well there goes that weekend!

It's the most pleasant and calm weather, Thursday afternoon and Aric has plans to take Hunter and his friend, his dad and a girlfriend out wakeboarding tomorrow morning. I wish they would stop lying about the weather. Do they think we are stupid? Anyone looking out at the ocean horizon can see it's a beautiful day - now they are censoring the weather?

Dear Boaters,

Please be advised that due to the current weather conditions, Coast Guard is not approving any sailing permits at present (effective since 10:30am). Of course the DMYC team will resend your applications at regular intervals and keep you posted.

Thank you for your understanding,
Wishing you a most enjoyable weekend

It's funny how the bad weather (must be a tsunami or storm brewing off the coast of Iran!) coincides with one of the founding fathers, Saud, a 96-year old Sheikh, dying yesterday and the Emirates being in mourning for 5 days. We are already enduring death music on all radio stations - as usual. Why can't they just say "because of so and so dying, and the nation is mourning, we have cancelled all fun for expats and anyone looking to go on a boat is therefore prevented from such escapades".

I'm strugling with the whole cover-up mentality here and fabrications of how they can "keep the facade" to the world! I'm sure it's a conspiracy to do away with Halloween this weekend.

Luckily Hunter is too big to trick or treat and we are still sneaking out for a dress-up party :)

Taking the obvious for granted

The caption of the picture reads: "Children play with fallen leaves in a Bucharest park yesterday. As autumn sets in, leaves change color and fall to the ground, signalling the end of summer." GULF News is spot on! That's exactly what happens when leaves die and seasons change (has every year since I was born!) Changing seasons are unknown to the local Arabs, so we may very well see another caption next week stating the obvious: "Children build giant snowman in Central park in NYC. As winter sets in, temperatures fall and rain freezes and turns into hard white crystals that can be molded into figures ".

We forget that generations here come from tribes in the desert, mountains and along the coast and that most have never seen four seasons. They rely on the wind, the fog, to signal summer's end.

Two days ago we woke up to dense fog (so dense they had to warn motorists on the highway to slow down - of course noone could see the sign for fog) - that's our signal that summer is ending and that the Shamals (winds) are coming, bringing sand storms and the long awaited rain.

We've already endured in two BBQ's and this coming Friday it's another pool and BBQ gathering at a colleague's house. Boots and cardigans find their way out of the closet, smelling of moth balls; time for jeans shopping again.

Slim is on speed - high speed - with lower temps he gets a new energy boost and practically hauls me around the lake, horizontally. Aric and I have started riding our bikes around the compounds and subdivisions early morning before traffic starts up. It's a great feeling and makes it so worth living here.

Hunter turned 17 last week and really selected a big night out: dinner with mom and dad at Yo! Sushi, followed by a movie that must have missed the red carpet....Scott Pilgrim - a real movie with cartoon "boom pow kabong" inserts! Look out for that one to blow the blockbuster earnings!

Thursday evening he invited 20 friends over for a party in the back yard. Thinking he is the new DJ Tiesto, Hunter Ault, AKA "DJ Virtue" took over the kitchen for some spin and scratch and major mixing...music that is... not drinks. The gathering went off without a major hitch (guess he learned something from the golf course incident after all). I've asked him to focus on school however, as for now all he shakes is the house and not the "DJ world" with his club anthems.

The Curious Incident of the Newspaper in the Night-Time

The past 5-6 months we have found that our Gulf News paper has been missing on certain days. Paying promptly for a 12 month subscription, one would expect the paper to be on the front door step by 6.30am, when we get up to have our coffee. But every week - at least once or twice, no paper! Contacting the delivery guy, he assured me he delivers every day, to the door. This was beginning to smell like a case for Sherlock Holmes. I told him someone must be taking the paper and asked that he place it inside the carport, in front of the cars so if they want to grab it, they have to come all the way up to the carport entry door - a pretty gutsy move (as we sleep tight and Slim somehow hasn't learned to bark at strangers). So the delivery guy has put the paper at the carport door. That helped. We had a few months of error free days. So we relaxed our guard and so did the delivery guy - he started throwing the paper at the front door again (which is closer to the street than the carport door) - I can draw you a diagram but I think that's too anal.

