Marco-YOLO

When glacier hiking, if you don’t put sunblock on the bottom of and inside your nose, your nostrils will burn from the sun reflecting off the glacier. Good to know, right? I found this tip in the Pakistan Trekking Guide.

Gilgit is nothing special. It’s a dusty town with not much going on, just a jump-off point to the real North. My only goal here was to buy a few items, namely a watch, a warm cap that can cover my ears, sunglasses, and hiking boots and pole. After Gilgit there are no large towns and therefore no large markets so shopping is best done here.

My feature-rich Suunto Core watch (altimeter, barometer, compass, thermometer, depth meter, sunrise/sunset times) had just come back from repair (free under warrantee) but was with Colleen in the US. All my other watches were in a safety deposit box in Arlington, except for one that draws way too much attention to consider bringing. So what watch did I buy in Gilgit? I’m not proud to say this, but I bought my first fake watch, and of all things it was a Casio knock-off, but with a very special twist (I’ve never seen anything like it – video forthcoming). This set me back $1.90. Next I bought sunglasses for 75 cents. “Oakleys” were going for the same amount but after the Casio, I wanted to keep it real, so I got a brand called “hot buttered”. Why not? For warm cap, I got a handmade wool Chitrali topi for $3.80.

For hiking boots and pole, I went to a second hand shop. I wanted something durable to last me through both Pakistan and Nepal so buying the cheap local or low-quality Chinese stuff didn’t make sense. Instead I bought from stock left behind by past trekkers/climbers, second hand but of high quality. I found a pair of boots of the brand name “Meindl”, which I’d never heard of, but they oozed quality and felt comfy on my footsies so I sprung $19 for them. I searched for them online and found that they’re made in Bavaria (a good sign) and retail for $200-500. Score! There were no used hiking poles so I bought the nicest new one I could find and that cost $10.

With shopping done, I headed to the local Aga Khan Rural Support Program (AKRSP) office to meet the team there. We discussed their current portfolio of projects including value chain development for the precious and semi-precious gems sector, electrifying remote villages with micro-hydro and solar PV, and youth and entrepreneurship development, among many others. AKRSP is the largest NGO by far in the Northern Areas and the one I’m consulting for on a different environmental project. While outside the scope of my engagement, it was fascinating to discuss high-level regional strategy with the management team. We basically did a rudimentary SWOT analysis for some of the more important projects and I respectfully shared a few observations and suggestions based on my experience doing similar work. The team was incredibly receptive to my inputs which made me feel great, but upon further reflection, it’s quite possible they were just being kind to the chubby burger kid from Karachi. For non-Pakistanis, burger is slang for rich westernized buffoon from the city.

I took a public minivan to Hunza in the evening. It was one of those annoying ones that leaves as soon as it’s full, however long that takes. I wound up waiting 80 minutes and then was crammed into a 12 seater with 17 other people (luggage and two people on the roof). I guess that’s why it only costs $2.60 for a 2 hour journey. In Hunza, I checked into the Hunza Embassy – $15 for double room including breakfast AND FREE WiFi! Woohoo!

I woke up the next morning to glory! The view made my heart sing glory glory hallelujah! I arrived in the night so had no idea what was I was surrounded by, which as it turned out was natural awesomeness – green pastures with grazing animals surrounded by humungous snow-capped peaks that shone in the warm sunshine. It seemed the whole valley had a halo, and off course, a river ran through it. Hunza is spectacularly beautiful! Here is a picture of my breakfast spot. In the background you can see part of Rakaposhi (25,551 ft), the 27th tallest mountain in the world.


The locals speak a language called Burushaski and many of them are descendants of soldiers from the armies of Alexander the Great who left many men behind in the area. The sale of cigarettes is banned. Electricity is rationed on a set schedule, outside of which hotels and a few big businesses run generators and everyone else burns kerosene lanterns.

