[Sca-cooks] Sort of off-topic - Silk Road/Himalayas

[ysabeau]

I thought I'd add some personal anecdotal information for anyone 
interested. 

I had to the opportunity to trek in the Himalayas in the early 
80's. It was an adventure and it was definitely like stepping back 
in time. Once you were out of town, the only way to get anything 
to the villages was by foot. They have pack trains of miniature 
donkeys that carry things or they are carried in huge packs on a 
person's back. 

It really puts things into perspective. I would stop at a rest 
stop and get a bottle of soda (it was called Lemu and was a tart 
lemon flavor). Now, the guy would have about a case of these 
sitting in a tub of cool water hauled from the river about 1/4 
mile away (unless there was a creek or spring closer that I didn't 
know about). These bottles had to be hauled up the mountain either 
on someone's back or on donkeys. When you think of having to have 
everything you can't make or grow yourself hauled up a mountain 
(several days travel) through manual labor it really puts it into 
perspective. We read about it and imagine it...but until you 
really see it, it doesn't quite hit home.

The daily diet of food consisted of water buffalo meat, goat 
cheese, cauliflower and potatoes. This is modern period so I'm not 
sure what they used to eat. Supposedly, these were the crops that 
grew best in the rocky mountainside. It was amazing how changing 
the spice combinations changed the way the combinations tasted. 

One of the images that sticks in my head was in a more remote area 
where I was struggling up a mountain that was covered in almost a 
rainforest type of jungle (the climate varied from almost desert 
to rainforest during the trek). Coming the opposite direction at a 
fast jog was this sherpa with a chair strapped to his back. In the 
chair was this other man strapped into the chair. The man in the 
chair was reading a book while the guy carried him through the 
mountains! I don't know how he could read with all the jostling 
but he had a book open in his lap. 

Namaste,
Ysabeau 

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