And in the Beginning...

   At 5 o'clock in the afternoon we met in the basement of Hotel Maan in the Karol Baugh district of New Delhi with Manu, the NOLS instructor charged with transporting us from Delhi to the NOLS base in Raniket (no easy task.) Although a few of us had gone on a tour the city previously during the day, many had not met so we sat in a circle around the table and introduced ourselves over chai.
   Andrew Backus: 22yo engineering grad of Santa Clara U in CA, originally from Vashon Island, WA. We are now travelling together after the course
   Jen Roberts:27yo who works in a PT office in Orange County, CA
   Avery-24yo from Boulder, CO
   Phillip Fleishman-18 yo taking a year off before beginning Harvard next fall. I leave tomorrow afternoon to go to Sri Lanka with him, Andrew B, and Phillip's father
   Ricky Simpson-27yo attorney from Seattle who works as a house parent in a home for girls
   Giselle-23yo mess of career confusion from Chicago
   Gavin GLider-24yo children's camp outdoor program director from Philadelphia
   Josh-28yo from NYC
   Andrew Oakley-20yo drummer/skier from Boulder
   Chris Stone-35yo from South Carolina
   Kyle Klein-22yo rugby player who attends FSU
   Erin-21yo from Orcas Island, WA

    Manu goes over the next few days of travel and we get our massive amount of luggage aboard a bus that will take us to the train station. We immediately hit traffic and become stuck in a festival progresion. The 30 min drive becomes one of our first lessons in the general attitude of travel in India which is along the lines of "You'll get there eventually.....probably" as it stretched into a crawl of over an hour. In Africa, ex-pats have a phrase said to explain the frustration, pain, poverty, occasional grandeur, beauty, filth, vibrant population, and lack of a "western" timeframe. T.I.A......"This is Africa." We tried "T-Double-I" but it didn't fit so we have adopted T.I.N.A. or Tina....."This is not America." The US Embassy official who helped me apply for my emergency passport though that was funny as I explained to him the past two weeks of travel without a passport or visa. Luckily I now have a crisp, blue, US seal passport valid for 1 year with a not-so-crisp, faded blue ink, India seal visa stamped inside. The man at the Indian consulate assures me it will allow me to travel freely as a normal visa, but T.I.N.A.....this country is an adventure.
  Upon arriving at the train station, the first think I noticed was the continuation of chaos, just amplified. The smell of Delhi train station is not best described, but experienced. The intricate blend of feces, Diesel, urine, food vendors, and stagnant water fill the nose and stifle your breathing more than the shirt you hold to your face in a vain attempt to filter the fumes of machine and human exhaust. We jostle, push, and pull our way through the masses along the platform feeling much like.....well, toothpaste being squeezed from a tube. Someone must have been rolling the tube from the end because we pushed along whether we moved out feet or not. The group piled its gear together in a pile near our gate (actually not our gate, it was a good walk away, TINA) and fomed a circle around it. Apparently we were quite the spectacle in the station as the large pile of duffels became a focal point for the interest of others in the station. While we circled the wagons our back pockets were "cased" by small children looking for an easy grab. Erin, who was dressed in traditional Hindi garb, was the delight of 4 men who wanted to take pictures with him and began to lead him away. Manu intervened and we stayed in the circle until our train pulled in. We find our appropriate gate and board the train. Manu gives us a snack of "Glucose Crackers" and we find our berths, stow our gear, and are soon asleep....chugging across the Indian nightscape toward Raniket and the Himalaya.

   

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.

The crazier you drive, the less likely you are to get hit

"Follow the masses" is the reply from my friend when i asked her if she knew where the baggage claim happened to be. Luckily a 68 lb black canvas bag with a bright orange strap around it is easy to find on the line of luggage. My TSA lock had been disabled and my bag searched, but i believe everything was still inside. Navigating my way through the unfamiliar airport, i began to look for a "NOLS" placard that would denote the particular taxi driver that was to pick me and another student, Kyle Klein, up from the airport. You would think that this driver would be waiting with ALL of the other taxi drivers with placards, but no. T.I.N.A. (read next post for explanation)