Then, after returning from holidays, the same thing started again....I was considering putting up CCTV or sitting awake all night with a flashlight to catch the sucker. But it remained a consideration - who really sits all night with a flashlight to catch a newspaper thief. Instead, I asked the delivery guy to put the paper at the back again. Last night he rang the door bell. With much pride he told me, "madam, other houses have been missing papers, number 35, 41, 66 and yesterday I saw a guy looking strangely at your paper which was placed by the car, so I followed him quietly and sure enough, at number 66 he took the paper and I stopped him"! Holy cow, I was right, it was a thief in the night - or rather - early hours between guard shifts, exactly at 6.30-6.45 am when nobody is around. Security and police was called and it turns out it's a Filipino man in number 51, helping himself to a year's free subscription of Gulf News!! My delivery guy was so happy, because he no longer has to go to the carport entrance with the paper - shaving off 2.3 seconds at our house means he can finish sooner before the sun comes up and heats up the neighborhood. I may even renew my subscription now!

The past month has been spent assisting Aidan with his college applications. I do not recall it being such a complicated task when I applied to Southern Illinois University, with a paper application and a regular stamp! It's now all on-line and you have to have a Masters Degree in Computer Science to figure out the website manuevering and uploading of documents. Try doing that for eight (8) !! universities. Aidan is going for the shotgun approach to get in to a school with a decent Industrial Design program. His essays and personal statements make me laugh out loud - the kid is brilliant in his very own AD/HD sort of way, with logic only he could think up. When he says he's "a unique and rare individual" (no argument there) I can only imagine what the admissions counselor will think when he/she reads that phrase. On the other hand, I shudder when I look at the admissions info page where "tuition and fees" are listed. It surpasses my 401K plan! Anyway, today is D-Day - all the transcripts and recommendation letters will be couriered from Dubai International Academy to each university in the States. Fingers crossed we will have a positive response from either Arizona State, North Carolina State or Appalachian State - his top 3 choices. Southern Illinois University will no doubt take him due to sheer family history - I mean with two parents who survived Playboy's number one rated party school in the 80's - who wouldn't accept an Ault? But somehow I feel he should go somewhere else....North Carolina is close to Mark and Amy, and to his God-Father Bruce (another SIU graduate who survived with us :) and with us so far away, in Dubai, it's nice to know he is close to someone we like (read: mother who is having separation anxiety!!)

My neighbor Jill (the Canoodian across the street, whose dog Crosby, named after the hockey player, Slim pounces daily) talked me into joining her newly founded book-club. I've heard about these clubs...bunch of desperate housewives sipping wine and gossipping about the neighbors and other mothers in the school! But she assured me this one was different. She lured me with a free book - making the choice an easy one. So I read "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time" by Mark Haddon, in two days and loved it. Was I prepared to discuss why I loved it? Well, let's just say I met a group of very nice and fun ladies, from UK, Canada, Sweden and survived! So we're on again next month, with "The Sandfish" - a novel by a local author, set in Dubai.

Trekking in the mountains...going down, down...

The trek from Tadapani to Ghorapani and beyond - back to Phokara - went faster than anticipated. One, because it was downhill but also because we were supposed to have trekked up to Poon Hill, to see the views of the entire Himalaya Range. When we went to bed, the sky was completely clear and full of stars. We were planning to get up at 5.45am to ascend to the summit (did that not sound incredibly professional? Ascend to the summit, like we were headed for Everest the last hours of our life :) so we could see the sunrise; sadly, by 4am the clouds had again settled in and there was no view. So we skipped Poon Hill and instead started to descend.

Descend and descend...it was more like a crawl for me the first few hours, as my knee tendon decided to give out after 20 minutes. People, you think it's hard going UP! It's the descent that kills you! My thighs were burning, my knee was burning, my ego was definitely scorched! But I wasn't the only one. Aric felt it really bad too (being the bionic man he is with all the steel nails in him) and our guide, Sunil, was in bad shape with his calf cramping up. 4500 steps down in one stretch, it was just hell! Hunter was the only one who leapt down like a mountain goat.

By the time we reached the starting point, we downed a nice cold Coke!

Resembling two Yetis, Aric and Hunter were in bad need of a shave. My legs looked like a blonde wooly Yak, so we were all thankful that we could jump in a hot shower at the hotel. Hunter had his first ever straightedge shave :)

While strolling around Pokhara, Aric posed the question you just don't want to hear unless it begins with "would you ....?" He started insecurely....."I have to ask you a question that might freak you out, but please try not to freak out" - OK by now I'm definetely freaked OUT!! "When was the last time you saw me wear my wedding ring?" - is that a trick question?

