Monday 27 July
47 Days until departure.
I love putting on my shiny black dress shoes. It's a jazzy feeling. It means tonight there's a night on the town. Fast women and expensive cocktails, classy bars with hard to pronounce names, No one will be home before sunrise and some of us won't make it home at all. Dinner will be bought from whatever kerb-side food stall we can find and we will most likely regret everything the next day.
I only have one other pair of shoes that tops this feeling. My mountain Boots.
THEY, feel adventurous. They feel sound. They have a feeling like there is something grand on the horizon. That I'm about to embark on a journey with no known outcome. As you well know by now - I crave that feeling. The world is out there waiting, and these boots will get me into the thick of it.
Along with these boots, my bulging backpack of clothes, camera gear, water bottles, and passports has been sitting at the ready beside my bed, ready to take on Nepal. I packed for this trip months ago. That’s how excited I've been. I have recently had to come to the realization that I may have to remove the clothes from the backpack to make room for more camera gear. Who needs clothes anyway! It's 34 degrees over there!
Its been a few weeks since James left, but recently he popped up on my Gmail chat window so I was able to get some of the inside info.
me:Where are you?
James:Singapore airport!
It looks like every other airport on earth - they're so crap
me: so they let you in? Given you're passport and all..
James: going through customs in Macau
they look at my passport:
"is this wet?"
I'm like "yeah, 18 months ago"
Then she starts pulling off the sides!
"This is breaking"
I say "it's the passports last trip"
She laughs - I get through
Then @ China, they made a fuss. Had to go see some supervisor. Let me in eventually.
seven more to go....
It appears that James' boyish charm has got him through the first set of checkpoints. I'm hoping he can keep that charm going for the next few months or else I will have a very lonely journey. It did not however, help him save his pants from some low life thief. So while James has been running around in the Chinese monsoon with no pants on, I've been planning on getting needle after needle stuck into my arm, but as always, things didn't go so much to plan.
I must say, the doctor was blasé about the whole thing. I turned up with a mile long list of various disease I required immunity for, only for the Doctor to laugh and say " no no no, you only need these two. Don't listen to those guide books! And look, if you come back next week I'll even give you one of them for free."
Now, I'm always a fan of free stuff. Free food, free rides, free love, but free immunization? Hmm. I'm a little skeptical. But hey - this ain't the girl scouts - this is Super Extreme Adventure Team. I'll take his advice and hope for the best. How bad can Rabies be, anyway!
So everything has fallen off track as per usual, which, as far as S.E.A.T is concerned means we're right on track . James may still running around with no pants on, Chris may still be in a predicament about which South African city to visit next based purely on whether or not he's feeling like a redhead, brunette or blonde, and I may be enjoying Rabies, but this is still feeling like a great start to Season 4.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Sunday, July 12, 2009
SEAT S4 Chapter 1
Sunday July 12 2009
61 Days until departure.
I don't quite know what to expect.
Everyone says it’s going to be hard, that if the altitude doesn't get me, the cold will. Or the food. Or I'll be shot and kidnapped by the rebels. But I'm not quite sure if they are over exaggerating or I'm just naive. After all, it's currently 34 degrees in Nepal, I've been eating curry for as long as I remember, and I've been to a cold place before. How hard can it be! This is Super Extreme Adventure Team! We own hard.
OK, in all honesty, I KNOW it's going to be hard. Probably ridiculously hard. But that’s half the challenge. What fun would it be if I just caught a lift up the side of a Himalaya instead of pushing ourselves to our limits to see just how high we can actually go before we pass out and freeze to death! I also know, despite all the so called 'training' we've been doing for this trip - our systems will be bent, broken, battered and bruised and thrown over their limits, in a place where the vaccinations endured before setting off cost almost as much as the flights.
Truthfully I know it’s just excitement taking over in place of naivety. I'm fidgety and restless, I want to be somewhere remote and hostile. In 60 days - I will be.
James and his flakey passport leave tomorrow.
Sydney - Adelaide - Perth - China - Pakistan - India - Nepal - India - Sydney.
A little more impressive than my Sydney - Hong Kong - Nepal - India - Hong Kong - Sydney, and a lot more hostile. China has riots, Pakistan has the Taliban, Nepal has political unrest, it seems India is the safest place either of us will visit, unless we get adventurous with the food. Which we won't.
