Eid al-Adha in Pakistan

Pakistan Karakoram

Balti boy in Askoli

Piaiju peak profiled at sunset

approaching the Trango series and Cathedrals

legendary Baltoro shoes

Goro I campsite near Masherbrum (K1)

our runaway horse at Concordia

the stately Hassan

Broad Peak from Concordia

 

the elusive Gasherbrum IV

Concordia village life

the mighty K2 at dusk... a sight to behold

Baltoro candy

the Deosai high plateau

 

Karakoram traffic jam

Greg Mortenson

The recent revelations of Greg Mortenson have been gnawing away at me the past few days as I attempt to digest the significance of it all. Like millions more, I found Mortenson’s story inspiring. Before reading Three Cups of Tea, the fate of my own adventures brought me to a remote village in Pakistan’s Karakoram Range where I lived with a family while volunteering at their community school. There are several parallels between my experience and Mortenson’s story, which led me to both revere and criticize the depiction of Three Cups of Tea.

Coincidentally, the village I lived in, known as Misgar, is located in the valley adjacent to Zuudkhan, which plays a pivotal role in Mortenson’s story (particularly in Stones into Schools) as the venue for the promise he makes to build a school for the Kyrgyz nomads of the nearby Wakhan Corridor in Afghanistan. More importantly, it was a non-profit foundation that funded the construction of Misgar’s community school, which was subsequently left to its own devices to source teachers, develop curriculum, and improve student performance. In every regard that directly impacted the quality of education being delivered, Misgar’s school was in dire straits.

After returning home and reading Three Cups of Tea, my primary objection was the relationship that Mortenson claimed to exist between constructing schools and educating thousands of children. When discussing Mortenson’s story with others, it was puzzling to me how few people took issue with this extrapolation, which should have been obvious to any discerning reader.

Regardless of what faults Mortenson’s readers may have identified in him, it was the cult of personality that elevated him to heroism (with myself included). The story of Three Cups of Tea is so extraordinary that, with the benefit of hindsight, it’s not difficult to imagine that elements were embellished. Nor should it come as a surprise that a 35 year-old nurse and climbing bum would become a dysfunctional executive.

What’s most devastating about Mortenson’s apparent demise is the implication of intent. That he pathologically misled his supporters is far more egregious than had he done wrong while meaning to do well. The projection of Mortenson’s character, which he worked so hard to craft in his books, has been irreparably damaged.

Mortenson was supposed to be the real deal – a man of genuine motivations who had made great sacrifices for the noble cause of education. To know that he existed was uplifting, and to now discover that he is a fraud is crushing. Did Mortenson become corrupted along the way by the temptation of selling his story to the world? Or did Mortenson, out of desperation from the very beginning, do what he had to do to make a living? We’ll probably never know, not that it really matters.

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Regal Chowk

Part I

The White Mosque’s call to prayer nudged me awake as it echoed through the empty bazaars splaying from Regal Chowk like bent spokes. There could be no more fitting way to begin the day. The sound of the call to prayer embodied everything I didn’t know or understand about this exotic place, and the thrill that I experienced in that brief moment of reflection was the very thing that brought me all this way to Pakistan.

I stumbled out of bed and across the roof deck to the “sky bath”, filled a bucket with water and paused, to reconsider, before dumping the first scoop over my head. The cold water jolted my body awake and left me tingling with warmth from within. I threw on a tan shalwar kameez and cinched the baggy trousers with a cotton waist string.

Downstairs, I always felt a pinch of guilt waking up Azir to let me out, and would hesitate for a moment before rousing him with a heavy whisper. If I caught him in the middle of a dream, he would thrust out of his bed in a state of disorientation, requiring several minutes to collect himself. There were many intriguing characters at the Regal hotel, but it was my friendship with Azir that I valued most. Belonging to the small Kalash tribe of northern Pakistan, Azir was a long way from home, and his struggle resonated with me. But the resentment of Islamic culture that festered in Azir, while amusing, was tragically ironic. As he removed the padlock from the door and I departed toward the street, he offered commentary on my own irony:
“Mr. Peter, you are looking like Muslim man in shalwar kameez, why you are not looking strong like English man with pant-shirt? And the beard should be full shaving, Peter, not looking like mullah –”
“OK, Azir, we will talk about that later, I have to get to work now.”

