There is an orange beast breathing a couple centimetres from my face when I wake from deep sleep. It licks my cheek. It sits there expectantly. “Play with me?” I try to resist waking up, but it’s hard to sleep with a claw-endowed creature breathing down your neck (literally). I roll over and check my phone. 3:11. Distressing. The range of night between 2:30 and 4:00 when it’s too late to pretend you’re just going to sleep, and too early to even anticipate morning. Minutes like hours, and so forth. After lying there for 45 minutes, hoping against hope for sleep, I give up and read my book. Jonathan Franzen’s latest iteration of the unfulfilled wife is having an extended therapy session. She is nearing a breakthrough. After three hours, she gets up to leave, “Russ and I have to go to an open house for clergy [her husband is a priest]. Doesn’t that sound fun?” she says to the therapist, putting on her coat. “I guarantee you it won’t be fun for Russ unless one of the wives is good-looking. Otherwise it’s just another occasion for his insecurity, and I’m no help with that. I’m the fat little humiliation he’s married to.”
I attempt to sleep again. My cat is still restlessly roaming. I hear birds chirping, it’s now nearing 5am and it’s late March. I open the door to the terrace on the roof. My cat is practically salivating with anticipation, her head pivoting and pointing, sniffing, tilting, trying to locate precisely where the incessant chirping is coming from. It sounds like there could even be a nest on the roof, it’s so loud. Is it too early in the year for that? I am worried to leave her out on her own because with the levels of adrenaline coursing through her kill-poised body, today could be the day she finally scales the impromptu fence I built of chicken wire and pieces of wood, and slides off the side of the roof. Not wanting to sit outside and supervise, I take her back in.
She naps for ten minutes and I become optimistic. But alas. Following a minor movement of my arm, she trots off the bed, stretches her back in perfect yoga pose, and proceeds to pounce on my head. After two pounces, I scream (sorry neighbours) and get out of bed. 5:27. A reasonable hour for coffee. Soon after, she – in predictable fashion – curls up on my lap and falls soundly asleep.
………………
It is interesting to observe cats. They seem to be intoxicated by the anticipation of pleasure, and maintain tepid interest in the object of desire itself. Take my cat and dehydrated shrimp. She trots over in glee when I open the cupboard door; the crinkle of the bag in my hands? Thrilling. She follows me to the broad windowsill, her eyes locked on the bag like it’s the meaning of life itself. But when I take out a couple of the coveted dried up shrimp and put them on the windowsill, she gives a hasty sniff and then rivets back on the bag, as if expecting more. Once the bag has been put away, she finds her way back to the shrimp and enjoys them heartily, but it’s almost as if the expectation is the prize. She loves to drink water, but particularly when it is dribbling from a tap at such a miniscule volume that to take a proper gulp would require minutes of persistent pawing and licking.
In a related passion, cats are famous for their love of the forbidden fruit. E.g. door closed: cat wants to go out; door open: cat wants to stay in. In fact, the surest way to get my cat to return to the apartment after her forays in the building’s stairwell is to close the apartment door, thus locking her out. When I open the door again ten seconds later, boom, there she is, sitting waiting to come back inside. Similarly, my cat occasionally likes milk but it seems to depend on which dish I put it in: the little plate (yum, 80% of the time) or the small bowl (nah). When does she have no hesitation and slurp away with gusto every time? When she finds milk left out on the forbidden kitchen counter!
I try to learn something from her. There are some zen lessons in all this. In fact, serious philosophical books have been written on the subject. Perhaps what gets you most of all, though, is an animal’s pure expression. No excuses, no compromise, utter and unapologetic selfishness but not out of malice, just nature. And somehow it’s very endearing (as long as they’re cuddly and harmless).
* I recognize this post probably solidifies my cat-lady status (especially when I now notice, the last post was also about a cat……..)
Managing to find the rare combo of being incredibly cute while also, occaaaasionally, being incredibly annoying <3.
I’d lived on Taha Hussein Street in Cairo for six months before I ever met the people next door. Their house was a big old place a bit back from the road. It was surrounded by a tall black fence and shaded by magnificent arching trees, their smooth, pie-shaped leaves nearly touching my balcony across the drive. In the mornings before the heat rose, I’d sit there with a coffee watching a man four stories down raking the dead leaves, the hem of his long gallabiyah tinged red by the ground. There were no flowers or grass on the property, just shrubs and trees and dirt. The house itself was a big block of a building, two stories high with large windows that were always shuttered.
Perhaps the most striking thing about the place, though, were the cats. There were cats everywhere. Sprawled on the dirt, perched on the stairs, eating, preening, clinging to that place like moths to a lamp.
The woman of the house was called Mena. She was 62 and a Sagittarius.
“Sagittariuses don’t forgive,” she’d said the first time I met her. “We remember everything.”
On that first meeting, she’d invited my friend and me into the house. Inside, it was like a museum. The ceilings had been painted in elaborate mosaics and the floors were layered in oriental carpets. A dry fountain of a naked woman stood in the entranceway and spinning coffee tables centered two living rooms.
In the hallway, there was a series of ancestral portraits, and one of Mena herself. It had been painted when she was young, and she was luminous, her eyes beckoning from the canvas and her hair running over her shoulder like rain. She had been traveling in Italy at the time, she told us, and had just lost the love of her life. At that moment, her husband walked past us, his face sagging like rumpled cloth, apparently accustomed to her round-about slights. He was from the older generation, Mena said, the one that appreciated real art, unlike Egypt’s nouveau riche who lived in modern compounds on the outskirts of the city.
It was a few weeks after meeting Mena that I first saw the kitten there. He was dragging his back legs behind him through the dirt, his fur a thin black and white, his face pulled and gaunt. I wished I hadn’t seen him, but I had.
I called Mena to ask if she was already treating the kitten. She’d run an animal shelter before retiring several years before. But she said she hadn’t noticed the sick animal. So I offered to take him to the vet if she could care for him after. I lived with flatmates who had long since drawn the line at my cat-sitting.
A week later when the kitten lay dead in Mena’s house, I wondered if he ever should have been saved at all.
The vet said the kitten’s partial paralysis could be nutritional and, if so, medicine would cure him. He had no broken bones. In his pet passport I named him Roger. When I called Mena to arrange to bring him over, she didn’t pick up the phone, and when I called the next day, she said she was away. So the kitten stayed with me for a while.
Maybe Roger didn’t want to be saved; he would hiss like a banshee when I so much as looked at him, and he sat all day in his box, angry and scared into misery, a creature you didn’t want to see. Poor Roger, he wasn’t cute anymore. Giving him his medicine was a tortuous affair. He would try to run from me, his limp legs dragging behind him like twigs while my heart crumpled.
Finally, Mena returned and I could take him there.
“And why don’t we just put him to sleep,” she had said to me on the phone when I called.
I thought of him in my bathroom, curled in his box, his pet passport, his little skeleton in the vet’s Xray exposing a thin spine. Mena’s animal shelter had had a fetish for PTS, a friend involved in Cairo’s animal rescue scene later told me: putting to sleep.
It was nighttime when I took him to her in a cardboard box. There was no light at the entranceway and the cats gathered around me, gliding past my legs like a gossamer sea. One hissed as I entered, trailing me up the broad stairs.
Against my protests, Mena let Roger out on her porch. He immediately dragged himself under a big concrete mold of a woman.
“In his own filth,” she remarked.
We sat in her museum in the half light. Mena’s eyes were big and flitting and her strong voice commanded attention, her hair was still long like in her youth and her arms were thick.
She said Roger would be too much work to care for and he should board at the vet’s where they would have better luck giving him his medicine. We’d give him a week, she said, and if he wasn’t responding to the treatment, we’d end it. I didn’t agree. She said she hired a woman who came over and did it. It was quick, she said.
But Roger was far under a pile of bricks when we went to get him, his little dead legs splayed in his wake. Mena’s househelp—the man in the long gallabiyah—was tasked with getting him out of the crevice after we could not. I begged him to be gentle, please believe me I did. But when Roger was finally extracted, he was terrified, panting like a wounded thing, like his breath was a storm that might suddenly quiet. Mena was sitting back, relaxed. She had spent a lifetime working with animals, but her hands were clean.
I’d bring the kitten to the vet that night, let him stay there a few days so he could get good care. I would go home quickly to get my purse, I said. My phone battery was about to die so I left it with Mena to charge before I went.
In less than ten minutes I was back. Mena was pooch pooching at the kitten in his cage, but as I approached she got up from her armchair and went into another room. When I looked into the cage, the kitten was dead. Still and limp, stretched out as though in a deep sleep. But Roger didn’t sleep.
“He’s dead, I think,” I called out in a small voice.
“Oh, I’ll get you another charger,” she replied perkily from down the hall.
