Hey everybody, I know it has been a really long time since an update, but between life moving at full speed and internet nonexistence I haven’t had the opportunity. But now I do! Wow, I don’t even know where to start, I’m just going to have to hit you with the highlights.
The first, place worth talking about is Dengfeng, which is the home of the Shaolin Temple and Kung Fu. All the best Kung Fu schools in China are in Dengfeng, and the most famous Chinese martial artists are the Shaolin Monks, so I decided that I would go train with them for a week. The Shaolin Monks are famous for their intense and brutal training, and my week was no different. I awoke at 5AM everyday, ran into the mountains 5 kilometers with all the other students, did hundreds of Knuckle pushups and trained for about 12 hours a day, intensely to the point of body failure. Basically, they break your body and mind and re-make you into a martial arts machine. I primarily trained in Sanda Sanshou Kung Fu/Kickboxing. It was hard, but I held my own pretty decently. The training was unreal, I thought I would quit many times, but I didn’t. It made me feel pretty good. After losing about 10 lbs. in a week my training had ended and it was time to go. Before I left I interviewed Master Hu or Shifu Hu as most of us call him respectfully about the school and the kids that he teaches there. He told me his 200 students range from about 4-21 years old, most of the are boys that he saved from poverty, some orphans. He uses almost all of his resources to provide them with food, shelter, schooling, the best martial arts training in the world, and 2 pairs of clothes. Master Hu is amazing. Because Dengfeng is in the poorest province in China he does not receive almost any financial help to raise these boys. My hope is that by taking what he shared with me in the interview and by sharing it with different apparel companies maybe I can get some t-shirts donated to these kids. Most of them only have 1 shirt that they have had for about 5 years and it is stretched, torn, and stained beyond recognition. We’ll see, I’m working on it.
The next place I went was Chengdu to meet up with 2 friends after being totally physicalled bruned out in Dengfeng. To my surprise neither of my friends ended up being in Chengdu. Chengdu was not an extremely impressive city, it had unbearable fog, and everything was overcrowded and overpriced for China. BUT, while in Chengdu I ended up making an amazing random group of friends from all over the world. We met during a dumpling making competition in my hostel, (I won 2nd place and got a free beer, booyah), and basically ended up traveling the next several weeks together. It was with this group of guys that I decided to go to Tibet, which ended up being one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. So, we got it all setup and hopped a 40hour train to Tibet. It was by far the most beautiful train ride I’ve ever been on. We passed endless landscapes of mountains, lakes, and endless fields. Additionally, my friends Nick, Rutger, and Jyan taught me how to play Chinese poker, the first poker I’ve ever learned and we powered through about 700 games of it on the train.
Tibet was unbelievable, mind blowing, and just…special. By the time I reached Tibet I had been traveling 3 months, I had probably seen 100 temples in China and Korea, but Lhasa, Tibet was truly the first place I went so far on my adventures that I felt was honestly a holy place. Lahsa is a holy city, it is the original home of the Dali Lama before he was exiled by the Chinese in the 50’s and for many it is the center of Buddhism in the world. First off, every single day in Tibet is gorgeous, you are at an altitude of over 5,000 meters above sea level, and the sky is blue, the sun is shining, and there are no clouds and especially no smog, every day. After adjusting to the altitude I hiked through holy mountains, went to Potala Palace (the holy temple and palace of the Dali Lama), and saw many of the most important Buddhist sites in the world. There were two types of people everywhere, people praying and Chinese soldiers with machine guns making sure no one would protest the Chinese occupation of Tibet. I don’t want to make Tibet seem depressing by talking too much about the Chinese Military presence, but the unbelievable endurance and spirit of the Tibetan people is the only reason they remain on this Earth. Those are the only things left the Chinese haven’t taken from them. The way they are treated, the way they are forced to live, the stories they tell, all these things make you love them, you pray they will be freed, and for the first time in my 2 months in China I really, really deeply resented the crimes of the Chinese government. But, I’m not talking anymore about it for now. After Lhasa my driver and my guide took me across the amazing mountains, cities, and landscapes of Tibet in our 4 wheel drive vehicle, couple hundred of miles of roads aren’t paved. Everywhere we went continued to go beyond every expectation right until we arrived at Mt. Everest Base Camp where we camped for the night. When you’re a kid you always wish you could go to Mt. Everest, and then one day you are a one blessed person and you’re there. One of my guides Dogie told me, “you must have been very good in another life to be so blessed to be here,” and I honestly think he has to be right. Initially though, it sucked, ha. The entire mountain was covered by clouds, you couldn’t see the top half, crappy jacks. But at sunset in epic fashion the clouds cleared and and the top lit up in an orange spotlight. The show wasn’t over though, because when the sun went down I could see more stars then I had ever seen in my life, from horizon line to horizon line. Even cooler, the trillion or so stars perfectly outlined the silhouette of the mountain for another unreal view. It still wasn’t over, because at about midnight the full moon rose over the valley of Mt. Everest and lit everything up like the 4th of July. Eventually, frozen and delirious, I passed out, but I woke up early to watch the sun rise over the mountain and to hike to it again. And then just like that, we left and I said goodbye to the mountain. While at the mountain though I made some more friends from Australia, and they ended up sticking around.
