This is not me but my friend Paul Keller. He has been living in China for the past 3 years working for Moan.

Enjoy.

Back from the mountain. Still have all ten fingers and toes, even.

Maybe a good thing you didn’t travel the 9,000 miles for the climb-- we were turned back by ice at about 17,000 feet and couldn’t summit. Sure, still a spectacular experience, but I’ve got to admit it’s a little disheartening to train for months, travel all that way to Tibet, then only make it about 2/3 of the way up the mountain. I was definitely feeling the altitude and exertion when the guides told us we had to go back down, so it wasn’t like I argued a whole lot. The head Sherpa pokes his head in our tent a little after dawn and he’s like: “well, two of our guys made it to the top yesterday… but they don’t think you will.”

“Eh… OK… “

I guess the recent snow and high daytime temperatures turned the last portion of the climb into a treacherous 3-hour hike along an exposed ridge… followed by a 300-meter vertical ice climb. I was a little puzzled because we had all the gear-- crampons, ice screws, axes, full harness. When I asked about it, the one sherpa just kind of smiled and said something like… “rookie”. I never realized that there were differences between crampons and ICE crampons… ice axes and ice CLIMBING axes.

After we came back down, though, the guide school did set us up with a Land Cruiser and this Joe-Cool-Tibetan driver-dude to tour around Tibet. We went quite a ways down the “Friendship Highway” that joins Tibet and Nepal. Everything involving Nepal seems to have “Friendship” in the title somewhere, like China is hyper-sensitive to point out that they’re not at war with the Nepalese.

So my friend Chris and I went through some Tibetan towns, saw the home of the Dali Lama and the home of the Penchant Lama, lot’s of monasteries… and in general tried to avoid any Public Security Bureau checkpoints. Which was actually pretty easy-- I guess Tibet has really opened up in recent years. The worst trouble we had came from a stodgy old lady at the desk of a government-run hotel. It’s kind of funny that their such sticklers about all these arcane document and authorization laws… yet they run a blatantly illegal whorehouse in the hotel “sauna”. Ahh, China.

What’s up back home? How’s Kate’s gestation coming along? Is she craving pickles?

Well, I’m off to India tomorrow. I’ve been delaying this as long as possible, but now it’s D-day. Or, “I”-Day, as it were. My intestinal track is already a little tore up from something I ate in Guangzhou yesterday… doesn’t bode well for a week in India.

Well the Singaporean lady who’s managing the Irish (!) bar I’m in just walked through and told everyone to “F*ck Off!”. Looks like my free wireless has come to an end.

Lemme know what’s up…

Paul K.

¶ 18:02