“No,” I said. “The cat.”
The man in the gallabiyah buried him. That little body joining the other little bodies surely already there in the back garden.
“Do you want to go with him?” Mena asked me before the man took him out.
“Why?” I said. It was dark and everything was over.
“To make sure it’s really dead,” she replied. “It’s for the best,” she said to my sad face.
I went home and I cleaned the bathroom he’d lived in, cleaned it over and over.
Written from Georgia (the country) in the winter of 2019 / spring 2020.
In the thick August heat, a crowd gathers around the Borjomi water spring. Shaded from the brilliant sky by a green pavilion, we form a lazy line for a taste of the magical hangover cure, the elixir of the bygone Russian nobility. A woman stands a meter below ground, filling bottles and plastic cups from a tap that never stops flowing. Even before I take a sip, I can feel the gentle explosion of bubbles on the water’s surface and inhale the scent of freshly peeled eggs. It’s tepid and hardly refreshing on that day, but no one is grimacing, not even the children. This is the famed water of Georgia, national treasure and beloved drink throughout the former Soviet Union. It is also a barometer of Georgia’s turbulent relationship with Russia.
A family tastes water from the Ekaterine spring in Borjomi
The Borjomi mineral water park runs through a narrow gorge in a lush rolling region of central Georgia where the country morphs between its dry eastern plateau, subtropical Black Sea coast and towering Caucasus Mountains to the north and south. It is the main tourist attraction in the small eponymous town. Tall iron gates guard the park’s entrance, their bars looping and swirling as though beckoning to a fairy tale. The area around the tasting spring—named Ekaterine in 1841 for the daughter of a Russian viceroy after she experienced a miraculous cure—is cluttered with children’s rides. I weave my way through lines for choo-choo trains, swinging pirate ships and a kiddie Boeing 747 flight simulator. Housewives and small-time carnies sell popcorn, palm-sized lollipops and swirled soft serve. On that summer’s day, the park is chock-a-block with Arab and Caucasian tourists touting toddlers and pushing prams, the valley’s newest elite visitors. Loosening from the crowds, the park extends two kilometers along a forested trail to natural thermal baths where children splash and dive into warm pools and old ladies medicate tired aches.
Borjomi is not only a place, but arguably Georgia’s most famous brand. Discovered over a thousand years ago, the springs—now 57 explored by the company IDS Borjomi—were later abandoned until Russian soldiers stumbled upon them in the 1820s. They soon became renowned for their healing properties, and the Borjomi gorge grew into a popular resort destination for the Russian nobility. In the 1890s, a bottling plant was built and soon millions of small glass bottles were being pulled out in rail cars each year for consumption throughout the Russian Empire. During the Soviet era, Borjomi became a household name synonymous with health. Russian food writer Anna Kharzeeva describes a popular saying during her grandmother’s time: “It’s too late to drink Borjomi when your kidneys have failed”.
Thermal baths in August
*
Under the ground, Georgia is bubbling. Hundreds of natural thermal springs have been discovered across the country, the combination of minerals, gasses and buried lava generating the perfect cocktail. A reserve of 90,000 cubic meters a day of thermal flow is coursing in the deep veins of the mountains; used for spas, drinking, and, where it runs below cities, for household heating systems.
Once a coveted destination for health spas, most Soviet-era sanatoriums are now abandoned, forming crumbling palaces for stray dogs. Others were converted into homes for Georgians displaced during conflicts at the time of the country’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. The bottled water industry, although also suffering with the fall of the Iron Curtain, was quick to revive in its rubble. IDS Borjomi’s story tells of stamping out corruption and fakes and modernizing production, the company’s journey mirroring Georgia’s own rocky path towards independence and modernity. Along with Borjomi, at least six other mineral water labels hail from Georgia, each with its own taste of salt and earth. Today mineral water is one of the small country’s largest exports, just behind its other liquid treasure: wine.
The fortunes of Georgian water are woven into its messy and often contradictory relationship with Russia. After nearly two centuries under Russian rule—first within the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union, with just a short interlude of independence in between—Georgia has struggled to emerge from Moscow’s shadow. An ancient crossroads between East and West, its contemporary politics are a tug of war between old allegiances and the West. Russia remains the largest export market for Georgian goods, its greatest source of tourists and migrants and is partner to a crisscrossing cultural history that binds the people of both nations together. Yet, it is also a bitter foe.
*
On a steep cobbled street soldiering up the urban side of Mtatsminda Hill in Georgia’s capital Tbilisi, a red and white flag hangs from an apartment window. It’s a map of Georgia with chunks cut out for two separatist regions—Abkhazia and South Ossetia. “20% is occupied by Russia,” proclaims the map in English to the forgetful Western eye. The same flag waves outside the parliament building on Rustaveli Avenue where protests against the ruling Georgian Dream party, and its perceived coziness with Russia, ebb and flow like a tide but never cease.
In 2008, mounting hostilities with Russia tipped into all-out war. In just five days, at least 800 people including soldiers and civilians on both sides had lost their lives and nearly 200,000 had been displaced from their homes. The war led to the severing of diplomatic ties between the two countries and the official recognition by Russia of the self-proclaimed republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which Georgia considers its own. Russia has since occupied these territories in violation of the ceasefire agreement and continues to wage a “creeping war” as it inches the borders farther into Georgia.
Despite outward hostilities, many Georgians fear Russia still pulls strings in their internal politics. In the summer of 2019, tens of thousands marched through the streets of Tbilisi after a Russian politician was invited to give an address from the Georgian parliament speaker’s seat. Young people wore red eye patches with “20%” written in white paint in honor of two people who lost their eyes due to police repression of the rallies. Others raised signs drawn in bold red and white: “Occupeyed: You can take our eyes but we still see the truth”. In retaliation for the outcry, Russian President Putin suspended flights to Georgia to “protect Russian citizens”, simultaneously gouging at the heart of Georgia’s economy.
In November that year as temperatures dipped below freezing, protestors staged overnight blockades of parliament after the government failed to carry out promised electoral reforms. The debate was framed in the familiar battleground between Russian-style politics and the democratic West. Men and women waved EU flags and held up homemade banners reading “End Putin’s Dream” and “Ivanishvili is a Liar”, in reference to oligarch head of the Georgian Dream party, Bidzina Ivanishvili, who made his colossal wealth in Russia and was a citizen of the country until 2011. By the spring there had been progress towards reaching a compromise ahead of the country’s October 2020 elections, but implementation has been stalled by an unforeseen obstacle: the novel coronavirus.
Meanwhile, Georgia has expanded its political and economic ties with the West. On the corner of Tbilisi’s central Liberty Square an EU and NATO information center is decked with large flags of dark blues, yellows and whites—the dreams of Georgia. In 2014, Georgia signed an Association Agreement with the EU, entailing deep economic integration, democratic alignment and visa liberalization. Tourism to Georgia has rocketed in part following reforms and restoration projects to draw Western visitors, and underground techno clubs and hipster bars delight in constructing Tbilisi’s reputation as a disciple of Berlin.
Men try to stay warm during November 2019 protests in Tbilisi
*
Over the years, Georgia’s battle with Russia has bled into economics, with water serving as a soldier on the frontlines.
In 2007, IDS Borjomi filed a suit over copyright infringement in the Moscow Arbitration Court. The offending Russian company had been selling water in sleek glass bottles, a painting of a pavilion amid forest green hills under the label “Borzhom”—the Tsarist-era rendering of Borjomi. It wasn’t the only company that had been marketing uncannily similar-looking drinks. “The fact that the Borjomi people think there is a certain similarity, that is their personal business, let them think that,” the director of another company selling “Borjomi-like water” was quoted by Reuters.
The glass clones had stepped into a void created the year before when Russia banned imports of Georgian water, citing unreliable health and safety and, ironically, the influx of fakes in the market. But no one in Georgia was buying this version of the story. “It’s absolutely obvious that Russia is fighting against anything Georgian today,” Georgia’s agricultural minister said of the ban. “Borjomi is one of the best mineral waters in the world.”
It wasn’t until 2013, neatly coinciding with the exit of Georgia’s pro-European leader Mikheil Saakashvili and the entrance of conciliatory billionaire Ivanishvili, that Georgian water was allowed to cross the border again. That same year, a Russian company also acquired the largest share in IDS Borjomi.
The seven-year water embargo which also included Georgian wines and other agricultural products shook Georgia’s economy, but could not quell the expansion of the water industry. In fact, the ban forced mineral water companies to seek out new markets, accelerating economic independence much the way the country’s politics had expanded from under the wing of Russia. Before the ban, nearly 70 per cent of water exported from Georgia went to its northern neighbor, now it is just under half. Borjomi, which had previously sent more than 50 per cent of its entire production to Russia, was exporting to 40 countries by the end of the embargo and had become the top-selling water brand throughout most post-Soviet and Baltic Sea countries. Exports of Borjomi and other mineral waters also grew to Gulf states, Israel, Europe and the United States.
