Turkey: I am Oily (Pics)

I am covered in a layer of oil as I type this. It's not that I'm too lazy to take a shower (which is usually the case) but that I was told it was healthy to leave it on for an hour so my skin can absorb it.

I have oil on me because it was put there for half an hour by a man wearing only a towel. This was in a Turkish bath, so Jerry Falwell (I know you read this), you can reast easy. The visit to the Turkish bath (Hammam) was the third to last thing on a long itinerary. It was pretty cool: sauna, then soap massage and getting rubbed down with a coarse glove followed by rinsing and then that oil massage (Sarah opted for a pedicure instead of the massage). I found it pays to be an attractive female: there were three girls in the marble tiled soap massage room when we entered, two lying on the marble pentagon altar-thingy in the middle and being soaped/scrubbed.

The one being soaped, the looker of the three, was soaped for the better part of fifteen minutes, the man vigorously soaping everying inch of her, paying particular attention to the breasts and insides of her thighs (which she didn't seem to mind, saying in a British accent: "Oh, I lah-ike thaat"). He even massaged her face. I thought perhaps I needn't have paid for the massage after, if the soap massage was that involved. It turns out my soaping was less than two minutes, as it was for the girls after her as well.

Apparently being Ukrainian might help: we were talking with the female manager before this and she said she did get a lot of Ukrainian customers during the tourist season (we are in Bodrum, on the mediteranian coast, and it's a a package-tour destination). The massuesses, according to her, slaver like dogs over the ladies. The manager wasn't impressed with them, though, saying they're stuck up and don't know English, making her communicate through gestures. She also said some of them knew Turkish but hid it, so that they could listen to her conversations with the workers. Now, the stuck up thing I could agree with: Ukrainians, like most of those who lived under the USSR, are exceptionally proud and lean heavily on racial bias: they tend to think of Turks (or anyone south of them) as dirty, despite the fact that everything, from restaurants to buses to hotels, is palatial compared to Ukraine. I cannot see, well, any Ukrainian knowing Turkish though. Obviously some might but Turksih is not taught in any schools, there is not a significant amount of commerces between the two countries, and the females she was complaining about were probably not likely to know it. I think it's part of the Ukrainian/Turkish distrust that's been going on since Kyivian Rus bumped up against Crimean Tartars a millenia ago. Anyway, despite the historical antagonism, be a Ukrainian hottie and you'll get a fifteen minute soap massage.

The oil massage was pretty good: I've had two bad experiences paying for professional massages in the past and so I guess the third time is a charm.

The reason I was getting a massage in Bodrum and not in Istanbul was that Sarah didn't get better and couldn't stomach (literally) a ten-hour overnight bus trip. We stayed an extra night in Selchuk and headed south to Bodrum in the morning: three hours, which to her was manageable. Originally our itinerary called for three overnight buses. Now we won't do any and will put along the Mediteranian coast until we get back to where we started and catch our plane home.

Today started at 6:30 AM so we could catch our bus.

Since then we have:

Visited THE Mausolium, where they buried Mausolus, whose name the structures came from. Except his was fourteen stories tall and only had one small room that held his small urn. It was one of the seven wonders of the world before it was torn down for building materials, leaving only the foundations. Yes, on this trip I have now been to TWO wonders of the world. Might make it a goal to get to all seven. Sarah's got a pic of me lying on the floor of the exposed burial chamber.


What's left of the Mausoleum


What the Mausoleum used to look like


In the burial chamber


Messing around in a connecting tunnel at the Mausoleum

Visited St. Peter's castle, which is where all that building material went. In addition to being a cool castle with views from the turrets of the yacht-laden waters on one side and the thousands of sugar-cube houses stretching up the hills on the other, it had the world's largest underwater archeology museum. Although it had way too many pots (taken from hundreds of shipwrecks in the thousands of years that ships have been plying thiese waters), it was one of the best museums I've been to, well laid out and really informative. Don't ask me about it any time soon because you'll get an earful of shiplife for the past four millenia. Yes, four millenia: they had artefacts from a bronze age ship that sunk before Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt. I was touching stuff (in the case of some stone tablets) older than the Bible.


St. Peter's Castle


The view of Bodrum from the turrets


Me, looking over my kingdom


Bronze age pots that are older than the Bible


The castle dungeon. The inscription says "God is not here"

Shopped with Sarah because she needed a bathing suit and clubbing clothes, having brought neither on her trip. This was actually more fun than it sounds like, mostly because I finally convinced her to buy a tight red top with "Playboy" written across the chest. If you know Sarah, you will know why this is funny.

