Category Archives: Life

Adventure, Life, Travel

Calgary Stampede Yeehawww!!!

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For the longest of times I have wanted to go to Calgary Stampede. 4 years ago I ran out of money and had to stop and get a job. 2 years ago I didn’t get my relocate a car in time to get to Calgary from Toronto.  But this year I arrived a month early, scored myself a job at the Stampede on the Bell Adrenaline Ranch station and a free pass daily to go with it. Even better, I also scored a job managing the backpackers hostel right over the road from the Stampede Grounds. And so the 12 days of ridiculousness was to begin.

I took one for the team over the first weekend working the night shift at the hostel on the Friday and Saturday night. The Sunday however was to be my first experience of Stampede.

At 6:30am my friend and I awoke to go to Stampede to work for two hours dressed in a sheep costume as Shaun the Sheep and his cute little baby, Timmy. I of course being the shorter of us had to be Timmy the fat baby. We stood in the grand stand and danced and had our pictures taken with a bunch of kids. Some kids pulled Shaun’s tail, one kid ran around hitting my belly and his parents wouldn’t control him. So I may have accidentally head butted him. Tehehe….. It is not like I can see out of the costume anyway. It was eventually time to go and we are tearing down the corridor pretty much blind in the suit while people grab at us for photos. We eventually got out of the hot suits and went home for a nap before the real fun began.

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On break time in my Timmy the Sheep outfit.

In the afternoon we began drinking sangria at the house before heading over to go proper stampeding. The atmosphere hitting the gates was great and we made our way first to the mini donut stand. A rookie error on my behalf as it was to start my obsession over the next week with mini donuts. Equipped with food, we headed off to the bar to hang out for a while and grab a few drinks before catching Vance Joy playing at the Coca Cola stage.

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Mmm. … mini donuts!

Vance Joy was awesome. We danced, we screamed and jumped up and down. It was awesome. At one point trying to get out of the crowd to a toilet I jumped a fence into a restricted area and then got thrown out over an even bigger fence. It’s a wonder that I didn’t fall on my face to be honest.

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Hanging with the girls at Vance Joy

Back to the B Bar it was for more drinks, watching people ride the mechanical bull and dancing on the tables to the Spice Girls before getting kicked off them. Fireworks ended off the evening and it was down the road to the pub.

Monday was a struggle. After a massive detox session it was back to work and doing the double shifts on Tuesday. It was my first day in the evening working on the Bell Adrenaline Ranch with the Cannon Lady and the boys from Keith Sayers doing the Evolution of Extreme motocross show. I was super impressed actually. These guys do some crazy stuff on their bikes.

One of the motocross guys doing a massive aerial jump. Too cool for school.
One of the motocross guys doing a massive aerial jump. Too cool for school.

Wednesday was some more of the same except the wind got up and the shows got cancelled so I got to.go and see the Corral Show of acrobatics and explore around the BMO Centre getting fed donuts and whipped cream from guys we didn’t know and hanging about in the massage chairs. A cruisy day indeed.

Calgary Stampede
Calgary Stampede

On Friday I had my first proper day off work and so I went to go and see the rodeo show. I watched the calf roping, bucking horse, bull riding and the girls.barrel races. It was pretty good. I sat next to a new couple I met there and they explained different things to me and we had a great time judging points.

The rodeo in the main Grandstand.
The rodeo in the main Grandstand.

It was the last of my stampede experiences. And I was glad to have gotten to experience it from so many different angles. Another thing to tick off the bucket list. Done and dusted and ready to set out for the next adventure!

Challenge, Life, Travel

The Nepal Earthquake: Three Months On

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I was sitting on a rooftop overlooking the lake in Udaipur when the word came in. “Tell your families you are safe and do it now. There has been a massive earthquake in Nepal and Kathmandu is severely damaged”. I started panicking. My close friend who I had trekked with a bit over two weeks before on Everest Basecamp was still in Kathmandu. She had messaged me the day before saying her bus nearly got ran off the road by a gravel truck and how much of a close call it was.  It wasn’t to be the last of the close calls. I was talking to her about fifteen minutes before the earthquake had struck. I didn’t know where she was, if she was alive, injured or whatever. All I knew was an approximate location.

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The Zen Bed and Breakfast where I stayed in Nepal and where my friend was staying during the earthquake. This alleyway caved in and there were cracks in the concrete through the walls of the Zen.

For days we worried. Me, her family,  my tour leader who grew up in Nepal. We worried. And we waited. Eventually news came through that my friend was fine, but as word came through about this, it came through that my tour leader had lost two of his friends. It was an devastating time. We had no idea of what it was that we could do to help and yet we wanted to help.

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Patan Durbar Square. The building on the left was a giant pile of bricks by the end of the earthquake. Incredibly sad that such a beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Site was so badly damaged and destroyed.

The Nepali government even now is still very disorganized.  While I was there they had a traffic strike over their constitution as they haven’t managed to come to an agreement about it. Coordination efforts for delivering emergency supplies were halted severely by the lack of organization of the government. In such disastrous circumstances coordination is one of the most necessary aspects of getting relief to where it is most needed. It is no use having funds and supplies if they just can’t get to where they are needed. And this was very much the case. Half cooked rations of rice were handed out and no water to many of people of Kathmandu. Charity organizations did the best they could in the circumstances. My friend worked for a few weeks building huts and distributing supplies in villages. But even then this didn’t seem enough.

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With my new friends after finishing our attempt at the Annapurna Circuit. I am so thankful they are still with us. These local boys are amazing people!

Locals started messaging their friends through Facebook and any means necessary in an attempt to get money for families and rebuilding villages. Many foreigners had their own fundraisers and took the money to Nepal themselves to distribute funding. While many of the people mean well and do the right thing with their money, you never quite know where it is that it is going. It is a tough thing to have faith that your money won’t be hoarded by the rich and organizations and not given back to those that are most in need.

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The Pathuputinash. The place where the Hindi people of Nepal cremate and bury their dead in the river that leads into the Ganges.

I feel a massive compulsion to go back. As does my friend and so many others I know that I have been there. My support can go back in the form of hiking and partaking in activities and accommodations within the mountains. The best thing we can do in times like these is help provide support by travelling there and supporting business while they rebuild. I know then where my money goes. I also know that I can spread it around and share it so that it all isn’t going to one place or the deep pockets of those that don’t need it. It is a sad thing that in the biggest times of need for most, many take the opportunity to capitalize. It is always the case in moments of war and natural disaster.

