Archive for category Travel
Plane Bonkers
Posted by Anya in Activities, Stuff that's different and weird, Travel on February 5, 2012
Every internal flight in China I have been on, or indeed any flight that originated in China started with an announcement in multiple different languages along the lines of: “We are ready to go but we need everyone to SIT DOWN before we can push back off the stand.” This is repeated with increasing levels of tension and volume until finally people sit down. When in the past I have looked along the aisles, there are people just wandering around, hanging out, generally doing anything except sitting in their seats. It’s SO much worse on arrival though….
You know how, when you are on a plane and it’s time to leave you get up, wait for the people in front of you to gather their belongings before you take yours and make your way to the exit? It’s generally fairly civilised with an unwritten “people in front first” rule that everybody abides to.
It’s not really like that in China. People jump up and often start wandering around pretty much seconds after the plane has landed (sometimes before) and while the plan is still taxiing to the gate. On today’s flight,fellow passengers waited several whole seconds after the announcement that says “please stay seated, with your seatbelt fastened until the aircraft has come to a complete stop…”
When it comes to getting out into the aisle, nobody will stand politely by while you faff with your stuff. You have to physically muscle your way out of your seat and into the surge of people. Under no circumstances will someone wait for you. If you have a bag to retrieve from the overhead locker, you have to be careful as, when you turn sideways, you present a smaller surface area. People will pretty much climb over you unless you are large enough to block the entire aisle, and even then they will probably try. (My trick is to always make sure to put my rucksack on if I have one before turning sideways.)
Then when you are in the aisle with your belongings, it’s still not over. As you take a step towards the front of the plane, the person behind you will bang his/ her bag hard into your Achilles. You turn and give the bag a hard look just to make it clear that it was a bit of you and not, say a chair, that it bashed. Anywhere else in the world the person behind would look a little sheepish and maybe even apologise. Not in China. Every subsequent step you take will be accompanied by another equally unapologetic bash from behind.
The crazy crush to get out of the plane continues, very much not helped by the people who exit then for reasons I fail to fathom, procede to stand RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE DOORWAY.
Then they pile off quickly to then STAND on the miles of travelators that lead to Immigration. All that hurrying and now they are standing on a bit of rubber moving at approximately 0.5 mph. (Obviously they stand on both sides) I don’t get it. I just don’t get it.
Fascinated by the top of the world
Posted by Anya in Activities, Travel on January 29, 2012
Almost constant companions during our trip to Nepal were the Himalayas themselves. In Pokara, I was charmed that from almost anywhere in town you were watched over but not a single peak, but a whole range of impressive mountains. The one that captured my imagination from the start was my first actual sighting of Everest with its distinctive black pyramid shaped peak.
Am I tempted to try to climb it? Well I can’t pretend that I didn’t think about it. Briefly. Some of this was brought about by meeting a Nepali girl who has climbed the mountain several times. She is about 80llbs soaking wet so if she can do it I figured I might have a chance. I certainly like the idea of a challenge on such a huge scale, but while fit but relatively inexperienced people have reached the summit in the past, without significant appropriate experience it seems pretty stupid. If anything goes remotely wrong (and when things go wrong in the mountains it happens quickly and tends to be bad) you really want to know what you are doing up there. So realistically I don’t think I’m about to put in years and years of mountaineering training and hardship…oh yes and it costs an absolute fortune. I don’t have $60k+ burning a hole in my bank account right now.
I’ve decided instead to focus on climbing mountains vicariously. Since my return from Nepal I’ve devoured a series of books on the subject – I’ve actually read Jon Krakauer’s “Into Thin Air” twice – a gripping account of the tragic events of the 1996 season, in addition to Anatoli Boukreev’s account of the same events in “The Climb” plus several of Ed Viesturs excellent narratives of his own climbing career.
What I hadn’t realised prior to reading these books is quite how debilitating extreme altitude is. Of course I appreciated that it is harder to function with less oxygen, but what I hadn’t realised is that breathing supplemental oxygen only somewhat mitigates the problem. Modern climbing plans for Everest and other 8,000m peaks tend to involve a series of sorties to increasingly high camps to maximise acclimatisation. These ascents, sometimes including nights spent at high camps are interspersed with descents to basecamp for people to recover. Over around 25 thousand feet is what is called the “Death Zone”. As the body just deteriorates at that altitude or above, the strategy is generally to spend as little time as possible there. It seems that climbers head for the highest camp, rest there until maybe 11pm, then make their summit push from there overnight. Whether or not the summit has been reached by around 1pm or 2pm the following day, climbers often plan to turnaround and head to more hospitable altitudes asap. Just like diving at depth, the hypoxia experienced at altitude impairs a climbers ability to think clearly so decision making isn’t always great. Some of the problems I’ve been reading about are in part due to people just not turning round when they should, leading to running out of air and things just deteriorating from there. As with so many things, it’s never a single factor that causes problems but you just aren’t able to survive long at that altitude. The hypoxia also affects how you feel – I was a bit disappointed that all the climbers I’ve heard/ read about have reported just a feeling of numbness at the top rather than the elation you’d expect. All that effort for numbness. Still, as Ed Viesturs says, getting to the top is only half way…you need to get back down again too.
In any case. It is bloody tough but a lot easier now than it used to be.
Visiting a small museum in the Nepal, I was able to view a series of exhibits about the first attempts* at the summit and the eventual successful Hillary/ Tenzing effort. What makes their achievement all the more impressive is the gear they used – clumpy leather boots that would have been cold when wet, heavy tents and not a scrap of Gore-Tex in sight.
* My favourite account of summit attempts relates to one mad Englishman who planned to crashland a small plane on the lower slopes of the mountain and climb up from there. The idea is totally bonkers and that’s before you hear that he didn’t actually have either flying or climbing experience. Insane and possibly the earliest recorded incidence of what they call ‘summit fever’.