I didn’t do much the first day, just walked around town, crossed the river over the Ganesh bridge (the name a legacy from Hindu times) and checked out some animist rock carvings from the 2nd century AD. There are two historical forts around town. I’m going to check those out tomorrow and also do some hiking with my large pack to build endurance and acclimate to hard physical exertion at this altitude. So far I’ve been ok but I did get a headache after an uphill segment today, which I’m still feeling. Unlike in Cusco, I have no Coca tea to help with the altitude sickness, although I have been drinking the local herbal tea called Tumuro and it’s quite delicious, whether or not it helps with altitude sickness.

I’ll post again in a day if my next hotel has wifi but after that there’s going to be nothing for two weeks as I’ll either be on a glacier or in Shimshal, the highest village in Pakistan, and they don’t even have phones up there.

I got picked up at my uncle’s house in Islamabad at 10:40pm (40 minutes late) in a 90′s Toyota Landcruiser. My driver, the reincarnation of Speed Racer, drove with such reckless abandon around blind turns that I began mentally preparing myself for an accident. My seatbelt stayed on the entire night.

We passed through now infamous Abbottabad (actually a nice town) and made a quick tea and bathroom stop shortly after passing Mansehra. Driving through Chilas in the dark, we turned left on the Karakoram Highway (KKH). The KKH is the highest paved road in the world and runs 1,300km through Pakistan and China. It is sometimes referred to as the 8th wonder of the world.

Shortly before dawn we stopped at a trucker’s stop constructed of mud and corrugated metal. Inside there were two truck drivers asleep on thin mats placed on an elevated platform. They were so tightly wrapped in blankets that they resembled mummies. At this point we were only 1.5 hours from the Babausar Pass (13,700 ft) so it was quite cold. We huddled around the mud oven and chatted with the proprietor and his son for a while before ordering breakfast. The air inside was thick with smoke from the wood burning oven. I remembered a project I briefly worked on in Guatemala in 2008 where these type of ovens were being replaced with a new design that dramatically reduced indoor air pollution and respiratory illnesses. Breakfast was fried eggs with paratas and chapatis, and lots of tea. We ate sitting cross legged on the platform next to the mummified truckers. Not only was it delicious, but at $3.80 for 4 people, extremely cheap. Just like with a tea stop we made earlier, one of the passengers paid for the whole group. I was impressed with and touched by the friendliness, respect and generosity with which the 3 other passengers treated each other and me, sharing snacks, cigarettes and gum. These were good people.

Shortly after driving over the Babusar pass, which offered a breathtaking panorama of the Kaghan valley, I got my first glimpse of Nanga Parbat. I felt like a newborn, in that my testicles retracted back into my body, and they did so with the speed of a mantis shrimp punch (fastest punch in the natural world). So fearsome a sight was the 9th tallest mountain in the world that any aspirations I had of doing serious mountaineering evaporated in that instant. Only a madman would want to set foot on that tremendous mass of death. From the craggy ridges near its peak hectares of ice sheets are blasted into the surrounding sky by pulverizing winds. It looks peaceful from afar but anyone with a sense of scale will realize that cold merciless fury resides above and to meet it would mean a miserable and hopeless death.

The KKH near Gilgit was buzzing with activity. We passed dozens of crews clearing rockfalls and repairing damage to the road from recent earthquakes. The region is earthquake prone as it sits on the collision zone between the Eurasian and Indian plates. When India separated from Africa 140 million years ago (when it was part of the supercontinent Gondwana together with modern Africa, Australia, Antarctica, and South America) it made its way NNE with a slight counterclockwise rotation until it hit Eurasia. India was moving at 20cm/year, extremely fast for a tectonic plate. When it collided with Eurasia around 50 million years ago, it formed the Himalayas, the most awesome mountain range in the world.

But back to the roads – not only are they being repaired but they’re also being widened 3x to facilitate greater trade volume with China, especially as efforts are underway to connect the Gwadar Port (which just got struck by its own earthquake yesterday that apparently created a new Island nearby) to Lhasa, which is already connected to Beijing by rail. China is very keen on this happening and it shows. Chinese text can be seen on machinery or tents at just about every other worksite along the highway, signifying their involvement on the Pakistan side of the project.