Outside the hotel, past the chai-wallah, the men at the flower stall had begun cutting their bouquets of roses, so I proceeded on with confidence. Being one of Lahore’s landmark intersections, Regal Chowk is a popular venue for demonstrations and political rallies. If anything disagreeable were in the forecast, the flower stall would shut down and serve as my cue to stay inside.

Along Mall Road, Lahore’s most prominent avenue of stately British architecture and urban greenery, I made my way to the rickshaw stand adjacent to the White Mosque. Approaching the yellow rickshaw at the head of the queue, I introduced myself to Dawood Sb (“Mr. Dawood”) who, in the coming weeks, would become a trusted friend and host. Hailing from Peshawar in northwest Pakistan, Dawood Sb is a Pashtun man whose brethren spawned the Taliban movement across the border in Afghanistan. Dawood Sb and I didn’t have any formal agreement for my morning commute, yet he never missed a single day delivering me to work.

The rickshaw rides to and from work were the highlight of my day. From Regal Chowk we drove south down Temple Road, which is one of the busiest neighborhoods in Lahore where people, vehicles and livestock converge on narrow streets in absolute chaos. The diversity of obstacles and near collisions you encounter racing through these bazaars could easily double as the set of an action film. As a foreigner it’s tempting to deduce that Pakistan lacks driving rules altogether, but this is not the case. There is a hierarchy on the road, whereby the larger your vehicle, the more dominance you assert over others. As a pedestrian, it is critical to understand that you have no rights, and no vehicle will ever yield to you, not even a donkey.

In Dawood Sb’s rickshaw, there was no mistaking that you were in his custody as a guest, and he took personally any attempted breach of his hospitality. At traffic lights, beggars with filthy infants slung over their shoulder would frequently approach us. I have no idea what Dawood Sb would say to these people on my behalf, but he did so in a very calculated tone with his arm placed across the door, and never had to repeat himself. As a veteran rickshaw driver of 30 years, Dawood Sb also employed the hobby of chastising other motorists for their incompetence. These exchanges took an aggressive posture, but were harmless and became an ongoing source of entertainment.

I’ve often questioned the substance of such relationships, where you spend an hour every day with someone, know basic facts about them, but don’t share a common language. Without the benefit of conversation, other forms of communication assume greater importance, and Dawood Sb and I got to know each other through our actions and body language. Central to our relationship was my investment of faith with Dawood Sb, and his supervision of my wellbeing, which required no explanation.

Temple Road terminates at its southern end by joining Jail Road at Quartaba Chowk, which recently became known as the sight of the dramatic shooting of two ISI agents by “Raymond Davis”, a contract security officer for the CIA. In the annals of espionage blunders, this one was the stuff of movies. The climax of tension during Davis’s custody occurred during my first two weeks in Pakistan, and to drive past the scene of the shooting on my way to work was a daily reminder of my delicate existence.

The day after Davis was released, word spread of a demonstration planned after Friday prayer on Mall Road at Regal Chowk, just steps from my hotel. Steeped in anticipation, this was the event I had dreaded. Several journalists arrived at the hotel to cover the event for international news agencies. There was a German writer, a Spanish photojournalist, a French videographer, and a Dutch reporter. That morning we were hanging out on the roof deck and one of the reporters began to rehears a “fake-live” dispatch on the “inflammatory situation in Lahore”. Once ready, he climbed onto the roof of the sky bath with his video camera on a tripod, and delivered his speech while standing in a collared shirt and underwear.

The protest was peaceful and consisted of only a few hundred people. As the journalists returned to the hotel in the afternoon, they made no effort to hide their disappointment at the lack of action.
“Hey guys, you’re back! How were the protests?”
“Terrible day. Nothing happening here so we’re heading back to Islamabad.”
Alas, the last story any newspaper editor wanted to run was a nonviolent demonstration of free speech in Pakistan.

