For 30 years I had viewed Narayanhiti—Nepal’s Royal Palace— only through its high silver gates,  or past the fruit bats hanging from the tall trees that shelter the grounds from view. But in early 2009 (shortly after Nepal became a Republic), the long-hidden residence was turned into a museum. Checking my  bag and passing through security I felt like a Chinese commoner, entering the Forbidden City after the Qing Dynasty fell.

It was a thrill to approach the sequestered palace, and climb the marble steps flanked by statues of horses and mythical beasts. But though the building is grand from the outside, the inside is dark and cold—filled with shabby décor that looks as though it hasn’t been changed for 50 years. With its small windows, narrow corridors and stuffed tigers (not to mention crocodile skins and rhinoceros heads), the place has a strange juju. One cannot use the word “comfy” to describe a single room.

There are the usual salons with useless gifts from visiting dignitaries: bronze medallions, filigree peacocks, a crystal paperweight from New York City Mayor Edward Koch. The walls are lined with photographs of visiting heads of state, even the humblest of them more powerful than their host. But the grounds and garden are quiet and pretty: the compound’s saving grace.

Photography is prohibited—but I did sneak a picture in the Gorkha Room, where I found myself enchanted by the Ceremonial Throne. Every King needs one of these, and this one is a beauty. More than half a ton of silver and a 30 tolas of gold (nearly a pound) were used to build the sofa-sized, velvet-cushioned seat of power. A canopy of nine gold nagas shaded the King’s head, and thick gold serpents served as his armrests.

On June 1^st, 2001, the enraged and besotted Crown Prince Dipendra allegedly went insane, and murdered his entire family— King Birendra, Queen Aiswarya, his siblings, and several other relatives—in the billiard room. The venue for the infamous Royal Massacre was actually a separate building, behind the palace itself. That structure has been completely demolished. Only the foundation remains, as if it were a freshly excavated ruin. Small signs indicate the sites where the shootings occurred. They are weird abstractions, and a sobering reminder of how the incoming powers immediately destroyed every shred of evidence that might shed light on the real motives for (and perpetrators of) the killings.

It’s a poignant experience to stand at the threshold of the late King Birendra’s office—a hideaway as modest as the Throne Room is gaudy. There’s a large desk, an imported bookshelf stereo and shelves filled with an odd assortment of books: Freedom in Exile, by the Dalai Lama; 1001 Wonderful Things, by Hutchinson; Hindu Castes and Sects. There is a picture of Tibet’s Mount Kailash on the wall. My friend Chrissie and I joked (in poor taste, I admit) about finding a copy of Shopping for Buddhas on Birendra’s desk.

“Birendra’s last words to his son,” I quipped. “ ‘Are these things Greenwald wrote about you true??’ ”

I left the former palace feeling underwhelmed, and a bit sad. There is little sense of grandeur at Narayanhiti, and few signs of greatness at any level. One gets the impression that the late monarch, though not a sad man or an ignorant one, lacked the slightest shred of imagination. I had the sense, as I did so often during the 1980s and 1990s, that he was gamely filling a seat—hoping to be an adequate king between more majestic ones.

*  *  *

Growing up on Long Island, I had map fever. It was more than a compulsion to cover my walls; it was a need to possess the places those maps represented, to accumulate destinations…  Above my desk hung a map of the United States, stuck full of pins, heavy with the destination voodoo of the post-Kerouac generation. On the Road was practically mythology to me; I charted Sal Paradise’s route through bop America as a scholar of ancient Greek might try to trace Odysseus’s travels.

In 1974, after two years at a local college, I set off for the West Coast at last, attempting to duplicate Kerouac’s journey and follow that “one long red line called Route 6 that led from the tip of Cape Cod clear to Ely, Nevada, and there dipped down to Los Angeles.” Needless to say, my path across the country took its own shape. It included some of the cities Sal Paradise visited, like Chicago and Denver, but for the most part I wound my way through territories unknown, an eager disciple of the Fates that steer young travelers into unexpected—but always strangely appropriate—encounters….