Arriving in Gilgit at 1:00pm, I checked into the Madina 2 hotel ($18 incl bfast). This was me treating myself as acceptable rooms with private baths were available for $7 at two other places. But because of how shitty I felt after the 14 hour road journey, and the fact that we are at this point waaay under budget on our round the world (RTW) trip, I decided to go upscale. And then I fell into the longest sleep I’ve had in a long time.

Tomorrow we go equipment shopping in the Gilgit market!

In a few minutes I leave on the 13 hour drive from Islamabad to Gilgit, the frontier town that serves as capital of the Northern Areas. It will be my jump-off point into the autonomous Northern Areas of Pakistan. Marco Polo, this website’s namesake, when travelling near here in the 13^th century called the area “noisy with kingdoms”, the better situated of which grew rich from taxing traffic to and from China. Gilgit has had many owners over its thousands of years history. It has been a part of Tibet, China, Afghanistan, the British Empire, itself (The independent Republic of Gilgit existed for a brief time following partition) and of course now belongs to Pakistan (kind of). This has led to many religious, cultural and linguistic traditions being layered one upon the other. The animism of the early inhabitants gave way to fire worship brought from Persia, which gave way to Hinduism (~1,700 BC), which gave way to Buddhism (4th to 11^th century AD).

When Mohammed bin Qasim’s Arab forces invaded India (including modern day Pakistan) from the South by sea in 632 AD, he succeeded in the South but his forces were repulsed in the North. It was not until after the 15^th century that Islam became the dominant religion in Gilgit, brought by the Sunnis who spread up the Indus River from Swat and the Shias who spread into Baltistan from Kashmir.

The King of Hunza converted to the Ismaili faith (followers of the Aga Khan) in the early 19^th century and so there are also many Ismailis present in the area today. If you hear anyone speak of “His Highness” in these parts, they are referring to the Aga Khan – a playboy Briton living on a lavish historical estate in France who is in the process of finalizing his divorce from a German aristocrat (my mother attended their wedding reception) for cheating on her with an air stewardess – I know, it’s weird, but he is their pope and his philanthropic foundations spend over $600 million/year worldwide.

From 1947 (when both Pakistan and India won their independence from the British) to 1972, the seven feudal kingdoms along the Gilgit and Hunza rivers remained essentially autonomous, but between 1972 and 1974, they were properly incorporated into greater Pakistan and the Pakistani government took over, establishing five administrative districts.

Despite 100% of the modern day inhabitants of the region being one kind of Muslim or another, pre-Islamic planting and harvesting ceremonies have survived and most people still believe in fairies, witches and Jinn (ghosts capable of magic, kind of like invisible wizards). The town marketplace is a babble of languages as exotic as they are indiscernible. Punjabis, Pathans, Chitralis, Tajiks and Chinese Uyghurs trade side by side.

Despite having all this wonderful diversity around, the Sunnis of the region somehow still feel the need to attack and kill the Shias. They occasionally ambush and board buses on the isolated mountain roads, shooting any Shias they find on them. This made me revise my driving plan up to Gilgit so that I’m now taking the long way just to avoid Sunni areas. While I’m a Sunni myself, I don’t know if I could emotionally deal with anyone on my bus being murdered for their faith. I’d either get killed myself for trying to intervene, or more likely live with nightmares and depression for the rest of my life for letting it happen. Among the Sunnis of Pakistan is a large cadre of assholes who never cease to amaze with their ignorant hatred. The Shias, Christians and other religious minorities of Pakistan won my respect a long time ago for never responding with reprisal attacks. May their patience and restraint be rewarded in the near future with peace and security.

At the last minute before my flight from Karachi to Islamabad my mother urged me not to go to the Northern Areas out of fear for my safety and is to this minute asking me to reconsider. The way I saw it, I was trying to be hardcore but she wasn’t letting me – I felt like Jorge below.

