OKLAHOMA ~ 250 Miles – The Hard Way

There can be no finer guide to Oklahoma back roads than my brother Will, who’s spent decades tromping its wetlands looking for ducks to shoot or fishing its lakes for flathead catfish and smallmouth bass.  I wasn't sure I could get him on a bike:  he and his hunting dog Buddy seemed happy spending hours roaming the 80 acres Will recently bought near Weatherford, together ruminating on plans to dig, build, clear, mow, garden, weed, prune, plant, level, and buttress, as swooning hawks circled over them.

 

We’d wanted to bike across Oklahoma ever since we’d read there were a group of athletic young folks who do it annually, riding south to north with the wind at their backs.   

NEPAL~ The Battered Wife ~ Sad Letter (March 10, 2013)

Comparing Nepal 1988 & 2013. Temple visits with Tibetans.


Visiting Nepal after a 25 year hiatus, I felt as if I was returning to find a battered wife, one I’d left long ago when she was a beautiful, fragile young woman.

When I arrived in Nepal in 1988, on my way home from Japan, I wrote this sentence home to friends,

“If only for 15 minutes, everyone in the world should visit Nepal.”

Thuli, Mulkharta village

The airport 25 years ago was a simple Quonset hut.  Even before I arrived in Kathmandu, I was introduced to Nepal’s poverty, as Nepal Airlines had only two aircraft in those days.  One flew and the other was in constant repair, while passengers, already checked in, waited in a decrepit airlines-owned hotel in Bangkok, lukewarm, murky water in the swimming pool. 

NEPAL ~ A Modern Day Arranged Marriage

The Happy Letter (March 1, 2013)



Tenzin Dechen & Nawang Lhadon on their wedding day, Feb 20, 2013

Marriage Arranged via Skype:  In 1993, I met Tenzin Kelsang, a Tibetan refugee to the US who ended up in Madison, Wisconsin, and three years later, her 4 kids and husband all arrived in Madison too.  This year, daughter Lhadon turned 29 years old, and her mother Tenzin and father Migmar decided it was high time for her to be married.  Through some conversations with their neighbors who’d come to Madison from Nepal, a nephew in a Tibetan refugee camp in Nepal was identified, and Lhadon had been “Skyping” with him for seven months.

I panicked – an on-line engagement seemed too risky to me.  Lhadon is the only girl of the four kids in my adopted Tibetan family and epitomizes all the conflicts inherent in growing up as an individual belonging to a rich, ancient culture, under direct attack, and yet at the same time a 21^st century woman, desiring to be stylish and modern.  It’s been fascinating, if sometimes painful, to have watched that cultural battle wage within one young woman’s life.

I grilled her – what did she know about this guy in Nepal? 

IRAN ~ Opposite of Everything Expected (Aug 6 2012)

Phenomenal welcome.  Tragedy of Iran-Iraq War.  
New perspectives on anti-Americanism.  
Conversations with liberal mullahs.  Ramadan.

Seven insights from Iran: From the moment of boarding the Trans-Asia Express train (Ankara, Turkey to Tehran, Iran) to my last lingering days, for three weeks my eyes were as wide as a child’s.  Seven things made it an exceptional experience:

•  our phenomenal welcome by Iranian people;
•   the beginning ride in a train filled with dissidents; 
•   the curiosity and cultural respect of my fellow American travelers; 
•  a new experience viewing anti-Americanism;
•  a glimpse of the tragedy of the Iran-Iraq War; 
•   insights in mosques and in conversations with thoughtful mullahs;
•  and finally, getting to experience Ramadan in two countries.

"Gentleness” is the one word I wouldn’t have expected to summarize my impressions of Iran.  The friendliness and welcoming hospitality of 100% of people we met, from turbaned mullahs in the mosques and complete strangers on the street, was almost embarrassing, considering the hostility and vitriol of the current international media toward Iran.

TURKEY ~ Call to Prayer (July 10 2012)

 

Call to Prayer. Kurds.  Halay Dances.
  

It feels like I’m flying through Central Asia.  Since my last Public Letter about Tajikistan, I’ve trapsed through the oldest cities in the world in Uzbekistan (Bukhara and Samarkand), flown in and out of the “New York City of Central Asia”(sophisticated Almaty in Kazakhstan), and danced at two Syrian- Kurdish and Zaza ethnic weddings in eastern Turkey.  Far from my fears that I wouldn’t be able to stand being a tourist for three full months, I’m thriving and loving each day.  

The irony of being a solo traveler is that one seldom travels alone. 

TURKEY ~ Dancing beneath the Full Moon (July 7 2012)

Remembering Bora Özkὅk.  Turkey's 4,000 Folkdances.  Two weddings.   
 Kazali, the Shoulder Shaking Dance.  Halay.
 

This letter is for the Folklore Village Dancers of the 1980’s [1] – and for all of the old Folklore Village crowd in Wisconsin who learned from Bora Özkὅk how to ululate and shimmey the shoulders and chest and who caught the fever of Turkish dancing.

Bora Ozkok 1979. Photo credit: Phantomnet.com

The Turkish government should give Bora a Medal of Honor for undoubtedly bringing so many travelers to Turkey – all those 1980’s dancers from Boston and Mendicino Folkdance Camp in California who signed up for his folk dance tours in the days before he figured out that you couldn’t make money off folk dancing hippies and switched to doing tours of Turkey for affluent retirees.  I don’t think any of us at Folklore Village signed up – was it the money, the idea of a “tour,” or was it that by that time we’d already switched allegiance to Norwegian pols and Swedish hambo? 

Can we roll back the clock, please?  I’d take that tour now!  Turkish folk dancing with Bora in TURKEY.  That would be heady.

TAJIKISTAN ~ Roof of the World (May 31 2012)

 Pamir Mountains. 

Mountains without Names. Swimming to Afghanistan.

There are probably more remote places in the world than Tajikistan, but as “the roof of the world," it’s on the list.  Tonight I’m in the Pamirs, gorgeous, remote mountains along the border of Afghanistan, curling over to the border of China.

Afghanistan to L of river, Tajikistan R side

Australian Dayna gazes at Fort Ratm

Grandpa & grandson in Bolunkul, a tough, remote settlement

Tajikistan is a mountaineer’s dream, an anthropologist’s field day, dance/music lover’s find.  For three days now I’ve been riding in a Land Cruiser, following a gravel, pot-holed road through a valley – snow-covered mountains on each side.  A river divides the Tajik mountains from the Afghan ones.  It amazes me to look just a stone’s throw away and see Afghan journeyers on camels, women in blue burka, covered head to foot, and men in white turbans.  I wave to a turbaned man watching his flock of sheep. He waves back.  “My first Afghan friend,” I say to Dayna, fellow traveler from Australia.