Part II

After a long day at work, returning to a crowd of friendly faces at the hotel felt like a college dorm. On this particular day, we had planned a falcon feeding so Phillip and I went on a quick run down Temple Road to buy a half-kilo of diced chicken. Phillip and his wife were Swiss travelers who recently overlanded through Iran into Baluchistan, where they made national headlines after being arrested for lacking the requisite paperwork. As it is, few tourists visit Pakistan these days, and it’s an even scarcer number that make it to Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan and headquarters of the Afghan Taliban. When I first heard this story I asked Phillip if he thought traveling through Baluchistan was a good idea:
“Beautiful place, Baluchistan! Definitely worth a visit... Yeah, no problems really, the police are very friendly.”

Back on the roof deck, we lured the falcons with a few warm-up throws. In short order they gathered into a swarm of several hundred birds, and the aerial acrobatics that ensued were a terrific sight. The falcons would accelerate towards the roof at alarming speeds, arresting their dive at the last moment and often brushing their wing tips against the walls of the building. In local lore, feeding the birds was a way to deliver sacrifice to God, but for us it was purely childish entertainment.

On nights when a good crowd had amassed at the Regal hotel, the owner would arrange for his favorite Sufi bands to play on the roof deck. Nadeem Sb was somewhat of a legend among travelers who had come through Lahore over the past decade, as pretty much all of them stay at the Regal. Having lived with Benazir Bhutto for several years and served as her media advisor while she was Prime Minister, Nadeem Sb was never short for a good story. Perhaps it was his disillusionment following Benazir’s assassination that led him to open the Regal, which provides a distraction from the quandary of politics in Pakistan.

It was a full house that night with the two Swiss, the two Japanese, a Belgian couple, two German NGO workers, and a French couple. The acoustics of unamplified live music makes everything else pale in comparison. For me, there have been few times when I have truly let go of my self-awareness and lived in the moment, and this was one of them. The style of Sufi music was very unusual to me, but the drum beats, the accordion, and the lead singer’s powerful voice owned everyone’s attention, and we danced for several hours beneath a smattering of Punjabi stars.

That night I learned an important lesson about Pakistani hospitality. After the band finished we were sprawled out on the roof deck when I complimented one of the band members on the wool vest he wore over his shalwar kameez. The vest turned out to be an article of considerable personal sentiment, but my complimenting it in public meant that he felt obliged to offer it to me as a gift. To convey respect, I had to accept his gift, but felt very uncomfortable doing so. What I did was, I graciously accepted the gift, and the next day I thanked him for letting me borrow his vest, and returned it – which presented an honorable exit for us both.

Mornings after a big night at the Regal, Azir and I would head out to get yoghurt for everyone. Crossing Mall Road we passed the electronics bazaar and turned down Ice Cream Street, whose namesake was the handful of milkshake parlors at its entrance. The yoghurt stall was at the edge of the lamps bazaar where it met the hardware bazaar, and there were also fruit vendors, men selling goats, and other food stalls. I also needed a shave and Azir brought me to a barber down one of the alleyways.

The two kids running the place were jovial and flamboyant. They didn’t speak English but I was pretty sure one of them was referring to me as a “beautiful man”. I leaned over to Azir and asked if these men were gay. Azir responded, “No, no, Mr. Peter, nothing like this. These are Muslim boys, their fathers are Muslim too. They are not being gay or something, they are just talking too much. They are very nice boys.”

As if on queue, less than a minute later, a third man walked in and one of the barbers declared this man to be his “wife”. I retorted that it was impossible for a man to be someone’s wife, and the barber, to illustrate his point, reached his arm around the man and they proceeded to make out in front of all of us. At first I was in a state of shock but then burst out laughing along with Azir and the other barber. It was the last thing I expected to see in Pakistan, and reminded me how little I really understood this place.

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from camels to Range Rovers in 40 years

Boarding a Friday morning flight to Dubai in my Pakistani costume – a beard and bleach-white shalwar kameez – I pondered what identity I might employ for the weekend. After all, this was the first time I would be arriving in another country in the guise of a Pakistani. What I learned about Dubai was that it really didn’t matter where I was from – I would feel equally at home as a Pathan from Pakistan’s tribal areas or a businessman from New York.

Descending the escalator towards passport control at the Dubai airport was one of the strangest assortments of people I’ve ever observed: two Emirati men in dishdashas, checkered head scarves and headropes, accompanied by their wives in black burqas; two Tamils in lungis; a handful of Pakistanis in shalwar kameez; an African couple in elegant tribal dress; and three Russian tourists in cutoff jeans and tanktops. Considering the conservative Islamic orientation of the Emiratis, it’s tempting to think of such diversity as a contradiction, but rather it is the very essence of Dubai.

