Dear friends, it appears that I have not written for over two months now, and since much has happened in this time and I have not even written personally to most of you, I have a lot to tell.  The tale includes an August month of bike rides, hiking, cooking, painting, and writing; a September month full of my birthday, a vacation in Nepal, then a promotion and new job for Jules, including a move to another part of Pakistan; and finally an October-so-far busy with adjusting to Quetta, our new home.

August was full of activity for both Jules and I as we made the most of what turned out to be the last month of our three-month sojourn in the tree-green home of mountain town Mansehra.  While I did, looking back, manage to keep myself busy, I have to confess it was a much more hectic month for Jules than for me.  Early in the month she told me that her time sheet for the previous two weeks totaled one hundred and forty hours.  That's 140 hours, people!  Now I know for you lawyers out there that's about what you put in for one week, but at least you're not working in a strange land where you have to wear thick, long-tailed shirts even in ninety degree heat and cover your head every time you travel away from your guarded office enclave.

Her job often includes a good bit of travel and August was no exception, as she journeyed the several hours north on the Karakoram Highway (KKH) to conservative Besham to help oversee field activities and school construction there and the several hours south on the KKH to home-of-all-things-liberal (or at least as liberal as you can get in Pakistan) Islamabad for organizational meetings.  Several other day trips took her to outlying mountain towns where her agency works.  These often included 6 a.m. start times since the towns, though not too many miles away, were still several hours drive over narrow, jouncy, cliff-hanging, prone-to-landslides mountain roads.  (And for those of you who know Jules, you'll know that a 9 a.m. start time is really too early, forget about 6!)

Most of her agency's work in Mansehra consists of school construction (rebuilding schools damaged in the earthquake two years ago - that will tell you something about the pace of reconstruction) and putting in water schemes that supply mountain villages with clean water.  I was fortunate to be able to accompany her on a visit to one village, Kundpayan, where she went to check on the progress of a water scheme.  We drove maybe forty-five minutes up the KKH from Mansehra then parked at a small mountain-highway-strip of a town and hiked in for twenty minutes to the village.  It was a beautiful walk, through green rice fields and over a river on a suspension bridge.  The village itself was tucked into a fold of the hills a five minute climb up from the river, a lovely spot with a stream, pine trees, and the scent of mountain air.  In the US rich folks would be buying up this property, building a big house, and enjoying the view, but here the hills house the homes of the poor; thus, our presence.

We sat in the home of a village elder for a few minutes drinking the Mountain Dew he served us, then walked around the village looking at the water-supply construction work.  The scheme consists of a large water tank built high up on the hill, fed by rain and high mountain springs, with feeder pipes running down to several community-use faucets (pic at right).  It was great for me to get an idea of what she works on every day; Jules loved getting out, too, desk-bound as she often is.  I took my video camera along, and will edit and post some footage online at a later date.

Even with Jules working a lot, we did manage to have some fun together.  One day we ventured out to Abbottabad, a larger town thirty minutes south of Mansehra.  We wandered the streets, ate pizza (a Western-food rarity so far north), and took in the scene at a local park full of families playing on swings and slides.  It was a Pakistani holiday, so when it came time to go home we had a hard time finding a taxi.  We finally caught a ride with a taxi-man who actually wasn't on duty - he was returning home after a holiday day in town.  We crowded into the back seat while he and his wife took turns holding their two small children in the front seat.  With the hospitality innate to most Pakistanis, he even bought us an ear of roasted corn from the roadside vender when he pulled over to get a snack for his family!

We also had the opportunity to take a few Urdu lessons together.  While this sounds like work it was actually quite fun.  We both feel bad that we know as little of the language as we do and were quite eager to learn.  As we made our way through the Persian-based script alphabet, it was great to be able to look at the calligraphic writing on roadside signs and see something other than unintelligible squiggles.

On many of the weekends Jules had to spend at least a few hours working, but we usually managed to get plenty of relaxation in.  A typical weekend schedule: a Friday night cooking macaroni and cheese for dinner than imbibing a precious bottle of red wine while watching a postmodern Romeo pursue his forbidden Juliet; a Saturday morning visit to Kundpayan followed by lunch followed by a hike in the Mansehra hills, with a potato and chickpea curry dinner then two and a half hours watching Johnny Depp be his quirky Captain Jack Sparrow self; a Sunday of sleeping in, late brunch, reading, then entertaining work visitors who had come to see how things were in Mansehra.