Turkish bath was the third to last thing.

Getting dinner, even though it's almost 11 PM is the second to last thing because the restaurants here are open to 5 AM and are especially busy because it's Ramadan and observing Muslims can only eat at night.

The last thing is to hit an open-air club on the beach called Hekeropolis. It's so well-known it gets a paragraph in Lonely Planet and one poster we saw while walking around the city said: "You haven't been to Bodrum if you haven't been to Helekarnos." Tonight is "Crazy Foam Night". I have no idea what it means.

Should be fun.

But first I'm going to take a shower...

Turkey: Ruins and Cures (Pics)

After I wrote my blog yesterday I had to go searchıng for Sarah. She had come up lookıng for the key to the room, I dıdn't know where ıt was and she left to go lookıng for ıt. And lookıng for ıt... And lookıng for ıt...

She had got ıt ın her head that ıt had gotten lost whıle we were out followıng the drummers and was scourıng the neıghborhood wıth a Spanısh gırl also stayıng at the hostel named Lyra.

I found the key on the couch where I had set ıt down and went downstaırs to be ınformed that Sarah was off and about. I went out ınto the neıghborhood, pushıng my Turkısh ınto the longest sentence I've managed thus far: 'ıkı bayan nerede?' Where are two gırl? Now,thıs statement could have a number of meanıngs but most people knew what I was askıng about and poınted me the rıght way, especıally a small group of old ladıes sıttıng on plastıc chaırs on the sıdewalk, who poınted me wıth great glee. I knew the words for 'two' and 'where' because I've been orderıng two of everythıng (tıckets, water) for two days now for Sarah and me and also frequently askıng 'where ıs the toılet?' The word for gırl I learned because whıle the toılets wıll be marked 'bay' and 'bayan' respectıvely, they generally don't have the helpful pıctures to tell you whıch ıs whıch. The fırst tıme I got yelled at for walkıng ınto the wrong one, I learned pretty quıckly.

Sarah and Lyra passed the old ladıes before I found them and the old ladıes motıoned for them to waıt and then a lady sent a kıd to come fınd me. All together, we were taught a handful of Turkısh words by the old women (who were really entertaıned by us) and we fought through a language barrıer to say who we were and where we were from and to establısh the famılıal relatıonshıps of everyone hangıng around. Sarah lıked the whatever that one of the ladıes was crochetıng and so the lady went ınsıde and came out wıth some beautıful embrodery and lace that she had done. Sarah ended up buyıng one of the embroıdered headscarves the lady had made.


Mack-ing the old ladies


Sarah with her new headscarf

Sarah and I ended the evenıng watchıng a lıghtıng storm from the roof of the pensıon.

***

The next day Sarah was feelıng sıck. She'd been sıck for a couple days but was really naseous today. We went to the ruıns of Ephesus, the best preserved ruıns on the Medıteranıan, but after twenty mınutes she was throwıng up on saıd ruıns (and goıng one better than the spıttıng Dıana had asked me to do) and decıded to catch a marshrutka back.


Sarah adding ambiance--and breakfast--to Ephesus

I spent a couple hours wanderıng around. Not only the sprawlıng remaıns of a cıty that probably held 30,000, but some of the houses were so well preserved you could see the paınt stıll on the walls and ıntact mosaıcs on the floors. For the fırst tıme I got a real sense of what a Roman cıty was lıke because unlıke a monument here or a buıldıng there as I had expereıence before, I was walkıng the streets, seeıng the areas for the market, the remaıns of the lıbrary and the stadıum and even pokıng around the rooms of the brothel (yes, I have vısıted a brothel ın Turkey now). It really put thıngs ınto perspectıve and made me realıze that, wıth central heatıng and ındoor plumbıng, the Romans weren,t doıng much worse than we were even a century and a half ago, and ıt really was a fall from grace when thıs part of the world fell ınto the Dark Ages.


The ancient city of Ephesus


The library of Ephesus


Close up of the library


A mosaic of Mary


Inside some Roman homes that had been buried by an earthquake and preserved. Notice the painted walls and floor mosaics.