- from “On Maps,” Scratching the Surface

Don’t know why it took me so long, but it wasn’t until this November – after giving a talk at the 100th Anniversary celebration of Hostelling International in Boston – that I finally made the pilgrimage to Lowell, Massachusetts, to visit Jack Kerouac’s grave.

It wasn’t even my idea. The inspiration came from Tony Wheeler, the co-founder of Lonely Planet, who was also speaking at the event. Along with travel writer Rolf Potts (and his Arlington-based friend Steve, who served as our own private Dean Moriarty) we left our hotel near the Boston Common and drove the 45 minutes out to the old milling town where America’s most poetic vagabond was born, schooled, and laid to rest.

There’s nothing much to say about the house Kerouac was born in, at 9 Lupine Road. It’s a brown shingle two story (his family lived in the top flat) with a porch filled with hanging plants and kids’ toys, a black SUV and a couple of bright red trash bins parked in front, the trees nearly empty now, it being Fall, and a melancholy pre-Thanksgiving light pervading the alley like the memory of hot cider on those short afternoons after football practice at Lowell High, itself as angular and sharply-lit as a canvas by Hopper, or de Chirico, near enough to the Mills so that the boys and girls could hear their mothers at work….

These days you can walk from the Boott Cotton Mill and Museum (now, strangely, a National Historic Park) to the Kerouac Memorial: a series of marble pillars arranged as a cross and a mandala, inscribed with passages from the Beat hero’s books and poems:

—When you’ve understood this scripture, throw it away. If you can’t understand this scripture, throw it away. I insist on your freedom.

- The Scripture of the Golden Eternity, #45

Two miles south of Lowell along a road punctuated by Dunkin’ Donuts and freight car diners and gas stations without restrooms is the Edson Cemetery. We parked inside the wrought iron gate and crunched through vivid leaves, a jazzy honeyed medley of cinnamon red, candy corn yellow and burnt umber.

It was a big cemetery. There was no map. Finally – with the help of Steve’s iPhone, God bless ‘em – we found the flat stone. It was covered with a scattering of small offerings: dried flowers, cigarette packs, stones, candles, an American flag, a picture of Buddha, hand-written notes.

We stood there for a while and didn’t know what to say. Kerouac’s marker may be here — but for us his spirit still inhabits the road, anchored more in San Francisco or Denver or Mexico itself, though we know he loved his roots and family and was a popular kid in high school, athletic and smart. What I mean is that Lowell meant more to Kerouac than to us, and although his bones lay beneath our feet I realized that if I can say one thing about Jack Kerouac it is that he is not interred. He is what Melville called a “loose fish,” connected not so much to this place (or any place) but to the Sense of Place itself, having created and cultivated that beautiful abstract sensibility better than anyone: that sweet lonely balance of longing and belonging, abiding in the moment while utterly aware of mortality, sublimely grateful yet inconsolably sad.

Rolf left a dollar bill he’d been carrying for six years, since he got it as change at the Golden Gate Bridge tool booth in 2003. Tony left a $10 trillion note that he’d picked up in Zimbabwe.

I dropped three coins onto the stone. They fell heads, heads, tails. The I Ching value of eight: a broken highway line. “The dark, yielding, receptive power of yin.”

Thank you, Jack Kerouac, I whispered to the bare trees in the leaf-littered November Lowell cemetery. We’re here by your invitation.

Have I not written since Christmas? Forgive me. But now that I’m 55, I truly appreciate the words of Buddhist teacher and author Joseph Goldstein: “At some point, breakfast seems to come every 15 minutes.”

I recently returned from a trip to Tasmania, my second visit to the Australian island state in 16 months. This is a funny thing about being a freelance journalist; one becomes semi-expert on subjects that, a week or a month or a year ago, one knew nothing about. Like the rest of the world (with the exception of a few people on the island itself), my entire idea of what a Tassie Devil looked like was based on the Looney Tunes character, Taz.