 That Saturday after-lunch hike was a particularly memorable one, mostly because, after picking our way along a faint trail through head-high corn, we suddenly came out into someone's living room!  Well, it was an open space between two small mud houses; the owner was expanding his "living room" by digging out a larger area with a shovel.  He graciously invited us for tea, which we declined, then he showed us the way - through his house - for us to continue on our uphill journey.  From this hike I also remember steep, pine-dotted hillsides sloping down to a deep gorge with a mountain-stream waterfall and swimming hole tucked in a corner.  A teenage girl filled two metal water containers slung pannier-style over the back of a donkey.

We also got down to Islamabad about every other weekend, either for meetings or just to be somewhere that felt more Western and had good restaurants and good cheese in the grocery stores.  One weekend one of Jules's coworkers played cello and sang for a couple of bands performing at the Canadian Club.  The Canadian Club, like other embassy clubs, is hidden in the gated Diplomatic Enclave and feels like a small piece of the Western world transported to Pakistan and dropped in whole.  It was a proper party, folks, with full-on bar, a buffet, a DJ, and of course the live music.  The club had gone all out and hung lights, strung up a huge tent, and brought in a (semi-)modern sound and lighting crew.  Expats of all stripes and nationalities ate, drank, socialized, and danced to excess in a I-want-to-forget-where-I-am-and-have-a-good-time sort of way.

Another time in Islamabad I had a completely different experience, visiting the landmark Shah Faisal Mosque on consecutive days at sunset and sunrise (pics below).  I had been afraid to go there for so long, unsure that I as a Westerner and non-Muslim would be welcome.  I had no troubles, however, even joining the rest of the Pakistani visitors in breaking the "No Photography" rule.  There, on a large plaza above a fountain and feet-washing stations, I enjoyed sunrise and sunset, watched families stroll and socialize, and from a distance observed the men going into the inner sanctuary to pray (women pray in a designated spot just outside the doors).  This quiet, holy place, where all visitors have to take off their shoes, women have to cover themselves, and no one would ever dream of drinking alcohol or dancing, was a conspicuous counterpoint to the riotous evening at the Canadian Club.  Yet in both places I had the same insider-outsider feelings that I get when I enter an environment that feels comfortable to me yet is in some way alien to who I am.

The last two weeks of August, which seemed increasingly certain to be our last weeks in Mansehra, I gave myself over to bike riding and to painting.  The urge to paint had been growing since mid-summer.  I finally found out where to buy some plywood, hired a taxi to bring a sheet home on its roof-top rack, cut it into smaller pieces then started slathering those rectangles with enamel house paint.  I had also picked up some interesting objects that, using the paint as glue, I stuck onto the plywood and called it art.  (pic right; click here for more pictures or select the "Gallery" link on the website menu then go to the "Art from Mansehra" entry)  The last two weeks of bike riding were the best of the summer.  Having gained some confidence with my early cycling adventures, I did a couple five hour rides over mountains and into adjacent valleys and back, as well as found new tracks to explore close to home.  I wished for more time to explore there, but there's also something fulfilling about going out on an upswing with adventures still to be had, not feeling as if you had sucked a place dry.

 (below: Jules and I leaving Mansehra - that's our cleaning lady in the background)

My birthday came early in September (as it always does, duh :), on the fourth.  I spent it biking five hours up the KKH then coasting back downhill to town, with a stop at a road-side trucker's restaurant for lunch.  The next day we packed up all our Mansehra things, and the next drove down to Islamabad.  We were sad to go - Jules felt like her work there was not really complete, and I had only begun to explore and to paint -  but also happy for the new opportunities ahead of us.  On that last evening I took a walk along the stream that runs just below our house there, skipping rocks and launching an impromptu group art project.  I'm in the middle of writing an essay about that walk; I'll post it when I'm done.

(For a gallery of my best pictures from Mansehra, click here or select the "Gallery" link on the website menu then go to the "Pictures from Mansehra, Pakistan" entry.)