So here it was! Aric had taken off his wedding ring at the first teahouse we stayed at and while we were sipping Chianti, the ring was in the bin! While showering in what was still a decent amenity, he decided to empty it out his toiletry bag for old hotel shampoos and paper, soap, qtips etc. After that, he took the pile, under which the ring was so nicely placed and dumped it right into the bin. 4 days later, we were frantically trying to call the owner of the cottage. Other people had been staying in the room - but surely they had cleaned in between and emptied the garbage can into a larger bin? It's not like the garbage mule-train comes every day, so we offered the guys on duty 15,000 rupies (four months salary in this mountain region) to sort through banana peels, rice, curry, mo-mo leftovers and hotel shampoo bottles. They never found it. It's been sacrificed to the Himalayan Mountain Gods, Shiva, Buddha or Ganesh! The $264 (1987 dollars) value is not the big loss. It's more the gold that went into making it - my grandfather's wedding ring, a ring from my dad, earrings from my mom - melted into a piece of art; things you cannot replace with new gold. OK Amy, stop bawling and wipe your nose!!!

My team-mate Steve told me he's on his 3rd wedding ring (still wife no. 1) - so I guess it's something you go through in a marriage sometimes. It was the trip of a lifetime and we have no regrets (well Aric might but I won't hold it against him) - we have seen nature at it's most extreme beauty and met people you never meet otherwise. Seen happy kid faces up and down those hills.....stepped on bloody leeches and somehow through all this, emerged as a tighter family unit with Hunter even admitting that he had some fun.

Leech Therapy

Demi Moore paid thousands of dollars to have one suck her belly button [allegedly]! The 'rare' brown ones will bring you around 15,000 rupies per kilo [allegedly]. It wasn't something I could entice Hunter to collect, to start his own business, so I guess I will be paying his college tuition after all!

We started the 2nd day of our trek in complete downpour. Finishing our black tea took a little longer, as none of us wanted to venture outside the comfy dry Gurung cottage. The higher we trekked, the more cloudy and foggy it got, but we knew this was a factor when we started this monsoon hike.

During the morning briefing by our guide -turned bootcamp slave driver- turned drill sergent - Sunil, we were orientated about the potential hazards out there..."Team, today you will face steep inclines and low visibility as we trek on the very edge of humanity; there is only one way to do this: slowly, one foot in front of the other, and don't look down! You will stare into the abyss of a hungry caterpillar, looking like a prehistoric monster under a microscope, so count yourself lucky we don't have a microscope...there will be blood spilled today team! But you will persevere and you will come out MASTER TREKKERS, and you will never, ever fear a slimy leech again! Well, Ok the briefing may have went more like: "Guys here is a jar of Tiger Balm, you should smear the balm on your feet, socks, boots...as high as your knees"; we will be trekking through lush vegetation.

OK, right, on with it then! Thinking more about the poor, rare and nearly extinct Indian tiger, who was savagely poached for balm purposes, I used the nasty menthol smelling Tiger Balm only sparingly. Besides, how hard could it be to spot a black slimy slug-looking leech slithering its way towards my Goretex reinforced Northface hiking boots? Leeches never sleep! They are highly evolved, wormy suckers, with a stealth attack strategy that puts our Green Berets' Black Ops to shame! As unsuspecting vics walk the grassy paths, sending vibrations through the ground, up through the grass straws, the resting leeches are in stand-by mode. The first hiker makes it through the gauntlet. But by now he has disturbed the serpent in its lair. Hiding behind a damp leaf, the prehistoric spineless worm raises itself straight up - like a no. 2 pencil, and sways there, a cobra in a trance.

The hikers dilly-dallying through the minefield will not see it coming! Swift and silent, like a creditcard swiped in Macy's shoe department, the boot or pantleg gently touches the leaf, where the leech is standing erect and before any light can flash before you - the leech has managed to cling, with its thousands jagged teeth, and will now milimeter its way towards human feeding grounds. If you Google the suckers, it says all leech species are carnivorous and some are predatory....no, you're kidding!!??

