ABOUT THE BOOK
Most people know Everest, but they are unaware of the jungle that covers 1/3 of Nepal or of the foothill communities, the golden temples (it's the birthplace of Buddha), the rare wildlife, and the Nepali village life that still thrives there. If one is willing to brave the bugs, a little dysentery and the feeling that you are completely out of your depth in a place that is nothing like home you will find adventure.
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Nepal regularly draws huge numbers of all kinds of tourists from around the world. Stories about Nepal have adventure, history and an air of mystery about them still. Much about Nepali culture is hidden from the rest of the world because of a strong cultural sense of privacy and because you need to live here in order to take in the true measure of the people who a long time ago hiked to these places and intentionally decided to make camp. Modernity has altered the region but stories about Nepal still have an mysterious quality.
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High altitude trekking in Nepal is an exotic tourist outdoors experience. It allows for an examination of the way modernization has altered humanity's relationship with the land. It lets us see for ourselves how tourism changes a culture and a place and experience how it alters the indigenous core culture as an inevitable result of interaction with the modern world once a place or culture exposes some treasure city folk want to possess.
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On a more personal level trekking in Nepal strips you from your comfort zone and you find yourself being reintroduced to the person you want to be and discovering who you can never be and who you never expected you could become. All this happens at the top of the world if you are willing to go.
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I love being lost and uncomfortable. The rewards are immeasurable. I needed to leave home. I needed to go somewhere else where I would have to rearrange myself in order to get along. I like wild places and I like being at the mercy of the travel gods and I love Nepal. This book is about my last and hopefully not final experience with the high gods and the people and places that live so high up.