By the beginning of September we knew that a promotion for Jules, in the works for weeks, was finally official.  She would leave her head of programming job in Mansehra to become the head of office in Quetta, a desert town in the western part of Pakistan.  To celebrate, and as a break from work - and from Pakistan - before plunging into this new job in the relatively isolated town of Quetta, we planned a 10 day rest-and-relaxation vacation in Nepal.

So, on the cusp of a new and relatively unknown life, we left our cares behind and flew to Kathmandu.  How do I describe to you the immediate feeling of release when the Thai Airways jet left the runway in Islamabad on its way to our en-route overnight in Bangkok?  We can hold hands in public now if we want; Jules can do away with her dupatta and wear shorts or a tank top if she wishes; soon the attendants will come by offering drinks more potent than Coke.  But it's more than all that, it's the feeling of opening up after constriction, of emerging from the house on the first day of spring after three months of winter, of coming up over a ridge out of a tight valley to see the mountain peaks stretching before you as far as eye can see.  We stayed the night in a canal-side hotel on the edge of Bangkok, then were back in the airport early the next morning for our flight to Nepal.

I'm not sure that I'll write too much about Nepal - it was vacation, after all, and though I tried to keep a journal I barely wrote down what we did each day.  Besides, what's so exciting about a vacation?  You sleep in, sit around, eat good food, read a book, enjoy the scenery, take a few day trips to interesting sights.                                                        (above: A shrine in the Bangkok airport.)

 Well, ok, we do have a couple stories worth telling.

Kathmandu is a mountain-ringed city bisected by narrow, dusty streets.  There was a gas shortage while we were there, causing traffic jams as cars lined up at filling stations along roads barely wide enough to accommodate ordinary two-way traffic.  We constantly marveled at how pedestrians, bicycles, motorcycles, cars, trucks, and large animals all came within scant inches of each other while maneuvering clogged streets.

We spent two weekends in Kathmandu, traveling to another area of the country for three or four days during the week.  On advice from friends we planned to fly to Lukla then trek to Namche Bazaar, a high Himalayan trading town, and back.  Flights to Lukla, however, are unpredictable and often delayed or cancelled by weather, since the airport at Lukla is a high mountain strip with one end carved out of the hills and a drop-off at the other end.  After getting to the airport at 5:30 a.m. and waiting for seven hours (around ten o'clock Jules said, "We've been waiting longer than we slept last night"), our flight was canceled.  Even now I can hear the peculiarly accented voice of the woman who announces flights in the Kathmandu airport telling us again and again of delays to our flight, then a final cancellation.  "Yeti Airlines regrets to announce the delay of flight 111 to Lukla, due to the bad weather at Lukla..." I begin, imitating her accent and cadence, and Jules covers her ears.

When the next morning's flight was also delayed, we quickly changed plans and flew west to the tourist district of Pokhara instead.  This area is the jumping-off point for the famous Annapurna Circuit and other multi-day or -week treks, but since we only had three days we elected to stay in town and do day hikes from there.  We found a quirky little hotel on the banks of the placid Lake Phewa and settled into a loft-style "cottage" room.  The hotel also had a cafe that served excellent breakfasts; the only thing missing from our relaxing lakeside brunches was a view of the big mountains to the north.  Sadly the big peaks did not come out at all, end-of-monsoon clouds covering them the whole time we were in country, only appearing for us when we too poked our heads above the fluffy whites on our Pokhara flights.

One of our day hikes into the hills around Pokhara city provided us with our most memorable Nepal story.  After visiting Devi's Falls and watching the river plunge spectacularly into an underground gorge, we set out for the World Peace Stuppa (pic right).  Visible on the ridge above the lake from our hotel, this dome-shaped Buddhist holy-spot promised to be an easy couple hour's hike up and back.  It was late in the day when we started, however.  Clouds had begun to gather above the mountains, and we missed the trailhead and had to hike up a hillside off-trail until we found the main path.  After that the way up was uneventful, and we enjoyed our hike, finally breaking out of the trees onto a ridge with great views of Pokhara, the lake, and the surrounding area.