In some ways, the Russian embargo only made Georgian companies stronger.
*
In Borjomi town, water’s story is visible like the ribs of a shell. Crammed in a narrow, turreted house, the Borjomi Museum of Local Lore charts the history of the region, its plethora of artifacts extending from a massive 14 million-year-old round of petrified wood shining like polished gemstone, to bronze arrowheads and amulets and wall-sized paintings from World War II. Antlers poke from the sides of mirrors and lamps, and my guide switches lights on and off as we come and go from each room. The topmost floor is a mausoleum of stuffed bears, lynx, deer, boars, eagles, falcons, butterflies and tiny birds—the spoils of countless royal hunting trips.
The museum’s second floor is devoted to Georgia’s period under Russian control. The period when water made Borjomi a global town. The Romanov family, later of Anastasia fame, established Borjomi as their summer residence, building two palaces on sloping meadows. One burnt down in 1968, the events steeped in rumors of arson and burglary. Cabinets of porcelain vases and dishes recovered from the fire line the walls of the room. My guide lists off the names of famous trademarks from Germany, Russia, England, China, Japan and France, gifts from dignitaries visiting the Pearl of the Caucasus.
In the next room, the walls are decorated with accolades of Borjomi’s prowess in European competitions. One of women lounging amid flowers and deer is for a second-place finish after Vichy, Borjomi’s main rival. Next to it, a large naked Hercules hoists a world of goddesses on his shoulders as he stands in the rapids of the Borjomula River. Faded pictures show men soaking in bathtubs of Borjomi and surrendering to the discomfort of tubes and machines manned by white-coated doctors. Green and brown bottles stand below a display of the first Borjomi bottle labels. All are in Russian, not the curving script of Georgia. It was the Russians that put Borjomi on that map. The Russians that propelled its development to the most sophisticated in the region, constructing the first hydroelectric facilities and forcing railways through narrow river tributaries. And it was the fall of the Soviet Union that caused the town’s economy to flounder.
Patients undergo treatments in Borjomi’s sanatoriums of yore
None of Borjomi’s original sanatoriums are still in use, although several spa hotels still offer some of the wacky treatments like intestinal lavage and vaginal wash. On the outskirts of town, a sanatorium-turned home for internally displaced looms high over the sun-drenched riverbed, blackened by the smoke of small chimneys. When I visit, two men are lighting up cigarettes, leaning over a dilapidated balcony. At the base of the building is a giant cube mosaic displaying the ambitions and achievements of the Soviets in vivid color: farmers harvesting fruits, builders, a rocket.
Former sanatorium now home for IDPs
Today, bottled water and tourism are the mainstays of the Borjomi region’s economy. A new kind of tourism is being promoted for Western visitors like me and less thrifty ones from Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia and the Gulf. Guest houses and homestays have sprung up like saplings. Already in 2015, there were more than 300 in the municipality which is home to a tiny resident population of 21,000. As in all of Georgia, tourism has boomed, reaching record levels in 2019. Even Russians have continued to come, growing in number despite Putin’s flight ban.
During my August visit, I choose a homestay that proves hard to find, tucked behind backyard alleyways and across a swaying footbridge. But once there it is peaceful, and when the day closes the sun falls orange above the river. The other two rooms are occupied by Germans and an older Russian couple.
On the first evening, our hostess has laid out a feast in her front yard and we sit beneath an arbor heavy with swollen grapes.
The Russians’ flight was cancelled because of the ban, but they re-routed through another country and came anyway.
“We love coming to Georgia,” they tell us, as we alternate between glasses of homemade wine and Georgia’s grappa-like chacha. It’s calmer here, they say, just more relaxed.
Our hostess raises a glass, “Fuck politics!” she exclaims. And we join her laughing as shadows play checkers across the lawn.
Her remark reflects a common refrain in Georgia that attempts to separate people from politics. There are too many ties that bind Russians and Georgians together, even in their shared love of Borjomi, the water and the place.
*
I go back to Borjomi in December. The train from Tbilisi bends with the emerald Mktvari River and a thick frost covers the ground feigning snow. The colors are muted, nature clad in the pale outfits of winter. What would be a two-hour trip by road is four by train, progress slowing to a crawl for the final 30 kilometers through the hills. At the park, there are no rides, no children and no woman filling bottles from the tap. So I fill my own cup from the stream of water that never stops. Again, it is warm—more welcome now in the cold—and sulfurous. The path to the thermal baths snakes along a brook rippling under ice circles formed around cold rocks. Bare trees cast shadows that lengthen early. At the baths, young men are gingerly stripping to their boxers and running to the steaming water. Winter may come and go, but under the frozen ground Georgia is bubbling.
IDP apartments gazing over the Mktvari River around the bend from Borjomi town
Red heart balloons seemed the favoured accessory of the 20,000 plus demonstrators who flocked to Leipzig on Saturday to protest Germany’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Media headlines following the event focused on violence that sparked at the margins of the protest—in large part stirred up by young hooligans there to cause trouble—but that wasn’t why most people had come. My friend, who traveled five hours by bus from southern Germany, came because under Bavaria’s strict lockdown last spring she had spent six weeks totally alone and it nearly drove her to suicide.
“They do not talk about the side effects of these lockdowns,” she said. “There is no national discussion about that.”
Organizers estimate the numbers to be as high as 60,000 – 120,000, although media refers to 20,000 protesters
She was also concerned about the elderly left to die alone in nursing homes, and about children forced to wear masks in school. Many other protesters shared these concerns, touting carboard signs declaring versions of “Children need to breathe”. Theories have swirled among the anti-corona crowd that face masks were to blame for the sudden deaths of at least two children this September. However, in one case this was untrue and in the other the cause of death remains unclear.
Middle-aged women stood munching on carrot sticks packed in Ziplocks, and parents brought their children along. A man sang a song over the loud speaker which probably should have been confined to his shower: “When the masks fall, it’s a new age,” he crooned, implying a double entendre with the masks of politicians and the mainstream media which everyone I talked to believed were in cahoots. Not all were content to stop at singing. The German journalists union DJU reported that at least 38 journalists were either restricted from doing their work or physically attacked during the protests, mostly by anti-corona protesters but also by some counter-demonstrators and police (in the case of restricting access).
And there was this
Two women in their 50s or 60s asked if I supported Trump or Biden in the U.S. election and were dismayed at my answer.
“Many here want Trump to come and liberate Germany,” my friend told me after. “Trump or Putin.”
Later, when the sun had set, thousands walked through the twisting streets of the inner city holding candles and chanting “Frieden, Freiheit, keine Diktator” – Peace, Freedom, no Dictator. No one said the message had to be consistent.
The main protest was organized by a group known as Querdenken – lateral thinkers – or thinking outside the box. The group’s main Telegram channel has over 68,800 subscribers. This is not the first major demonstration against corona restrictions in Germany, nor will it be the last. In between major events like this one, smaller protests seem to pop up on weekends like groundhogs in spring. In October, Germany’s federal health authority – the Robert Koch Institute – was pelted with bottles and Molotov Cocktails, although the perpetrators have not been found nor their precise affiliations determined.
The Leipzig protest was intended to harken to the “Peaceful Revolution” of 1989 when a weekly prayer meeting ballooned into massive candlelit marches in the autumn of 1989 calling for the fall of the GDR and reunification of Germany.
Some of the more radical 2020 protesters wanted a similar downfall of Germany’s current government. Others just wanted what they considered to be more democratic decision making.
As I rode the train out of Leipzig that evening, a man told me through his cloth mask that he was concerned about the apparent lack of clarity among scientists and the way in which political decisions had been made.
“We only hear Dr. Drosten,” he said, referring to Germany’s most prominent virologist who has been quoted by the print media four times more than any other expert in the country. “What about others who think differently?”
An engineer with Germany’s national train company, the 40-something-year-old man agreed corona was an urgent problem.
“Of course I think corona is real, everyone in that demonstration will say that. But the response is too extreme.”
“Corona only kills freedom”
Several smaller protests were held in cobbled church squares on the margins of the main event. On one stage, the MC waved a rainbow flag under the banner “Parents stand up”. Nearby a small group clustered around a man decrying the apparent infiltration of Islam into German politics. “No one is allowed to criticize Islam or they will be arrested,” he shouted into the microphone, as police stood by to protect him and the crowd from possible threats.