In reality, devils are snarling, toothy, adorable creatures about the size of big raccoons, with translucent pink ears and white bands across their chests. They feed mainly on carrion (i.e., road kill) and small mammals. And they are in serious trouble. A deadly and contagious (!) cancer called Devil Facial Tumor Disease is sweeping over the island, and has already wiped out about 2/3 of the devil population since it appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, in 1996. Unless this mysterious disease is stopped, devils could be extinct by 2025.

A few days after I returned home to Oakland, I  took a walk in the Berkeley hills to enjoy the wildflowers. Along the trail I ran into my old friend Arlene Blum. Though Arlene is best known for her role on the 1984 all-women’s expedition to Mt. Annapurna (and as the author of Annapurna: A Woman’s Place), she’s also a PhD in chemistry. The minute I mentioned Tasmania, Arlene informed me about a recent study. Amazingly, autopsies on Tasmanian Devils are showing very high levels of chemical fire retardants called PBDEs: highly toxic chemicals commonly found in computers, carpets, and furniture. How did these chemicals get into the environment of this remote island, which is said to have the cleanest air is the world? And are these PBDEs — which affect the immune system, and “have been linked to reproductive problems and cancers in animals and human” (The Australian, 2/22/2008) — the cause of Devil Facial Tumor Disease? If nothing else, these remarkable and alarming finds show that this planet’s biosphere is linked in ways we can barely perceive, with results we are only beginning to anticipate.

On a more playful note…

Is it wrong to blog about a blog about me? I think not. A few days ago, my Google ego-alert turned up a blog on DeepGlamour.net referencing a quotation from my 1999 book Future Perfect: How Star Trek Conquered Planet Earth. The ping was timely for two reasons. First, because the new Star Trek movie is scheduled to open on May 8th ( can you believe it’s actually called “Star Trek”?). Secondly, because I have come to realize that what most appeals to me about Barack Obama is his Spock-like quality.

Anyway, here is the blog from the erudite Virginia Postrel,entitled “The Glamour of Star Trek.”

Earthrise from Apollo 8

Whenever I see this photograph – taken on Christmas Eve, 1968,  by Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders – I think about the now-classic sci-fi film Men in Black. Planet Earth, suspended in space, reminds me of “Orion’s bell:” the bauble around the neck of an alien’s cat, containing an entire miniature galaxy. There it is: the home planet, shrunk to the size of a Christmas ornament.

As many times as we’ve seen this iconic image, how often do we really get it? Do we understand, viscerally, that everything that has ever happened to humanity – to every living thing ever known – has occurred on that glossy blue-and-white marble?

In the Hindu and Buddhist traditions, much is made of a phenomenon called satori: the moment of illumination, or awakening, that makes the delusional nature of life melt away like a sno-cone in the Sahara. Satori can be evoked by a simple phrase, feeling, or gesture. The emaciated Buddha attained realization when served a bowl of rice milk; the teacher Byron Katie awoke in a halfway house to the sensation of a cockroach creeping across her foot. For others, illumination comes with the contemplation of a koan: a mystifying paradox which short-circuits our rational thought process.

It seems to me that this astonishing photo – disarmingly simple, yet impossible to fully comprehend – might serve as the collective koan for every human being alive on this world. It is a portrait in which we are invisible, yet fully contained;  a point of view that portrays reality in an absolutely unadorned, yet utterly radiant, state. It is a vision available to non-visionaries; a miracle that requires no faith.

It is a view of our dizzying isolation, and proof of our total interdependence. And whether our Earth is just one of a billion populated worlds in this spiral galaxy, or a trinket around the neck of some alien’s cat (or both), it’s pretty frakkin’ gorgeous.

Here’s wishing all of you a wonderful New Year - on a planet that seems just a little more wonderful than it did last year.

*  *  *

p.s. – A marvelous essay about this famous image, by Nature editor Oliver Morton, appeared 12/24/08 in the New York Times.

Nearly half my lifetime ago – in October, 1983 – my friend Bill Geary and I took a taxi to the Kathmandu’s old Tribhuvan Airport and boarded a sturdy Twin Otter for Lukla, the gateway to the world’s highest mountain range. We trekked for nearly four weeks, exploring the three main valleys of what would soon become Nepal’s Sagarmatha National Park. Our adventure climaxed atop Kala Patthar: a “black hill” which, cresting at 18,200’, affords a panoramic view of the Khumbu Glacier, the saw-tooth face of the Lhotse/Nuptse wall, and the commanding anvil of Everest, towering yet another 11,000’ above our struggling lungs.