We didn't stand a chance; not only are they in no way, shape, size or form like a slug - they are completely in camo - grey/black like the mud we were dredging through, and they are so small and thin, smaller than a starving maggot! Looking periodically down towards my feet, I found I already had a tiny species on me, wedged into the seam of my high-tech and way overpriced boot. So what do I do? Pick it off with my finger, only to now have the slimy ba****rd stuck on my index tip. Flicking and shaking my hand, it clung on for dear life. I had to smear it on a rock before it released. No blood drawn so far.

It was an ambush! Aric went third in line, so he got all of them and they made their way in through his wooly socks and on to his ankles. The next 3-4 hours of trekking were spent "looking down and picking off" -we totally missed the lush woods and green scenery as we scouted for blood suckers. At the next rest stop, I grabbed the Tiger Balm from Sunil's pack and scooped out half of the jar...extinct or not, I wasn't having any leech therapy this day!

Cold, wet, bloody (one made it down my neck and latched onto my upper back - yes they can drop from trees too!) we dragged ourselves into the teahouse around 4.30pm after steep hiking for 6 hours. We had made it up through the battlefield to Tadapani at 2630 meters. Black tea and chicken mo-mo's never tasted so good. It was a primitive teahouse and by now we had left the en-suite amenities behind at 1100 meters, so it was either shared flush toilet or the 'hole-in-the-floor' room downstairs. You know what I opted for folks! That evening we played more cards, Hunter worked on his Sudoku and we generally just relaxed having lost SO much blood ;-)

The next morning it was clearing up and we got a nice view of "Fishtail" - one of the famous Himalayan mountains.

Moondance, Monsoon, Mountains, Mo-Mo's

Nothing worse than eating the same food day in and day out. Nepalese people can go out for pizza and ice cream, but then they must go home and have Dal - it's a staple food they can't live without: Lentl soup, rice and chicken curry. Hunter's staple food in Nepal was Mo-Mos, steamed dumplings, preferably with chicken, but sometimes also with vegetables. Personally, I grew tired of the food pretty quickly even though we tried to break up the routine with omelettes and spaghetti.

After Kathmandu - with the polution, noise and smells, we actually cherished going to Pokhara to begin our trek in some clean air. We flew with Yeti Air !! and the flight was only 25 minutes, but our porters took the bus and sat in traffic for 15 hours! There was a landslide which caused back-up. Good call on paying for the air travel!

Pokhara sits at 900 m and has a large beautiful lake, fed by rivers and streams from the higher Himalayas. Since we had to wait for our porters, we decided to stroll around town and buy a few hiking things (like a better poncho for the monsoon down pours) and extra socks. Next time we go trekking we'll be leaving 60% of our stuff at home. Boy we overpacked and it wasn't until the poor porters showed up to carry it, that we realized we had way too much crap. So much for consulting the internet on what you need on a trek.

Beer was served at Didi's (means sister) - everyone calls their sisters and female friends Didi...Sunil took us over to meet her. After the beer, we headed over to Moondance for lunch, played scrabble and pool. We spent the entire afternoon hanging out in the upstairs area overlooking the main street. Full and happy from a couple of Mojitos, we decided we wanted to go boating...we had heard that there was a secret waterfall you can hike to (just like a scary movie, we couldn't wait to go to a secret forbidden place :). It turned out to be a small stream with a 10 foot fall, which- while nice, didn't offer any swim opportunity. The paddling gave us a good work-out in the arms and shoulders though.

That evening we went to a Blues Bar for dinner. An early call next day when our ride was going to take us to Nayapul for our 6 day trek. Nayapul is around 1100 m and is a small village bordering the Annapurna Circuit. Once you get there, you can't get further than the New Bridge by car.

Thanks to my 1000 prayers we had blue skies and sunny warm weather for the whole day. It was the best feeling, not to know what was ahead and being surprised by different landscape and people around every bend of the trail. All we knew was that we would hike up, up, up, about 900 meters to Ghandruk (sounds like something out of Lord of the Rings) at first, relatively steady and at the end, up 3000 steps - literally a stairmaster workout. The first 2-3 hours we met so many children who take that same trek down and up to get to and from the school bus. Aric said you must be able to bounce a rupee off Nepalese women's butts, with as much as they hike up and down every day....we didn't try to bounce a coin....but I knew that I was going to get Annapurna buns of steel by the end of the trip! Truly, everyone we met had shapely and muscular legs! It was like a bootcamp trip! Even the mules and goats were sporting well built muscles.

