Anker

Broken Crown

The Tom Bradley Terminal in the Los Angeles airport is home to more varieties of palm frondus plasticus, lilyus nylonus and carnation imposteroti. Plants are a wonderful part of my day-to-day existence and it pains me when they are synthetic replications of the real thing. More and more I see these plants sprouting up in various places. If a go to a doctor's office and find plastic plants, I promptly leave. How can this person be a healer if they don't have the time or patience to care for an oxygen giving plant? Same thing with restaurants. Do they take the same shortcuts for the sake of efficiency with their food? It would be interesting to see if there is a correlation between food quality and whether their plants were real or artificial.

Upon arriving at the Bangkok airport, I was pleasantly surprised to see a plethora of live tropical plants about the terminal. A gentleman pushed a small cart about, watering and caring for the many plants. How nice. Upon further inspection, each plant I looked at was real. Not only are they easy on your eyes, they offer a touch of tranquility in an otherwise hectic and stressful environment.

Our stay in Bangkok was uneventful, a short overnight stay and a quick visit to the King Power duty-free shop (between the nine of us we bought enough scotch to entitle us to a discount of 30%) before we boarded the infamous Thai Airways Flight 319 from Bangkok to Kathmandu. Realizing we were bound for six weeks on the Tibetan plateau, we visited a restaurant and feasted on a wide selection of fish products. Yummy-yummy.

Prior to leaving on expeditions I try to make sure my teeth are in order. Many an expedition has been stopped in its tracks due to dental problems. Even the toughest Eastern European alpinist — the type raised on bread lines and of the opinion that a route is only "in shape" mid-winter, has been brought to his knees by errant teeth. I've heard tales of folks trying to heal an exposed nerve with Barge Cement and Krazy Glue — to no avail. The poor chap still couldn't eat and would probably prefer having their thumbs massaged in a nutcracker to drinking cold water. Knowing this, I was quite surprised when the spicy squid dislodged my "temporary" crown from two-and-a-half years ago. The squid, which has the consistency of Gummy Bears, decided it was time for the shiny silver artwork to move on. Not so good. We weren't anywhere near Base Camp and I was having a mini-epic. Fortunately, I didn't have to resort to glue or other dire measures.

You're probably wondering why I have just shared this with you, over the Internet. If you really like this, there is a fine recording of a dental drill here on the Website — imagine as you log on every morning instead of the dreamy cyberjingle of a massive software giant, you'd hear the calming sound of a drill pressed against your jaw. Wouldn't that make work so much fun you would give up your salary and forfeit all vacation time for the soothing sound of a drill pounding on your mandible each morning? (Just kidding!) The flight was uneventful and a small incident like this provided us with plenty of fodder for the humor mill. "Geez Conrad, looks like you'll be eating oatmeal for the duration of the expedition," quipped Andrew. "Got any Fixodent" prodded Mark. Little things like this can liven up even the most dull evenings.

This aside, we arrived in Kathmandu without any hitches. For Mark, Hans, Kris and Andrew, the experience of Kathmandu is eye opening. Yes, the cows bevy in the traffic circles, they drive on the "other side," and for a city of 1.5 million there are no traffic lights. I'll have to get them to report on this in person — problem is they are to busy changing money and shopping for tiger balm, kukri knives, and "automatic" chess sets.

— Conrad Anker, MountainZone.com Correspondent

EXPEDITION DISPATCHES