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Cashmere scarves I bought at SK Handicrafts in Kathmandu from my friend Keshab.

So three months on…. The country is still strained.  Things are still far from normal. Some villages still struggle to rebuild. And in the grand scheme of things, most people have moved on and forgotten. But to my friends in Nepal who still live with this everyday I am in awe of your bravery. To those who stay and help, I am in awe of your heart and compassion. My health was facing serious issues at the time and I could not have been a help at the time. But I will get back there soon. And hopefully I can make a difference in a community of people who even before this tragedy showed me great heart and kindness. To one of the most amazing countries I have ever visited, I am still with you Nepal. For now in spirit, but hopefully soon in body too.

Adventure, Learning, Life, Travel

Shit I Learned In Glasgow

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Despite only being a whirlwind five days in Scotland, I spent most of it sitting in my friend Paul’s kitchen drinking wine and eating cheese or painting sunsets terribly in the studio drunk on wine. I did however do the odd museum tour and in the grand scheme of me and learning, I learned quite a few odd and interesting things.

Sir Roger

Sir Roger is a famous Glaswegian elephant who went on heat, got a bit violent and then they were forced to shoot him in the head. In the awesome tradition of not letting go of things we love, Sir Roger was then stuffed by a taxidermist, preserved in arsenic and formaldehyde and put on show in the Kelvingrove Museum (ps. Kelvin as in the man who did the Kelvin scale of absolute temperature… science nerds rejoice!)

 

 

The famous Sir Roger complete with broken trunk and bullet hole.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sir Roger of course is a children’s delight. So many of them can’t resist touching him all the time and one child accidentally snapped off his trunk….. so then they glued it back on. Poor Roger.

 

Christ Of Saint John Of The Cross

 

This famous painting by Salvador Dali is also now housed in the Kelvingrove. Once upon a time a few moons ago, some crackpot who thought he was Jesus decided that he didn’t like the portrayal of himself within the painting. Of course the only acceptable way of dealing with such an offensive representation is to go to the museum and throw a brick through the painting. If you look closely you can see where the painting went through repairs.

 

 

The famous Salvador Dali painting equipped with square rip from the offended real Jesus’ brick.

This, however was not deemed enough by another group of crackpots who went to the museum and shot bullets at the painting with a gun. Jokes on them though, the Dali is now housed in bulletproof glass. Epic fail.

 

McDonald’s Is Technologically Apt

 

So I wander drunk into a Maccas at midnight and have a massive flip out when I discover that not only can you order your food on a giant touch screen before you get to the counter, but once you have your drunken cheeseburger and fries, you can sit and play angry birds and other cool games on a touch screen computer. You can also do some Facebooking if you feel so inclined…. what is this socially antisocial world coming to?

 

 

Drunken cheeseburger and Facebook in the upscale McDonald’s.

Painting

 

I was fortunate enough to be able to spend my time with two exceptionally talented brothers that are painters while I was in Glasgow. This opened my world to art galleries and exhibitions I would not otherwise have experienced. It also allowed me one afternoon to sit and paint with a canvas. I learned firstly that drunken finger painting is fun. Secondly I learned to look at things in a context of colors and shadows more. It is incredible to sit and watch my friend Paul paint and to watch his brain process where colors and paints go. Awesome 🙂

 

 

My glorious painting. Now an exceptional masterpiece on a bathroom wall for hilarity’s sake

GOMA Statue And The Traffic Cone

 

Glaswegians have such a good sense of humour that a traffic cone constantly lives on the head or some other part of the statue outside of GOMA. Apparently the council will remove it but someone always climbs right back up there to deposit yet another traffic cone in its rightful place, statue head.

 

 

The GOMA Statue and it’s glorious traffic cone hat

Glaswegians Kick Arse And Balls

 

Once upon a time in Glasgow at the airport there was an attempted terrorist attack. A few guys decided it would be a good idea to fill a Jeep with some fuel canisters and set it on fire whilst driving it into the front doors of the airport. The guys in the Jeep got out and were tackled by some locals. One awesome Glaswegian kicked a guy in the balls so hard he broke his foot. Local hero! And now you can’t approach the front door of the airport by car, you get dropped off a hundred meters back from the entrance.

Well, that’s it! Until next week! 🙂

Adventure, Challenge, Life, Travel

Readjustment To Western Civilization

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After spending such a large amount of time sick while I was travelling around Asia (of which there are more stories to come, I just haven’t gotten around to writing them down yet) I was done with it. Never before had I wanted the Western comforts of home more. And by Western comforts I am not talking about things like mummy and daddy and a room to myself as much as I love these things. But my first request getting off the plane was steak. Lots of steak. And brie cheese… my Achilles heel.

I arrived at the airport only to have a dispute with the arsehole immigration officer who seemed to be concerned that as teacher I was going to attempt to work in the UK for the all of 2 weeks I am here with adequate funds and my old Canadian visa and onward ticket. In true Dano fashion I said to him “seriously? Your country would  sponsor me to come here and work and get paid as a teacher. If I wanted a work visa I’d have one already and you’d organize it for me. I’m her for two weeks to buy bras, eat steak and visit friends before working jobs I have lined up in Canada! Why would I lie?” He let me through. I am pretty sure he was just having an arsehole day. I wanted to tell him if the wind changed his face would stay looking like an arsehole but thought better of it, grabbed my passport and ran.

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After a ten minute interrogation, finally got my passport stamped!

So I got out of the customs area and am looking for signs of subway when I hear this familiar high pitched screaming “THOMAS!!!” At which point I am then throwing myself at my friend Tash with the railing in the way and there is screaming and crying for a 3 year reunion. At which point I then got annoyed with the barrier railing and knelt down to crawl through it with my pack still on and people staring at me while I tell her this immigration arsehole nearly wouldn’t let me in the country. She says to me “only you would make me laugh so hard being too lazy to walk around the rail and have a complaint come out of your mouth as the first words spoken… I love you!”

After getting back to her house we had a think… couldn’t figure out where to get the best steak ever but the place down the road does the best ever BBQ meat platters and I am all in! Brisket, baby back ribs, spare ribs, pulled pork… more meat than you could poke a stick at and more than two of us could eat in one sitting and being such a precious commodity, I wrapped the rest of that meat up and took it home for breakfast.

