The View from Everest

emmline · Post by **emmline** » Sat Aug 30, 2008 6:36 am

I'm glad he took a nice pic. Don't think I'll make it up there myself.

Innocent Bystander · Post by **Innocent Bystander** » Sat Aug 30, 2008 7:02 am

So, in a way, the mountain came to you....

djm · Post by **djm** » Sat Aug 30, 2008 8:15 am

I find it a bit disappointing that you could climb all the way up there, and you still can't find a
decent restaurant, and there's nothing worth watching on tv.

djm

emmline · Post by **emmline** » Sat Aug 30, 2008 8:24 am

Déjà Vu, et toi?

Denny · Post by **Denny** » Sat Aug 30, 2008 9:54 am

yep....and I'd seen it somewhere else long before it got to APoD the 1st time.

'course they've been doin' APoD for 13 years.

jim stone · Post by **jim stone** » Sat Aug 30, 2008 11:26 am

I was trekking in Nepal and stopped at a village
for the night. The convention was that you approached
a house and said 'Dalbat,' which means dal (lentil soup)
and potatoes. They would give you a meal and let you
sleep in the house, usually in a bedbug infested
bed, for about 35 cents.

A young woman in her early 20s asked me
where I came from. 'The USA' I said.
'Where is it?' she asked.
'On the other side of the world.'

She thought for a moment then asked:

'Can you see it from the top of Everest?'

sbfluter · Post by **sbfluter** » Sat Aug 30, 2008 3:29 pm

When I trekked in Nepal you stayed in hotels and ate pizza. The hotels were built of stone with plywood walls. You could see through the walls and through the stone. The pizza was like some kind of bread-like substance with a layer of "spinach" and other vegetables. Other than pizza, the menu of most hotels had such local delicacies as top ramen and boiled potatoes. The dal bat was the best thing on the menu, as was the yak. The dal was served on rice with a little pile of spinach and potatoes and hot spicy carrot which they called pickle. The porters were served as much of that as they could possibly eat, which was a lot. The rest of us, suffering at altitude, found the top ramen and potatoes spicy enough.

Somewhere I have a lovely picture of Mt. Everest or Chomolungma I think is its real name. I'd post it but then my server quota would be all used up.

emmline · Post by **emmline** » Sat Aug 30, 2008 7:47 pm

Wow. that is one horizontal post.

Denny · Post by **Denny** » Sat Aug 30, 2008 7:57 pm

on a vertical subject....

jim stone · Post by **jim stone** » Sat Aug 30, 2008 8:29 pm

I think things have changed a bit, Diane. I went through in 73.
Geez I'll never forget that.

Denny · Post by **Denny** » Sat Aug 30, 2008 8:55 pm

don't pick on the kids Jim

yer lucky it's still in the same place

talasiga · Post by **talasiga** » Sun Aug 31, 2008 5:43 am

"dalbat" or "dahlbhat" pronounced daal bhaat actually means pulse stew and rice in most of the north indian languages.

Daal is any thin stew made from any pulse (bean, lentil, pea etc)
and bhaat refers to the rice.

This pulse and rice as well as daal roti (daal and bread) is the protein mainstay for most people in the South asian sub-continent.

Incidentally the roti or bread is a reference to freshly made,
unleavened flat bread which comes in diffrent varieties
(chappati, paratha etc).
The "normal" breads as most of us know it in the Western world
is called dabal roti which literally means stale bread.

What has this got to do with Mt Everest? Well for one, Everest was "conquered" on the backs of the daalbhaat and roti eaters.

mutepointe · Post by **mutepointe** » Sun Aug 31, 2008 7:11 am

Yep but that doesn't count. It never counts til white people of european ancestry do it.

jim stone · Post by **jim stone** » Sun Aug 31, 2008 6:43 pm

We were smoking hashish for the first couple of days.
Then we got to a river gorge, the river really fast
below, and a bridge over it made of planks and cables,
lots of planks missing. No more hashish, I promise you.

Days going along trails blasted out of the cliff edge,
the river raging a hundred feet below us, in places
the trail washed out a couple of boards spanning
the gap.

It was beautiful beyond anything imaginable but,
unlike the American wilderness, inhabited.
We would pass huge waterfalls and there, by the
side of the trail, would be a teashop, and we'd
stop and have tea and biscuits.

Orchids everywhere. It was raining and there were lots
of leeches.

I started across one bridge, holding the cables on each side,
planks with lots of gaps, the river raging a hundred feet
below. Suddenly, when I was a good way onto the bridge
the whole thing started swaying up and down. A cow
had started across the bridge on the other side. I slowly
turned, grabbing the cables, and went back.

Tibetan Buddhist temples, prayer flags, dozens of prayer
wheels at the entrance of villages, monastaries...

Walking in rain from dawn till evening, the trail a stream,
putting on wet clothes in the morning and going on.
Villages an hour apart. Then one morning I came out
of the place we'd spent the night, plagued by bed bugs,
and the sky was blue and I looked up. There was a spire of ice going
up and up and up forever, Annapurna.