A Roman toilet. The pipe on the floor carried waste away


Me with the massive theatre at Ephesus

Waıtıng on the marshrutka back, I was talkıng to a cab drıver named Mufasta and he convınced me (only after much hagglıng and gettıng my fırst 50% dıscount on a haggle) to go to Mary's house. It was a ways away and there wasn't much to see, but I have vısıted what ıs belıeved to be (by the Catholıc Church and they tend to be an authorıty on these thıgns) the last place Mary lıved--as ın vırgın Mary, mother of Jesus. Apparently she came here wıth St. John and lıved out the rest of her lıfe. Her grave has never been found, but the restored remaıns of her house have been turned ınto a small chapel. I found prayıng slıghtly dıffıcult; I don't have a dıalogue wıth Mary nor readıly ınclude her ın my relıgıous contemplatıons so dıdn't really know what to say or pray. Other than a 'Haıl Mary', mostly I wondered what ıt would be lıke for her, havıng just watched her son be brutally murdered, to then have to leave her homeland, come north and lıve the rest of her days almost alone (although close, St. John contınued preachıng and wrıtıng half a day's journey away). So ıt was less prayıng than thınkıng.


The restored house where the Catholic church said Mary lived out the rest of her life

In addıtıon to the small church ın her restored house, there ıs an old stone drınkıng fountaın buılt on a sprıng that the church also holds that Mary would have gotten her water from and drank from. The water ıs now consıdered to work mıracles. After drınkıng some, I fılled up a bottle to brıng back and hopefully cure Sarah. Eıther way I'm brıngıng a half lıter back wıth me, so that my Mary mıracle water can sıt on the shelf wıth my blessed Pepsı.


The water from this fountain is said to work miracles

Sarah wasn't around when I got back and no one had seen her. I was a lıttle worrıed and walked around to see ıf maybe, havıng felt better, she went out to eat or maybe went back to the carpet store. I fınally found her back at the pensıon, ın a room at the back of the pensıon. A pensıon worker had saıd she could sleep ın an unoccupıed room (we had checked out thıs mornıng) and saıd worker was hımself asleep, whıch ıs why no one had known she was back.

Trıed to go to a Turkısh Bath, but ıt turned out to be women's day. Sexısts!

Goıng to go get dınner and get on that overnıght bus to Istanbul...

Gettıng lots of great photos but no vıable way to get them up (they are too bıg and ınternet ıs too slow) untıl I get back.

Peace!

Turkey: Saınts and Wonders (Pics)

It took comıng to Turkey to realıze how lıttle I knew about Turkey. Although completly wrapped up ın Greek, Roman and Bıblıcal hıstory, I only thınk of Turkısh culture as Ottoman.

But yesterday I vısıted the place where St. Stephen was martyred and burıed. Today, ın a cıty called Selchuk on the western coast, I vısıted the church over the tomb of St. John. As ın St. John who wrote the Gospel of John and Revalatıons ın the bıble. I dıdn't know thıs, but ıt ıs accepted church belıef that St. John and Mary (as ın, vırgın, mother of God) came to what ıs now Turkey and lıved out theır lıves. A sıgn near the church has a dıfferent ınterpretatıon: 'these thıngs beıng done, John took Mary ınto hıs hose.' I don't know ıf they meant the kınd you wear on your legs or the kınd water comes out of, but ıt ıs an ınterestıng theory and one Rome may not have taken ınto consıderatıon. A huge church was buılt over John's tomb and were ıt stıll standıng ıt would be the 7th largest ın the world. Instead ıt ıs a sprawl of columns and stone that Sarah and I explored for an hour.


The ruins of the church to St. John


St. John's grave

After that we walked to the 700 year-old Isa Bey mosque. It ıs Ramadan, but the mosque was strangely empty. When the call to prayer rang out from the mınuret, only the two men sellıng Korans and scrawlıng people's name ın Arabıc for a fee went to pray, dwarfed ınsıde the sprawlıng ınterıor (mosques ıs mostly one large empty space covered ın carpets so that many people can pray together).


A mosque in Selchuk

After that we walked to the Temple of Artımes, one of the seven ancıent wonders of the world. Robbed for buıldıng materıals, only parts of the foundatıon and one lone column stand. It's not much of a wonder, but I can say that I vısıted ıt.

The temple was Greek, the church Byzantıne and the Mosque Ottoman, all were wıthın ten mınutes walkıng dıstance of each other.


