An Ode to Visitors

For my entire adult life and a good portion of my youth, I have fantasized about my sisters and I all being grown up, paired off with dazzlingly attractive mates, and having glamorous adventures together. This past April, one such dream was realized....

in...
Angelina and Travis's 
Epic Visit to Nepal

When you live abroad, you always fantasize that people will visit you so that you can show off what a savvy member of the host community you have become. Believe it or not, previously the only visits I had had abroad were in 2005 when my BFF Aimee visited me in Europe where I displayed mostly my inability to function in cold weather, and lack of knowledge about the Autobahn; and in 2009 and 2010 when Steffen braved two Kazakh winters to be with me, and I again had trouble functioning in sub zero temperatures. 

Both visits featured my loved ones and I being pickpocketed (actually, digital cameras in both cases), and both visits were just way too cold. But without those visits my stints abroad would have been incomplete, and I have rarely felt more loved than when waiting nervously to pick these two up from the airport.

And then, a few months ago, there Steffen and I were at the Kathmandu airport, welcome wreaths of marigolds in hand per Hindu tradition, waiting nervously for my sister Angelina and her husband Travis to emerge warily from the relative safety of the Arrivals terminal and out into the chaos of the city.

Luckily, there were no robberies reported when Angel and Travis came to Nepal. But, as Travis will testify for all eternity, there was one very cold night spent at 3400 meters in a too-small sleeping bag in a tent covered in hail.

Part of my work is taking the occasional field visit to the various rural communities my organization supports. Angel and Travis's visit was the perfect time to visit our most popular placement, "the monastery in the mountains" - a small Buddhist nunnery in a village called Bigu.

Bigu is about 7km from the Tibetan border, and as such, the air is thick with spiritual ethos and the promise that there is a meaning of life to be learned. After a seven hour jeep ride from Kathmandu to the town that serves as a trail head, and two incredibly long and arduous days of back country trekking, the remoteness and serenity of Bigu was perfection.

Sure, there were some bumps along the way - the sleeping bags we had rented for Angel and Travis were about two feet too short, and the Chinese knockoff Thermarest that we got Travis was fully deflated before he was able to nod off. Stef and I were psyched to get some use out of our camping equipment, especially the new 2+ tent and camp hammock...but we regretted opting out of the rustic tea house lodge when a hail storm started in the middle of the night. This mistake was not repeated on the trek back down, and the we gladly kept the camping gear packed in exchange for the warmth of the tea house (attributed mostly to the newspaper pasted all over the walls for insulation, and kitchen fire pumping carbon monoxide throughout the structure).

Hands down though, nothing beats sitting with your childhood best friend (sister) and adulthood best friend (hubs), and awesome brother in law, dangling your feet off a 3400 meter ridge in the Himalayas.