I didn’t know if I could do it again. I’m in my 50’s now — fit enough for sea level, but cashing in on my genetic inheritance: high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and a hardwired risk of heart failure. This year, in fact, I outlived my father, who passed away in September 1984 – less than a year after my first Everest trek, and mere days after his 54th birthday.

There are no guarantees in the mountains. I would not have been the first “healthy” trekker to collapse in the thin, cold air, struggling up flagstone trails that climb as much as 2,500’ a day, into an atmosphere that holds only 50% of the oxygen at sea level. And if that had happened – had I died on the trek, surrounded by impassive yaks and single-minded lichen – it would have been all right. By the time the Dakini and I began the long, slow climb up Kala Patthar, we had seen visions of such breathtaking beauty that it might seem almost selfish to wish for more.

You know the ending of this story. I didn’t die. We stood atop Kala Patthar just after noon, the sky high angstrom blue, the sun a bleached yellow star of halogen brightness. My ears beat in the wind. Crows hovered alongside our perch, hoping for power bar crumbs. The shifting Earth, with its myriad expressions of DNA, lay all around.

We tied a string of multi-colored prayer-flags at the summit. I dedicated their blessings to the memory of my father, and his good heart.

Indra Jatra is one of the Kathmandu Valley’s most treasured holidays. In shorthand, the 10-day celebration commemorates the capture and ransom of the rowdy god Indra, who was caught stealing a bunch of the Valley’s famous jasmine. The trussed-up god agreed, in return for his freedom, to provide the morning mists of late autumn, essential to the cultivation of winter wheat.

On a recent Friday afternoon, the city’s Newari population was gathering for the climax of the beloved festival. I parked my rented scooter, strolled past the saffron merchants and copper smiths, and took my place with the celebrants flowing into broad Basanthapur. The square soon filled up in anticipation of the evening’s traditional dances and rituals. Hundreds of women, dressed in brilliant saris, covered the temple steps like spilled confetti. Men milled around three worn wooden chariots, lifting their children for a better view. Soon, the ancient vehicles — festooned with flowers and fitted with thrones for Bhairav, Ganesh, and Kumari, the Living Goddess – would be pulled through the streets. Here, the old Newari spirit of Kathmandu was very alive — though the old palace square is now surrounded by cement high-rises.

Every year during the climax of Indra Jatra, dozens are water buffalo are sacrificed in a ritual to honor Kumari, the Living Goddess: a pre-pubescent girl who serves as Kathmandu’s protector deity. This year, though, the recently elected Maoist leadership decreed – at the height of the ceremony — that this year would be different. The secular government, citing extreme financial pressure, claimed they would not allocate government funds to buy sacrificial animals.

The reaction morphed instantly from disbelief to violence. Riots erupted. Police posts and tourist ticket booths were burned, and tires set on fire. The usually jubilant festival turned into a melee. The first wave was led by the kusain, the traditional butcher sub-cast. The yearly festivals of Indra Jatra and Dasain (a bigger and far bloodier event, starting October 4th) are their Thanksgiving and Christmas, providing most of the year’s revenue. By Sunday, though, a large part of the Valley’s indigenous Newari community had joined in.

Eventually, the government capitulated – but it was too little, too late. For the first time in living memory, the festival ended prematurely. There was no blessing from the Kumari to the nation’s new President; no procession of god-bearing chariots through the crowded streets.

What fascinated me most about this debacle was that it ignited a passionate debate about ritual sacrifice. This occurred last Dasain, as well, though on a much smaller scale. During the past week, emboldened or inflamed by government’s decision, Op-Eds and articles have filled the local dailies, addressing both sides of the argument. Is the ancient tradition of sacrifice – during which the heads of goats and buffalos are severed with a mighty stroke of a long-bladed kukri — an essential expression of Nepalese identity, or a primitive and barbaric display of animal cruelty?