(taken from a Mexican Jerry Springer-type show)

She wasn’t alone. My father, my wife and my in-laws also asked me not to go. I love and respect them all and ordinarily would go out of my way to keep them happy. In fact I came very close to capitulating, but in the end decided I had to do it (with extreme caution). In some bizarre way, it bothers me that I’ve seen so much of the world while seeing so little of my own country which is full of remarkable historical, cultural and natural beauty. The danger is there – there is no denying that. Even in peacetime, people die in car accidents (driving off the side of the mountain) or from rock falls or avalanches. The roads aren’t good and emergency response is often inaccessible. This treacherous terrain, often more vertical than it is horizontal, has many ways to kill. But in the end, this trip was decided in my heart, not my mind, so off I go. Wish me luck!

My original plan was to go to Concordia, the intersection of Baltoro and Godwin-Austen glaciers from which 4 of the world’s 14 “eight thousanders” (meters) can be seen, including K2, and then on to K2 basecamp. But since I missed the weather window for 2013, instead I’ll be hiking across the Batura Glacier (4 day trek), one of the world’s longest and largest, beneath the peaks of Batura (25,574 ft) and Passu (24,600 ft). I’ll also be doing consulting work with a local NGO, helping them with their reporting to donors and putting together a performance monitoring and evaluation plan.

P.S. – Won’t have laptop for next three weeks as I traverse Gilgit & Hunza valleys. Will post to blog upon return.

Many hard-core backpackers, those that have been on the road for several years already, will simply say travel light and pack small so your backpack can be carried on the plane. Easier said than done.

The maximum carry on size backpack for most airlines is 40 liters (45L also has a good chance of success). Any more and you pay $20-30 per bag on discount airlines like Ryanair and Easyjet. Unfortunately I have a 60L pack and Coleen’s is 55L.

Packed for cheapo airline – My pack (right) is supposed to only be 9% larger than Colleen’s but right now it’s well over twice the volume of hers because it’s packed for an Easyjet flight from Dubrovnik to Milan.

So what we’ve been doing for budget flights is overloading my pack and compressing hers to the smallest size the internal frame will allow it to be. That way we only have to check in my bag and we carry hers on-board. We’ve only tried it on two flights so far but it’s worked both times.

After Reykjavik, Oslo seems a proper city. Reykjavik didn’t even have a bloody McDonalds, not that I like Mickey D’s, but it’s an indication that it’s not a large market. We paid $16 for a Big Mac meal in Oslo so you know it’s an expensive town. But then Norway is one of the richest nations in the world. They have massive reserves of offshore oil and gas in the North Sea and the government manages revenues from their exploitation very well, giving Norwegians some of the highest standards on living in the world. Norway is the 4^th biggest exporter to the EU behind China, Russia and USA and 2/3rds of that is oil & gas.

Another clear contrast to Iceland is the proportion of immigrants. Over a quarter of Oslo residents are immigrants. All of Reykjavik had maybe one quarter of an immigrant. Talking to people we met, we realized our hostel was widely known to be the cheapest place to stay in Oslo. Even day laborer types stayed there! I had a chat with a Polish fellow and a Canadian/French man who had recently arrived looking for work and were comparing notes over a beer. Neither was having much luck finding work and they were already discussing where they’d go next if they didn’t find anything in Oslo. It seems you need a permanent local address to get a job and landlords want proof of a job before they rent you anything so these two were stuck in a Catch-22.

In fact, the big story that leapt out at me in Oslo was immigration. Unlike the US which has centuries of experience with immigration, large scale immigration to Norway is relatively recent and happened very quickly. This has spurned something of a backlash. Most Norwegians are now dissatisfied with or at least concerned about immigration.  Anger at immigration, or “Multiculturalism” as he referred to it, was the justification used by the Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik who in 2011 bombed government buildings in Oslo killing 8 people, and then shot and killed 69 others, mostly teenagers, at a labour party youth camp. Norwegians are also more nervous after the recent riots (May 2013) in an immigrant suburb of Stockholm as Swedish and Norwegian immigration systems are similar and both have a high proportion of refugees.