For every Emirati in Dubai there are four migrant workers from south Asia or Africa whose labor inputs make this master-planned city state spin. Without its army of expatriates, Dubai would not be the two-tiered food chain that it is. At the top are the citizens who enjoy, in lieu of the right to vote, a standard of living and carbon footprint exceeding those of the average American, coupled with social perks like free health care and education. As for the worker bees, the carrot of financial arbitrage is achieved through minimizing one’s living expenses in an otherwise terribly expensive city. Thus, many laborers are said to reside in “subhuman” living conditions, all for the dream of sending some money home.

Despite its ongoing embroilment with the real estate and financial implosions, the Emirates are an Arab success story. While it was oil that propelled this desert outpost onto the global economic stage, the wisdom to invest their resources in infrastructure, social institutions, and diversification has paid dividends: oil and gas now account for only 25% of the Emirates’ GDP, or 5% in Dubai. Throughout its history, Dubai has made its stake in trade by luring merchants with free trade zones and subsidized tariffs. From pearling and gold to re-exports and tourism, the accommodation of foreigners has always been central to Dubai’s existence.

The four meals I ate out in Dubai were south Indian, Persian, Afghani, and Syrian. After my last dinner out, I rode back to the hotel in a taxi and shared the final minutes leading up to India’s cricket World Cup victory with a taxi driver from Kerala. He asked me if I was Pakistani and I replied that I was an American living in Lahore and spending the weekend in Dubai. His response was “Yes, of course.”

onions and toothpicks

The weekend in fotos...

First Impressions

It’s interesting to reflect on the range of emotions over the past few weeks. My departure for Pakistan was overshadowed by controversy among friends and family who expressed unsolicited concern, confusion, and even anger at my travel plans. One of the very things that attracted me to Pakistan – that it is a largely misunderstood country by Western perspectives – made coming here an intimidating prospect. I have to admit that reading the news reel and security reports back home inspired some sobering introspection on my part as well. This emotionally charged mental projection of Pakistan culminated on Saturday when I stamped out of India, walked through the Wagah ceremony grounds, and sped towards Lahore in a rusting taxi. It was then that I began to experience a great sense of relief and remembered why it was that I came.

As expected, the Pakistani people are famously gracious and create an atmosphere that sparsely resembles the one painted by Western media. Pakistan is a fascinating country that lies today at the crossroads of Asia and the Middle East, as it has for millennia. I’m overwhelmed by the amount I stand to learn from living here and feel distinctly fortunate for the opportunity.

Several people described Lahore to me as the cultural and intellectual capital of Pakistan; a place of progressive orientation, universities, and tree-lined avenues; and of course a reservoir of history and architecture spanning several empires. In particular the part about the “tree-lined avenues” I found hard to believe but was pleasantly surprised to find it the case indeed. In contrast to India, the streets are swept clean, cows are not sacred and roaming freely, and public urination is frowned upon. The beautiful rooftop sunsets have been accompanied by a hanging crescent moon the past few days, a sight whose symbolism has not escaped me.

Hindustan

It’s been nearly a year since I was last in India, which is long enough to relish the novelty of it once again. Minutes after clearing immigration I was bound for New Delhi Station in a black-and-yellow Ambassador and not much traffic to contend with at 1:00am. I could smell that it had just rained and the balmy wind in my face set me adrift in nostalgia. That very moment and nothing more captivated me and I was overcome with content.

It’s great to be back on the subcontinent and I shall reiterate my love for India, which strikes a lovely balance between progressiveness and integrity, which is another way of saying that India has its own style (a diminishing commodity among its peer group). It’s the little things that make me smile: men holding hands, the chai-wallah tune, beedis in the air, unguarded curiosity, head wagging, etc.