The discussions that followed Indra Jatra (and that will no doubt greet Dasain) were diverse, but all paid homage to the obvious: ancient customs die hard. Even those adamantly opposed to animal cruelty were careful to hedge their views – admitting that such festivals are an indelible part of life in what was, at least until last April, “The World’s Only Hindu Kingdom.”

Even after 30 years of visiting Nepal, sacrificial rituals make me queasy. But I have to be fair: the meat is brought home for supper, or distributed, and the feasts that follow are a much-anticipated event. Yes, the animals are decapitated in a fearsome, bloodthirsty ceremony. But “barbarity” is a subjective term, and the Nepali method of slaughter (even on a day-to-day basis) is no worse than what you’ll find in… well, many Western abattoirs. One might even argue that if you are going to kill an animal for consumption, ritual sacrifice – where there is first-person awareness of the act, and a spiritual motive – is preferable to mindless butchery.

Someday, such large-scale animal sacrifices will likely end, and symbolic gestures will take their place (in Sri Lanka, for example, coconuts are smashed at the foot of holy shrines). But the transition will not occur overnight. For now, Nepal may be the only country in the world where Cybercafés and animal sacrifice share the public square, and angry Nepalese text message each other to report that the chariot of the Living Goddess has been stalled by protests.

The Nepalese may be enchanted by iPods, cell phone cameras, and other modern gadgets. But they cling savagely to tradition. Gods and goddesses will long remain central characters in the life of Kathmandu – and they like their meat raw.

Gairidhara is one of those little neighborhoods where you can find just about anything, from skin lightening cream to motorcycle seat reupholstering shops. This suits me well – because whenever I return to Nepal, I prepare myself to take advantage of a quality that has not changed a bit since my Buddha-shopping days: the Nepalese ability to fix anything. In the late 1980’s, I delighted in snapping photos – admiring photos – of umbrella repair stands and disposable lighter refilling stations. For a few years I sheepishly brought my old lighters back to Nepal to be reconditioned, though I never got as far as umbrellas.

Since then, I’ve abandoned all pretense of shame and generally fill a suitcase with items that would have to thrown out, or replaced, in America. Among the personal possessions rehabilitated on this journey: a $65 ThermaRest pad, leaking at the seams (repaired at a bicycle tire mender for 15 rupees, about 20 cents); my Timberland expedition hiking shoes, which, though incredibly comfortable, are separating at the soles (20 rupees), my carry-on computer case, in need of a new leather carrying handle (60 rupees), and my $125 Sennheiser collapsible noise-canceling headphones, with amazing electronics but wires so cheap they’re worn down to a few copper threads. The minimum repair charge for these babies on the Sennheiser site is $55, plus postage. I paid my friendly Gairidhara electrician (who fixes everything from toasters to laser printers) 50 rupees, no bargaining involved.

All of which brings me back to my long-held conviction that millions of dollars could be saved if the United States government got a clue, and started a variation of what the British did with the Gurkhas in the 19th century. The most ingenious and efficient Nepali street repairmen should be found, and recruited – not as soldiers, but as astronauts. Launched into orbit, they could repair absolutely anything — from faulty space station toilets to the Hubble Space Telescope – using needle nose pliers and few paper clips, for a cost of about six bucks a pop.

They say that if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere. I say, if you can drive a motorcycle in Kathmandu, you can drive one anywhere.

Granted, the bikes are small – my 150cc Bajaj Pulsar is about average – but that’s okay, because you can’t really go faster than 40 mph anyway (and that’s when the city streets are clear, at about 3 a.m.). During the day navigation is a surgical skill, accomplished with precision along narrow lanes, many of which were not made for anything wider than a cow. That’s about the width of my scooter; but I’m also sharing the streets with vagrant dogs, taxicabs, the occasional SUV, and a chaotic mix of kids, women in saris, rolling fruit, rickshaws, ice cream carts, balloon sellers, schoolgirls, buses, baskets of onions, and many other (far more aggressive) motorcyclists. All of the above move in what amounts to Brownian motion. The concentration required compares to the most austere Zen practice. There’s no room for error; if I show the slightest bit of indecision, other vehicles roar past me within a hair’s breadth, weaving like drunken bees. If I go down, I won’t be getting up again – one reason why a friend referred to the enterprise as “meditation at gunpoint.”