The big word that kept coming up in my conversations with Norwegians was “integration”. Yes, the immigrants were there and now they are here, but they are not giving up their old ways and becoming Norwegian. Depending on who you speak to, this is because of social exclusion that keeps them marginalized and removes the incentives to integrate, or because they are simply unwilling to change regardless of the opportunities before them. Frankly I think “integration” is a euphemism for “assimilation”. Integration sounds reasonable, assimilation doesn’t. Assimilation reminds me of the Borg menace from Star Trek.

For non-trekkies, the Borg are a pseudo-race that sweeps across galaxies forcing other species into their collective and connecting them to “the hive mind”; the act is called assimilation and entails abductions and injections of microscopic machines called nanoprobes. The Borg’s ultimate goal is “achieving perfection” (thank you Wikipedia because I am not a trekkie either. I was always more of a Star Wars guy).

In a nutshell, Norway needs workers but Norwegians don’t want to have more children, so their only option is immigration, but they’re unhappy with the immigrants they’re getting because they’re not becoming Norwegian fast enough.

To any admiral contemplating a sea invasion of Oslo I say “you’ve got to ask yourself one question – Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?”

We toured the Oslo Opera House, Akershus Fortress, OsloCity Hall, the National Gallery and the MunchMuseum, but by a large margin the highlight of Oslo was FrognerPark which contains the Vigeland sculpture park. The artist responsible for the park design and all 212 bronze and granite sculptures, Gustav Vigeland, was nothing short of a spectacular genius. The frozen characters scattered about the park represent human and particularly familial relationships and offer a deep study of the emotional complications that enter these relationships from factors like love, shame, obligation, competition, betrayal, beauty, envy, pride, disappointment, ageing and death. The expressions and body language of the sculptures are so spot on that you can distinguish between paternal, maternal, fraternal and other relationships on their basis alone. As you journey across the garden you feel the fury of the cranky grandfather chasing his mischievous grandkids, the warmth of the old woman comforting her adult daughter with a broken heart (or sadness over miscarriage, it’s up to the viewer to interpret) and the sadness and jealously of the less loved and popular brother. Seriously, I wasn’t expecting to be affected this way but I found myself in deep reflection in the park that day as the sculptures shared with me their most intimate insecurities, pitiful failings, heroic courage and boundless love. It’s not an experience I will soon forget.

Vigeland Park viewed over clasped granite hands

Just like with Reykjavik I want to be clear that this post is about Oslo. We visited that city but not the country of Norway, not properly anyway. We did see some of the countryside as our train carried us from Oslo to Stockholm, but we saw no Fjords and really, that’s what this country is famous for. Perhaps on another trip.

We’ve been pretty bad about posting to our blog lately and must apologize, but it’s because we’ve been moving through the US and Western Europe very quickly to save money, and by the time we get back to the hotel neither of us is in the mood for serious reflection or thinking.

In May and June we drove over 8,300 miles across America through Washington DC, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, California, Nevada, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland. We met old friends and absolute strangers along the way and visited nine national parks.

The scale and diversity of America is truly breathtaking. One morning we stood in scorching desert sand and the same evening in snow covered granite. Along the way we met cowboys and indians, and immigrants from every corner of the Earth. And all the while we wondered, how does one sum all this up?

One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,
peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces
of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth
across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies.
One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story
told by our silent gestures moving behind windows.

My face, your face, millions of faces in morning’s mirrors,
each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day:
pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights,
fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows
begging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper—
bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us,
on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives—
to teach geometry, or ring-up groceries as my mother did
for twenty years, so I could write this poem.

All of us as vital as the one light we move through,
the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:
equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,
the “I have a dream” we keep dreaming,
or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won’t explain
the empty desks of twenty children marked absent
today, and forever. Many prayers, but one light
breathing color into stained glass windows,
life into the faces of bronze statues, warmth
onto the steps of our museums and park benches
as mothers watch children slide into the day.

One ground. Our ground, rooting us to every stalk
of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat
and hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmills
in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, hands
digging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands
as worn as my father’s cutting sugarcane
so my brother and I could have books and shoes.