Then, after climbing up a flight of steep stairs, just below the pagoda itself, things started to go wrong.  I looked down at my Teva-clad foot and saw a dark spot that I thought was some leaf matter.  When I tried to brush it away, however, it stayed attached to my foot.  Suddenly it dawned on me - a leech!  Ugh, I had a foreign body that was latched onto me and sucking my blood.  Disgusting.  We went quickly to a shop nearby, and I indecorously plunked my foot down on the porch in front of the shopowners.  The women brought some salt and poured it on.  When the salt hit that leech it was like magic - he let go and then shriveled up like, well, like a salted leech.  We said quick "thank you's" and hurried on, mindful that it was getting late and our return hike awaited.

Around the same time I noticed my leech we had also noticed how threatening the clouds looked, and they were coming our way.  At the start of the hike we knew there was a chance it would rain, but we had not yet fully learned how the rains at this time of year come punctually every day around 5:30 and that they come heavily.  We summitted and took a quick walk around the pagoda, clockwise, as is the custom, eyeing the weather.  The journey down suddenly seemed fraught with peril - coming darkness, sure signs of rain, a possibly uncertain trail, and we would have to walk back through the same area from whence my leech had come; certainly there would be more.

Scarcely had we plunged off the ridge into the forest when the rains came in a thunderous downpour that quickly soaked us.  We stumbled through the forest, stopping every five minutes to brush leeches off our feet, discussing our way at each turning, the path becoming a small stream of rain run-off, and the growing twilight giving us plenty of reason to conquer all these obstacles and hurry before complete darkness fell.

Just as I thought we might not find our way out, we broke out of the forest and onto the rice-field plains.  With the last light of evening, still walking through a downpour, we came to the end of the trail, then over a rickety suspension footbridge (thinking the whole time about the murderous waterfall just downstream) and ducked into the shelter of a local cafe.  Requesting more salt, I shriveled a couple more leeches off of my foot.  Back at the hotel, we picked half a dozen out of each of Jules's shoes - luckily none latched onto her.  We were glad to be back in a warm, dry, leech-free place for the night; the next two days I kept checking my feet for black spots that wouldn't brush off.

Our other adventures in Pokhara were more sedate - a walk around town, a good-book and good-food approach to life, a hike up to the hill station of Sarangkot.  The Sarangkot hike had no darkness and no rain, so while more pleasant it makes for a less entertaining story.  After finding our way up for a couple of hours, asking local folks for directions along the way, we came to a steep staircase running for many thousands of steps along a spectacular ridge with views down into the valleys on both sides.  Spurred on by friendly townspeople from their low huts hunched beside the stairs, we climbed and climbed until we finally reached a watchtower at the very top of the hill.  Normally a point with spectacular views of the snow-capped peaks to the north, all we saw in that direction were clouds.  If I ever go back to Pokhara, preferably in a less rainy season, I will do that hike again then stay the night, waking at sunrise to drink in the mountain view denied to me the first time.

(below:  A view of Pohkara; our clouded-in view of the peaks)

One of the chief joys of being in Nepal is simply walking around watching people and their activities, stumbling now and then onto small shrines and other Buddhist and Hindu holy sites.  Our two weekends in Kathmandu were a pleasant combination of such sightseeing and, as I've said before, just good plain relaxing - eating south Asia's best pizza at the Roadhouse Cafe; spending a lazy afternoon atop Helena's Rooftop Restaurant; admiring the Buddhist eyes paintings at the Swoyambhu temple and looking out over the city from this high point; watching the Tibetan-in-exile community on their sunset devotional walks around the stuppa at Bhodnath; hanging out in the Durbar Square admiring the ancient pagodas as they crowd each other for space and shivering in front of the grotesque Shiva-as-destroyer sculpture; starting a conversation with a random expat in a restaurant that ended in our being invited to he and his wife's house for dinner.  We had our times of trouble, of course - moments of indecision, wrangling over prices, haggling for new air tickets after the cancelled Lukla flight, a bad experience at a hotel.  But what I remember the most is the freedom that we found to relax and wander and see what we wished; and also that there was much that was well worth seeing, more than enough left unexplored that we would go back again in a heartbeat.

(above: The Bodnath stuppa.  below: People hanging out in Durbar Square; Helena's Rooftop Restaurant.  For more photos from Nepal click here or select the "Gallery" link from the website menu then go to the "Nepal pictures" entry.)