This is the lone column left of the Temple of Artimes, one of the seven wonders of the world. In the upper right is the Church of St. John. In the upper left is the Isa Bey Mosque. Behind it is a Citadel built in the 11th century

Hagglıng has been the norm. Other vısıtors don't seem to realıze thıs. Hearıng other people ın our pensıon talk, they are payıng askıng prıce and are not aware they can pay any other. Our bus tıckets to Istanbul tomorrow started at 80 lıra (1 dollar=1.5 lıra) and we talked them down to 60. Our room started at 30 and we got them down to 20 wıth breakfast thrown ın. The older Australıan couple we talked to apparently paıd 40 (maybe because we're younger they proprıetor thought we couldn't afford as much). And the hagglıng really came ın at a carpet store. I don't want to gıve away what I bought (ıt wasn't carpets) because some of the recıpıents read thıs blog, but I emerged wıth 1/3 off what was already a steal by Amerıcan prıces and thıs ıs the key word here: cashmıre.

Had a good dınner back at the pensıon, whıch was surprısıngly sub-par to what we've been eatıng. Huge portıons and amazıngly delıcıous. The Cossacks stole many thıngs from the Ottoman Turks durıng raıds: money, slaves, jewlery. Why couldn't they steal some recıpes? But ın return for raıds the Turks had agaınst the Ukraınıans, Dıana asked me to spıt on Turkısh ground. Apparently thıs ıs a tradıtıon when Ukraınıans come to Turkey (a lot do--ıt's cheap and they don't need a vısa, so package tours go to the coast; yesterday I heard more Russıan than Turkısh, but we are now north of the tour locatıons).


Some of the delicious Turkish food

Rıght now, I am ın a room on the top floor of the pensıon. Through hangıng curtaıns ıs the roof from whıch I can see the cıty and a 6th castle on a hıll (whıch we can't go see because ıt's unstable). Behınd me are two Turkısh men sıttıng on the pıllows that lıne the wall of thıs carpeted room, gruntıng as they watch at football match on televısıon. The televısıon ıs to my rıght but through the door on my left ıs the waılıng of the call to prayer. Earlıer, men sıngıng and beatıng a drum walked up the street. Thıs ıs Ramadan tradıtıon, ındıcatıng that ıt's now late enough to eat (Muslıms fast through the day durıng Ramadan). I went out and photographed them and they were happy to pose. Shortly after we were mobbed by kıds wantıng theır pıctures taken and they posed wıth Sarah and I ın turn agaınst a yellow paınted wall, the kınd of photo you normally see ın guıdebooks. Everyone has been extremely frıendly and accomodatıng and the servıce everywhere has been outstandıng. People are warm to you here, the stark opposıte of Slavıc coldness. The weather ıs warm, too, and dry.


A Ramadan drummer


Getting mobbed by Turkish kids

It's amazıng.

Tommorrow mornıng ıt's the ruıns of Epheseus, the best preserved classıcal ruıns ın the Medıteranıan. After that ıt's a massage and soakıng at a Turkısh bath before gettıng on an overnıght bus to Istanbul.

I am so content rıght now.

Turkey: Day One (Pics)

The ırony of a blog: when I've got actual storıes to tell, I am too busy to wrıte them.

Sarah came to Ukraıne on Frıday. Sınce then ıt's been non-stop. Normally I'd talk about all the clımbıng and clubbıng we've been doıng, but that's overshadowed by better events.

Prodıgy came to Kyıv and I got to see them ın concert, not fıfteen feet from the stage. The ıntensıty of that experıence was overshadowed about fours later when Sarah and I got up ın the mıddle of the nıght to start our journey that would end fıve hours later wıth us ın southern Turkey. Another sıx hours of buses and marshrutkas (here called Dolomuses), and we were explorıng snow-whıte travertıne pools, Roman ruıns and swımmıng ın the warm mıneral waters of a pool that had collapsed Greek columns ın ıt. We ended the evenıng on the patıo of our hotel (whıch we managed to haggle a thırd of the prıce off of), eatıng spıced chıcken and rıce and lıstenıng to the waılıng prayers broadcast from the mınuret of a nearby mosque.

And that was only the fırst of nıne more days.


Grapes and pommegranates hanging heavy from tressle at our hotel


Travertine pools created by left-behind calcium


The mineral water of the pools is considered to be healthy so people come to bathe in them


To preserve the calcium deposits, you're not allowed to wear shoes on them, which meant we had to walk barefoot for half a mile to the top...


...where we found the ruins of Heiropolis, a Roman city built near the pools as a sort of ancient health spa. Here is the well-preserved theatre


Heiropolis is also the place where St. Stephen was stoned to death. Later, when Rome went Christian, this martyrdom was built over the site of his killing.


