Bhutan/Nepal

This topic is much too broad to cover in my racewalking blog, but just to give you an explanation for the incredibly slow time at the Marine Corps Half Marathon on May18th, let me tell you about what we were doing from 12 April until early May.

We returned to the USA on May 6th. We were originally scheduled back on May 2, but as explained further below, had a delay.

The good news is we had an amazing trip, especially in Bhutan. It is truly a lovely country with equally lovely people, and very little influence yet on its civilization from European/American/Chinese influences. Travel is a challenge, as the roads are narrow and although asphalt paving is present, it has many holes and rough places. Such that travel on the main highway is at an average of 20km/hour (that's about 12.5 mph), meaning a 100km journey is most of a day.

Nepal is much more "westernized", with an absolute plethora of motorcycles, cars, bikes, pedicabs, trucks and busses of all shapes and sizes. Kathmandu is about 3.5 million people, but seems to have infrastructure for perhaps 500,000, so the electricity goes off for several hours in various areas on a pre-set schedule, water service is so uncertain each house has several hundred gallons of storage, which they fill when they have power and water, and use gravity feed from rooftop tanks for times with no power. It's a fascinating and beautiful country, but as the drivers of all those vehicles think they must honk their horns to tell everyone they are passing, it's noisy.

The less good news and reason for our being in Kathmandu until May 5 was that Naomi had to be hospitalized for four days to recover from a couple of infections. She was running a 101 degree fever when we got her there April 30, but they got her temperature and the infections under control, she regained her strength and was discharged on May 4.

We had gone from Kathmandu to Nagarkot, a more mountainous and remote part of Nepal, when she started showing symptoms of diarrhea and fever. We tried getting this under control with aspirin, immodium and so forth for about a day and a half before bringing her back to Kathmandu. We are in the Norvic-Escorts International Hospital, which is providing first class care. Several of the physicians have trained in US, and one (a cardiologist) is going to be in DC for a fellowship at George Washington University Hospital again this fall. The "we" is appropriate, I stayed in the hospital with her, sleeping on a cot in her room. It was reasonably comfortable, and there was no way I was leaving her in a foreign hospital on her own.

Naomi recovered pretty quickly, having among other things learned about cricket by watching a match on TV with our friend/guide Surendra, who is helping her understand the game. Surendra has been a friend of Naomi's for many years, and over the last week has become my friend as well. Her hospital discharge gave us about 24 hours in a hotel before we departed for home. We were both delighted to get to the hotel's shower, as the hospital is equipped with a shower about the equivalent of a motor-home unit, and we had agreed to forgo same. Like many Nepalese, Surendra owns a motorcycle, which is the family transport. In fact he, his wife and five year old daughter have come twice to the hospital for a visit.

The legal limit for motorcycle passengers is two adults and two children, which is seen often. More surprising was being passed by a motorcycle with a man driving, his five year old in front of him, a teenage boy in back and a live goat between driver and teenager. Many cars, most of which are small (a Toyota Rav4 seems quite large here), and all drivers seem to believe honking their horn will make traffic move more rapidly (futile, but loud).

As it worked out, the timing of Naomi being well enough to travel matched up pretty well with our ability to get flights home. We ended up taking the same flights as originally planned, just four days later, so arrived in DC on Tuesday, May 6th at about Noon (after 32 hours of travel, about eight of those on ground between flights).

Surendra and I spent a couple of days running errands on his motorcycle, and it's quite an experience. Then there was going to the airport to change flights - that's an adventure in and of itself.

Pictures soon!