The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plains
mingled by one wind—our breath. Breathe. Hear it
through the day’s gorgeous din of honking cabs,
buses launching down avenues, the symphony
of footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways,
the unexpected song bird on your clothes line.

Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling,
or whispers across café tables, Hear: the doors we open
for each other all day, saying: hello, shalom,
buon giorno, howdy, namaste, or buenos días
in the language my mother taught me—in every language
spoken into one wind carrying our lives
without prejudice, as these words break from my lips.

One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed
their majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado worked
their way to the sea. Thank the work of our hands:
weaving steel into bridges, finishing one more report
for the boss on time, stitching another wound
or uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait,
or the last floor on the Freedom Tower
jutting into a sky that yields to our resilience.

One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes
tired from work: some days guessing at the weather
of our lives, some days giving thanks for a love
that loves you back, sometimes praising a mother
who knew how to give, or forgiving a father
who couldn’t give what you wanted.

We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight
of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always—home,
always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon
like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop
and every window, of one country—all of us—
facing the stars
hope—a new constellation
waiting for us to map it,
waiting for us to name it—together.

- “One Today” by Richard Blanco

This island of volcanoes and glaciers struck me as different from the beginning, so I went over the list of countries we’d already been to and confirmed it was the smallest country by population we had ever visited (not counting Monaco, Vatican City or any territories). Also more than half of Icelanders believe in elves – that’s different. Of the ~300k total residents, 2/3rds live in the Reykjavik area, and at times it does appear everyone at least vaguely knows each other.

Iceland is one of the most expensive countries we visit on this trip along with Norway, Denmark and Japan. $100 a night gets you a single room with shared bath. The land of ice sounds cold, no? Combine that with shared bath and you’d think hot water would run out early in the morning and late risers would be forced to bathe in freezing glacier water. It’s actually the opposite. Cold water runs out before hot water in Iceland thanks to their thermal springs. Because of this hot water from the tap smells of sulfur so brushing your teeth or taking a shower smells the same as eating a cold boiled egg at a budget motel’s breakfast buffet (totally safe though). We smelled the same sulfur at the geysers of Yellowstone a few weeks back. 25% of electricity produced in Iceland is geothermal (the rest being hydro so 99% of generation is from renewables), but gas is expensive at ~USD9/gallon, like most island states.

Reyjavik feels more  like a really big town than a city. The nightlife that Reyjavik is famous for in actuality comprises of only a handful of pubs/clubs, fewer than in Clarendon (an area in Arlington, VA). The party scene is lively, with the revelers both younger and drunker than most Americans are used to seeing. Far from being a crime, public intoxication is a national pastime here so guys peeing or puking in a corner and drunk girls teetering precariously atop their high heels as they stumble from bar to bar are common sights. Police presence is virtually nil which is both good and bad. On the one hand, you can have a good time without risking waking up in prison. On the other hand, if you get in a fight and are outnumbered, you better be a fast runner or you will definitely wake up in a hospital. I saw a fight break out where one guy took some serious blows before bolting into a bar where the bouncers blocked his pursuing attackers.

I did get shoulder slammed by a guy trying to pick a fight in Kaffibarinn, one of the trendier clubs, but given the size and solidness of his shoulder, I walked away without a second thought. No idea why he picked on me. But assholes exist everywhere and the Reykjavik bar crowd is very friendly. There are lots of foreigners speaking English and while the locals converse in Icelandic, they all speak English as well and on several occasions started conversations with us out of the blue. Since Iceland’s population is small and 95% ethnic Icelandic, genetic diversity if low, and while “soft” inbreeding can result in ugly people, luckily in Iceland it has not. So for the single folks out there, particularly those with an affinity for blondes, Icelanders are attractive, big partiers and friendly to foreigners.