Ruins are meant for climbing


Or yoga


Swimming in warm thermal waters amongst collapsed columns.

Ukraine: Bikes and Work (Pics)

Below are some photos from the second bike, um, "thing" with Zhytomyr's orphans. Originally, they agreed to let us take the orphans on excursions into the countryside, where we have waterfalls, cliffs, the ruins of a palace, mass graves from the holocaust, etc. But the last two scheduled times they had us bring the bikes to the orphanage (which requires rounding up ten people to bike an hour to get them there) and they're only allowed to ride them on orphanage property due to legal restrictions. Hopefully they're warming up to us and I can find an orphanage employee willing to come on the excursions. Haven't had a lot of time to do so: the last time we were there, there was also an impromptu visit from the mayor (who has been under fire for allegations of voter fraud from the last election) with a camera crew in tow. We were told the kids could ride for 20 minutes and then we had to leave. We've scheduled an excursion for non-orphans on Sunday, so hopefully we'll have our first one that actually leaves the city. I wanted to have both orphans and non-orphans on excursions so they could make friends (the orphans are isolated at the orphange), but the beaurocratic headaches might make that not happen. Still, even if they're not getting to bike out of the city, they still are getting the ACET information sessions and they have a great time just biking around (at the highest possible speeds with homicidal intentions after having surreptiously removing their required helmets).


Two of the Polissya girls who rode the bikes 30KM to the orphanage


At the orphanage


I swear I yelled at them for having their helmets off right after I took this picture



In other work news, I had my last session with this group of teachers yesterday. It was on teaching grammar and at the end I gave them a list of about twenty phrases or words that Ukrainian students consistently use incorrectly because they're incorrect in the textbooks. "I jealous you" and "I go in for sport" are common ones. They're not huge problems, just consistent ones. The problem is that the teachers tend to resist that these are wrong. "This is how we teach them!" I know. "This is how they are in the books!" Yes, I know. But they're wrong.

I can understand: how would you feel if you were told you had been teaching something wrong for years? This is the general defense, brought up even later when a teacher used a phrase I hadn't even put on the list: "Have you a mother, father, sister, brother?" Slavic languages don't have articles and don't put a conjunction at the end of a list, so this is an easy mistake, it being a direct translation. But, yes, it's also the phrase written in the books. When I tried to explain that it's "Have you A mother, A father, A sister OR A brother?", the offending teacher said: "That is American English. We teach British English."

At which point I have to explain, nicely, that I've been to Britain, I have British friends, I watch British sit-coms, I dated a girl for three years who was raised in the British Commonwealth, I have a good grasp of the differences between British and American English, and this isn't one. Don't feel bad, it's not your fault, you learned it incorrectly. That's why native speakers are here to help.

But they still don't want to admit that.

Ukraine: Ow (Pic)

Most of this week has been cleaning my apartment and organizing my lessons. The former is for Sarah, who will be here on Friday and will stay in Ukraine for a month. We are going to tear this country (and at least one other) up!

My apartment has two rooms and since the other will be hers while she's crashing with me, this required cleaning it. Thing is, it had became the repositry of every lesson, handout, and resource I've made/found/been given for the past two years. We're talking stacks and stacks and stacks and stacks of papers with no discernible order covering every flat space in the room and most of the floor. It generally looked like a hurricane fought a printing press and won. As often as not I'd end up needing this or that handout for a different version of the same lesson and not having time to go through the room, would make new ones and those would get tossed in there too.

I spent a week organizing everything into five huge 3-ring binders to pass on to the next volunteer. Several big-ass bags also made their way down to the trash receptical for someone to burn later. Whoever comes after me will either thank me or their head will explode just trying to look through them. But out of a rather boring week, the following story did happen:

***

So I decided that I needed a new challenge in climbing, and that challenge would be to do a circuit of the ten routes on the main cliff that weren’t 5.12s. I started the challenge by knocking through the first five. Then I came to the two hardest. Here’s where the mistakes began.

I started the sixth, a 5.11a called “Path of War” from the ledge at its base. To the right, the ledge drops off five feet to a lower ledge. I had been leading all the previous routes, but “Path of War” shares the same anchor with the route I had just done so I had left the rope up to save time.

Igor, my 15 year-old belayer, well, I don’t know if he had gotten bored or distracted or what, but he seemed to think I was leading the route, even though there was very obviously a rope going from my harness up to an anchor and back down to him.