My friend Nivi was late to lunch, citing rain and traffic, which I found to be preposterous for someone who lives in Delhi. The next day I read the breaking news in the Hindustan Times: “Rain Lashes Capital, harasses commuters”. The whopping 2.1mm of rain recorded in Delhi that day made great press for the traffic police: “‘We had deployed personnel in different areas of the city. We managed to bring the situation back to normal by late afternoon,’ said a senior police officer.” Whenever I think of Indian police I picture WWI-era rifles and a group of men sitting around sipping chai.

India is wonderful, but India is easy. To spice things up, today I plan to ride the Grand Trunk Highway to the Pakistan border, and walk across into the Land of the Pure, and thus commence the next chapter of adventure and discovery.
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FCIC: The Shatterer of Glass-Steagall

In November 1999, Congress passed and President Clinton signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), which lifted most of the remaining Glass-Steagall-era restrictions. The new law embodied many of the measures Treasury had previously advocated. The New York Times reported that Citigroup CEO Sandy Weill hung in his office “a hunk of wood—at least 4 feet wide—etched with his portrait and the words ‘The Shatterer of Glass-Steagall.’”

Now, as long as bank holding companies satisfied certain safety and soundness conditions, they could underwrite and sell banking, securities, and insurance products and services. Their securities affiliates were no longer bound by the Fed’s 25% limit—their primary regulator, the SEC, set their only boundaries. Supporters of the legislation argued that the new holding companies would be more profitable (due to economies of scale and scope), safer (through a broader diversification of risks), more useful to consumers (thanks to the convenience of one-stop shopping for financial services), and more competitive with large foreign banks, which already offered loans, securities, and insurance products.

The legislation’s opponents warned that allowing banks to combine with securities firms would promote excessive speculation and could trigger a crisis like the crash of 1929…

FCIC: Chapter 4: Deregulation Redux
FCIC: Home
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FP: How Obama Lost Karzai

MARVIN JOSEPH/The Washington Post

Here's a fascinating and relevant follow-up to Steve Coll's article on the U.S.-Taliban talks:

"Over the course of the last decade, the few U.S. officials whom Karzai trusted have one by one moved on, leaving the Afghan president alone with his conspiracy theories. Of late, he is convinced that the Americans want to get rid of him, even as he stubbornly refuses to reckon with the aspects of his rule that might make them wish to do so: his own administrative failures, growing corruption in the top ranks of his government and family, the rigged presidential election that won him a second term, and above all his failure to articulate a vision for the future of his country. Last fall he reportedly told top U.S. officials that of the three "main enemies" he faced -- the United States, the international community, and the Taliban -- he would side first with the Taliban."

READ ON: How Obama Lost Karzai - By Ahmed Rashid | Foreign Policy

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Quantitative Easing Explained

I just can't get tired of this. The Ben Bernanke and The Goldman Sachs...

The New Yorker: U.S.-Taliban Talks

ILLUSTRATION: TOM BACHTELL

There's no shame in diplomatic discourse but I can't imagine what sort of mutually agreeable terms could be reached with the Afghan Taliban. Particularly with these talks being led by President Karzai, the durability of any outcome should be questioned - recall the fate of Soviet puppet Dr. Najibullah? And what substance would a deal with the Taliban contain with the exclusion of other pertinent groups like the Haqqani network, who are less likely to participate?

Read the article: The Obama Administration and the Taliban

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Tajikistan

It wasn't that I felt compelled to write about my trip and chose the Pamiri people. It was that I felt compelled by the Pamiri people and chose to write about them. Afterall, the Pamir Highway was the most rewarding chapter of my trip around the world. On top of everything else Central Asia has going for it, it's fair to add obscurity as well. And this is particularly true for the Ismaili people - I don't think I've met a single person in the United States who's even heard of the Ismailis (except a recent acquaintance whose father happens to be Ismaili), so their fascinating story needs to be told. Thus, the article I wrote for Marin Magazine this month is the first step in said direction. Feel free to check it out and let me know what you think:

 Tajikistan: A Central Asian Gem

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the New Light of Myanmar

To illustrate the absurdity of Myanmar’s reclusive military leadership, consider a recent propaganda statement from Senior General Than Shwe on Union Day 2010: “[The people] are all under a duty to tackle any possible attempts by colonialists to break up the Union, aiding and abetting their minions… National races have showed their massive support for the State Constitution of the Union of Myanmar to build a new nation. Now, according to the State’s seven-step Road Map, a free and fair election will take place soon. That means national people will have the rights to elect representatives, and stand for election” - unless, of course, said representatives are associated with the National League for Democracy, which is barred from participation.

