Home is Where we Hook-up

I have always liked to travel, to explore and have adventures. As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what I was doing the day Keith and I met on the boardwalk in Santa Barbara eight years ago. I was out exploring and it has become the adventure of a lifetime.

We all travel differently, and for different reasons, with different expectations. I love to sit quietly in public places for long periods of time and people watch, get the “feel” for an area. Sometimes it takes me a few days to get my bearings and sort out what “attractions” I want to see. Major touristy areas are not really my bag, but I also hate to miss worthwhile sights simply because there are too many other people looking at the same thing.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading on this six week trip. Mostly the books have been travel related, and seemingly (though unknowingly when I collected them) have had very common themes. Travel and spirituality. I have enjoyed three very different authors with stories on yoga, meditation and india.

The other day, finishing Michael Cricton’s Travels a book of sometimes extremely short travel/life stories, I found the best little piece, it made me smile so much to read, that I thought I would share it here with you. Here is the except from his book:

A few years earlier, during a trek in Nepal, my Sherpa guide took me to the top of a hill at a place called Ghorapani, pointed to the view and said,

“The Kali-Gandaki Gorge.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. I was sweating and tired. It was cold. My feet hurt. I could hardly pay attention to this view.

“The Kali-Gandaki Gorge,” he repeated, significantly.

“Uh-huh,” I said.

What I was seeing wasn’t even a gorge, it was just a big valley with snowy mountain peaks on both sides. Spectacular, but all the mountain views in Nepal are spectacular, and I was tired at the end of the day.

“The Kali-Gandaki Gorge,” he said a third time. Like I still wasn’t getting the point.

“Great,” I said. “When’s dinner?”

It wasn’t until I returned home that I found out what the Kali-Gandaki Gorge is.

The Kali-Gandaki river cuts between the peaks of Dhaulagiri to the west and Annapurna 1 to the east – respectively the sixth and tenth highest mountains in the world. Both peaks rise more than four miles above the river below, making a canyon so enormous that the eye can hardly see it for what it is. It is four times as deep as the Grand Canyon, and far wider: between two peaks, you could roughly fit twenty Grand Canyons.

The Kali-Gandaki Gorge is the deepest canyon in the world.

That’s what it is.

I’d like to go back and see it sometime.