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My first meal… hordes of meat, coleslaw and sweet potato fries…. mmm… meat….

Protein was one of the many things I missed in Asia. Especially through Nepal and India, after the stress on the body from the pneumonia and secondary infections and then having to give myself intramuscular injections twice daily (a hilarious and not so hilarious story to come later – watch out for “Adventures With Needles”), I lost a lot of muscles and damaged muscle tissue. I needed protein to heal and protein in Asia is a measly scrap of chicken on a bone in a pile of curry sauce. And vitamins! I was tired, lethargic and felt shitty a lot of the time from diet. But here I was, munching down on meat and Sainsbury vitamin pills for every meal in England and became a force to be reckoned with. That force wound up in Marks and Spencers shopping for bras…. something I no longer owned and yet deemed necessary in this society.

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Protein shakes and vitamin pills. A woman’s guide to returning to normal health.

I will say this. I have a ginormous fondness for bras. When I was a teenager the only ones that fit me were horrendous grandma-type looking bras with inch thick straps and material that sat up near my collar bones. As fashion started to compensate for those of us well endowed, my love of pretty bras began. And so continued in M&S as I spent 2 hours in there trying to figure out what size I was now and what they have in my size and then pretty much trying on one of everything they had in my size. Plus matching undies because those were also novel in the unattractive teenage days. The ladies that worked in there stared at me for a long while trying to figure out who the disheveled looking woman in their store trying everything on was. I explained to them “I have been in India, all of my clothes smell and have holes in them, this crop top I am wearing is the only bra I own. I don’t know what size I am anymore”. It was like a state of emergency. They were both horrified and excited and helped me out and by the time I left I was quite a debt on the credit card and super happy with my giant bag of bras hanging off the arm down the street.

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Piles and piles on non granny bras 🙂 Ecstatic!!

So off to Primark. For those not English or unfamiliar, Primark is considered cheap and daggy, kind of like the Australian K-Mart and the North American Walmart but done up in a classier way and heaps cheaper. I headed here for basic tank tops, long sleeved tops and t-shirts. And then wound up with shorts, boob tubes, hoodies, bikinis, socks, underpants, leggings and the rest.  Another couple of hours later and I emerge from Primark swallowed underneath piles of bags I can barely carry and with waaayyyy too much stuff. My friend Tash says to me “but you deserve it! You haven’t bought things for yourself in a very long time! And you need it! And…. you don’t smell like India anymore thank fuck!”

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Just a few of the clothes and shoes I accumulated….

The next days were a hunt for shoes, jeans and accessories. I pretty much bore me new wardrobe in the first 3 days of being in London and then the guilt set in. These clothes were too pretty and nice for me to wear. I am a bum. I wear clothes with holes in them. Looking nice feels weird. What if I trash these nice clothes….. ugh…. people are obviously staring at me because I look so strangely normal now….  and so the readjustment continues…

After a couple of days I started getting used to it. My largest concern now is how to get all of this junk I have to Canada after going out of control. I can check an excess bag but after my adventures of getting it to Glascow on the all too familiar sleeper bus I am pretty excited about my next stop being my last stop for a while. Bring on more work and a bit of normality. Oh and more steak. Mmm…. steak….

Adventure, Learning, Life, Travel

Happy Holi!!!

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Ever since I heard that Holi was on the fifth of March this year I have been excited. I actually pre-organized my treks and my flight to Nepal around my desperate want to experience Holi. So to say that I was excited was an understatement. I was literally like a five year old kid on Christmas.

I got up in the morning, put on my white t-shirt and my blue and white elephant pants from Thailand and headed downstairs in the hostel to get my breakfast and see the gang. I was sitting on the balcony when the first water bomb was thrown by the kids next door from the rooftop. I started laughing and then joined back in. We started to throw water bombs back but they had the height advantage so it was a little more difficult for us. The hostel staff gave me my first colour in the form of a blessing on my forehead and then I started out down the road to meet the local family I was spending Holi with.

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Hanging with the hostel boys getting bombarded by the neighbours

When I arrived in the neighbourhood I had no idea where I was going. I started asking around the locals and they pointed me in the right direction. Once I found where I was going I met up with the family and headed out with one of the boys to explore the neighbourhood. Apparently the locals had heard I was coming and I was a wanted target. I met many groups of kids with water bombs and buckets of water and all of them seemed to be coming my way. I was laughing hysterically and having the best time of it.

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Hanging out with the family at lunch

We eventually wound up at one of the neighbours houses on the roof. I am drowned in water and covered in some colour at this point and the war from the rooftops was about to begin. There was a lone kid on the adjacent roof and he was appearing hard to hit. A cheeky and wiry kid. He got some pretty decent shots in on us too.

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The enemy… neighbourhood kids. Cheeky things!

After eating lunch, we continued to explore the streets and get bombarded with more water bombs and colour before the massive rooftop war between three houses began down the road. I was half stung on a bottle of red wine that they fed me at breakfast so my aim was terrible but I managed to get a few good shots in on unsuspecting neighbours reading newspapers and then when the plastic bags to put the water in ran out, we all danced Nepali dance on the rooftops for an hour before heading downtown to Thamel.

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Dancing on the rooftop with the girls

Thamel was craziness. There were tourists and locals everywhere walking around throwing colour everywhere. Given how wet I was from the massive water fight the colour stuck to me like glue. I was a rainbow of pink, purple, blue, orange, green and yellow powders that eventually covered me to a point of unrecognizable. People would take the colour in their hands and wipe it over your face saying ‘Happy Holi’ in a blessing. By the end of the hour I spent in Thamel, I had it caked in my hair, my face was fluorescent pink and I was a total mess. But I had had the best fun I have had in my life. I even had colour in my teeth given that I ate so much of it while I was laughing.

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The product of Thamel Holi street warfare

Post washing, I still have colour in my hair, my face is still dyed pink and so is my hand and I have one yellow boob and one green one. Quite funny. Every time I look at my dyed skin I smile and remember. What a wonderful and fun celebration that allows people to be kids and just play for the day. If only more people would embrace and play every day in life.

