Lhasa! You’ll be missed dearly.

RIP.

PS: I know that Gorida’s blog is all about travelling, mountaineering, photos and adventures, but today it is about a great loss to music, to nomadic ears, to wandering nomads … I’m deeply saddened by her passing. Her music was love at first sight for me.

Finally, Goran’s documentary about Klara Polackova, the first Czech woman to reach the top of Mount Everest, is ready.

“In 2006 I had been climbing another 8000-metre peak in the Himalayas, Cho Oyu - which is 8,200 metres, and I met a great guide there, Tashi Tenzing. He was guiding us up to the peak and we became really good friends. After that climb together we got back to Katmandu and on this beautiful café on top of the roof we were just thinking, what next? Once you have climbed 8,000 metres for the first time and you succeed you think, OK, let’s try a little higher. And then the offer came from Tashi - have you ever thought of giving Everest a go?”

The term Brotherhood of the Rope (I would love to add Sisterhood or even use another term, Fellowship of the Rope) refers to the psychological, social and spiritual connection amongst members of a climbing team, their reliance upond one another for safety, security and success. It is also the philosophy and title of the biography of famed American climber and doctor Charles Houston, whose team’s failed 1953 attempt on K2 in Pakistan. He tackled K2 twice, and became the foremost authority on altitude sickness. In his book K2: The Savage Mountain, he was writing about the Brotherhood of the Rope:

…men banded together in a common effort of will and strength–not against this or that imagined foeman of the instant, but against their only true enemies: inertia, cowardice, greed, ignorance, and all weaknesses of the spirit.

Charles Houston died last year, and this evening I came upon an amazing video of him speaking and sharing his film from K2 in 1953. WW means worth watching.

just read an amazing post on Kraig’s blog, namely the story about a couple in Japan, Michael and Miki Tan who decided to spend 2009 walking 3,000 km on bamboo stilts (takeuma in Japanese), from north to south of Japan to raise funds for the Borneo Orangutan Survival Fund.This travel involved visiting many Japanese schools along the route, and getting the kids to walk together in stilts to raise $50,000 in donations to protect rainforests land in Borneo.  I couldn’t walk for just  2 meters on long bamboo stilts! Michael and Miki are such amazing people who show us that if we just put our head down and start, anything would be possible.

PS: They’re still trying to raise funds for their case, so if you’d like to contribute go to their donations page.