I'm half expecting to land in Kathmandu waiting for a James that never shows up. Let's hope that’s not the case. I'm going to need someone to get into trouble with.
I have no idea how we're getting from Kathmandu to New Delhi, but I like that. I enjoy not knowing. Anything could happen and I could be stuck there for weeks, maybe months, living off boiled blood and sheep testicles. I could be flying into this amazing part of the world only to get acute mountain sickness and spend 34 days in agony! (At 12,000 meters, the average person only has 9-15 seconds of consciousness, and it's not much better at 6000 meters; 5-12 minutes.) The unknown is intriguing. I don't WANT to know how I'm getting from one place to another. I don't WANT to know all the problems I'm going to face. I WANT to be there, in the thick of it.
The biggest problem I have yet to solve is how I’m getting all my camera gear in my backpack. Bah, raincoats and thermals, who needs ‘em! This is the place wide angle lenses were invented for. This is the first time I’m going properly travelling as a proper photographer. This is going to be fantastic.
60 days. It can't go fast enough. James, the prick, is already on route to Super Extreme Adventure Team Season 4.
Perhaps I should login to Facebook via iPhone, in 60 days time and set the only status that's possibly ever been worth reading.
"Sammy is at the highest place in the world, with camera, without James, and has 9 seconds of consciousness left."
Chris, on the other hand, is still in South Africa. Drunk, I’d imagine and in bed with someone who has no idea what she’s gotten herself into…
61 Days until departure.
I don't quite know what to expect.
Everyone says it’s going to be hard, that if the altitude doesn't get me, the cold will. Or the food. Or I'll be shot and kidnapped by the rebels. But I'm not quite sure if they are over exaggerating or I'm just naive. After all, it's currently 34 degrees in Nepal, I've been eating curry for as long as I remember, and I've been to a cold place before. How hard can it be! This is Super Extreme Adventure Team! We own hard.
OK, in all honesty, I KNOW it's going to be hard. Probably ridiculously hard. But that’s half the challenge. What fun would it be if I just caught a lift up the side of a Himalaya instead of pushing ourselves to our limits to see just how high we can actually go before we pass out and freeze to death! I also know, despite all the so called 'training' we've been doing for this trip - our systems will be bent, broken, battered and bruised and thrown over their limits, in a place where the vaccinations endured before setting off cost almost as much as the flights.
Truthfully I know it’s just excitement taking over in place of naivety. I'm fidgety and restless, I want to be somewhere remote and hostile. In 60 days - I will be.
James and his flakey passport leave tomorrow.
Sydney - Adelaide - Perth - China - Pakistan - India - Nepal - India - Sydney.
A little more impressive than my Sydney - Hong Kong - Nepal - India - Hong Kong - Sydney, and a lot more hostile. China has riots, Pakistan has the Taliban, Nepal has political unrest, it seems India is the safest place either of us will visit, unless we get adventurous with the food. Which we won't.
I'm half expecting to land in Kathmandu waiting for a James that never shows up. Let's hope that’s not the case. I'm going to need someone to get into trouble with.
I have no idea how we're getting from Kathmandu to New Delhi, but I like that. I enjoy not knowing. Anything could happen and I could be stuck there for weeks, maybe months, living off boiled blood and sheep testicles. I could be flying into this amazing part of the world only to get acute mountain sickness and spend 34 days in agony! (At 12,000 meters, the average person only has 9-15 seconds of consciousness, and it's not much better at 6000 meters; 5-12 minutes.) The unknown is intriguing. I don't WANT to know how I'm getting from one place to another. I don't WANT to know all the problems I'm going to face. I WANT to be there, in the thick of it.
The biggest problem I have yet to solve is how I’m getting all my camera gear in my backpack. Bah, raincoats and thermals, who needs ‘em! This is the place wide angle lenses were invented for. This is the first time I’m going properly travelling as a proper photographer. This is going to be fantastic.
60 days. It can't go fast enough. James, the prick, is already on route to Super Extreme Adventure Team Season 4.
Perhaps I should login to Facebook via iPhone, in 60 days time and set the only status that's possibly ever been worth reading.
"Sammy is at the highest place in the world, with camera, without James, and has 9 seconds of consciousness left."
Chris, on the other hand, is still in South Africa. Drunk, I’d imagine and in bed with someone who has no idea what she’s gotten herself into…
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