One caution on partying – buy your booze at duty free as you enter the country because alcohol is expensive, and outside of bars is only available at a few stores which close at 6pm. The locals pre-party at home and only hit the bars around 1am. Lastly it must be noted that party nights are Friday, Saturday and that’s it! All other days are dead because as stated earlier, Icelanders have ritualized their party schedule this way.

Unfortunately we didn’t see much of Iceland’s natural beauty because it’s cost prohibitive for us at the moment – Iceland’s an expensive country and we’ve got to make our money last 16 months. I can see us returning later on a separate trip to see the rest of the Island and the Western fjords in particular which are spectacular.

The one trip I did take outside Reykjavik was to SCUBA dive in Silfra which is a glacier lake with a crack that divides the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates. This crack widens by 2 cm each year and is wide enough to swim down into up to a depth of 22 meters. The water is supposed to be the clearest in the world, offering visibility of up to 100m. It’s clarity comes from the fact that the water travels through porous volcanic rock for between 30 and 100 years from the glacier to the lake and this does an amazing job of filtering it. Water temperature when I went was 2 degrees Celsius. Because of how cold it is, divers have to wear a dry suit with two layers of insulation underneath, gloves, hood and since the dry suit increases buoyancy, you need more weights than you normally would. Lastly, if you’re not dry suit certified, you also need a BCD (Buoyancy Control Device) which is redundant extra weight since you can control buoyancy with the dry suit. In the end, my gear weighed about 35 kilos but more than the weight, all the layers of stuff I was wearing reduced my range of motion and the thick gloves made operating my camera difficult. My dry suit seals held up great as did most people’s but three divers in my group aborted their dives due to water leaking into their dry suits. In the end it was cool to be between continents but not worth all the trouble and cost (roughly $300), plus there are virtually no fish in there. I saw one brown fish maybe 2 inches long, but I don’t think anyone else saw fish.

One bonus of doing the dive was getting to see the Icelandic landscape outside Reykjavik. It is lots of green gently rolling hills with pretty waterfalls and small lakes here and there, but no trees. I don’t mean hardly any trees. I really mean not one single tree anywhere, which was weird. I climbed a hill near the dive site and my foot sank ~5 inches into its soft surface with every step because it was covered with a thick layer of moss. This surprised me but it makes sense since volcanic ash is incredibly fertile. I remember seeing similar hills on the Big Island of Hawaii, although I never attempted climbing one.

On our last day we saw a massive celebration in Reykjavik to commemorate their national day, June 17, on which they won independence from Denmark in 1944. Check out our photos from Iceland here. It’s an interesting country but now it’s off to Norway!

If it didn’t hit us before when we left for the US road trip, it’s definitely hit us now! We’re really doing this and it fills us with both excitement and anxiety (more Mustafa). We downsized from a four bedroom house to a car 7 weeks back, and now we’ve further downsized our life so it packs into two backpacks, which have been weighed, tagged and are about to be tossed on a conveyor belt to Reykjavik, Iceland, our first international destination!

Mustafa’s pack: 31 lbs, Colleen’s pack: 25 lbs

Named for the city of Memphis in Ancient Egypt, Memphis, TN took us three hours to drive to from Nashville. Despite being even further South than Nashville, I got the sense Memphis had better racial integration. Both cities are roughly the same size (between 600k-700k population) and are rich in musical heritage. We did 3 major things in Memphis:

1 – Visited Graceland: We took a tour of the estate of “The King”, Elvis Presley. Neither of us are Elvis fans but this was something we had to check out. Two things struck me at Graceland. First, Elvis was a twin. His older brother was stillborn 35 minutes before the King made his entrance into this World. Second, despite being a big star, he was drafted into the army and spent 2 years in service between 1958 and 1960. Whatever I think of war, the fact that he was drafted and had to comply despite being a super-celebrity is impressive because it indicates the draft system was relatively free of corruption and equitable between individuals, even if it was inequitable to the group as a whole. The United States ended conscription and moved to an all-volunteer force in 1973, which has had several benefits but on the whole I feel has been negative because it’s made going to war too easy for most Americans because on average they are less likely to know a soldier personally. Sending people to war should be an involved and difficult decision and yet today the US is fighting the longest war in its history and hardly anyone notices. War should be taken more seriously.

