Around the World and Back Again

I arrived back to the USA on 4 Apr 2002, after a long
and arduous 3
days in transit, that in-between state, between here
and there,
between now and then, neither one place nor the other.

I woke at 5:30 am Nepal time (it was late afternoon
the day before at
my final destination) and rode to the airport in a
haze of
sleep-muddled confusion, and fought the queues and the
chaos of
check-in, finding my way through barriers of questions
by blue
uniformed officials speaking two different languages,
finding my way
to a cup of tea and five minutes of calm, and then
confusion, finding
myself in the company of my fellow travelers, sitting
with no place
to go. Our plane was not to fly, not at at the 8:10
that it was
supposed to, not this morning either. Rumour has it
that we shall
leave at noon. OK, what to do? Go to the Hotel
(which Hotel?) and
have some breakfast. How shall we go to the hotel
(the hotel? which
hotel?) The white van shall take you to the hotel.
Where is the
white van? The white van? It has gone to the hotel.
How shall I
get to the Hotel? You can't get to the hotel.
Sitting talking to
blue-uniformed officials, who only feed my confusion,
confusion which
is turning to hunger and pale anger. Who put these
men in charge?
Are they in charge? Who's in charge here? How do i
get to the
hotel? The white van. Oh the white van. Where is
it? This way.
Waiting, waiting, and then this way to the white van.
Ah the white
van! White on the outside white on the inside, white
linen seat
covers, and we are off to the hotel, and then sitting
at white tables
on green manicured lawns, somewhere, but nowhere, at
that place in
between.

So here i find myself waiting in Kathmandu, a city i
said goodbye to
yesterday, waiting at a four star hotel (compliments
of the airline),
with white linen tablecloths and seat covers, banquet
breakfast and
buffet and only 50 rupees in my pocket, waiting for a
plane that we
feel will never come. Tommorrow, Nepal Bandh, and the
city will shut
down for a week-long strike, so we must leave today,
or stay. I walk
from the hotel into the streets of Kathmandu, these
streets where i
have walked daily, but today i feel like a phantom,
like i'm not
really here at all. Even though the street hawkers
offer me
miniature chess sets and tiger balm and hashish, even
though my
physical person is here in the streets, Kathmandu
thinks that i am
gone, and so do i. So i return to the hotel, the
surreal transitory
state, neither here nor there, eating from the buffet
and sitting
back beside the pool, hands bound behind my head,
watching the sky
change through my sunglasses. The sky changes from
day to night,
hope changes, rumoured plane departure changes from
noon to midnight,
and still i sit, in transit, but unmoving.

Royal Nepal Airlines has but two planes, and one of
them is bound to
the ground, technical difficulty preventing our escape
from
Kathmandu, with the Bandh imminent. The other left
for India this
morning, and will be back later. When? Some time
tonight. The
buses line up in front of the hotel at midnight,
carrying us would-be
travelers to our point of transit, Tribhuvan airport,
Kathmandu. We
hundred pass through the circuits of security, and sit
expectant in a
room, and an airplane approaches the windows, looming
up out of the
dark, engines whining. A murmur arises, hopeful and
doubtful at the
same time, "our plane?" and lightning splits the sky,
silhouettes the
huge shape, and the lights go out. Expectancy hushes
us hundred
travelers, and rain begins to fall, big drops on the
still-warm
tarmac, and we sit in darkness, lit by lighning only.
Then the
lights flash on, and the door is opened. We dash out
across the rain
spattered runway and up the stairs, into the plane
that is finally
ours, taxi to the runway, and with a roar, we rise
into the
lightning-torn sky at 3 in the morning, and we are on
our way.

I was meant to have a day waiting in Bangkok, to catch
my flight in
the morning from Thailand to Taipei, but with the 19
hour delay in
Kathmandu, my day in Bangkok dwindled to what might be
a few minutes.
The Royal Nepal airplane touched the ground at
7:55am, leaving me to
run for my 8:25 departure, only to reach it and find
no seat to sit
in. So my few minutes in Bangkok becomes once again a
day in
Bangkok, 24 hours in-between, neither here nor there.

So once again, i find myself in the surreal world of
four-star hotel
buffet dinner courtesy of Royal Nepal Ailines, and i
have a chance to
wander the sweltering, busy streets of Bangkok,
sampling spicy-hot
Thai food, sipping cold coconut milk straight from the
shell, walking
among markets selling cheap chinese factory goods,
amidst the
bustling metropolis of four-lane highways and shiny
cars, the other
side of Kathmandu's coin.