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Post face washing…. still stained pink… 😛

I did think many times during the day back to when I was a kid and we would have birthday parties at the bike centre and my Dad would always play devil’s advocate and bring massive amounts of water bombs and water pistols and start up a massive war. It would always be every kid in the place against him, but he would get his own on most of them first before they would bail him up in the toilet and start pouring water over the toilet door. Parents would get mad because their kids would all be wet going home. But what is a bit of water? Especially when it creates so many smiles. The only thing that could have made my Holi better would have been having my family there. Given the amount of warfare we are used to with these fights as kids, the five of us would have been a formidable Holi force to be reckoned with!

Challenge, Life, Travel

The Everest Aftermath

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It has been 6 days since they let me out of the hospital and 10 days since I was on the brink of death with lungs full of water being helicoptered off of Everest Basecamp.  My body in that time has pretty much healed itself. I am off all of my antibiotics, my cough is gone, my appetite is coming back and short of the tiredness that reminds me of my lack of stamina and the odd pain I get in my muscles from their weakness, I feel good. My mind I fear will take a little longer to heal than the rest of my body.

In the first two days as I sat in hospital on Facebook to the rest of my family and friends on the other side of the world, the entire situation was a huge joke to me. “Hahaha I almost died and had to get evacuated off Everest with porters practically dragging me over the ground and what not! Isn’t that funny?”.

The third day was a day of frustration at not getting the help that I needed from the nurses in hospital. I was telling them that my wrist was swelling further, I needed more antibiotics, they forgot to give me my last antibiotic, they hadn’t checked my vitals and I had a fever again, I was still waiting 24 hours later on feminine hygiene products and I had asked for and was waiting to see a doctor I had asked for 24 hours previously. After being somewhat patient and asking multiple times without result, the arguing, the yelling, the demanding, the threatening of contacting insurance companies and the crying began. Every built up piece of frustration outed itself at that point and it was the point where I realized “Shit,  I actually nearly died”. The realization of what happened and the gravity of it set in.

The night nurses were good to me and calmed me right down and were attentive.  I got all of the things I had asked for including demanding the other cannula out of my hand and taking oral medications. But once you get the ball rolling with emotions, it accumulates more feelings to surround it like a snowball tumbling down an avalanche until you crash and burn and don’t know what to do with yourself.

The day they told me I could leave the hospital I didn’t want to go. The thought of having to look after myself and do things for myself scared the shit out of me. I had no choice. I was alone. And I had to venture into the hell raising and erratic traffic of Kathmandu. The tour guide operator kept making demands on me to go where he wanted me to go as if getting out of hospital was such a fun and exciting thing that we needed to drink tea and celebrate. Like I was a full bill of health. He drove me crazy with his demands that I wasn’t willing to comply with and then his sneakiness of then calling the hospital behind my back to get them to take me where he wanted. He wouldn’t listen to me and I was losing my mind and patience fighting with him. I just wanted to go back to my hostel. I had one functional hand and another that looked like it had swallowed a tennis ball. I had two bags of trekking gear with me and another bag to pick up from around the corner and bring back. I didn’t realize how weak I was until I had to pick up that 20kg backpack and walk it 200m down the road back to the hostel. It near killed me and I pulled a muscle in my once super strong thigh muscle. The amazing crew at the hostel carried my things for me up the four flights of stairs to my room and after ten minutes of climbing the stairs myself, I settled in to sleep. The only time I headed out that day was to the bakery down the road to buy an assortment of things I could pick at to eat before I took my medications.

My friends arrived back the following day in the early morning. I sat quietly in my room as the door was knocked on fearing it was somebody I didn’t want to talk to. The excitement of finding out what happened for the rest of the trip lasted for maybe half of the day before the haze settled back over my brain. I don’t know what it is or how long it will last but I feel an exhaustion that I can’t explain. Two weeks ago I loved meeting people and had all kinds of time for them. Now I want to hide in my room and not have to speak to them at all. The hustle and bustle and excitement of the streets of Thamel seem too crazy for me to contend with any more. The idea of going out and doing things makes me want to hide.  And yet there were things I needed to do on a check list and I set about them. I got my Indian visa. I bought my gifts for my family and posted them home. Today I even took a local bus with some girls I met to Bhaktipur and spent the afternoon walking around the old town. But after a couple of hours out and about my tiredness and hunger started making me anxious and angry. I wanted to crawl back into the hole of my room and stay there. And I did.

There is a timidness and an agitation that now lies in me where once I had huge courage. My mantra was always “feel the fear and do it anyway”. I never saw the fear as something that would have ever done me great harm but as a mental challenge to constantly overcome. But looking at myself now I have taken a huge fall. I am by no means invincible. I am by no means immortal. Like everyone on this planet, at some point I have to face my own mortality. I have to acknowledge that I nearly died and try to find a peace about it that still allows me to live large instead of meekly like a mouse. The last time I had to deal with such feelings was ten years ago when I was attacked in the street. It took me many months and a boxing coach to find within me that girl that just goes and does it. The girl that fights back. I didn’t want to be that victim girl that is afraid to walk down the street and do things. I don’t know where the courageous girl is right now. She has taken a break to rest somewhere and I don’t know how to find her any more. Right now I feel lost. And at the same time I know running away from the issue and hiding from it will only make it worse. The hardest thing about living through this is that you change and others around you don’t.  You feel that they don’t understand and that they don’t know what to do to help you. And if I am honest there is nothing that they really can do other than check in with me every now and then. It’s my internal war and battle that I now face. And hopefully I will find that strength and courage back soon enough to continue with living large. Until then, be patient with me, be supportive of me and with time and a bit of soul searching. I will be back. That I can promise. I just don’t know when.

 

Life, Travel

This Week I Almost Died….

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So I embarked on Everest Basecamp super optimistically. I had the whole thing planned out in my head of how it would go. I had my diamox to manage altitude sickness, cotton wool to stuff between my toes for blisters, an array of different medications for pain, swelling in my knees, general antibiotics for skin/chest/sinus infections, even pseudoephedrine in case I got a head cold. I was more prepared than most. And yet what I was moving towards was nothing that I could have prepared for…..

Two days out from leaving for our trip, if you had have asked me who was going to make it to the camp of me and my friend, I would have put money on me. She had gotten a chest infection from the dusty pollution of Kathmandu and I worked tirelessly for two days doing everything I could in my power to get her better because this wasn’t just my trip. It was our trip for so many reasons that are too long to explain here. I steamed her in the bathroom, rubbed tiger balm into her back, got her the strongest antibiotics in town and cough syrup and we were set. She was on the mend, not quite 100% but we knew by the time we got her to the top she would be pretty much right. It was an up and down first couple of days but things were starting to look up. She joked that this kind of shit always happens to her and that she would probably wind up helicoptered out like she did at Machu Picchu. I told her “not on my watch!”