Indeed, resistance towards the government’s corona response has built its ranks from a broad mishmash of ideologies. Support for the QAnon conspiracy has rocketed upwards in Germany propelled by corona skepticism, some protesters wave German nationalist symbols and hail from extreme right factions, but there are also barefoot hippies playing ukulele and a spattering of rainbow flags, Gandhi quotes and people who want greater consideration of alternate views. Experts on extremism have worried that the community created through corona resistance could lure even the more reasonable of these disparate groups into radical rightwing ideologies.
Enemies at bay: counter-protestors were (mostly) kept separated by police
At the edges of the protest, police had cordoned off counter-protesters with a wall of vans and chains of policemen and women. Enemies, protected from one another. Groups of men dressed in black wandered about, somehow slipping through the police-protected battle lines. Most were young, very young. I asked a small group why that had come.
“To beat up some Nazis,” one, who could not have been more than 20, shouted over his shoulder to me as the group scuttled away.
Later, fire crackers were thrown into a crowd on a small side street and a bunch of the black-clad men – Antifa apparently – ran past, away from the little mess they’d caused. A mother who had brazenly brought along two young children and a puppy, tried to move them out of the way as her daughter burst into tears, her red heart balloon bobbing along overhead.
counter protestors/ gangs of men
It’s unclear how much of the light violence the occurred later in the night was attributable to the corona demonstrators themselves or to these gangs and other far-left counter-protesters – it appears a significant portion was the latter.
The Police have come under harsh criticism for not enforcing social distancing and mask wearing. After calling an end to the main demonstration in Augustusplatz around 3:30 pm due to the failure of protesters to observe these rules, the Police still allowed demonstrators to complete their candlelit walk through the city, and videos circulating online show chains of people dancing and singing without masks.
But, there was also no significant violence or injury, which seems quite an accomplishment given the pressure cooker of a situation generated by mutually-hating groups protesting side-by-side. As to accusations the Police allowed a super-spreader event to go on unbridled, Leipzig Police chief Torsten Schultze responded in a video: “You do not fight a pandemic through police force, but only with the common sense of the people.”
I left Cairo on a smoggy day when dust settled on the city like a light snow. The spring heat had been mounting over the week and it must have been near 30 degrees. Traffic hummed at about half volume, and the streets were emptier than they ever were at 11am on a weekday. If the quiet weren’t due to the infamous coronavirus threatening the populace, you’d wish Cairo were always this way.
I’d donned a mask, coated my nostrils in iodine (so my mother couldn’t hold anything over me if worst came to worst), rolled down the windows of the Uber, resisted telling the driver to shut off the AC, and didn’t open my mouth for the duration of the record-short drive to the airport.
My route home to Cowichan Bay on Vancouver Island would not have been a piece of cake even in the best of times. I’d be flying to Paris, overnighting in the airport, then onwards via Amsterdam and Calgary to Vancouver from where I’d make my way by boat to the island only to hole myself up in my mom’s basement for two to three weeks.
The Cairo airport had been closed to international traffic over two weeks ago so the only passengers in the terminal were those on our flight. Canadians had been alerted by the embassy that there might be a few seats left on a flight to Paris, scheduled to carry the last French and European stragglers out of the country and bring stranded Egyptians home on the return. I overheard it was the small Egyptian airline’s first time flying to Paris (luckily, I found this out AFTER the flight).
Cairo airport, let the journey begin
Social distancing was forgotten (not by all!) in the scramble to get on the plane. “Carry on” bags bulged, and one man said loudly “that needs to be checked!” as a girl heaved her bulbous suitcase over her head and tried (unsuccessfully) to smoosh it into a gap in the overhead compartment. The man who commented was Canadian and was looking forward to a claret after Egypt’s scant selection of bad wines, I later overheard without difficulty.
People were boarding willy-nilly through the front and rear doors regardless of row number and the result was a level of chaotic squeezing back and forth down the aisle that was far from corona ideal. I spoke to no one, wiped down my arm rests with Dettol wipes and gaped in disgust behind my mask at a man two rows up who was picking his nose vigorously and wiping it on his scarf. Note to self: avoid that man like the plague (almost literally). Children chewed on oversized masks donned by well-intentioned parents. It was a five-hour flight of shallow breathing for me.
During the trip, people’s stoic anti-social responsibilities soon lapsed into capricious bonding over shared hardship and novelty, as if some trickle of collective “ah, fuck it” sentiment had permeated the cabin. Little groups of strangers chatted across the aisle and laughed with their neighbours, against all logic REMOVING their masks when talking and putting them on again when conversation died down and they resumed calm nose breathing.
There was a little kerfuffle when the crew took a film of all of us for their promotional use. “The airline that cares about humans” they said, in a moving speech that neglected to mention we had all paid good dollar for this trip. One lady was NOT ok with the videoing and stomped up to have a lengthy negotiation in the mini front kitchen as the rest of us craned our necks into the aisle for a view. “She’s flippin’ out!” the wife of the Canadian man who was looking forward to claret commented loudly like a sports caster relaying the state of play. Her friend joined in from a few rows back “I’m going to make my own film thanking Air Cairo!” she said. She then proceeded to loudly record on her camera, gushing out her gratefulness and enlisting other passengers to do the same. I declined to participate when she came my way.
We arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport to find it at a standstill. From here on out the trip to Canada was like breezing through the eye of a storm. Calm, closed down, the eerie silence after the hurricane of travelers rushing to get home in the weeks gone by. We were the last few, slipping through the slim lines of air traffic that remained open. Perhaps soon even these would be shut.
It was a funny feeling passing through empty airports, these monuments to human connectivity. Lights blazing for no one, AC ramped too high for the scattered few who took to the benches and floors to sleep, or fiddle on phones. All of us travelers mutely passing each other at least 2 meters apart, faces covered, and yet somehow a little community.
Charles de Gaulle, Terminal 2E where I became well acquainted with the floor to the left.
As I trundled in the near empty shuttle to terminal 2E, planes the size of elongated cruise ships stood row on row like beached whales. The sheer power of the pandemic struck me more viscerally than ever, the speed and completeness with which it had ground to a halt the massive machine of world transport.
Amsterdam airport was equally shut down. The place felt like a school during the summer holidays. Construction workers drilled away with abandon and workmen ambled about, finally given space to do their job. Staff meandered empty hallways and flight crews bounced past, smiling and laughing, hopefully enjoying some low-key days after what must have been a hellish few weeks as passengers surged through a convulsing maze of border restrictions.
I noted different virus protection trends by continent/region.
In Egypt it was gloves. Great, cool, but then they’d rub their nose, use their phones, touch your boarding pass etc. etc. i.e. the same as you’d use an ungloved hand on a not particularly hygienic day. In Amsterdam there were wandering posses of Asians decked out in full-on head-to-toe jump suits, with goggles and masks to complete the look. Later I saw them boarding a flight to Xiamen, China stepping up one by one like sacrificial lambs for a man – even more impressively covered – to take their temperature and shout something in Chinese which must have meant “Good, go ahead” but sounded awfully scary.
For Europeans, and Canadians I’d soon learn, it was all about social distancing and no to anything else. Signs peppered the walls of Schiphol Airport and seats were cordoned off with packing tape to force people to move apart. Lines were strictly spaced, and an announcement aired every ten minutes reminding everyone to keep their distance. Almost none of the airport staff wore masks.
Passengers board a flight to Xiamen, China
Perhaps the most shocking experience of traveling through the hollowed shell of the transport industry was the flight from Amsterdam to Calgary.
On the shiny Boeing 787-9 that seats 290 passengers, there were 16 of us. Yes, one. six. The flight attendant told me it was the smallest plane they had that could make the 9-hour trip. So, we trundled over the Atlantic like kids on an empty bus, some insanely OTT deluxe and extraordinarily cost ineffective excursion.
KLM has an excellent movie selection
There was a light snow covering Calgary when we finally arrived. It was a strange feeling coming back to Canada and especially at a time like this. I haven’t lived in the country consistently for many years and in a lot of senses I feel like a foreigner whenever I come “home”. How lucky to come from the land of JT who stands sane and approachable among a sea of dictators and clowns in his (as noted by my actually foreign friends) attractive WFH beard.
I finally made it to Vancouver and then to the Island, through a cleared-out city (minus the snaking line in the Costco parking lot), ferries and roads. Now I’m holed up in my mom’s basement suite. We meet once a day for coffee in the backyard seated 5 meters apart.
I was on a train from the fringes of Transylvania to Bucharest. I remember little from my readings of the intricate rising and falling of empires, strategic alliances or geographical features that distinguish Transylvania from other areas of Romania. Just a few key words like Saxons and Hapsburgs and of course Dracula, the initial inspiration for which was a pale prince with bloodshot eyes and a legendary thirst for blood – although Vlad the Impaler, as he was charmingly known, never actually lived in the “Dracula castle” tourists visit in droves.