We flew out from Kathmandu on a Sunday, nine days after we arrived.  One more night of the relative freedom of vacation in Bangkok with dinner at a great vegetarian restaurant we found there last time, and then it was back to Pakistan to a new city and, for Jules, a new office and job.  We landed in Islamabad on a Monday afternoon, unpacked our bags from vacation, packed them again as full as possible for our journey to Quetta, then flew out for that desert city the next afternoon.  We spent a week there under the tutelage of Darren, the outgoing head of office, and his wife Heather, as he taught Jules the ins and outs of the office and Heather taught me the ins and outs of the guest house that we would take over as home.  In the middle of their own last-minute activities and packing, they graciously showed us the town and gave us advice about how to survive in Quetta, a city with something of a reputation, where expats are concerned, for isolation and for security issues.

I was sick a good part of that week, but one of the highlights for me was having dinner at the fancy Serena Quetta Hotel with the US Embassy Consul-General, who was visiting and wanted to meet the fellow Americans in the area.  The dinner was good and making conversation with a consul-general less painful than you might think, but the highlight was that my first ever iftar (the traditional Islamic meal breaking the daily fast during the month of Ramadan) buffet was paid for by the US government.  That meal was on you, faithful American taxpayers!  (I just enjoy saying that.)

After that week of whirlwind introductions to a place and its people, all four of us flew back to Islamabad for a long weekend.  There, we had a send-off dinner and party saying goodbye to Darren and Heather (who now work in Nigeria), went on a good long hike to the highest point in the Margalla Hills with Jules's coworker Alex, shopped for some necessities like cheese and canned kidney beans that won't be found in Quetta, and once again stuffed our bags as full as possible, effectively emptying our Islamabad house and completing our move.  Monday morning, October 1 we flew once again to Quetta.  Jules immediately went to work and assumed her new head of office role, and I began to unpack and move our things into the house that was now ours.

(above: Leaving our house in Islamabad.)

After a September month of two moves, three countries, three Pakistan cities, and more air flights than we can count, we were glad to end up in Quetta, set down our things, and start slowly to put them away.

Jules has had a very busy first two weeks.  Not only is she becoming accustomed to a new position with its increased responsibilities, she is also learning the character of a new office in a strange, new city with staff that she, for the most part, had never met until we first came here.  She's had to grow into her role very quickly, which she has done fairly easily, though the work and the learning are challenging.

It's all been complicated by the month of Ramadan, which began while we were in Nepal and ends this weekend.  For the whole month practicing Muslims fast all day, rising before sunrise to eat then not letting any food or drink, not even a sip of water, pass their lips until sunset.  It affects the whole culture of the country - restaurants are closed for lunch and shops and businesses typically open early and close by 3 o'clock.  Much less work gets done than usual, since hours are abbreviated and the majority of the population, who are fasting, get very tired and maybe a little grouchy by early afternoon.  From a religious point of view it is an excellent month of piety, purity, and reconnecting with God, friends and family; from a business point of view it's a hard time to take over an office and orchestrate the end of a fiscal year on top of that.

While Jules has been meeting her new work challenges I've contented myself settling into the house and the town.  The house is a palatial thing with five bedrooms, a large kitchen, dining room, sitting room, and a great room with a ceiling at least twenty feet high.  The house is surrounded by eight foot walls which enclose a lovely front garden, perfect for sitting in the warmth of the afternoon sun on these increasingly chilly fall days.  There is a very loyal guard named Juma, and also a half-day cleaner and cook.  A driver picks Jules up every morning and brings her home every day for lunch; the food is invariably delicious.  (Today the cook made pumpkin soup and spicy fried vegetables.)

In addition to writing and baking in the house, I've been getting out to explore a bit, too.  Considering the reputation of the area, my exploration, however, has a been a bit more tentative than usual.  Since Quetta is not so far from the Afghan border and has a sometimes restive political life, security issues are a more persistent concern here than anywhere else we have yet lived.  Incidents appear to be specifically targeted, however, mostly against political and tribal figures, and there have been no reports, even in the memories of those who have lived here ten years and more, of violence against Westerners.  Some talk about Quetta as a lawless wild west town where you'd best stay in your house, but Jules and I have found the people friendly and the public atmosphere little different from other places we've been in Pakistan.