And so the days progressed.  By day 5 we were reaching 4400m altitude. I was feeling fine. I was still hungry, drinking lots of fluids, had a little bit of the head cold symptoms I get at altitude and a bit of a cough. But I was feeling good. My friend and one other on the trip however both had splitting headaches from the altitude and were vomiting along the path to reach the destination of Dingbouche. We eventually got there. I went back into nurse mode and started “bossing people” as I called it, forcing a litre of hot water and food into my friend before bed. The village medical researchers came around and we had her checked out. Out of curiosity I put the gadget on my finger to measure my oxygen levels and heart rate. Oxygen good…. Resting heart rate 124… hmmm…. my resting heart rate is pretty high normally so I figured it was my body responding to lack of oxygen in the air and resolved to keep an eye on it. And so we went to bed.

The following day was the day for an acclimatization hike. I was literally dying going up the hill the air felt so thin. It took me 2 hours to get up to the flagpole at 4700m. With iron will there was no way I wasn’t going. If I couldn’t make it here, I couldn’t make basecamp at a higher altitude so my sheer grit and determination said I was going. And I made it. I felt fine sitting at the top for a while and then I started my way back down again, happy I had made it.

That afternoon however I started to feel very weak and like I had no energy. I figured that the altitude had knocked me around a little so I sat upstairs in the dining room and drank 2 litres of how water and ate a soup trying to get my body to acclimatize.  Heart rate still 124. I figured still having appetite was good but I was starting to show some of the symptoms of altitude sickness that the others didn’t have. The head cold was kicking in a bit more and the cough was getting a little worse. But I knew that this was the way my body responded from the first time I ever had altitude sickness so I wasn’t worried. I stopped taking all pain killers and drugs that day to evaluate what my body was actually doing and to try and heal it. It was the best and the worst choice that I had made….

By dinner I had gotten so exhausted I took a nap upstairs in the room with the fire. Despite it, I was still freezing cold. I sat to eat my garlic soup for dinner, took a handful of pills and some cough syrup to knock me out to sleep properly hoping it would be good by morning and went to sleep.

Two hour later I awoke coughing violently. The pills had failed to knock me out. No matter which way I moved I couldn’t lay without it triggering more violent coughing. I could not manage to get in any more than 30 minutes of sleep at a time. By one in the morning I was acutely aware that I was in very big trouble. I was starting to cough up large amounts of water and that I had a lot of fluid on my lungs. Another symptom of altitude sickness that is very serious.  I needed to go down and I needed to go down immediately but it was the middle of the night and no evacuations were happening at one in the morning. 

I got out of bed to go to the toilet. The toilet was maybe ten to fifteen meters down the hall. It took me two minutes to shuffle one foot in front of the other to get there. After getting up I was so out of breath I was leant over the sink coughing and trying to suck air very aware of the fact that my body at that point was trying to drown itself. It was at this very point that I knew I was in very big trouble.  I tried to calm myself and walk back to the room and get back to bed. I laid there propped against the headboard for another 5 hours drifting in and out of fifteen minute intervals of sleep before the sun came up and I woke my friend. “Get the guide. Get the helicopter. I need down now.”

They called for the helicopter. It was coming for me but not for 3 hours. My friend packed my bag for me and I sat in the window frame of the room as the sun streamed through as it was the warmest place I knew of. I sat still. I tried to be calm. I tried not to move for fear of having more breathing and coughing attacks. I went to the toilet again and ran into some dumb bitch who is saying to me “oh you are getting helivacced out! I thought you looked sick last night but like you know what? You’re in the Himalayas and that is like amazing so like whatever”. If I had have had the energy I would have smacked her in the chops for being so dumb and ignorant, I was that ill, frustrated and annoyed. Who says that? It felt like forever waiting and waiting and then next thing I knew, it was time.

People rushed into my room to collect my bags and took off running. The helicopter was here and impatient and does not wait. People are trying to push me faster along and I could not suck the air in to manage it. I had no strength to walk that fast. Before I knew it, one of the sherpas has a hold of my arms and is pulling me over his back and dragging me along like luggage, my feet semi dragging along behind me on the ground. After dragging me over one rock wall, the next sherpa grabs my arms and throws me on his back and starts running with me across the paddock to the next rock wall which he climbs over and then puts me down. Next it was my porter, the amazing Lalit’s turn to carry me. The man, like all of the others, is shorter than I am and hauling my 70kg  arse on their backs while running. Dressed like a smurf in his blue jacket and hat with his yellow scarf, he threw me on his back and ran me the rest of the way to the helicopter.

As I sat in the helicopter I looked out of the window to see my whole crew standing there waving me on in support. My friend was videoing for her adventure video as she promised me she would and several thoughts passed through my mind. The first was “I hope she filmed the sherpas carrying me through the paddocks and across the rock walls cause my god that would have looked funny” and then this massive feeling of being overwhelmed hit me as I sat there in the helicopter and started to cry. I put my hand on the helicopter window kind of like Rose in Titanic and the helicopter took off, taking my dream of Everest Basecamp and my friends away from me.

I tried to stay calm. I tried to concentrate on the amazing mountains where I was. It was the cheapest scenic helicopter ride I was ever going to get so I may as well focus. The helicopter landed back in Lukla. They were originally sending me right then. But then they changed their mind and moved me to another helicopter. Then they changed their mind again and took me out of the helicopter and told me I had to wait for the next one to Kathmandu. At this point they put me in the kitchen with a cup of hot water.  Despite increase in temperature and oxygen levels, breathing wasn’t becoming easier. I knew I needed medical attention and I needed it now. But sitting there in the kitchen unaware of my condition and not really giving a shit, the helicopter guys lit up their cigarettes beside me and I forced my way up and out of the kitchen back outside to the fresh air. They didn’t want me out there. I didn’t care. I had no energy in me to fight them. One of them fed me a noodle soup for lunch. I asked about the helicopter. Over another hour they tell me. I am furious inside but I have no breath or energy to get mad and fight with them. I wanted to yell at them “I am in serious fucking trouble here and you’re more stressed about your fucking cargo. Get me out of here” but alas, no air and no words. 