The junta isn’t fooling anyone with their staged elections scheduled to occur this fall. Yet despite such illegitimate efforts to balance the military dictatorship with democratic processions, the elections may signal a glimmer of moderation on the part of Myanmar’s extraordinarily thuggish and xenophobic leaders. Decades of isolation from much of the world continue to levy their toll on an impoverished populace, evidenced by an ever-growing humanitarian crisis and a (near) vacuum of foreign financial participation in Myanmar’s development.

Myanmar’s alliance with China, their most meaningful confederate, has proved to be anything but altruistic, as China develops its surrogate economic foothold while displaying tepid interest in broader diplomatic alignment. Nor does the junta’s freakish fear of outsiders escape the Chinese, for whom they seek a hedge, be it with Russia, India, or maybe even the West. Indeed, what degree of thawing in diplomatic relations with the US would be sufficient to reintroduce Western involvement in Myanmar? As for Sino-American cooperation on Myanmar, I’m more than skeptical of China’s enthusiasm for the US meddling in its neighborly affairs.

 

China's fiscal pickle

The Chinese Communist Party’s monetary policy revolves around maintaining domestic growth, of course; but beneath the pursuit of prosperity, is the need to subdue social unrest. To the extent the Chinese citizenry are occupied with economic progress, they’re not taking to the streets to demonstrate political and social grievances. The importance of evading an economic slump is therefore particularly critical for the CCP’s legitimacy at home. Meanwhile, the People’s Bank of China has quietly amassed the largest cache of foreign currency reserves in the world – US$2.5 trillion – which represents a formidable implement with which to shape monetary policy, but also a pickle between dollar dependence and growth sustainability.

Unlike the liberal institutions of the West, Asian banks were battered by financial storms prior to the Great Recession, thereby insulating themselves with tighter supervision and regulatory measures. Asian markets like Japan, China and India also contain intrinsic advantages, like high savings rates, that translate to robust deposits and sound capital ratios. These factors, reinforced by the CCP’s restrictions on private foreign investment, have contributed to the central bank’s impressive capitalization.

But the primary source of funds for China’s central bank originates in the arena of its trade surplus and currency manipulation. As Chinese exporters receive payments for their goods in dollars, the central bank buys those dollars by printing yuan, accumulating the dollars on its own balance sheet. By strictly managing the circulation of foreign currency, the central bank maintains its peg for the yuan. Furthermore, in theory, the central bank can use the dollar reserves to stabilize its yuan liabilities, the same way the Federal Reserve historically utilized gold reserves.

Why keep the dollars? No global currency’s circulation, other than the dollar, is substantial enough to absorb China’s massive trade surplus – nearly US$200 billion in 2009 - meaning it has no real alternative to the dollar for diversification. China’s marriage to the dollar is twofold, in that any harmful impact its monetary policy has on the dollar’s value will devastate not just the value of its foreign currency holdings, but also its export advantage vis-à-vis an appreciation of the artificially devalued yuan. For China to alter its pattern of Treasury bill consumption, for example, would prove as disruptive to China’s interests as to the Americans’.

All this amounts to a trajectory of negative feedback with few palatable remedies available to arrest the cycle: as China’s central bank accumulates more dollars to maintain exports and a cheap yuan, its dependence on the dollar also grows, rendering any reversal of policy increasingly troublesome. For now, China will continue to finance the U.S. account balance deficit - but that doesn’t make said deficit any less alarming.

Pakistan's Burusho

Pakistan is often said to be more an idea, or a theoretical union, than a cohesive nation. Despite its 95% Muslim majority, Pakistan’s social structure is a highly diverse assemblage of ethnic groups representing over sixty spoken languages. The majorities consist of the eastern Indic groups (the Sindhi in the southeast and the Punjabis in the east) and the western Persian groups (the Baloch in the southwest and the Pashtuns in the west).