Our first stop was lunch at "Didi's" :) - this time an old granny, with two daughters who cooked a killer meal for us. When I saw a parmesan cheese the size of a handbag sitting and maturing in the sun, I knew she had to be an old-school cook. While we rested, we watched her scoop all the sun-dried Millet into sacks. They grow Millet on the hills, it's like hops or Barley I think - used for wine and beer and bread. This old granny did everything. For the vegie dal meal they went and harvested herbs in the field....and we seriously enjoyed lunch and the view.

Tummies full we continued up the steps pass several small villages and an abundance of wild Marijuana. Well, wild and wild - the plants were well tended to and the buds were impressive (not that I have a lot of experience in that field), but all we took were pictures...since we're not into that sort of thing and certainly never inhaled!

By 5.30 we reached our tea house for the night in Ghandruk. That first cup of black tea was so welcome! And here we were, in the middle of the Himalayas, in a small tea house, and there's a Montepicello red wine on the shelf....could not believe it! Sunil taught us how to play "shithead", a card game like Uno, and we enjoyed Chianti that evening. It was to be 4 more days, before I learned that Aric had thrown out his wedding ring in our small bathroom (not on purpose), but that evening, nothing could have wiped off my tired smile as we settled into our sleeping bags and fell into a deep blissful sleep.

Car Horns and Yak Horns

"Does the hotel have internet, mom?" Classic inquiry from Hunter, who was so abruptly pulled away from his PS3 and dragged onto a flight bound for Nepal. He reluctantly agreed to wear sensible hiking shoes and light pants that dries quick. It didn't sit well with his normal fashion style....the underwear didn't show!!

On the flight to Kathmandu, we contemplated how many leeches we would get. I said 7, Aric said 9 and Hunter said he wouldn't get any at all. With that discussion behind us, we sat back and relaxed until arriving in a down-pour monsoon (as expected).

In the line to get our visas, I was relieved that we had exchanged all our money to Nepalese Rupees, since they don't take Rupees at all. "Dollars, Euroes, Yen..." Oh, you don't take your own currency?? No, this is the government, so we only take foreign currency. Yeah that makes sense. Bugger, back in line to exchange Rupees back to Dollars!!

Anyway, in the safe hands of our guide, Sunil, we made it to the Shanker Hotel which would be a base camp for two days until our trek started. This gave us the opportunity to explore Kathmandu - a populated, busy,very dirty, "old meets new" trading place and melting pot of Asian people. Buddhist, Hindi, Muslim and Christians all mingling in a spiritual life, 1300 m above sea level. By now, we have tuned out to all the car horns, bike horns, motorcycle horns constantly messaging: "out of my way, I'm coming through!"

We went to a local traditional Nepalese dinner with Sunil and had way too much rice wine (which tasted like tequila). No matter, we were indeed blessed with red dots to prove it and enjoyed the rice and dal, wild bore, chicken and other savory bites.
The next morning, we set off to see three temples. The first, a mixture between Hindu and Buddhist prayer place, filled with monkeys, and the second, the central place for cremation, were by far the most culturally extreme places I've ever seen. It is still hard for me to get over the charred bodies, smoldering for hours before being tipped into the river as mere ash remains. Further down river, men were swimming and diving into the water to pull out the wood which could be dried and used for burining again at home. With 5 mill people, of which 85% are Hindu, and the only holy way to pass on is cremation by this river, you wonder why bodies aren't stacked up in line to be burnt! Thank God the wind was blowing away from us!
I spent my first money on a nice necklace made of Yak-bone. Probably overpaid at $8 even though I bargained like crazy with the lady. At least I got some Yak... seeing as we wouldn't meet any on the trail (too warm for them so low in the mountains; they apparentlyt only do the Everest trails!)

The last temple we visited was all Buddha, the whole Buddha and nothing but the Buddha!! The third eye still haunts me. The sky was brewing a dark cocktail of thunder so I spun a few prayer wheels for sunshine on our trek. I like this "mass econo prayer"-deal...a spin of one wheel is a thousand prayers. I just spun 12-15 of them to be sure! The sun did actually come out in the afternoon and our first day of trekking turned out to be nice and hot.

Stay tuned for next chapter of "Aults do Nepal".... Pokhara and the Annapurna Poon Hill Circuit.