Across the seat from me on the train was a sweet, chubby Romanian lady of about 60 something. She would cross herself rapidly multiple times at each church we passed. It seemed excessive to have to do it so many times, but then who was I to say. When I sat down, she chatted about in Romanian and I apologized in English for not understanding a word she was saying. My Romanian vocabulary consists of precisely six words and three of them are alcoholic drinks.
However, later during our four hour journey together she would frequently point something out, make some remark or some little joke and I slipped into an unclear territory where I began nodding and smiling at her in response despite not knowing if she was talking about the pretty snow falling outside or her sister’s arthritis.
Brașov, Romania
The train stopped at a town and a slew of new passengers got on. A woman and her small son took the two seats in our four-person arrangement (two seats facing two seats). The little boy was all bundled up in a full-body ski suit, and under that, I could see, wore a big puffy sweater and a hat. He had a toy handgun which he aimed out the window and proceeded to fake fire at every tree, stick or blade of grass we passed, making accompanying pssh psssh grrah sounds softly, likely trained to keep it down by his mother. She held a plastic bag which contained a small machine gun. I suppose they had agreed that the handgun would be more appropriate for the train ride. The mother was astonishingly beautiful, like a dark-haired version of Kate Moss or some other famous model (I don’t know many). As soon as her husband leaned over from the seat behind us, I assumed the guns were his influence. He was a large, red-faced man and had certainly scored way up with his wife, at least in the looks department.
Twenty minutes later when we stopped at another town, there was a little kerfuffle on the train as it emerged that the last group had got in the wrong carriage. The family with the assassin boy trundled out and two young guys took their place.
As we glided out of the mountains and through darkening fields, I tried not to dwell on the fact that I had missed my flight out of Romania. I had made a mistake with the date that was embarrassing to consider, not to mention the cost I would surely incur, nor the potential entrapment in Romania as I waited for a non-exorbitantly priced flight to become available. I had discovered my rookie mistake just ten minutes before boarding this train bound for Bucharest where my flight was leaving, I had thought, later that night. A few frenzied minutes of calculations ensued as my brother – about to board a train in the opposite direction – searched for flights online (I had no data and so was useless other than to exclaim every 20 seconds “How could I have been so stuuupid?! I was sure it was on the 28th”. The flight was at 0:40 and so a confusing one but I would never be so dumb as to make that mistake. I realized of course that it meant although you were flying Friday night the date would be Saturday etc. But however smartly I may have thought I made the mistake, there was unfortunately no denying that I had indeed made it).
I imagined Tarom Airlines calling out my name over the loudspeaker as I lay asleep in the oddly named “Bedstage Hostel” four hours away. “Would a Miss Tara Brian please proceed to Gate 4B for immediate boarding”. And then again a few minutes later. I was mortified for my imaginary self listening to that ring through the airport as other more seasoned and smart travelers tut tutted and wondered whereabouts Miss Brian could be. Maybe some pitied me, perhaps imagining Miss Brian running sweatily down the corridors after a late connection from New York. Eventually they would have stopped calling out my name, given the “All passengers on board” announcement – or as I’ve noted some airlines do now in a very impersonal flare “All customers on board” – and sealed up the plane doors.
Bran Castle, the mythical residence of Count Dracula. In actual fact, home to Romanian royals as recently as the Second World War.
The lady next to me on the train seemed finally to have figured out that I didn’t understand verbal language and so she began gesturing to me instead. She was also chatty with the people across the aisle and had frequent conversations on her non-smart phone. She would move it in front of her mouth and speak loudly and then shift it up to her ear to hear the response. At one point she got up, I presume to use the WC, and draped her scarf partially over her purse which she left on her seat, as if this might stave off thieves.
Close to Bucharest I realized one of my earrings had fallen out. It was from one of my favourite pairs – a set of delicate leaves dipped in a brilliant golden – my “lucky earrings”. No more. But the disappointment may have been worth it if only to witness the vigorous and whole-hearted search which commenced as soon as I made my problem known to my neighbor via a simple set of gestures. I did so more as a topic of conversation following hours of my mute nodding and smiling, but the kindly lady sprang into action, recruiting the woman from across the aisle to join the search party. The two of them scoured the eight chairs in my vicinity long past when I had given up hope, patting down the same bare seats repeatedly as if the large gold leaf could have transformed into blue fabric. Alas, despite their most thorough search we had to conclude the good luck earring was gone.
Upon reaching Otopeni Airport, it become clear that my Zen-like composure was not going to last. Either the prices were far from ideal or the flights were long in the future. I flitted between Skyscanner, Kayak and three airline ticket counters, schlepping my bags around and battling spotty Wifi and a long ago ignored but actually quite urgent need to pee. I considered combinations of trains and planes from various Eastern European cities etc. It all became very complicated. In a frenzied move I got a flight leaving in an hour to Warsaw, having seen cheap onward tickets from there to Georgia where I was going.
No sooner had I made the purchase to Warsaw, than the prices of the onward tickets started to jump like goats on catnip. Meanwhile, my stress levels were ratcheting upwards to the hand wringing I-don’t-care-if-Obama-himself-walked-through-and-saw-me-in-this-state levels. I boarded the flight to Warsaw with the realization that the whole idea had been a big mistake.
I’ll spare you the details of the booking website problems, overnight airport forays, and the dismay at realizing this totally unnecessary diversion was actually going to cost more then if I’d returned straight from Bucharest on the most expensive flight.
But Warsaw turned out to be beautiful – perhaps even more so because it was entirely unexpected – and I wandered through the city as if in a dream (I was also very tired). Maybe in the end it had all been worth it after all.
When we reached the town of Manang, we rested a day, as was suggested to avoid altitude sickness. At 3,540 meters Manang was about where the effects of higher altitude could start to be felt. From here on out it was short days with moderate elevation gain, post arrival acclimatization hikes, and paranoia about possible sickness rumbling gently through the trekker community like the thunder of a far-off storm. Without much understanding of what provokes altitude sickness in some people and not others, each of us was poised for a bad roll of the dice and we tracked fleeting symptoms like a club of hypochondriacs.
Manang sat in a broad river valley and stretched lazily over the neighboring hill. The main drag was a wide dusty strip bordered by dingy trekkers shops. Rugged faced shop keepers would appear to sell Snickers and sunglasses, taking a break from card games played on stoops across the street. Hotels like Yak, Himalaya View and Tilicho Lake competed for business with gas vs. solar heated showers, and Western vs. Asian toilets. No one had wifi because the electricity was out. Crowds of goats trotted through town, spreading in all directions like hyperactive school children. Lines of shaggy horses dutifully plodded one way down the street in the morning, and back the other in the evening, exchanging the odd niblet of brittle grass for the mucky stable. A little boy rode up and down the strip on a plastic tricycle, cheeks the color of cranberries, puffing out like balloons. His clothing was layered so many times that his arms could barely bend under the bulk; a mini Michelin Man parading through the set of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. North of the main strip, stone houses clambered up the hillside, narrow and muddy streets winding through a cluttered arrangement of houses and stables and prayer wheels.
Goats in Manang
We stayed in the Himalaya Singha, a big south facing hotel with a broad dining area centered around a cast iron stove, which was lit at dusk with wood and yak dung. Idle trekkers sat at the long tables, biding their time with eating, Kindles, cards and chat. A little circle of porters laughed over dal bhat and constant cards games. It was the final cement that bonded us, a band embarking on the last stretch to the exalted high pass, Thorong La, a few days away. Here our little crew expanded to its full and final proportion. We were the original four from trekkingparters.com, and Harry of course, plus the German and South African, plus the two 18-year old Australians and a British man who’d been held back a day by a tooth infection. The only girl in a sea of males, dirty and disheveled in my ugly hiking pants and striped touque, I felt like a female incognito, privy to conversations ad nauseum on farts and bowl behavior. But bowel matters aside, as we shrugged on our bags to leave the city, we made a pretty great team.
We left Manang on one of those perfect blue sky sunny days, the kind where the world appears new, cleansed by some ethereal hand and laid out again dancing. Strings of candy floss cloud fluttered out of the mountain peaks, the ponies trotted out to their brittle grass patches, and the little boy on the tricycle giggled with glee. Looking back from the first bluff outside of town, the city shone like something magical—all dust and dirt and dung glossed over. One could almost see throngs of galloping horses, with crying men, spears drawn, charging at some mountain foe. Horns blown in unison, prayer flags turned battle symbols, and stupas monuments to the fallen.