During my visit to Pakistan, I acquainted one of its more obscure minorities, the Burusho, who co-inhabit the Hunza Valley alongside Wakhi-speaking Tajiks in the Northern Areas. While both groups follow the Ismaili branch of Shiism, they are entirely unique linguistically. The Burusho language, Burushaski, is a genealogical isolate, meaning that it has no known ancestral relationship with any other language. Burushaski is one of about a dozen extant isolates in the world, still in use as a primary language among children.

Many Burushos uphold the legend of their Macedonian descent, whereby legacy soldiers of Alexander the Great gave rise through inter-marriage to new communities with a Greek linguistic influence, although the absence of genetic or linguistic evidence thereof suggests otherwise…

Ismailism

In Rajasthan, India, I met a lovely French couple who had recently arrived in India by motorcycle, from Paris. I was fascinated to hear about the highlights of their journey through the Middle East and South Asia, but was instead confounded by their clever remark: ‘It is impossible to choose a favorite, because each place is so different; it is like asking, “whom do you like better, your mother or your father?”’


traveling light!

On the other hand, I have few misgivings about scaling my experiences abroad. If I had to choose an apogee, it would favor the Ismaili Muslims of Tajikistan, with whom I discovered the paradigm of progressive Muslim society. In my experience, the grace and hospitality of these people is unparalleled, despite their circumstance of isolation and hardship.

That the Ismailis have escaped the attention of the West is beyond perplexing. Estimates of their global community total 20 million, meaning there are 50% more Ismailis than Jews worldwide. The bulk of Ismailis are concentrated in contiguous regions of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Tajikistan, and their communities constitute a pillar of stability in the epicenter of perhaps the most polarized region in the world.

While neighboring Muslim communities struggle with radicalism and sectarian conflict, the Ismailis embrace education, women’s rights, and technology, and have successfully rejected the perversions of Islam so malignant elsewhere. To this, they invariably assign credit to their visionary spiritual leader, the Aga Khan. At the very least, Westerners’ perception of Islam would be enlightened by a greater awareness of the Ismailis and their inspiring fortitude.

Sierra 2010

No California summer is complete without at least a week of climbing on the east side. This trip was action-packed, not only with some of the best 5.10 crack routes in the high Sierra (3rd Pillar of Dana, Red Dihedral on Incredible Hulk, and OZ on Drug Dome), but with ferocious electrical storms, hot springing rest days, and bloody battles with unprecedented mosquitoes at the zenith of alpine spring.


3rd Pillar as viewed from the base - perfect white alpine granite


Adam cranking the summit move on the 3rd Pillar, 600 feet airborne


The Red Dihedral route - 1,200 feet of blissful backcountry crack climbing

the End of a Dream

To reflect back on my trip, upon its conclusion, is a surreal exercise. What commenced as a momentary departure from the currents of everyday life, has taken its own course and shape, and emerged as a life in itself. The journey, spanning 11 months, has taken me to 16 countries in Africa and Asia, wherein I’ve logged over 25,000 miles of overland travel on local buses and trains. As travel does, it has bestowed upon me an enriched perspective of the world, in vivid colors and three dimensions, to accompany me in all future endeavors that life may entail. In receipt of this extraordinary gift, which few people in the world have the chance to experience, I’m overcome with gratitude for my good fortune.

Shanghai

If Beijing can be likened to Washington, then Shanghai is New York, rather like an epicenter of global commerce than ancient history, to which Beijing lays its claim. The pitch of activity in Shanghai, not to mention its confluence of colonial and post-modern architecture, resonates a story of capitalism, not imperialism. With a bitter aftertaste, this tale summons a sad chapter in history when, content to its own devices, China was forcibly disrobed and placed upon a disagreeable global stage. But the Shanghai of today is a thriving masterpiece of Chinese advancement, and can hold its own in any short list of the world’s greatest urban civilizations.

Exploring the periphery of Shanghai uncovered a beaming ray of hope in my quest for embers of tradition in China, in Xīdì, Anhui province – an ancient city having preserved its heritage in an unusual degree of authenticity. Aside from minority establishments such as the ancient city of Lìjiāng in Yúnnán, there are few surviving outposts of old China among the Han. In Xīdì, peasant life perseveres along with its Song Dynasty architecture – nearly 1,000 years old – in a remarkable display of style and detail. What a shame that more places like Xīdì have not survived in China.



Here's a map of my final route through China:


View China route in a larger map