Graceland

2 – Hit the Beale Street Music Festival: While we didn’t buy tickets to the concert itself which was quite affordable at under $40, Beale Street itself was teeming with activity and jazz music so we happily took in these freebies.

Beale Street

3 – Visited the American Civil Rights Museum: This museum includes the Lorraine Motel where MLK Jr was shot and killed in 1968. We learned a lot we didn’t know about the fight for African American civil rights, too much in fact to include in this post. I’ll just say I was surprised by how much we didn’t know and that it was a longer and more painful struggle than I had previously thought.

National Civil Rights Museum. At right is room 306 where MLK was staying and in front of which he was shot and killed.

We also took in the Mayweather-Guerrero fight at a nearby Fox & Hound pub, and had the best fried chicken yet on our trip at Gus’s World Famous Fried Chicken. It really was exceptional chicken!

In Nashville, I was finally able to pop the cherry on my 100 strangers project with an especially interesting stranger #1 (if he is to be believed). Nashville is called “The Music City” and for country music it definitely is (The Grand Ole Opry is here), but I think it’s significance for popular music has fallen over the years. Everyone we met was universally friendly and this general friendliness is slowly beginning to rub off on us city slickers from the North. However, the white/black socioeconomic divide in Nashville was wider than I’m used to seeing. We weren’t there very long but I didn’t see a single affluent looking African American all day.

I went to the Tennessee state capitol and again the black/white divide story repeated itself. The state legislature is THE hall of power and influence. Today, a high school class was using the capitol to practice their Robert’s Rules of Order in the real McCoy. I counted between 60-70 students and not a single black one among them, in a city where African Americans comprise 29% of the population. A lack of minority voices may be one of the reasons Tennessee lawmakers were so quick to adopt the paranoid bill against the mythical threat of creeping Sharia. Sadly, this is a region with a storied history of bigotry. Tennessee is the birthplace of the KKK and is the state where MLK was assassinated. The legacy of bigotry continues to this day. Murfreesboro, a town where the site of a new mosque was recently vandalized and targeted in an arson attack, is less than 30 miles from Nashville.

And then there was the case of the Moslem (or is it Islamist?) foot bath that wasn’t, when Tennessee lawmakers freaked out because they thought a new mop sink in the state capitol was an ablution facility installed out of consideration for Muslims. Well, Tennessee lawmakers should know that I met with Imam Obama at the DC Muslim Brotherhood chapter before our road trip and he personally entrusted me with the mission to further sharia-creep in the great state of Tennessee by performing wudu (ablution) in their state capitol’s Sharia compliant Islamist foot bath. Oh, and mission accomplished!

Jokes aside, it’s frustrating that the South where folks are warm, friendly, hold the door for you and profess family values has so much bigotry, whereas the North where people are cold and even rude to one another has a far better record of tolerance and inclusiveness. What drives this? Is it the heritage of a once slavery-driven economy and resentment over defeat in the civil war? Is it that they have fewer immigrants so less experience with diversity and less appreciation of the common humanity that all people share regardless of how different they appear? Could it be that the affluent and powerful classes don’t want to surrender their economic and political advantage to the historically disenfranchised, fairness be damned, and so push racially divisive narratives to prolong the institutional inequities that favor them? It’s probably all of the above and more.

Also, anti-immigrant rhetoric and violence almost always flares up during economic slowdowns (as can be observed in Greece and a few other crisis-hit European nations) so the longer the economic hardship triggered by the global financial crisis lasts, and the worse income and wealth inequality becomes (which has been the trend over the past several decades), the more fertile the ground will be for bigotry to take root and spread. Here’s hoping for prosperity, tolerance and inclusiveness instead.

I should make clear that I have nothing against Tennessee or Tennesseans. Racism and bigotry exists everywhere. I only wish that bold leaders that prioritize justice above politics would emerge in this state and others like it so that people of all races, religions and sexual orientations are treated as equal citizens.