Utah is definitely going through its awkward phase in the change from winter to spring. The metaphor for the development phases in a person’s life is pretty obvious since the teenage years act out a brief tantrum of horrifying thunder and rebellious destruction. Once it passes the weather is sunny and mild, just like how a lot of us in America soon start wearing Dockers and we get a mortgage. The transition from fall into winter, and correspondingly our personal transition into old age, is usually very mellow. Shovan, or own Subject Matter Expert on Nepal, is excited to see the raging wind gusts, and I’m pacing around reminding everyone to save their work on their computers in case the power goes out. Shovan describes the weather patterns as being much, much different from this.

With the superlative and singular terrain of Nepal it seems that casually trekking amid the jagged mountains is pretty pedestrian. There are certainly enough thrill seekers fueled on high horsepower trucks and death-defying adrenaline rushes that can make good use of Nepal’s extreme geography. Apart from the degree of personal risk involved in an expedition to the summit of Mt. Everest, there are countless combinations of normal recreational activities mutated into something insanely suicidal, but a good laugh if you survive. You could say that mountaineering to the top of Mt. Everest is the most extreme activity on the planet, but then consider that it takes months to get up there, and most of the action moves extremely slowly and you undergo prolonged trauma from the cold and shortage of oxygen. Let’s classify this less of an extreme sport and more like being a subject in a torturous medical experiment.

Kathmandu is practically on the exact opposite side of the planet from where I am, and that’s the sense of how far away the culture and perspectives are from here. I’ve discovered that there actually is a small Nepalese community here in Utah, and there are a few things around here to keep them in touch with the familiar comforts of home. Of course the number one joys of the Terai has to be leeches, but Utah is deficient in that regard. However, there are still a few good restaurants that offer fairly authentic recipes. Locally there is the Bombay House, with a kind of pricey but delicious Indian menu. We’re bummed that they’re only open for dinner, because the cravings for curry creep up on us constantly. There are also a few international markets to please foreign tastes, and they even have a few Nepalese RaRa noodles I think and jars of a fossil fuel processing byproduct known as mango pickle.

I’ve been reading a lot of reports of protest and violence coming from Kathmandu, and the level of frustration on all sides of the issue is building steadily. I just wanted to make a note that this is on my mind, but I want to continue to write up my recollections of the regions that are, at least for now, more removed from the conflict. Of course I won’t say that the region of the high Himalayas is peaceful and serene compared to the unrest in the big city. The awesome force and seemingly arbitrary shift in temperament of nature in the mountains puts into perspective how small our grievances are. People could conceivably set down their sticks and stones and sit together and talk things through, but with the cold, the wind and the avalanches the elements have the real autocracy and no amount of protesting will sway the course of nature.