The time eventually came and I got on the helicopter and made my way back to Kathmandu in the front seat of the helicopter, taking stock of the view and somewhat meditating on it to calm me throughout the ride. The helicopter eventually touched down at the Kathmandu airport and was met with an ambulance to take me to the hospital. They kept trying to make me lay down on the trolley in the back of the ambulance but I refused and kept sitting.  They strapped me to the oxygen machine and then we flew into crazy Kathmandu traffic with the ambulance siren wailing. My first time in an ambulance. 

Upon arrival at the hospital they put me in the emergency section and took my vitals. Much to my surprise. I had a high fever. I guess getting the chills in minus degree weather isn’t a really strong indicator so I missed it. This is also what caused my tachycardia. I overlooked why I had high heart rate. After listening to my chest I was told I had an infection in my right lung. They x-rayed my chest, inserted a shunt into my hand and started me on antibiotics immediately.  As I was sitting upstairs in my hospital room with the nebulizer on my face and the drip hanging out of my arm the doctor comes in to tell me that I have pneumonia. The infection had also moved from my lungs into my blood as well. But they were treating it all and it should be fine.

I messaged my mum from the hospital then with a picture of my feet in bed saying “greetings from hospital” and making jokes about it. I make jokes and look for the positives in everything. But it wasn’t until later the next day after a sleep that the actual reality of the situation set in. If weather was bad that day, there would have been no helicopter. If I had have stayed at high altitude in minus five with no heater for another 24 to 48 hours, I probably would have drowned myself in my own lung fluid. While pneumonia seemed such a funny thing to me as I was healing and being pumped full of drugs and high on cough syrup and because I was safe in a hospital bed, the reality was I got very lucky. It set on so acutely that even in those moments at 3am sitting in a dark room waiting for the sun, I knew I was in very big trouble but I wasn’t admitting to myself how big of a trouble I was in. Like always I fought with all I had and I knew I had to ask for help. The whole thing now seems somewhat surreal. I still sit in a hospital bed, but I can walk around and do things for myself. Except for the cough I feel relatively healthy. 48 hours ago I was on deaths door. Never before have I been so sick that I needed a hospital or that it was something I couldn’t handle myself. I’ve never been that person before. In all honesty, it scared the crap out of me.

So this week we say hallelujah for modern medicine, hallelujah for helicopters and hallelujah to not dying this week. My lifelong aversion to the word no extends out to “no, I am not dying this week” and so I live to see another day and another adventure. And you can bet your arse I am coming back to Nepal to finish what I started. Nothing beats me. Not Everest Basecamp. And certainly not pneumonia. Until the next adventure 🙂

 

Camping, Life, Road Trip, Travel

Canada By Car: Leg 4 – Living in Eastport

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As we drove up the laneway to Eastport Organics there were people lounging about on the lawn after a hard days work. We met Jason, who owns and runs the farm and Meghan and Cuchulain who were staying on the farm and helping out. We went blueberry picking in the late afternoon in the abundant bushes down the road and cooked up an epic feast of local cod, fresh vegetables from the garden and cheesecake. Dinner was also served with good conversation which was awesome. I knew in the first couple of hours that I was going to enjoy staying here very much.

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The Glorious Eastport Organics 🙂

The next day was the first one getting to work. I planted two and a half rows of lettuce plants, picked some raspberries, and watered and weeded sections of the garden. Gardening is something that I have always enjoyed and I started to learn a few tricks of the trade here. Namely on the first day about compost tea that used compost and seaweed from the beach harvested and kept in a big drum of water that is used to water the garden so that it is full of nutrients. We ate kaplan fish sticks and scallops for dinner which was delicious. My back and hands hurt from the hard work but for the first time in a while my tiredness felt hard earned. I slept very well that night and was super relaxed.

On the farm lives quite a few animals that I quickly came to adore. There was Marley, the cheeky golden retriever, Kota, the black labrador, Zeus, the black and white cat and a couple of horses. We spent the morning hanging out with the animals and taking pictures with them. They are too cute. We had another new arrival on the farm in the form of a German girl, Wiebke. We weeded and watered for the afternoon, picked some blueberries and raspberries and then we cooked up and ate an epic feast of scallop and cod mornay with cheesecake for dessert.

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Chillin on the couch playing guitar with Marley

In the afternoon I watered, harvested zucchini and served customers. There were so many zucchini going about the place that I made stuffed zucchini for dinner. We sat and watched the fireworks over the property outside that they had down the road and then headed off to our first ever Newfoundland kitchen party.

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Stuffed zucchini for dinner, too many zucchinis….

Now I had not really heard too much about these before arriving in Newfoundland but apparently they are an institution and one that should not be missed. So down the road we went to Chad and Thea’s house where we all sat around in the kitchen eating fish and brews (a local dish traditional at Newfie kitchen parties) and playing musical instruments and singing. It was a heap of fun. I don’t know why more people don’t have kitchen parties to be honest.

The following day led us even further to living off the land. We spent the morning planting lettuce and picking raspberries before going mussel diving. The unfortunate thing about this was that there were too many jellyfish and not enough large mussels to make it worthwhile for dinner so we decided to come home with sea urchins instead. After harvesting the roe, also known as uni and a Japanese delicacy, from the middle we decided to make a pasta sauce with the uni for dinner. Adventurous… it kind of has a taste like lobster but with a really buttery type of texture. While it was good, we didn’t have enough uni.

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The sea urchins with the orange uni inside

After working the morning the following day, we got a visit from Chad and Thea at the farm. Chad was building a makeshift pizza oven on the beach from the clay and sand in the area and was curing it for the evening so we could go and have a pizza party. They were to bring the dough, we were to bring the vegetables. And so we went down and sat on the beach with beers and a guitar eating vegetable, uni and blueberry pizzas (not all together of course) and singing some tunes as we went. It was the most glorious day and I was starting to feel really at home in Eastport.

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The makeshift pizza oven on the beach

In the coming days the zucchini continued to get out of control and I spent my days harvesting and chopping zucchini into small pieces and putting them into bags to be frozen. I took Marley to the beach in the afternoon to play fetch and the defiant puppy decided that when I was done he wasn’t and ran away on me. I spent most of the afternoon chasing after him and trying to get him to come home. What a pain in the butt! But I still adored him anyway.

