I tried to post this last night but the computer shocked me....then it died

    How do you end up sitting in lawn chairs in the front yard of a government complex sipping chai out of fancy china tea cups with the first Indian woman to ski to the south pole and the district manager of the Bidhoragh District at 8:00 at night with the lights of Munciari spread out before you making a stark contrast against the black backdrop of the Milan valley? Follow the simple analogy "passport is to crevasse as hockey-puck is to net." Yep.....like a full-court slapshot made be gravity skipping across the Kaffne Glacier ice rink. As previously stated by my little brother "let's hope what he loses isn't that important."

                             (The "where is my passport?" pose.....also known as the "WTF!?" pose)
    This social visit with the District Manager was second-to-last in a line of others to the police department and various offices in Munciari with Reena, the afforementioned celebrity. Reena and her husband, a famous Indian mountaineer from Munciari, are well knon in the valley and the police officers filing the report of my ice-bound identity posed with the two of us for pictured. When i protested "Why would you want a photo of me? I haven't set any records!" they returned enthusiastically "Oh, but you are famous. You are the the first person to ever lose a passport in a crevasse!"

    Honestly this scene was not abnormal. Though I may have considered it strange 2 months ago, I was coming off of a uniquely eventful mountaineering course in the Himalaya with NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School) that saw me soaked by the worst monsoon India has seen in 40 years, frozen by a two and a half day blizzard, plagued by the destructive force of frequent landslide, nearly pushed into a ravine by a stampede of sheep, educated in the ways of Sadhu by a Yogi (holy man) in a cave at the base of the Pindari Glacier, nearly crushed by a dynamite blast in the trans-Himalaya, and one of only two members in a 7 person independent student expedition who was not debilitated by diarrhea, vomiting, and dehydration while exiting the Milan valley. Sounds like fun right?
    Unfortunately, since the detailed journal I so meticulously kept during the majority of the trip is in a passport ice fort, I do not have the fresh and detailed stories that I had planned to regale you with. I will do my best to recall the events of the expedition starting with the first of many meetings the 13 students of GAR-9/1/10.