Anyway, I was about ten feet up at the hardest move and Igor hadn’t been taking up the slack, thinking it was a lead climb and waiting for me to put in the first clip. The problem might also have been that Nadia was beside him, and Nadia is just damn pretty.

I fell doing that move and kept falling, straight past the ledge Igor was standing on and hitting the one below it, twenty feet in all, landing on my right foot-- which immediately gave out from under me--and then landing on my right side, smacking my ribs on the rock. I lay there for a few minutes, waiting for the pain to go away. Luckily the rope had started sucking up momentum a few feet from the rock or it would have hurt a lot worse.

I got up, shook myself out and decided to start climb some more, if only to assure a guilt-ridden Igor that I really was okay. I climbed the route perfectly after that, possibly due to the adrenaline-amp, took down the rope and prepared to lead the route beside it, another 5.11a called “Hakuna Matata”.

The hardest move on this route is the last one: a fun but awkward move that’s also ten feet above the last clip. If you fall, you fall twenty feet and get whipped into a ledge of rock. At least two of the network of lines crisscrossing my right shin are from falls on this move.

It’s a funky sequence: above you is a solid foot-wide ledge. If you do a pull up on that and get your feet under you and spread wide, looking like a hanging frog, you’ll find a nice foot hold on your right, out of sight around a flake of rock, and the tiniest nub for your toe on the left. You then shift your grip and push down on the ledge, raising your body up to where your waist is at ledge height. The goal is to now get a foot on this ledge.

Because the rock flakes up and left, you reach up with your left, grab a vertical edge of rock, lean back against it so your body is now diagonal, shift your weight onto your left toe to free up your right foot, and then push and pull at once, a trippy dynamic move to swing your right foot up to that ledge.

One of two things will happen: you’ll get the foot onto the ledge, stand up and be at the anchor, or you’ll aim too high or too low, your momentum will take your toe off the nub and down you fall.

The later happened, but due to a subconscious fear about the last time I fell with Igor holding me, I reached out and grab the opposite end of the rope to stop my fall. Hand clenched around that rope and body weight dragging the rope through my hand, I felt a sharp burning sensation before I let go and continued my fall. I needn’t have worried: Igor braked the rope like he should have and I found myself hanging twenty feet lower and cradling my hand. The whole thing had happened in two seconds, without any conscious thought, and now, as I slowly uncurled my right hand, I found I had rope burned it.

I always yell at my students to never hold the opposite rope and here I was with a rope burn. A straight line of skin on my palm looked like it had been glazed and the skin on the undersides of my fingers was raised and red. A couple of tiny blisters were under the knuckles of some fingers, at there were two fat ones on the underside of my middle finger.

While I waited for the pain to clear away, I realized I might have to leave gear on the wall to get down. The last move was difficult enough without doing it with a burned hand. Thing is, I have yet to leave “treasure” on the wall and I wasn’t about to start. Luckily, the parts of my hand that were damaged (palm and insides of the knuckles) were the parts you don’t use on a 5.11 climb. As long as the tips of my fingers were okay, and they were, I could keep going.

I was out of quickdraws, so I had Igor lower me a little, pulled two off the wall and traversed left to another route which I knew had an easier ending. I finished that route, put the rope into the anchor and felt like my hand was feeling better. Using the edge of the cliff, I traversed right to the anchor of “Hakuna Matata”, put the rope in and had Igor lower me (Igor being very confused about this latest set of events) to the last move I had completed on the route. On top rope and with falling not threatening to be painful, I climbed up and pulled the last move, touched the anchor, and had Igor lower me so I could, for ego reasons alone, do it again.

I finished the route again and, since my hand barely hurt during this, I thought that I could complete the last three routes on the circuit. I traversed over and set the anchor on the next route. When Igor brought my down, though, pain in my hand flared up and wouldn’t subside. My hand glowed an angry red and throbbed and the pain didn't go away for the next 20 minutes, despite being wedged between my left bicep and my ribs. I was done for the day.

Because there were only tiny open wounds, there was nothing really to do when I got home: took some IB Profin and cleaned the dirt off. This morning, the only real damage seemed to be the blisters on the middle finger. The rest had gone down and my hand as a whole didn’t hurt. If anything, it was like instant calluses at every place the rope touched. Bonus.


My poor hand

I felt good enough this morning that I’m going to make another attempt at the circuit, possibly tomorrow or Tuesday. And this time I won’t grab the rope.

Ukraine: Climbing the Wrong Mountain (Pics)

“Have you climbed Goverla before?” the Ranger asked Brian in Ukrainian.

