Hard to believe, but today is Mrs. C’s 80th birthday and she is in fabulous shape. (She is my senior, but not by enough to matter. Doing better than me in some ways.) We have been married 50 years and have had some great adventures together. She is seen here holding Buddhist prayer flags on some godforsaken plateau in Tibet. I’m hoping for many more years with her. She makes my life complete.
A long time ago - everything is a long time ago now - I was in my middle year of law school. It was St. Patrick's Day and I had only change in my pocket. My roommate and I decided we could not sit at home despite our lack of funds. There was a bar near the university that had cheap beer and pinball machines. It was crushingly crowded and I was literally pushed into the other person in this picture. I grew up in an apartment in New York. She grew up on a farm in Kansas. We were married 50 years ago today. It worked. It really did.
And the adventures we have had. Some people want to sit on a beach in Cancun or buy trophies in luxury shops. Not us. We went to Tibet, here at Everest base camp at 5,200 meters / 17,000 feet. And Tierra del Fuego and Fairbanks and Bangkok and Alice Springs and Cairo. And Paris, over and over again. Wow, did I luck out. She's the best.
Before we stop doing Asia pictures on the blog, there are a couple of special things I wanted to feature. This is our superb Tibetan guide, Tenzin Choedak. He's a native of Lhasa but familiar with the whole territory. He's done mountaineering and rescue missions. Choedak seems to know everybody who matters. He works awfully hard and keeps everything under control with unflappable charm.
The opulence of Tibetan Buddhist temples is a sight to see. They are often more ornate than the most Baroque European cathedral. The faithful leave offerings in Chinese yuan but we also saw U.S. dollars, Euros and once Argentine pesos.
Back at home, I went to the supermarket last night to stock up on general supplies. The breakfast cereal display contained an overwhelming number of choices. It made me me think of the tiny hole-in-the-wall shops we saw everywhere in Tibet and Nepal. No choices there. This little girl we met near Samye Monastery clutches a stick of gum given her by one of our group. It looks like her only possession.
Hello again from beautiful O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. Nice to be back in the US. I edited a bunch of pix on the flight from Delhi and posted them on Flickr here. Lots more to come. Since I don't have any current St. Louis material I'll keep posting images from Nepal and Tibet for a bit.
Gyantse is a modest town southwest of Lhasa, more Chinese than Tibetan. Someone observed that the old town had a Tolkienesque appearance. Now the visitor sees dull, repetitive state architecture. The fruit and vegetable, market, however, is an eyeful. The offerings were gorgeous and very fresh. This stall sells spices, sauces and chili powder.
Not a very sharp picture but, I think, a poignant one. Taken from a moving car, this little girl from a small family of yak herders makes human contact with the white faces rolling past. Note the adult, smaller child and tent in the background. They spend much of their lives in isolation, grazing their animals on what you see in the foreground. I couldn't see any water in the landscape.
McKinley - a big pile of rubble. Fujiyama - elegant but actually rather small. Mont Blanc - it has some elan but fails to reach the sky. This is Number One, Mt. Everest, shot from base camp on the Chinese side, about 5,200 meters or 17,200 feet above sea level. 
A lot of our drive Sunday was through river valleys, one of which was dammed to make an eerie teal-colored lake.
We stopped at passes of 15,000 and 15,800 feet. We're sleeping to ight at 12,800. Doing pretty well with the altitude - fair amount of trouble sleeping but lungs and energy are okay.
The Barkhor is the old Tibetan quarter in Lhasa, which is otherwise a modern Chinese city. Our guide said that most of the vendors are Chinese or Muslims from the northwest of China.
The Jokhan is the holiest temple in Tibetan Buddhism. It is located in the center of the Barkhor. What's inside is much grander than what you can see here. Large numbers of pilgrims from all over Tibet come here, circling the temple clockwise and chanting prayers.
This is the Mongolian Budhist "college" at a big monastery complex just outside of Lhasa. Once it held 5,000 monks. Today, 750.
Hey if any of the iPhone pix are clear enough post them to the blog for me with a little explanation. No blogger here.
Guest photo by Mrs. C., taken in Kathmandu a year and a half ago. A young Buddhist monk walks past Boudnath Stupa in the sunset. You can see more of her Nepal pictures here.