We are taking care, however, to not overstep any security boundaries as we learn what is safe to do and what is perhaps unsafe.  So far our ventures about town have been limited to secure bazaar areas and to errands in the main business section of town.  The mountains outside of the city look mighty tempting to my mountain biking pedals and to our hiking feet, but we're restraining ourselves from venturing into their desolate environs.

Security was elevated during the recent presidential elections, but they came off relatively peacefully.  The president is elected here by the sitting parliamentarians and not by national, individual vote.  Roads were closed here near the Balochistan Assembly but there were no reports of unrest.  The saga is not over, however, as the Supreme Court has yet to rule whether Musharraf, who won the election handily, was eligible to run in the first place.  New deliberations on this issue are to begin next week, right around the time that exiled ex-stateswoman Benazir Bhutto is scheduled to return.  There will almost certainly be street incidents in the major cities as people turn out to support or protest one person or the other.  Quetta, however, is too much entangled in its own political infighting to pay much attention to events in Islamabad and Karachi, or at least that's my guess.

Besides, Jules and I will be out of town next week when all this is supposed to go down.  Since it is Eid, the holiday celebrating the end of Ramadan, this weekend, Jules's office will be closed all next week.  Last minute planners that we are, we are still putting the finishing touches on a 7 day trip to the mountainous northern areas of Pakistan.  At this point everything looks like a go, though in this country things can change any moment.  "But," you might say, "you've just been on a vacation to those same Himalayas!"  Yes, we know, but as we looked ahead this seemed our best chance to visit the Hunza valley and other points north, and besides we never saw the big mountains in Nepal.  We're hoping Pakistan's snow-covered peaks will be kinder.

I realize that I have not yet described much of the physicality of Quetta to you, and I wish to do so, for it is a unique landscape such as I have never seen before.  Think the American southwest except even less vegetation, with hills carved out of a brown dirt that supports no greenery at all.  It is hard for me to describe, and therefore I will leave you with a few paragraphs from an email to friends, paragraphs that I think started to get it right about this place.

"It's sunny in Quetta, as I am beginning to suspect most days are.  Yesterday it seemed cloudy because the sun's light was muted part of the day, but when I looked to the heavens all I could see was haze and no evidence of clouds.  So, I think it was just dust in the air mediating that heavenly orb's light as it came down to me where I sat in the garden.  It's a lovely garden with a comfortable table and chair set.  Each morning and evening birds congregate in its trees.  Their individual songs make up a surprisingly loud collective hymn that insinuates itself into the background of dawn and dusk so that you do not realize the notes are there until they stop.  And the birds do stop singing, briefly, in mid-voice, now and then, as if someone flipped a switch to "off" then back on again.

Am adjusting to Quetta.  Felt positively colonial for the first few days, with a woman cooking and serving lunch every day at the house, a train (that most British of legacies) going by on the tracks just next door a couple times a day, devoted and protective day guard whose father's life (rumor has it) was saved by an Anglo.  The patina of the Raj is fading, though, becoming only an opaque lens I found to understand a new place for an introductory period.  Venturing out of the house felt vaguely dangerous the first few times.  I'm sure it will all be fairly normal soon, however, and I will be able to figure out if the outer world here feels different because it really is different or because of the pre-ideas concerning it that I have brought with me and which has become the next lens through which I interpret the place.

Already before landing I was liking this landscape, so dry and barren, the mountains desolate and cracked.  From the airplane it was fascinating to see the dirt floor of the world, scarcely supporting any growth, rivuleted and worn by the runnels of infrequent rains.  Every shade of brown exposed itself to my eye, and a few shades of red at the sides of particularly deep washes.  On landing the world became more complex, of course, and full of the annoyances of ground life that flight happily obscures.  Still, it is a beautiful place, though the dust and the dry air inflict the nasal passages.

Yes, there is beauty in desolation, especially when the sun, sinking into horizon's haze, turns a dull white orb like the full moon, or when a group of women in gaily covered headscarves walk across the brown valley floor against a backdrop of brown mountains obscured by sandstorms and you think you've seen that scene on a postcard somewhere.  I think I will spend all year trying to properly capture the subtleties of earth, sky, dust, and desolation in print (textual and photographic)."

We plan to be in Quetta for a year - come visit us sometime!

(Happy Eid!)