After an hour of searching I do locate the driver chilling with Kyle OUTSIDE of the airport and we leave for the hotel. Hot Wheels......we are little Hot Wheels cars let go on a steep, smooth hill. Supposedely there are traffic laws in India....but of course "technically" there is a street in the city where I live that it is illegal to wear jeans while walking on (I've never seen anyone arrested though.) There are 3 lanes with 9 cars abreast those lanes jockeying for position, honking, cutting each other off, and drafting inches from their bumpers. Honking in the states is close to an insult, but it India it is as necessary to safe travel as headlights at night (many cars don't cut them on or they don't work...not sure.) Surprisingly we make it to Hotel Maan and once kyle differentiates the man at the front desk's accent between "hotel voucher" and "water bottle" we are set up in our hotel. Not jet lagged but also a bit restless, we wake up at 5 A.M. for a few mile run around Delhi. Despite the heat we are considerate of the culture and wear shirts. It is perfectly acceptable for me to find a nice patch of earth, pull down my pants, and defecate....but if I were to go shirtless in public we would have received more startes than we already were. I believe the incredulity was best translated as "what are those silly white boys running from?" as they looked behind us as we passed for the mad cow that must surely be chasing us.

P.S.- The computer I am using shocks me every time my fingers touch parts of the keyboard not including the keys....good typing practice T.I.N.A.

But I have to pee sooooo bad

This is an entry from my journal i wrote while on the plane from Chicago to Delhi

   7:41 A.M......or is it 6:11 P.M? I am in limbo. My stomach is starting to growl telling me it is time for breakfast, which will soon be served on the plane, although where we are it is currently dinner time. This makes me wonder about my Malaria meds which are supposed to be taken every morning. The doctor didn't say "start taking these in the morning before you leave in the timezone you will be travelling to." I realize that I have now seen the sun set, rise, then set again all in a period of 13 hours.
   As our homely 737 passes over the mountains of Dushambe, the plane shakes slightly and I ponder the wonders of international travel. Like how I left Chicago right after the sun set, but was able to see it rise less than six hours later. Like how my feet, already large a size 13 4E width, barely fit in my shoes. I was lucky enough to be in a seat away from the token crying baby and in its place my discomfort mate is a wonderful woman from New Delhi who's name i can not begin to spell correctly (give me a few months.) Her only downfall is that she plans on sleeping for most of the flight and i don't want to wake her up so that i can get out!

Things learned: Toilets on airplanes will always startle me when flushed, even if I am prepared for it.
Things marveled at: Even being on a turbulent people rocket streaking across the sky at nearly 600mph will not stop morning prayer. Prayer rugs do fit in the aisle.

Leaving Ranikhet!

I apologize that I have been unable to post more in the past few days. Getting 13 students and 4 instructors from Delhi to the foothills of the Himalayas in Ranikhet is no easy task. Overnight train rides, walking, and multiple trips by Tata 4wd's have brought us to where we are now, and after one last ride we will leave this cloud city and start our expedition. I have been keeping a journal as best as I can, and when we get back, on October 10, I will fill in my blog with the details of my trip to Ranikhet and those from the course itself.

Cole at Atlanta Airport: Atlanta to Chicago to New Delhi

Cole and his ten-ton backpack full of gear for the NOLS mountaineering portion of his trip make way through the airport.

Saying goodbye to family for 3.5 months.

Y

Younger brother Graham may outgrow Cole by December!

 And he's off....Atlanta to Chicago to New Delhi.

Attention all passengers, the national travel advisory is currently orange. Please be advised that blah blah blah

Weather in Chicago has delayed my flight from a departure of 2:50 to uhhh....well, I'm not sure. I'm still waiting to see. Luckily my layover in chigaco was close to 4 hours and as long as I leave here SOMETIME soon I shouldn't have to miss my flight.

How much weight does it take to climb in the Himalayas and work in medical clinics for 3 and a half months? The scale on the baggage check counter said 68, I think it was being generous.

My family brought me to the airport this morning and went through the check-in process with me, waiting as my behemothbag of a duffel was weighed. We ate at Atlanta bread company for lunch, and it was not until I began to walk into the security scanning area that the tears I had been dreading began to well slowly in my mother's eyes. She was good though! A few moments later she and my younger brother Graham were cracking jokes as I put my shoes, belt, wallet, phone, etc etc into the bins.

Text message from my mom "I just said i hope you can keep up with all your stuff. Graham said i hope what he loses is not that important."
Looks like they know me all too well