Istanbul to Kathmandu

Setting Off

I pushed down the last of my gear to clear the soft top then zipped up the bag.  The sound of the zipper closing had more finality to it than quitting my job or getting the few visas I knew I needed to get here in the U.S. rather than abroad. And, frankly, the sound terrified me because the adventure that lay ahead of us became so suddenly real. This happens to me every time before a long trip. But this one was different. It had no timetable, no date set to come home. We would take a plane from New York and land in Istanbul. Then the “plan” was to figure it out from there. As of this moment, the only thing we had to stick was the landing. And the Turkish pilot would be in charge of that.

We guessed we’d be gone a year overland to India. I couldn’t imagine we could last much longer than that with $1100 each in American Express Travelers Cheques. That currency isn’t current anymore. No one will accept them even if I had them. I’m stunned AmEx still sells them since you might as well be waving around Confederate dollars. But that’s what we stashed in money belts to our waists. Passports. Yellow health cards. Fake student IDs we’d gotten in Greece the year before.

My girlfriend, Edwina, was slight, just the slip of a girl. She was naturally white blond and pale. If you thought she wasn’t tough, though, you’d misjudged her. Oh, she was sweet and that would be your first takeaway on meeting her.  But she was tough when she needed to be and had quickly agreed to join me on this…what, safari? Quest? Who knows?  It was 1971; we were 23.

We were leaving when Europe could be had by the budget traveler for $10/day. But do the math. It nets out about a quarter of that or $2.50/day. This could only be done east of the Bosphorus.

Just a year earlier, I’d come back from an unguided—my mom would say “misguided”— year in Europe to work in New York City.  No other plans. Clueless. When I landed, I had $7.36 in my pocket, I’m not lying. My hair was halfway down my back. I had only rags on my back and in my bag. I chose New York because my girlfriend was living with two other young women in a swank—for me, anyway—building on East 9^th next to the Village. They agreed to let me stay on the floor for two weeks until I found work. I will never understand why they said yes. The apartment was absurdly crowded without me but, at least, the women could flow around one another without the opposite gender putting up fences. When I arrived, we seemed to all become sardines in a small can. It didn’t help that one of them was gorgeous.