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More zucchinis….

My last day round one in Eastport was spent getting stung by a bee whilst hanging out washing and spending the rest of the day chopping zucchini. In the evening we drove down behind the new land that is being cleared to expand the farm and started up a giant bonfire with all of the scrap wood that was cleared. We sat around and cooked sausages on sticks and played guitar and sang songs. It was a lovely way to spend the evening and I was feeling more relaxed than ever. But it was again time to hit the road for a couple of days and see what the rest of Newfoundland had to offer in the south.

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Friends chilling on the beach playing music

To see what I got up to on my southern Newfoundland road trip, check back in next week!

Learning, Life, Travel

Westerners’ Don’t Walk…. And Other Indonesian Musings

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At first it really annoyed me. The constant harassment in your face with people yelling at you ‘You want transport?’, ‘You go on moto?’, ‘Where you go?’. It wasn’t until I was in a car driving with a local for the day around to Tanah Lot and Uluwatu in Bali that I realised just how much of a game it is to them. I realized when our driver started yelling out of the car window to his friends ‘Haaalloooooo, you waaaannt transpoooort?!’ and then laughing. Then they would call him on his phone and they would laugh about it some more. The whole thing was just obscenely funny to them. And so I decided to make it obscenely funny to myself.

The first time I really decided to make it a source of entertainment was when I was drunk coming home one night from the Sky Garden Free Flow (two hours of horrendously bad, strong and free alcohol).  They see me, go to open their mouths and before they can respond any I am all over it ‘Hey! You want transport? I carry you while I walk?’ They look at me like I am nuts, laugh and I keep going. And then I yell at cab drivers ‘you want transport?’ and they look at me strangely before they start laughing and so the game continues……

It became evident pretty quickly that as a westerner, it is expected that you don’t walk anywhere. I could have 100m to walk down a one way street opposing traffic flow and the locals would try and convince you that it is too far for you to walk and that they should take you on a 3km round trip around the block on their moto to save you having to walk 100m. The idea of walking anywhere is just absurd. The look of shock and horror on the faces of people when you tell them you are walking somewhere is priceless.

Take for example Baluran National Park which I visited on the east coast of Java. I got to the front gate, paid the entrance fee and asked about transport in and out of the park. They told me it was either motorbike or ojek. You weren’t getting there one way for less than $5 and I had all day to kill and a Mount Everest Basecamp to train for so I said to the guy, no transport there. I will walk in. He says to me ‘NO!!!! You can’t walk?!’ I said to him “Why not?!” He says to me, “You HAVE to take moto! It is too far! It is 15 kilometers!!” I laughed at him and said to him ‘It’s only three hours and it is flat. It is fine. I will walk’. The entire staff look at me like a mental person as I start out along the road. And sure enough, after 3 hours of walking I got there. And had a great time along the way being surrounded by butterflies and interacting with the nature around me.

Of the most entertaining times that we embraced the ‘Westerner’s Don’t Walk’ policy was when I got up at 3am to hike to the top of Mount Pananjakan for sunrise over the Bromo-Tengger-Semeru National Park. The lovely men outside the front of the hotel were trying to again convince me that 5km to the top was ‘too much’ and that I couldn’t get that far. I told them I walked 15km two days ago and I would be fine. They looked at me cautiously before also trying to convince me I needed a scarf and a hat because 15 degrees was also ‘too cold’. Ha! Try -40 in Canada… I am fine!

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OMG! Look! I am walking overland through the Bromo-Tengger-Semeru National Park instead of taking one of those jeeps behind me that all the tourists take!!

On the way up I met a couple of cool guys I started walking with and between us we got to the viewpoint 1 for sunrise and then up to viewpoint 2 later in the day after the tourists had re-embarked their jeeps and had gone home. We found a stand of fried banana and I bought two, one for each hand. As the incessant questions ‘You want moto?’ started up, I had a stroke of genius. I said to them ‘No, I don’t need moto. Too fat from fried banana! Must walk!’ The women had a quiet chuckle. The men stared carefully at me as they were not sure as to what the correct response to a woman calling herself fat is and they said ‘OK’ and left us alone. So I employed this for the rest of the day. By the end of the day we had clocked up 3 mountain tops and approximately 25km of walking in around 13 hours. When I got back to the hotel and saw the men trying to sell me hats and a moto I told them where I had gone and walked the whole way. They looked like they were about to die of shock. And then they applauded me. Not a bad effort for a girl about to hike Everest Basecamp. I wonder if they will have me a moto to take me to basecamp…?

So it is about a week later that I discover why I have such looks of confusion on the faces of locals when I met a local in Sidoarjo who literally myth busted quite a few of my ideas. It turns out that fat in Indonesia is a compliment. If you are fat it means that you are healthy and rich and have lots of money to eat. On the contrary if you are skinny you therefore must be sick, having money problems, anxiety attacks, broken up with your significant other or have some other serious issue in your life that needs dealing with. Fat is good. As such, why would I want to be losing weight by walking….??? OK, I think now I understand.

The second thing that he pointed out was something that after about a month I started to realize all on my own…. it isn’t the westerners that don’t walk. It is the Indonesians. They literally can never be seen walking anywhere. They will ride a motorbike 100m down the road to the shop if it saves them from having to walk anywhere. The whole time I figured they were trying to convince me that I needed transport so that they could have my business because I am white and as such I must have money. But no. It turns out that again these horrified looks of ‘What? You are walking 15km?’ are sheer looks of concern given that this is not a concept they can fathom. Turns out that it isn’t the Westerners, but the Indonesians that don’t walk…..

Challenge, Learning, Life, Travel

My First Yoga Retreat

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So in the grand tradition of me, I started my zen week by rocking into the yoga retreat with a two day hangover, still wearing last nights’ make up under my sunglasses and hat and arguing with a cab driver who was trying to rip me off. Pretty standard entrance really. They showed me to my room, I got changed and I went to my first session. We started with meditation. My meditation went something like this “Shit! Did I have my ukulele with me in the room….? I don’t remember seeing it. Hmmm…. did I take it off the taxi? Fuck! What have I done with it? If I left it in the taxi then I am never getting it back cause the arsehole has probably sold it now to make up for the fifty baht he tried to extort from me that I wouldn’t pay him. Fuck fuck fuck! Ugh, I want to go check on it now but I have 2 fucking hours of this shit to get through before I can and I think this is going to kill me…..”. Time dragged along…. Anyway, I found my ukulele. I left it on the table with my water bottle that I also couldn’t find. Drunk brain has been hiding things again.

