natefurman

The book describes the author's Everest trek in autumn 1985. He travelled there for five weeks together with a Finnish, an Australian and a New Zealander friend. They walked hundreds of kilometres up and down the mountains. They crossed the passes, walked along the mountain ranges, passed through the mountain villages and met friendly people like Sherpas, Gurungs, Magars, and Rais. It was quite a memorable trip, although the author didn't encounter an abominable snowman in the Everest region as was the case in the Langtang Himalaya six months earlier. However, he met the former President of the United States in the middle of the Himalayas. For years, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter had been making plans for a Nepal visit and Everest trek. Like the author of the book, they planned to visit in October, because the autumn season is considered to be the best time for trekking in Nepal; but nature had decided otherwise. Both the author and the President were surprised by the monsoon that...

Excerpt from A Cathedral Courtship and Penelope's Eng Lish Experiences: With Illustrations by Clifford Carleton We are not only in London again, but we are again in Smith's private hotel; one of those deliciously comfort able and ensnaring hostelries in Mayfair which one enters as a solvent human being, and which one leaves as a bankrupt, no matter what may be the number of ciphers on one's letter of credit; since the greater one's apparent supply of wealth, the greater the demand made upon it. I never step long in London without deter mining to give up my art for a private hotel. There must be millions in it, but I fear I lack some of the essential qualifications for success. I never could have the heart, for example, to charge a struggling young genius eight shillings a week for two candles, and then eight shillings the next week for the same two candles, which the struggling young genius, by dint of vigorous economy, had managed to preserve to a decent height. No,...