Leaving Manang
That day we walked to Yak Kharka, a tiny conglomeration of shabby guest houses and stone walls shoved in a narrow, shaded valley. By the time we flopped our bags down, I could no longer pretend I felt well. The phantom headache I’d pushed off that morning had blossomed and I was feeling increasingly nauseous and lethargic. Bundled in the lodge around a hopping fire fueled on spindly wood and yak dung, our crew had become a team of amateur pharmacists. Sean had Diamox, and Tylenol. Matt had ibuprofen and activated charcoal. Ben had paracetamol. A little man in the shop in Besisahar who had sold Matt Diamox, the altitude medicine, had said “no sick, no take.” But a man in Kathmandu who’d sold Sean his had told him to take between one and four a day. It was a pill popping party, over by 8pm. I watched in a gloom the energy of the others, playing cards and laughing. Jake was on his second dessert. Sean began telling us again about the burger he would eat when he got to Hawaii.
As we tried to fall asleep that night bundled in every layer we had, including our toques, Jake humored me by comparing pulses and exchanging paranoias, his being that a snow leopard would attack him on the way to the outhouse. The next morning I felt a little better, but that was only temporary.
That day we reached Thorong Phedi, the last stop before the pass. At 4,450 meters, Thorong Phedi stood at the end of a long, narrow valley, rammed in the clasp of mountain tops that sealed off the riverbed like a giant wall. It was a barren place with just two guest houses and a frigid wind that whistled lonesomely around the buildings. The first lodge was the bigger one and got the majority of business, it being situated 30 meters lower than the other. Behind the lodge was a vertical incline that stretched up for 400 meters. It was the start of what awaited us the next day and what we were supposed to hike up and down that afternoon to help with acclimatization. “Climb high, sleep low” was the adage. After the morning’s respite, my sickness had seeped back even worse. I was like a high slug, lolling about with air in my head. I hiked up the incline with the others, each step a horrendous weight, and tried to remind myself that this was voluntary.
I went to bed as soon as it was dark and awoke at 10pm with that knowledge that the night was going to be torturously long. I felt more nauseous than I could ever remember, like my body was a giant dam holding back a mountain of sludge. My head ached like a lawnmower. It was some sub-zero temperature, there was no internet and I could think of nothing but the pain, like my brain had been erased and filled with a bucket of gravel that clattered around incessantly. Later, I sat outside under a close starry sky, alternating between a duty-free bag, and the pitch-black squat toilet. Around me wind whistled, and the rustle of some cow or dog or human clinked in the shadow. Eventually I managed to lie down again and sleep in mini fitswaiting for morning when I would tell the rest that I wasn’t going any farther. When the last of the group rounded the dark corner of the lodge early the next morning and disappeared, I went back into my room and sobbed. Perhaps a combination of sadness, exhaustion, fear and disappointment, alone on a dark, cold mountain, a bag of pink tinged vomit next to my bed.
A few hours later, a small appetite regained, I ate my cold breakfast bun which I’d ordered the night before and which hadn’t yet been cleared from the table. I spread on peanut butter from some jar someone had left. Three ballsy Australian guys prepped for a later climb, excited about the peanut butter and successful pre-ascent poops. I told them about my pink-tinged vomit and that was the last we saw of each other. We shouldered our bags and headed in opposite directions.
Not a bad view down the valley
As I walked back down what had taken us two days to come up, the clouds bantered with the sun, shadows whipping through the valley like pieces of some high up game. I imagined the guys slogging over the pass, imagined them coming down the other side and sipping their first beers in the long-anticipated celebration, and I felt tears stinging at the sides of my eyes. Everyone I passed wanted to know why I was going the opposite direction. I dreaded running into anyone I knew; and of course, I ran into them all. That night back in Manang, I couldn’t shake the feeling of having given up, and I considered trying again. It was either that or take a jeep down a deathly cliffy road for 10 hours, back to the starting point where I could meet up again with the group. If I returned to the pass it was another week of walking, alone, or with whomever I might meet along the way, and I could still get sick again. After a fitful sleep I awoke early with my mind made up: back up to the pass it was, and this time I was going to make it.
It was another bluebird day when I left Manang for the second time. I passed the same woman selling bracelets and trinkets, the same boy on the tricycle and ponies ambling up the path. Again, the city looked like the site of a medieval battle and candy floss trailed off the mountain tops. The woman selling trinkets asked about my friends, “did they make it over?” she wanted to know. I was surging with energy, healed and made stronger in just one night lower down. Half an hour out of Manang I met a small group of hikers. One of them was a German girl of 20 something, who extended her hand, beaming: “Hi! I’m Tessa,” she said. I recognized her from trekkingpartners.com—we had been planning to hike together but then our schedules didn’t quite align. And here we were like some funny little twist of fate.
My favourite tea house
In two days we were back at Thorong Phedi. I was surprised that the manager of the guest house recognized me, “you can have your old room back,” he said with a wry smile. He was a tall, Nepali man with a wide face and toughened skin, and he was normally gruff and snappy with a sarcastic wit lurking behind his eyes. I wondered what it must be like for that man, serving so many people, seeing them all at the last stop before they crossed the highest point on the trek. A buildup of energy each day and then they were gone—over and away, and a new group came and it repeated. It must get a little lonely, being always something by the wayside. Along with Tessa, I met three Canadians, one of whom was from close to my home town. We chatted and ate and planned to hike over the pass together the next day. A group of Swiss were trying to fix the struggling fire which was overloaded with wood and yak dung. A girl in wool socks sat splay legged on the floor pulling out pieces of poop and wood and a man came over and dumped kerosene from a little metal bottle on the stubborn contents.
We left the next morning at 4:45. It was dark still but the approaching sun was already brushing the sky, softly pushing away the half-moon that lingered. We zigzagged slowly up the first steep slope among sleeping mountains, until finally they were clothed one by one in sunlight. At the top of the first climb was the very last tea house, and we stopped to warm up. But it was ineffective. The hut was freezing with thin wooden walls and a brave shopkeeper bundled up in layers that could not have staved off the aggressive cold. The water in our bottles had frozen around the edges, and chunks of it clinked in the middle.
View from High Camp
Outside the tea house we rounded a corner and the world changed. Snow covered the ground and the wind whipped it into our faces, swirling like a living thing, pushing us along or pushing us back. Our feet slipped on the narrow ledge, and the wind wiped over our steps so we could barely make out the footprints of the one in front of us. Reality narrowed now to breathing and stepping, head down, step after step. Each one to himself, in a small interior world. It struck me how vulnerable we were out there—foreign creatures in an inhospitable land, our delicate skin wrapped under layers of protection, our lungs rebelling at the thin air, our legs weak. Every nagging worry was gone, we were our bodies, our blood, our breath, harshly alive.
Finally, we reached an area warmed by the sun and the wind died down and a while longer we were at our destination. A mass of prayer flags strung up like a lonely fair ground and amassed around a small wooden sign: “Thorong-La Pass—Congratulations!” It read. “5,416 meters.” I felt a giant surge of happy sadness. The sun shone blindingly and around us mountain peaks and glaciers creaked in it. There was not the epic view I had been imaging, it was a white place in a bowl of peaks.
Thorong-La Pass
We took a few photos and then we went down, down, down 1,700 meters in a seemingly never-ending slope of brilliant snow, boiling hot, sweating now, layer upon layer stripped off, sliding down the melting hills into the neighboring valley.
The valley on the other side
When we reached Muktinath that evening we showered and refilled our bodies on dal bhat and the sun streamed through the windows and soaked into our skin and we switched on our phones and the world seeped back in a little. And it was funny to see how we meant something again, while we’d meant nothing up there.
The next days, Tessa, Max—the Canadian from near my home town—and I walked down the valley together. A new little band of the necklace. It was a beautiful feeling going back down, life buzzing and creaking and vibrating around us, back to where we belonged. And there, everything seemed possible.
Nepal began in the New Delhi airport, where I was transferring on my way to Kathmandu. Deplaning, we were directed to group by onward destination. I moved into a cluster of eager-looking rookie outdoors people, trying to somehow appear less conspicuously like one of them. Despite my efforts, however, I was a perfect match. I’d checked a trekking pack, and my shoes were those unfortunately large hiking boots – brand new – that one sees on extra serious tourists. I had just quit my job in some bold or naive attempt to reach the grass on the other side. The destination separation seemed a little unnecessary when a petite woman dressed smartly in the beige and red uniform of Air India led us like a troop of large school children down a corridor clearly marked “International Connections.”
