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| My Tibet Travel Crew ...and a few Thoughts on Travelling Companions |
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| The Honeymooners: Dan and Carey I met Dan and Carey on the plane on the way to Tibet. Dan is the retired founder of MamboSok snowboarding clothing company, and inventor of the Italian Dinner Waffle... His new bride, Carey has taught English in China, and recently run an educational travel company for students. Both are serious travel veterns, and Carey was our MVP for playing continuous mom for all of us with her fluent Chinese. I learned a ton about relationships, love and marriage from spending time with the newlyweds, not the least of which is that a 4 month honeymoon is the way to go! Ask me sometime about their sweet engagement, their first accidental buddist marriage, and their second marriage they planned theirselves and as a result had the most spiritual and personal ceremony I have ever heard about. |
| First, let me introduce you to my newest close friends... |
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| Jim Kiick, the pro-bono Lawyer Working as a labor/talent lawyer for NBC in NYC, Jim took a pro-bono case of a Tibeten woman seeking asylum in the US. After winning this original case after a year, Jim is now working to get her husband and daughters (still living in Nepal/India) asylum as well. He came to Nepal both to meet her husband and do a little business, as well as to follow his client's path as she fled Tibet. Jim's understanding of the issues of Tibetan refugees as well as general insight on the trip provided a great backdrop for our trip across Tibet. When we weren't all bunking together, Jim was also my roommate and late night philosophy partner.... |
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| Above: Carey Moore and Dan Hoard (try to find a way to put those two last names together!) with Chika, a Tibeten school student that invited us to his house. Below: Jim Kiick and a boatload of Tibeten Pilgrims on their way to Samye Monastary. |
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| Not your average honeymoon.... more than once in the trip, we were all in a dormatory style room... |
| Jim and I having a beer on the roof of the Yak Hotel. Note the Potala in the background. (as an aside, there were 3 beers available in Lhasa, the local brew, Lhasa beer, Budweiser and Pabst Blue Ribon.... go figure.) |
| The Fort in Shigatse... was the head of the government of the region before being bombed and totally destroyed in the cultural revolution and Chinese takeover. |
| On Travel Companions: One of the interesting thoughts that has been fermenting as I have travelled is the weird conflict between getting away from home for perspective but needing a taste of home in order to get it. When I embarked on this adventure of mine, I first thought I was coming to immerse myself in a culture to get to really know the people and the countries. To an extent I have done that, but there is a constant inhibitor to learning a culture--the language barrier. One can only go so deep with locals, talk about issues to a certain level before hitting language and cultural barriers. Then, I would think about things on my own, but I was processing something either I didn't know enough about, or I was doing it through the same eyes from which I was trying to get perspective. For me, this is the main reason for seeking out other foreigners... to have a REAL conversation to help to synthisize and digest all that is going on around you. On the Tibetan trip, this was especially the case. With backgrounds American yet very different, we all shared our experiences and not only thought and learned more about Tibet, but more about ourselves in the process. This made me take real pause since I had this impression that I would come on this trip and learn about myself and get perspective in a box, alone. Now I realize that understanding what and who you are takes anchor points which to base perspective on. Although travelling half-way around the world certainly facillitates self exploration, I think now I can do it right at home through meeting new people, and talking about real issues... issues beyond what you did at work that day or what you're doing that weekend... issues that make you think and challenge your assumptions about yourself and the world around you. What I appreciate perhaps most of all about Dan, Carey, and Jim was that through their friendship and conversations, I learned more about not only Tibet and the issues there, but also challenged the assumptions on how I live my life at home. I finally started to get traction on perspective by starting with America and going from there... When I get back, who knows, maybe I'll make Italian Dinner Waffles as well... |