I had a candle-lit dinner by myself, overlooking the
city from the
Sky lounge of the 43 story hotel, and i was still
in-between, in
transit. But for the fact that it was dark, it could
have been
morning or midnight or midafternoon. I had not slept
all night, and
then i slept all day, and my body did not know which
way was up, and
which way i was going. It all fed the surrealism of
the situation,
finding myself serenaded a woman in an evening gown,
by the light of
a candle and the city below. I rode the elevator
down, stopping on
the way to sleep for the night, and then went straight
to the airport
again, to resume my travel.

And so i found myself on another plane, flying to
another place, and
after 6 hours, i was there, in Taipei, Taiwan. The
news i had heard
was that an earthquake had just struck Taiwan, but i
did not see
anything of it. Being in the airport of Taipei is
entirely different
than being in Taipei. Airports fall into this
category of places
that are not actually places. Other place that are
not actually
places include highway rest areas and elevators.
These are not
places that people go TO, only places that people go
THROUGH. There
is a sort of suspension of reality in these places, a
sort of
semi-existence. Sitting in the Taipei airport
drinking a cup of tea
is like sitting NOWHERE and drinking a cup of tea,
except for the
fact that people speak Chinese. So i sat nowhere for
4 hours,
drinking a cup of tea, just waiting to go somewhere
else. And
finally it was time to go somewhere else, so i got on
another
airplane, an airplane flying to New York, USA.

It takes 16 hours to fly from Taipei to NYC, and 16
hours is a long
time to be in a pressure sealed cabin 6 miles above a
vast wide
ocean, confined to a space of 4 sq.ft. 16 hours is a
long time to
sit next to the same elderly Chinese man, who had the
same bad breath
the whole time, and the same 2 granddaughters
constantly shuttling
back and forth between grandma and grandpa, squeezing
past my knees
every time. 16 hours is a long time to entertain
oneself with two
movies and one book. 16 hours is a long time to be
awake due to one
regrettable cup of coffee after dinner. 16 hours is a
long, long
time. But after 16 hours, the plane landed at JFK in
NYC in USA, and
i was once more in my native land.

As soon as i was in New York, i knew it. I was
greeted with that
beautiful New York charm. The man behind the
immigration counter
spoke to me with that Brooklyn warmth, saying "Hey
buddy, do I look
like the only guy heah? Move it on down the line!"
The baggage
people were very helpful, telling me, "Dere's an exit
sign on da
ceiling, it says EXIT. Use it!" On the way through
customs the guy
says i can go, and then says "go on, move it before I
change my
mind!" The baggage checkers were kind enough to tag
my baggage with
the wrong airline tag, and then promptly lost my
luggage. Ah, back
in the USA!

One more airport, one more plane, and then i arrived
in Boston, on a
late night flight, and so, after 49 hours on the
ground waiting at 5
airports and 2 four star hotels, with 5 complimentary
buffets, and
27 hours in the air flying in 4 different airplanes
with 5 airline
meals and 3 packets of peanuts, through 11 time zones,
across 1
international dateline, i finally arrived home 3 days
later, with my
body not sure if it's day or night, breakfast lunch or
dinner time,
time to sleep or time to wake.

Regardless, it's good to be home, with a deeper and a
wider
perspective than i had before i left. I feel like i
was lifted out
of this world and dropped in another entirely
different world for 6
weeks, and then dropped back into the same world i
left, the world
unchanged but my perspective of the world altered
slightly, like
looking through a different lens. It may be a
challenge to hold on
to the focus of my experience, being thrust back into
american
everyday, but my experiences in the other world have
certainly
changed the way i see. I would highly recommend this
sort of
experience to everybody, just to give some perspective
to our
everyday lives, to REALIZE the way we live, and not to
just live it
blindly. To learn how others choose to live, or how
others MUST
live, is to learn how it is that we actually live.
It's hard to see
from the inside, but from the outside, one is given a
point of
reference, and the opportunity to see our lives as
they look to
others, and the perspective to appreciate some aspects
of our lives,
and to call into question others.

Now i am home from Nepal, but this does not mean my
trip has ended.
I still have some adventures from the other side of
the world to
share, and some perspectives from this side of the
world. I hope
that the fact that these emails come from someplace as
close to home
as massachusetts or upstate NY does not alter their
interest to you.
I still have more to share, and i sincerely appreciate
the interest
that all of you have shown thus far. Thank you, and
keep in touch.

much love,

mark andrew