That night, I was meeting the guys I’d be hiking with for the next two weeks. We’d found each other online – trekkingpartners.com – and knew only each other’s nationality, age and sex. It felt a bit like a Tinder date with higher stakes. In fact, I knew very little about what I was getting into, in general. A hike for a couple weeks in the Himalayas, varied temperature and I didn’t need a tent. I’d be with a Brit, an American and a Canadian, all male, age range 18 – 42. We met over Ghorka beers in a dimly lit restaurant in Thamel, the tourist hub of Kathmandu. Thamel buzzed with hikers, potbellied sightseers, and spiritual seekers descending from silent retreats in hilltop monasteries. Narrow alleys crowned with prayer flags and electrical wires wove through cafes, trinket shops, and oodles of trekking stores selling knock-off The North Face, Chinese Nalgenes, and altitude meds. Everyone in Nepal wore The North Face, almost like a national uniform.
Rickshaw drivers in Kathmandu
Sean, the Canadian, was waiting in the restaurant when I arrived. Friendly to Canadian textbook standards, Sean had scouted the shops for the best gear, and the restaurants for the best food. He was nursing his Ghorka like it wasn’t his first. After Nepal he was going to Hawaii and then back to his job in the oil fields. I thought Sean might be the type who would carry you down the mountain if you got hurt, and was relieved. Matt and Jake arrived later, Matt from the US and Jake the youngin’ of just 18 from the UK.
As we left the restaurant, Jake voiced what we’d all been thinking “Well, at least everyone is cool; I was worried someone might be a total shit or something!” Jake had a knack, it turned out, for saying what everyone was thinking but had decided not to. I liked them all and felt that jubilation at having landed in an excellent situation.
The next day we schlepped off at 5am to the nebulous bus station to begin the 9-hour journey from Kathmandu to Besisahar, the kick-off point for the Annapurna Circuit. After finding a ticket for the “tourist bus”, a man led us through a crisscross of narrow streets to a tilting row of dusty buses that looked like prehistoric relics. He pried open the door of one and began wiping the windshield which was coated in a brown film as though it had not been driven in years. “Deluxe” was plastered across the front. After about 100 stops to pick up passengers as we left the city, we settled into a giant traffic jam extending around the hills and into the distant valley, like a supernatural cobra panting exhaust.
I was squished in next to Sean who was 6 foot 3, at least. He’d taken a Dramamine preemptively before the trip, and I soon learned that he was a walking pharmacy. Behind us sat Matt, the American, and aforementioned Jake. Tall and handsome, Matt had stylish sunglasses and swished back hair, which he washed every two weeks or so to keep in a good amount of oil for bong and hold. He was reading Siddhartha for the third time and, like me, had recently quit his job in pursuit of something more fulfilling. I heard him and Jake cracking jokes and setting a meditation schedule for the trek, which we kept for a day. Jake had a small pack crammed full, a ready smile and the adventurous spirit of a young traveler setting out to see the world. He was mid-way through a gap year before starting university, where he was signed up for chemistry but really wanted to be doing art.
The bus twisted and bumped for seeming eternity as Nepali and Hindi top hits blared from the tinny speakers. The high voices and piercing flutes of the music blending with horns and thuds from the bus. At some point we reached Besisahar and were dropped off at the end of a little road jostling with shops. We saw a couple of other hikers stroll by in likely equal, but boldly masked, confusion. We decided to hire a porter between us to share some of our things, and within half an hour, Harry emerged, packed and ready to set off for the next two weeks. He was a quiet (also because he spoke very little English), and bright-eyed man and he soon became the shepherd of the flock. He wore a thin, bright purple jacket no matter how hot out it was (although he once zipped it half way down, revealing startlingly defined pecs) and plodded unyieldingly along at a tortoise pace, eventually becoming living proof of “slow and steady wins the race”.
That first night we slept in the village of Ngadi, about an hour’s walk from the trailhead. In the morning we caught our very first glimpse of a snowy mountain, a humble harbinger of what was to come. As we set out, our packs settling onto our backs, we were practically bouncing. Sean got some Barenaked Ladies going (the first of many times) on a speaker and we marched on into the hills.
Waking up in Ngadi
We spent those first days winding deeper into the valley along the path of a gushing turquoise river. Broad and twisting, the riverbed was like a giant’s abandoned playroom, boulders the size of five story buildings strewn casually on the nursery floor, gashes in their sides where the water had etched its dominance.
Marshyangdi River
We passed through villages and terraced plots of land, draping down the hillsides like the backs of scaled dragons. Mules lumbered past now and then, carrying bags of rice, gas canisters, or household items, begrudgingly following the whistles and calls of teenagers with swished back hair. One day rounding a bend, we saw a tiny old woman, skin shriveled like a dried date, wisps of grey hair escaping a loosely tied shawl. She was croaking and purring like someone gone mad, speaking to the spirits in her head, I assumed. But then four white goats trotted out from a little creek bed behind her, apparently understanding her language. She croaked and cooed them across the path and up the hill, half goat half woman.
On day one we took a tea break under a giant arching tree. It was decked out in strings of prayer flags extending from its branches to the local shop, police station and hotel like a great carousel. There we made our first friends of the journey—the two hikers we’d seen the evening before looking as lost as we were in Besisahar. They were from Germany and South Africa and were studying engineering. We chit-chatted and drank our masala and then they were off down the trail, moving at a faster pace than we were.
The giant arching tree
We slipped into a rhythm. Eat, walk, eat, walk, eat, sleep. Eat, walk, eat, walk, eat, sleep. Eating for our movement and moving to eat. Life became simple. Each meal was a glorious pig out of carby comforts selected from a towering menu, standard throughout the Annapurna Conservation Area. It consisted of options of rice, pasta, bread, pizza, soup, noodles, curries, potatoes, and desserts including deep fried snickers and mars bars, doughy apple fritters and rice pudding. Dal Bhat Set was the local staple. A mound of white rice, with a bowl of dal (soupy lentils), a plop of curried potatoes and cauliflower, and a papadam, a crispy Indian-style cracker. It was served on a big silver tray and included endless refills. “Dal Bhat power 24 hour” was the favorite saying of chirping Nepali guides and German traditionalists committed to the local cuisine.
On day three it started to rain as we approached the town of Dharapani, globes of cold sloshing on our hands and the backs of our bent heads. We hustled into little huts as the clouds submerged the village and then darkness submerged it all. That night we huddled in the dining room, warming ourselves with curries and spaghetti and Ghorka beers. Next to us, a posse of brightly clad Koreans pecked at kimchi and rice. They consisted of a middle-aged man and three middle-aged women, and their chipper guide who bustled to and from the kitchen with boiled chicken and special coffee from Korea complete with its own brewing apparatus. Their two small porters giggled over tea at the table next to them. During the day they lugged about bags the size of small beds, like ants carrying twigs that were much too big for them. Loosened by the beers, we chatted about regrets. Three big men and me; more in common than initially met the eye.
The next morning, the clouds had vanished, leaving in their wake mountain peaks freshly clad in snow, glimmering in a brilliantly blue sky. A world transformed. Mount Manaslu, at over 8,000 meters, filled the vee of the valley before us, wisps of blowing snow or cloud streaming off its jagged peak and disappearing into the blue.
Manaslu
We walked up into the mountains, leaving the river that day, pursuing peaks, surrounding us in taunting brilliance. Us in a bowl of mountains. In the afternoon, we rounded a corner to see Annapurna II. Its tall pointed peak claiming the valley, majestic, terrifying and stunning—it was the most beautiful mountain I could remember seeing, like one painted in a fairy tale. It glistened in the sun, snow blowing off the top, treacherous giant slabs of rockface stretching up its sides.
In the evening we sat around a pot-bellied stove, the first of the trek as the temperatures fell—us and the brightly clad Koreans, and their mighty little porters.
Annapurna II
It was a day later, when we were leaving Chame, that the German and South African unofficially joined our trekking crew. Friends from university, they cracked jokes at each other like an old married couple. Emil had a wry German humor and an appetite like no other and at meal times he would sit waiting for his food like a bear out of hibernation. Felix, the South African, was relaxed and funny with a penchant for fantasy ebooks, and was diligently studying Japanese along the trail. That day, we stopped for lunch at a little guest house under the arc of an epically sloping bowl, fresh snow clinging to its steep expanse. We sat on a rooftop on little wooden chairs, doused in sun.
Harry
Along the trail one runs into the same people over and over. Ping ponging our way through the mountains like a loosely strung necklace, crossing and recrossing until it finally breaks apart and scatters. That day, our whole little section was there. There were two duos of Spaniards: a sweet couple, and two male friends. One of the friends wore a brightly colored hat which he’d picked up in Lake Titicaca ten years before, and his skin was brown and grooved from a life spent loving the sun. The other had a quiet eccentricity which seemed to pop out in spurts as Friend One would abandon him from time to time out of exasperation. When they found out Jake had brought along a little weed, their eyes lit up like 5-year-olds at a candy store and they instantly became our best friends. There was an Australian girl trekking alone, warming up for later climbs of 6,800 meters. We were all in awe. She hiked briskly, with never a stay hair escaping her ponytail, nor a droplet of sweat running down her freckle dusted face. She had no sunburn, dirty nails, or sweaty shirt, and she was polite and contained as though attending a high tea.
