He has gazed upon the slopes of Chomolungma without fear! Crossed the Sahara by camelback! He has danced with cobras in Marrakesh! The señoritas of Andalucia sign psalms of his stamina! Here, our hero is undone --- by the duplicity of a shirtless Chinaman! Read on!! PART ONE Where our hero tames the tigers of Kanchanaburi, and bridges the river Kwai. His heart pounded but our hero's hand was steady. The beast yawned archly, fangs glistening in the afternoon sun. Its yellow eyes shone with homicidal malice and canyon walls stretched dizzyingly upwards. Our hero inched along the dusty floor, as [View Full Entry]

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For five days without reprieve the filth and soot hung in the clouded sky like some great fecal smear on a porcelain toilet bowl. For five days, without reprieve, there was not even the remotest suspicion of the chance of the possibility of blue. I had arrived in Beijing. Where pollution has usurped the heavens. And in this sense, is not industry China's new God? Even the universally-coveted tourist buck is here but an afterthought, an appendix to the real behomoth of the East: the dragon of production. It is no secret, of course, that the Chinese are choking on the [View Full Entry]

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Tengboche, Debuche, Pengboche, Dingboche, Lobuche. The days and villages began to blur together in a single image of short stone walls, dusty pastures, alpine scrub, lodge kitchens, squat toilets, and frigid Himalaya mornings. Walking out at dawn to wash my face and teeth by the village stream, sitting back on my haunches as the icy water rises steaming off my face and neck and I breathe hard into the thin, frigid air. And of course, always, there was the monsoon fog. Throughout each day it perched shifty and billowing with ominous intent on the low valley walls, whitewashing the sky and [View Full Entry]

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It's true. My pack was too heavy, my knees were too fragile, my legs were too weak, and my feet were too delicate. But on a 1000-meter ascent, it's the altitude -- not the fatigue -- which you can't bear. Long before the symptoms of Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS) set in, the thinning of the air around you as you climb is palpable. At 1,000 meters, the oxygen delivery rate is still 88% of that at sea level; by 3,500 meters that has dropped to 60%, and at 5,000 meters each breath is worth just half what you are accustomed to. [View Full Entry]

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Part I: Access Three days I stayed in Kathmandu and I saw a city neither completely Indian nor fully Himalay. Streets bustled with traffic anarchic: taxis buses, rickshaws, bicycles, tractors, motorcycles, stray dogs and lowly humans swarmed apparently without law or reason through dusty lanes, past colorful wares displayed from dawn to dusk; but entreaties of touts were polite, almost docile, and beggar children appeared only occasionally from the mud and sewage to ask for "pen" or "milk" or "sweet." Hindu monuments and temples appeared, colorful and incongruous, in corridors and squares; yet the population was politically active -- riotous -- [View Full Entry]

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Look, I'm no Carmen San Diego, but this ain't my first rodeo either. I've changed money on the street all over Central America, and more times than I can count in West Africa, where black market rates were always better than posted ones. You'd think I'd know the ropes by now. I had to be reminded the hard way that anyone can make a mistake. Here's how it went down: I'm on the road again, after nearly two years of uninterrupted academia. After finally earning a pair of degrees, I took off for Hong Kong where my friend Walker lives and [View Full Entry]

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I ended up in Dakar. I supposed, to look at things from the lighter side, it was actually rather amusing that I was completely out of money except for the price of a hamburger, stuck in an African whorehouse with nothing to do but drink Nescafe and hope the hours would pass faster. I mean -- forbid that I should end up with money and freedom! Or a clean pair of underwear! That would be totally out of character. I'm looking at the sun -- to the sun now, for inspiration, but there is nothing. I watch it slip yellow rose [View Full Entry]

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THE WESTERN SAHARA ROUTE In the Czech Republic at Christmastime I met a Dutchman who was a thousand years old. His leathered skin hung off once-sharp features in great Byzantine folds, and his voice groaned out in thick English, terribly slow and breathless. I asked the man of his travels and he told me quite solemnly that he had been everywhere. Twenty; at twenty, he told me, he had crossed the Sahara on foot from North to South. "Why?" I asked him. He leaned forward and fixed me with grey eyes. "Because," he whispered at me, smiling; and when he started [View Full Entry]

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JULY 6th PAMPLONA LA FIESTA I arrived in Pamplona on the evening of the sixth, having spent that entire day traveling from Santiago de Compostela -- far in Spain's northeast. The train along the final stretch, from Vitoria to Pamplona, was already filled with only party-goers -- most my age -- already decked out in the all-white garb with red scarf traditional to the Fiesta de San Fermin. Everyone was already drinking, passing around big plastic bottles of red wine mixed with coke (Kalimocho, the regional students' drink of choice) and sharing chunks of fresh baguette. Someone started smoking a joint, [View Full Entry]

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Well, it's been a long time since I've sat down to write an entry. Months, actually. But even though I am on the road again, this entry is going to be more about how I felt about things coming out of my Madrid university experience, and less about my travels. So, it will probably only interest you if you want to know about the Spanish education system or my personal academic affairs. (Two thrilling topics in my book.) Next, however, I will be writing about the festival of San Fermin in Pamplona, and the running of the bulls. July 1, 2006 [View Full Entry]

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