Day, the Tenth

Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?

And today, is my wife’s birthday. When you’re a non-fiction memoirist, family tends to become tangled in the word webs you weave, so I’m lucky Meenakshi knew this about me early on. Still, I’m fortunate that she serves as the voice of reason (some would say she’s my bull*#^t detector) in my writing.

She’s always been my first and primary reader. When I forget a scene, or over exaggerate a moment, she’ll look up at me and say something like, “Hmmm, don’t think this works.”

She took me to the foot of Everest. She was at my side in Istanbul when our daughter first walked. She was there when my father died. She puts up with me.

So today, if you’ll forgive me the indulgence, I know there’s many new readers with us here at our day-to-day musings. To that end, I thought I’d reprint the Introduction to my book “The Nepal Chronicles.” While that book was, technically, the first written, its original purpose was not as a travelogue, but a love letter to her. And it’s the one place in all my writing where I tell our story.

I hope you enjoy, and join me in wishing her a most excellent birthday!

INTRODUCTION

With less than 48 hours to go before my wedding, instead of celebrating my impending nuptials with my soon-to-be new family in Kathmandu, I was climbing the 268 steps to Tian Tan Buddha in Hong Kong.

            We could have used a little serenity right about then, and one of the largest bronze Buddhas in the world seemed like the perfect place to shed the bad karma of the previous day.

            After nearly 24 hours of flying, en route to Nepal, our tiny Dragonair flight landed in Bangladesh with an electrical problem. Though only an hour from Kathmandu, we might as well as been on the other side of the planet there on the airport tarmac of Dhaka. Six hours later, by the time we were ready to go, the single runway in Kathmandu was having repairs done to it, and all the customs agents in Dhaka had gone home. Our pilots couldn't sleep on the plane, so with nowhere else to put us, they flew us to Hong Kong.

            There amid the chaos of trying to secure another flight to Kathmandu in time for our wedding, we did manage to secure a room at the airport Marriott, along with vouchers for all the food we could eat for the next couple days. We stayed in Hong Kong for free, and slept and ate in a place we would never have been able to afford; and all of it at the cost only of ten or so uncomfortable hours crammed into a small, musty discount airliner.

            Meenakshi and I did make it out of Hong Kong the next day. And our visit to the Buddha was remarkable.

            But it occurred to me later that so much of our relationship on the path to Nepal had been and continues to be about great reward preceded by great discomfort, that reaching that Buddha seemed an appropriate metaphor for everything we've ever done together.

            You must climb those nearly 300 steps to get to that place of serenity and wisdom. We had to sit on that plane, eating peanuts and water, in order to make it to those stairs. We had to train for nearly a year, before getting on that series of flights that would eventually take us to Everest Base Camp. And before that, we climbed a mountain with a Justice of the Peace and 16 bemused but willing friends in New Hampshire, our home state, on the day that a hurricane named Earl was visiting, to say “I do” from the top.

            I met my wife years ago, when I was a lowly editor of a start-up newspaper and she was a city planner. For months, that paper ran story after story on city planning, all because the only thing I wanted to do once I met her was be near her.

            Even then, every step forward in our relationship, in my courtship, was gained through sheer grit, or luck, or sacrifice. She is a native of Nepal. I was raised in Buffalo, New York. That might as well be the cultural equivalent of Mars and Venus.

            She grew up in Chicago. I grew up in the suburbs. She had never been to Europe. I had never been to Asia. Her mind is a planner's, calculating, reasoned, deliberate. I am a writer.

            But we forged a relationship out of two separate worlds by strapping backpacks to our shoulders and hitting the trail: the White Mountains, where we climbed all 48 of the state's highest peaks; the Dakotas, where we thru-hiked on the Centennial Trail, and the Grand Canyon, where we learned crucial lessons of patience and simplifying. By the time we decided to get married, it felt like we had nothing left to prove. We were not young. Our friends were both our friends. Our families appreciated us and loved us both.

            But great discomfort to attain great reward came knocking again. Meenakshi's father asked if I would be interested in marrying his daughter in Kathmandu in a traditional Nepalese ceremony. I would be alone. I'd need handlers to walk me through the traditions and tasks. I would be asked to abide by cultural mores for which I had no frame of reference and in some cases no understanding.

            I said yes instantly.

            Meenakshi and I upped the discomfort ante by deciding, for our honeymoon, to trek to Mt. Everest Base Camp and climb an 18,000-foot mountain called Kala Patthar for the sole reason of getting a better view of the tallest mountain on Earth.

            Discomfort followed by reward. Only this time, on the biggest stage and grandest scale we could find.

            So, that day, Meenakshi and I climbed those stairs and walked fully around the base of “The Big Buddha” passing by six smaller bronze statues known as the Offering of the Six Devas. These statues symbolize charity, morality, patience, zeal, meditation and wisdom.

            In the days ahead – indeed throughout our lives – we would need to call on each of those Devas again and again. It wouldn't be easy. Sometimes, it wouldn't make sense.

            But for all the challenge, for every moment where my legs betrayed me and the air felt like syrup in my lungs, and on the days when uncertainty clouded concentration, I knew – from experience and history – that the reward would always be great.

            The lessons of our adventure are the same to anyone, on any journey great or small, and for any place. Put in the time. Say yes. And go with wonder in your heart. I hope you enjoy our journey, and I wish you many of your own.

If you’d like to learn more about “The Nepal Chronicles: Marriage, Mountains and Momos in the Highest Place on Earth” you can click here: Nepal Chronicles