Clattering up the stairs soon after us, two 18-year-old Australian boys cozied themselves up to our table. A tall one and a short one, I knew them from their snide jokes along the trailside. “Do I have to carry more of your stuff today?” said the tall one to the other, as we listened on. “I’m carrying like half his stuff,” he tossed over our way with a laugh. Across the table, his friend rolled his eyes. After lunch, we didn’t wait long before being on our way.
The first thing I noticed when I arrived in Cairo was the dust. Like the world’s vacuums had backfired, spewing everything out in a fine, ethereal vomit. There was dust on the guardrails of the highway, dust on the bodies of the cars, dust on the sign posts and embedded in the walls of the buildings. Brown made browner. It was March 2016 and this is where I was moving, into the heart of this giant humming dust globe.
The taxi inched along in what I would soon learn was called “Zahma”, essentially plugged up streams of traffic – cars, minibuses and motorbikes smooshed together, horns tooting, exhaust spitting out evidently having pledged allegiance to the army of malfunctioning vacuums. People were on everything, coexisting with the cars.
A breeze burst through the open taxi windows, warm air taunting my face, and cajoling my hair into flips and twirls. We crossed the Nile, big and broad, forcing the sides of the city apart like a giant wedge, lined by towering hotels with gold tipped roofs. In the evenings neon lit boats circle in the current, loud and repetitive music blending into the existing cacophony of the city’s sound. Could there ever be silence in a place like this, I remember wondering.
It was my second international move in less than a year. Uprooted from my comfortable life in Geneva, I’d moved to Berlin eight months before, and now Cairo, spurred by some desire for adventure, some need to cut out the old and force myself into freedom.
Like many expats (i.e. wealthy foreigners), I moved to the island of Zamalek, the “bougie” part of town, although there’s still dust, garbage, mangy cats, and sidewalks that end abruptly, forcing pedestrians to walk in the streets, cars and people dodging each other in a slow-moving narrow river. Zamalek is the embassy heartland, ornate 19th Century buildings shaded from the sun by large leafy trees, the products of decades of patient ascent. The trees flower in the summer, bright red and orange dotting the netted green.
Nestled in the middle of the river, the Nile cuts between Zamalek and the rest of Cairo like a grand moat, ensconcing the island from the reaching arms of the city proper. Cairo is like a hungry beast, devouring the desert, lurching off track, concrete skeletons of uninhabited buildings clamouring at the margins of the city. The downtown a museum of faded glory, ornate windows, cracked and chipped, grand hotels turned seedy one night stops. Torrents of people filling a labyrinth of buildings, off setting the brown. Brown dirt, brown walls, brown horizons. Without the people in it, Cairo would be like a post apocalyptic remnant of death after life, the cracked scale of a snake.
The Lotus Hotel is in the centre of Downtown. On the 9th floor is a little bar, and an ugly restaurant. I don’t think anyone eats there, only French fries. The bar has quite the charm, though. There’s a fridge of Stellas, the local beer, and behind the bar a dusty mirror with some ancient bottles lined up along it – green Stellas which look like the beer turned to cough syrup 10 years ago, and a couple of some indistinguishable brown liquids. Dark wood paneling, neon pink lighting and chairs from the 60s lined up along the single wall. What Berlin tries to be, I always think when I go there. From the tiny balcony you can see Cairo – family homes constructed on rooftops, gardens of satellite dishes, cracked windows and ornate facades wasted under grime, an orange sky, and the sounds of the unrelenting traffic below.
I’d been in Cairo just a few weeks when I went to Lotus, back when everything was new and unusual and there were no memories or emotions attached to anyone or anything. Back when everyone I met was two dimensional and so was I. And slowly, slowly, meeting after meeting, people began to colour and become real and I found myself again here, living in Cairo.
“All boats in Egypt are five star, but not all boats are five star,” pronounced our driver cheerfully as we pulled up to the harbour, about to board the boat that would carry my friend Elissa and I along the Nile for the next two days. “Some are five star, some are four star, some are three star…” He jumped out to see what ours was. Scrap the tour itinerary and its “5-Star-Cruise Boat.” Turned out, however, our boat, Magic, was pretty nice, and as we drifted down the river from Aswan to Luxor, I discovered cruising is perhaps the ideal way to travel. We had started the whole expedition two nights before with a 14 hour train ride from Cairo to Aswan in southern Egypt, a packed day on arrival and a 3am wake up the “next” “day” to see the magnificent tombs of Abu Simbel. Abu Simbel is a place that really catches you, not like some historic sites that look like a postcard you’ve seen a hundred times – the greatness of it is palpable, Ramses sitting there four times, each of him 20 meters high, his numerous wives featured at 2 meters high, the whole thing dragged up a mountain as the waters of Lake Nasser encroached upon it following the construction of the Aswan High Dam. Clearly preservation of 3,000 year old massive stone carvings and wall to wall hieroglyphics was not on the top of the dam developers’ minds.
Magic was a welcome change of pace from the hustle of sightseeing and lack of sleeping, and we floated blissfully down the river, surrounded by retired Germans with experienced tans and ballooning bellies. At risk of sounding shallow, I’ll now turn from ancient world heritage sites to tell you about Khaled and the cruise men. Being two of three girls on board under the age of 60, it didn’t take long for us to garner a little attention from the young, all male staff who seemed to lie in wait like drooling flies for the catch of the day to come in. Chief among them was Khaled, who approached us almost as soon as we’d stretched out our albino ankles on the chaise lounges. About 24 years of age, he wore sneakers and faded jeans, the butt sinking low, “Massage” written on the back of his baby blue T-shirt. Bee-lining over to us, he stammered: “Can you give me a 5 minute hand j…Ah! I mean, can I give you a five minute hand massage?” He proceeded to stroke Elissa’s hand, as she attempted to focus her gaze on the deck railing. Lucky for me, the crew called tea time and everyone on board flocked to pick up their Nescafe and cookies as if they’d been labouring in the salt mines for hours since the all-you-can eat lunch buffet two hours before. Upon my return, Khaled was finishing up, but we had a feeling he would soon return.
Sure enough, that evening we found ourselves sneaking off the boat to have tea and shisha with him, following the instructions of some covert operation which he had conjured up in a hurry (or been planning ever since he first laid finger on Elissa’s thumb). While the portly Germans tottered off to marvel at the temple of somethingorother, Khaled marvelled at Elissa. I was there too. A few sips of tea in, Khaled played his cards. “I like you. I like you very much,” he stated, and then that question that’s always a little awkward 10 minutes into a first “date”: “Do you like me?” He found Elissa’s smile “beautiful”. Mine was not, I have to assume. I offered to leave them, but Elissa was not too keen. At some point musicians and dancers showed up and we were dragged up to twirl, and twiddle on the violin-like instruments that sound hideous if you don’t know what you’re doing. Blessedly for everyone in a 100 metre radius, that experience was short-lived, and we soon retreated back to the boat, Khaled skulking along three minutes behind us.
Later that evening, Elissa and I gave the boat bar a try. “Unnnnbreak my heeeaarrt, say you’ll love me againnnn… unnndo this hurt…” droned through the place, making the few unsmiling people in the room smile less. Khaled must have been DJing. By the end of the trip, we’d heard that song in hotel lobbies, restaurants and our weary heads far too many times. Egypt seems to have a love affair with western heartbreak music. There’s an elevator up to a popular rooftop bar in Cairo that starts “My heart will go on” as soon as the doors close, perhaps a bad omen for the couples heading up on their dates. The grocery store I shop in has a music loop about 5 songs long, at least one or two of which is also “My heart will go on”. Celine Dion is a household name, almost as commonly known in Egypt as Canada Dry.
We saw Khaled again the next day as we lazed about on the deck waiting for an acceptable time to include vodka in our juice. There was a staircase leading up to the top deck where we were, and for the rest of the day we saw his head popping up every ten minutes like a gopher on a spring day. But it wasn’t Khaled’s happy day. No, sadly, he was left to massage the hands of others, dreaming of times gone by. The next day, we reached Luxor, bidding Magic and Khaled goodbye. we can only imagine his heart will go on.
A little boy rode up and down the strip on a plastic tricycle, cheeks the color of cranberries, puffing out like balloons. His clothing was layered so many times that his arms could barely bend under the bulk; a mini Michelin Man parading through the set of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. North of the main strip, stone houses clambered up the hillside, narrow and muddy streets winding through a cluttered arrangement of houses and stables and prayer wheels.
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“All boats in Egypt are five star, but not all boats are 
tararachael 