So, after Everest my new “Ozzie” friends and I hopped in a bus and headed south to Nepal to try our luck in another new country. We arrived in Kathmandu, probably the craziest damn city I’ve been to yet. People, noise, music, madness, and color everywhere. As my new friends would say, the city was full on. The first place I went was the Monkey Temple to feed my love of both historical religious architecture and monkeys. It was awesome, I met many new monkey friends, they are crazy and mischevious, I left them at the temple. After wandering the streets of “The Big Kat” as we grew to call it, my Aussie friends and I put half our stuff in storage, took what we needed in our backpacks, hopped the scariest bus on Earth, and took probably the most horrifying bus ride in existence down to the Himalayan Mountain Range to Trek through Nepal. In roughly four days we hiked around 80 kilometers, 40 up hill, in the range. I climber a glacier and two mountain peaks, it was ridiculous. By the way, yaks go everywhere. They are silly clumsy looking fat hairy animals, but at the top of every mountain you’ll find a herd or a million yak patties. Away from yak patties though, the glaciers and the mountains are will melt your mind with their beauty. After, 8 hours in the mountains you just are amazed that you still think they are the most beautiful thing you've ever seen in your life. The people here worship them, and I totally get it. It’s like falling in love with a woman, you can’t even remember why you love her anymore, you just do, and that is what the mountains do to you. You breath harder, not just because of the altitude, but because you hope that some of that air will be trapped in your lungs, and maybe you get to keep a part of the mountains with you forever. I don’t know, every breath just feels like your first one. After our total domination the the Langtang trail Trek in the Himalayas my Aussie buddies and I headed back to Kathmandu to re-group, listen to the incredible live rock n roll bands, and eat delicious Mexican food, you heard me, Mexican food. It was pretty damn good. That is until I caught a stomach virus. I went with my friends to the next town of Pokhara where at least 2 of us spent 3 days in our hotle room puking and shitting our guts up. It was awful, it was miserable, and it was Halloween. That was the trick. The treat was leaving Pokhara and that awful hotel room to head south to the Jungles of the National Forest where we proceeded to trek for 3 more days. The jungle was unreal, I got to see elephants, rhinos, monkeys, crocodiles, and a bunch of other living things that I had no idea what they even were. We go a safari like thing, but because they are repairind the roads of the park we couldn’t take a jeep, so we went on foot haha. A freaking safari on foot, with rhinos and tigers, and all there are to protect me are my two small Nepalese guidemen with bamboo sticks. That’s right not even guns, just bamboo sticks. It was probably the most exciting trek of my life. 20 kilometers through the jungle in a day, 3 times we had to hide from pissed off rhinos in the bushes, survival instincts going crazy, you could feel your heart beating in your head, it was awesome. The highlight were the rhinos, they are unreal. They’re about 1/3 bigger than the ones at the zoo and you always hear em before you see em. They are dinosaurs man, freaking huge, they move the forest, and when they grunt you feel like you might have just pissed your pants, but your too busy figuring out and exit strategy to worry about it. They are unbelievable and beautiful behemoths. I spent pretty much most of the next day hanging out with elephants. Early in the morning I went on an elephant ride through a nearby jungle, which was a kind of mixed emotion experience. It was awesome riding an elephant, and even better riding one through the jungle, because animals don’t really see you on top of the elephant so they stick around in stead of running off. The mixed part comes in, because the elephants are treated a little rough by their drivers. They get beat with stick and poked with fireplace pokers which kind of takes the thrill out of getting to hang out with them. My friend Jonsie said it best, “I think I’d rather just see them running around in the wild where they belong.” Regardless, they are amazing animals, pretty easy going, gigantic, and constantly entertaining themselves by rooting around with their trunks and getting into all sorts of shenanigans.
I’m now back in Kathmandu, battling out the rest of a stomach virus in my hotel, watching movies. But, Wednesday I fly to Manila, Philippines to re-unite with Steve for the first time in a couple months and we are going to hopefully bring in Thanksgiving and my 30th, holy shit by the way, birthday on a beach with sea turtles. I’m also hoping to meet up with my Grandmaster Cacoy Canete and train stick fighting for a little bit. We shall see, adventure is always waiting, until next time, which will hopefully be a little sooner…….
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