Twenty-five years ago, in 1983, I arrived in Kathmandu for my first extended stay, and wrote Mr. Raja’s Neighborhood. In October of that same year, I trekked to the Khumbu, the Everest region. A lean, mean 29, I carried a huge pack and spent weeks above 15,000’. This year, I’ll be returning to the Khumbu—this time with adventure travel pioneer Leo Le Bon, who founded Mountain Travel and helped open the area to trekking 40 years ago.

This year is also the 20th anniversary of Shopping for Buddhas – a story based on my search for the “perfect” statue, set here in 1988 against the backdrop of fast-changing Kathmandu. Now, 20 years later, I’m on a mission to write a story about how the past two decades have affected my relationship with Nepal.

I have to say right off: there have been countless changes here, and very few of them have been for the better. “Modern” Kathmandu seems to be the result of fifty years of bad choices, one on the heels of another. Somehow, though, I still love the place, and the crippled sister it has become. As the days pass, I’ll post some vignettes from the Valley. And I’ll try to do some shopping – if I can think of a deity that might be appropriate for this time and place.

So it begins: the 10-hour flight to Tokyo; the 5-hour layover amid the cutting-edge consumerism of the Narita Airport mall, where I escaped the tsunami of irresistible electronic temptations by falling into the pummeling embrace of a coin-operated massage chair; and then the surreal, seemingly endless final leg: 7 hours on to Krung Thep, where the gray cityscape belied the warmth and comfort of Jock and Annie’s eternal abode. Arrived under tumultuous rain, the taxi throwing up sheets of water as it pulled off Rama IV Road and onto Soi 26.

Still amazing, that in a total of 27 hours I was able to transport myself from door to door: from my Oakland, California abode to this Bangkok oasis, the much-loved “Wooden House” that has sheltered so many kindred nomads.

During last year’s visit to Asia, I returned to Kathmandu for the first time in five years – and vowed to make Nepal a regular part of my life once again. I’m keeping my word. After a long weekend with my great friends Jock and Annie – and a road trip to Chaloem Rattanakosin National Park, with its famous cave-dwelling barking toads– I’ll be flying on to Kathmandu. From which point, for some reason, writing this blog seems so much more… essential.

One final note. Just before leaving the Bay Area, a friend took me to see one of the most inspiring and unforgettable films I’ve ever seen. Man on Wire instantly took a place in my all-time Top 20 Films. Beautiful, audacious, maddening and jaw-dropping, this documentary says just about everything there is to say about risking everything for one’s art. Don’t miss it.

And hey… while composing this entry, I came across this cool website, definitely worth a look: “Walking as Art.”

A Dakini – according to the Shambala Dictionary of Buddhism and Zen – is a “wrathful naked female figure,” a benevolent demoness often found in the company of gods. Her job  is to inspire Buddhist practitioners; her nakedness symbolizes “knowledge of truth unveiled.” Dakinis are also known as women who “fare through space,” able to dance across the sky in their muse-like role as collaborators of contemplators. 

 I don’t know about all that. The Dakini I’ve recently connected with is seldom wrathful, only occasionally naked, and certainly not predisposed to hanging out with gods. But she’s a pretty good writer (check out her Flying Hobo Girl blog) and, sure enough, she flies. Someday, I hope, she’ll teach me – but until I’m ready to sign up for paragliding lessons, we have to content ourselves with high-altitude hikes in the Sierra and quasi-weightless dips into mountain hot springs and alpine lakes.

I like her July 22nd entry a lot; I was, after all, the friend who came up with the  Constructivist wilderness  moniker. So in a way, hers is sort of a proxy blog for me, in light of the fact that I’ve lately been too busy — or lazy — to produce one myself. I’m not sure that’s what dakinis are supposed to be provide, but hey… I’m  grateful all the same.