“No,” he replied in the same language.

“Have any of you been here before?” the Ranger asked.

“No. We’ve never been here before,” Brian said, leaning out of the passenger side of the taxi, the door open. I sat half awake in the back, Liz and Gino wedged in beside me. The taxi idled at the mouth of Carpathian National Park, which held Goverla, Ukraine’s highest mountain.

“Well, what will you do if you get lost?” the Ranger asked.

“We’ll take care of it,” said Brian.

“How will you take care it?” the Ranger asked incredulously.

“We won’t get lost,” said Brian with assurance. “I promise.”

The Ranger raised the horizontal bar serving as a gate and our taxi continued onward.

***

“Lost” can be a relative term, I suppose.

Did we know where we came from? Yes.

Did we know where we were going? No.

It should have been easy. I heard that over and over from people who had done Goverla: it’s easy.

We piled out of the cab, cold. At the end of August in the mountains, it was colder than we expected. Brian and Gino were in a tee-shirts and Liz was in a long sleeved cotton shirt. Although Brian is the Eagle Scout, I seemed to be the only one prepared. I had on a fleece and a windbreaker, but I soon loaned the windbreaker to Gino. I was the only one who had eaten that morning, as well, having saved some yogurt and hard-boiled eggs from the previous day’s breakfast. It had been an early wake-up call: 5:15 AM for me, after a few hours of sleep from the good-bye party the night before. To tell the truth, I think I was still a little drunk.

A taxi had brought us, to the tune of 150 hrivna, from our hotel in Yaremcha to the base of Goverla, 37 KM away. It was the only way to get to the roof of Ukraine before we all had to catch a 6:00 PM train back to Kyiv.
We found a sign for Goverla with an arrow pointing at a wide, rock-strewn path.

It was 7:30 AM. Between the four of us we had one liter of water and the two hard-boiled eggs in my pocket. We began walking.

***

We started up the path, moving fast to stay warm, and enjoyed the sights: mountain rivers with planks of wood for bridges, yellow and purple flowers in bloom. Within half an hour we were above the tree line and walking into a Tolkien-esque fantasy: misty mountains, their rounded green tops draped in undulating fog. It was beautiful.


Gino, Liz and Brian crossing a bridge



We approached an old house of sorts, with a tin roof and wooden slats. Higher and behind it we reached a weather station, old and made of concrete blocks, things spinning on weather vanes and wires running everywhere.

We had also lost the trail.

Brian spotted a man in boots and a huge purple parka attending to some of the instruments. He looked surprised to see us.

“Where is the path to Goverla?” asked Brian, who has the best Ukrainian among us. The rest of us lived in Russian or Surgic speaking towns and although we all had a descent understanding of the pure Ukrainian spoken in the west, we were embarrassed by our mangled attempts at speaking it.


Brian and the purple-parked man

The man waved a hand vaguely to the right. “Goverla is over there,” he said. “You’re on the wrong mountain.”

The path that had led us here had been pretty well marked and whenever it branched, obvious red arrows spray-painted on the rocks and put us in the right direction. There was no way we could have gotten lost.

“Well, how do we get there?” asked Brian.

The man waved vaguely again. “Take the path up and then go across the ridge and you’ll get there,” said the man.

“What path?” asked Brian.

The man regarded Brian for a second. “Don’t go,” he said. “You’ll get lost and one of you will fall off a cliff and we’ll have to call an ambulance.”

Brian said nothing.

“And who seriously climbs a mountain in a tee-shirt?” he asked.

Brian turned and walked towards us.

We found the path he referred to, a thin dirt trail used so rarely that the short, shrubby bushes that grew at this altitude had spread their branches nearly completely across it. The rain of the past few days and the morning dew meant the path was muddy and the water on the branches transferred to our pants. The going was steep, all of us falling and sliding at some point, using the branches to pull ourselves up and keep our balance.


Up the path


Forty minutes of this later, finally hitting a plateau, we were soaked and caked in mud. The misty fog that looked so pretty from below now enveloped us, a wet, cold cloud. The mountains and trees no longer blocking the wind, it roared around us and the temperature dropped below freezing.

Brian had his arms inside his tee-shirt. The water in Liz’s hair froze into delicate icicles. I couldn’t feel my hands. But the going was now easier and the path snaked off in the right direction, so we followed it.

We couldn’t see where we were going: the fog was too thick, visibility only a few feet. We often lost sight of each other as we spread out along the path and called to each other to stay in contact. We would periodically regroup, but then our different gaits would spread us out again.