The evening was spent meeting people and going out for a shared dinner of amazing Thai food before heading to bed early. You see, there is sunrise tai chi every morning at 6am and I was getting up for it…. Why am I doing tai chi you ask? Because it is the only way to get fed before 10am if you are only getting up for the 7:30am yoga and I don’t think I can handle two hours of yoga unfed. Tai chi it is.

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Morning tai chi

My early morning tai chi was actually pretty awesome. I think it is my favourite part of being here. It is kind of like a martial art form in many ways and takes me back to my days of doing kung fu. In the mean time you have the most amazing sunrise going up over the sheer -cliffed mountain islands in front of you. It is quite incredible. And so we are standing there listening to a speel about how the sun is energy and the sun and the earth create this energetic ‘magnetic’ field around you that shields you from evil things and thoughts and that the more you do tai chi, especially in the mornings, the bigger and greater your magnetic protection shield of energy from the sun becomes. I felt like a kid in class who wanted to put their hand up and say…. “ahhhh, the sun has nothing to do with magnetic fields because it is a giant ball of frickin gas. Gas has no magnetic properties. The earth however has a giant core of iron which has unpaired electrons in its orbitals, thus creating a magnetic field due to the accumulative spin of these unpaired electrons….. Last time I checked a human does not have giant iron cores or currents of electricity running through them with the exception of the small electrical impulses running through nerves but this is not enough to give a person a protective fucking magnetic shield around them from the evils of the planet!” Yeah I was that kid. Deep breath, heed my friend Rachel’s warning about keeping my mouth shut, say nothing, laugh internally, cry internally. Go to first and more vigorous morning yoga sessions.

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Sunrise on the beach during morning tai chi

I can say four things from this. 1. My hips are horrible. 2. My balance is horrible. 3. My lack of patience is even more horrible. 4. At least I still have my sense of humour.  At one point we were doing this stretch where you take a wide stance and then put your chest to the floor. You then get your partner to pull your hands through your legs to give you a deeper stretch. So you literally wind up with someone’s arse in your face while you are assisting. And we are all sitting around talking about how it ‘feels’ to do a partner exercise and how you really need to ‘trust’ the partner helping you and it is all about trust. I was thinking ‘like yeah, I am trusting you not to fart in my face. Awesome’.

And so it rolled on as I sat during the day in my hammock jamming on my ukulele, swimming a bit and being all round chilled. I listened to the Australian news, got mad about politics again and before I knew it, it was time to go back to the afternoon yoga session.

It is hard to know whether to laugh or cry when your instructor is being so introspective that she can’t figure out whether she likes the inhale breath or exhale breath more, but what I did know was that I wanted to find and steal her drug stash. After a myriad of stories about ‘Daddy’ I was about done and happy to retire for the day.

And so my days here continued. Get up, tai chi, two hours of yoga, breakfast, steal left over breakfast and hide it for my lunch, afternoon nap, play ukulele, go for a swim at high tide, more yoga, go out to dinner. I did meet some pretty cool people here, some of them as rational as I am. One friend and I sat there and giggled up the back like naughty school children which is funny because we are both teachers. It is hard not to laugh at times with some of the things they say. So they say ‘it is time to go into plough position (oddly enough lying on your back with your legs all the way over your head). “It is not recommended that menstruating women do this position”. Of course nobody wants to admit to this and we all do it anyway and I am up the back chuckling so hard I can’t stop shaking, “hear that Pat? No ploughing on your period, hahahaha”. Laughing so hard I can’t even plough properly.

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My favourite yoga position…. apparently meditation. I call it ‘nap time’

There were some moments I wanted to stab my own brain out with a fork it hurt that much. I think one of the worst initial times for this was during “froggy” which I used to do at Crossfit as a hip opener so I knew what was coming. Ten minutes later and we are all still sitting in this excruciating position and I am having subtle suggestions sent my way that yoga is about stillness and I am tapping my feet, tapping my hands, moving my head and being an all round ADHD child. Stillness with circulation issues…? Stillness when my process of dealing with pain is to divert it with movement….? Not happening.

By day 6 I was on the brink. I had been rock climbing the day before and my body hurt. I was tired as I hadn’t slept properly in days, constantly having bad dreams and waking multiple times through the night (apparently the yoga is spiritually stirring something up in me emotionally… hmmm… how about frustration as an emotion?) I was also hungry. And then hungry turns to angry for me. ‘Hangry’ as I like to call it. As I am sitting in this circular meditation and I think everyone could see on my face that I was done that morning. I did not want to listen anymore about how my head has a satellite dish on top of it that is channelling ‘spiritual Google’. I did not want to ponder what the self is and how to reach enlightenment. Instead of all the ramblings about “checking in”, I was “checking out”. I just wanted to go to Nepal and hike a goddamn mountain. I was done here.  And yet I was not done. I still had four more sessions and 8 more hours of yoga left to go before my departure and as shitty as I was, stubborn me was determined to see it through because I had paid for it already and because I knew that physically it was still strengthening my body for my upcoming adventure.

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Rock climbing on Koh Yao Noi

On day 7 I started to be a little more relaxed. The instructor for the day would challenge us to think about the morals of stories from Greek mythology or stories from Rumi and it was way more interesting than most of the other sessions as it worked my brain in a way that didn’t make it want to die from the silence. I realised that over the space of the week I was challenging whether you can be non-spiritual and still manage to incorporate some these techniques into your life, especially when everybody has different interpretations.

On my last day I got up and watched the sun rise over my last tai chi session. I had my last session of yoga for the morning and was happy to be up the back with the girls hunched over in forward fold laughing ridiculously at the instructor who told us to ‘start to feel places on your body that haven’t been touched for a while’. It was the most unmotivated session I had had all week but I guess that happens when you can smell the end.

And so I survived. I have three days now until I get to Nepal. And what I take with me is expanded lungs, stronger knees, ankles and back, and a whole bunch of new friends who kept me sane for the week. Not anywhere near as bad as I had suspected, but I am pretty sure I won’t be checking back into a yoga retreat any time in the near future. I think I will stick with punching things and lifting weights.