from sitting in the airport, but at altitude with no heat, snow, and when the pipes all freeze, the illness explodes into a fever of 102, coupled with shakes.  (brushing my teeth is like using an electric toothbrush)  Luckily the worst of the illness happens on a rest day, a day to acclimatize to the altitude, and I get anti-biotics, pain-killers, cold tablets, throat syrup to guzzle and which soon freezes, and try to get better.

Day 7: Walking to Tengeboche a monastery at 4000m. Massive mountains newly covered in snow surrounds one as you walk, following a ridge, then descend to the river, then again climb 500m to the monastery. We decide to descend a little lower to Deboche as this section of the trail is covered in ice and the descent at 4pm will be less treacherous then a descent at 8 am. 

We made it this far, but the most dangerous moment awaits us. Sharing one squat toilet with 20 other people, the floor completely covered in a one inch layer of ice.  (oh, I broke my hip falling into the pit of the squat toilet I need a helicopter lift back)

Day 8 and 9: Walk to Dingboche.  Following the icy track down form Daboche you emerge at the river and cross the bridge looking up the valley and Amadablam that looks like a mirage as the sun sits behind it and it appears only faintly sitting in the sky.  You climb from the river to Pengboche and make your way up the valley eventually climbing to Dingboche at 4400m. On the acclimatization day the views of the two valleys emerging are fantastic Amadablam on one side Taboche Peak on the other. 

Day 10: We walk two days in one. We follow the ridge to Dughla, climb the pass, cross the memorials of those who died on Everest, and enter into what is now the Khumbu Valley. A straight valley greets us, and we though the snow following the trail past Laboche towards Gorapshep.  The end of the day is a circuitous traverse of the ridge above the glacier, but you are greeted with remarkable views of the entire valley and the peaks of Nuptse, and Lohtse. 


Gorapshep is cold, everyone circles the stove until the heat disappears and you have to spend a long, cold night in your bag, tossing and turning and peeing at 5100m.  
the stove in the middle of a lodge, this one in Daboche
In the morning we climb Kala Patthar to be at the top of the valley and to get the best views of Everest and base camp below. 

This is what makes the entire trip worth it, the cold, the altitude, the 7 hours of walking, the broken nails on your big toes, the frozen squat toilets, the loss of appetite, no vegetables, the 12 hours a night in your sleeping bag, it is all for the view.  To be on the top of the world to see a landscape that can only exist in one place. Amazing, beautiful, spectacular, and in one case the word awesome seems completely appropriate.
view down the Khumbu iceflow


Lohtse and Everest





We return after breakfast back tracking past Laboche, to Dughla, and down towards Periche (a wind tunnel that looks like a town from a western movie, one street, a few lodges, some corals just out of town, and a bar or two.) We walk over the Periche pass and down to Oches having dropped 1500m in the afternoon.  From Oches we descend the following day to Namche, and from their the next day we make it to Lukla, where we spend the night in a dark town, cold lodge, and dank room and pray we can get a flight out of the town the next day.  At this point you just want to get  hot shower, a salad, and a good night sleep.
"Kanada ... hockey champions, yeahh!!"