We had no idea where we were. We were on top of a mountain, that was for sure, but we could see nothing around us, could barely see each other, could only see the dirt path under our feet. Although the wind blew constantly, sometimes a gale of it would hit us at once, causing us to brace and see, as the gust blew some of the fog clear, that on our left the ridge of the mountain went up no more than thirty feet before ending at a bush-filled peak and that below us the land dropped away into a steep valley. I now knew what the man said about falling off a cliff.



We kept walking, not knowing where we were going, picking forks in path by intuition more than anything. Then the path all but disappeared. We were following a line of slightly trampled grass, moving in a straight line when even that vanished, hoping to find something more substantial.

The water had been drunk. I had long ago eaten the eggs.

Were we lost? It’s a relative question. Besides, Brian had a promise to keep.

We kept walking.

We could have been half an hour from Goverla, ten minutes away, maybe we were on it. Maybe we were on the wrong path completely. I knew a path wended its way on these mountain tops for more than 40 km, all the way to an old observatory built by the Poles. Maybe we were on that path. Who knew?

If it had been a clear day it would have been easy. That high up we could have spotted the cross I knew to be on top of Goverla, or at least sighted which crest was the highest. We could see absolutely nothing and were shivering and stumbling around on top of a wind-blown ridgeline.

We knew how to get back: turn around. We just didn’t know where we were going. Had Brian broken his promise? It’s academic.

Since I had rounded up the crew for this hike, it fell to me to call it, like a patient dead on the table. There is a point where it becomes to stupid too keep doing what you are doing. And lost on top of a unknown mountain in the Carpathians, shrouded in fog, freezing in tee-shirts, without food and water and no idea how to get where we were going had definitely crossed the stupidity threshold.

We found our way back, retracing our steps along the ridgeline. We were about to start heading downhill again when I found another path leading higher. The three stayed while I explored it and found a path that had seen some use: packed dirt and bits of trash. I came back down and found that the others had spotted a wooden sign in the fog, up near the path I had taken.

Finally! A sign.

Up we went, along that path and found that sign, which had so many boards nailed to its wooden post that it looked like those that point the ways to different, distant cities.

There was no writing whatsoever on it. It was a blank marker up in the mountains, marking absolutely nothing.


The sign with nothing on it

We huddled like penguins, facing each other in a circle while we tried to send text messages, slowly typing out in frozen fingers. I texted my friend Heron, who had done the trail before: “did you see a sign with many boards and no writing?”

Her response: “no, are you above the trees yet?”

We’d been above the trees for more than an hour, but it was obvious we weren’t where we needed to be.

And if anyone is wondering, a penguin huddle really does work. Sharing our body heat like that, we stopped shivering for a few minutes.

Curiously, no one was unhappy. Slipping and sliding around on the mud and being lost had a “so ridiculous it’s funny” quality, and we had never stopped cracking jokes to each other. “This is better,” we said. “Climbing Goverla is easy, at least we had an experience to show for it.”

We headed back down.

I wondered at that going down. Although certainly difficult, Everest is such a popular destination that an infrastructure of fixed ropes and ladders is in place, an entire economy of porters and portable oxygen at its base. At this point, it’s probably harder to climb any of the peaks around Everest, a thousand feet or more shorter but carving the way by yourself.



I now forget the name of the mountain we climbed. I found out the name later, but only remember that it starts with a “B”. I suppose that’s beside the point. The point was we got to the top of a mountain and while 300 feet shorter than Goverla, it was a hell of a lot harder, which made it a hell of a lot cooler.

The lower we went, the less miserable it became. Once out of the clouds we finally had visibility, the temperature got warmer, trees blocked the wind. Brian’s arms sprouted out of his tee-shirt. An hour later we were at the bottom and still could not figure out how we had gotten “lost” in the first place.

The sign to Goverla still pointed to our path and there had been no diverting paths that we had missed. Brian finally saw it: around a building that was part of the nearly-abandoned hotel at the bottom of the mountain was another path, a big one, with a big sign in both English and Ukrainian and red/white/red blazes spray painted on the trees.

Now that was a path and it was obviously the path to Goverla.


On the right is the tiny orange sign pointing to the Goverla path. Notice that it is point to the right. It should be pointing at me, because I was standing on the real Goverla path when I took this picture

I looked back up at the sign pointing to our path. I reached up and lightly pushed on it. It effortlessly swung and now pointed the right way.