The Best of Wanderlust (A GeoEx eBook)

GEOGRAPHI C EXPEDI T IONS

The Best of Wanderlust

Ta l e s o f Wond e r & Conn e c t i on

Edited by Don George

THE BEST OF WANDERLUST

Tales of Wonder & Connection

EDITED BY DON GEORGE

GeoEx.com

THE BEST OF WANDERLUST

Copyright © 2022 by Geographic Expeditions and contributors. All rights reserved. Additional credits and copyright notices for individual articles in this collection are given on p. 100. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without written permission from Geographic Expeditions, Inc., GeoEx, and the Inner Asia Travel Group.

This book is dedicated to the extraordinary extended GeoEx family: cherished staffers, contributors, and travelers past, present, and to come.

Published by:

Geographic Expeditions 1016 Lincoln Blvd. San Francisco, CA 94129 USA

Thank you for everything you do to make our planet a better place, keep our wanderlust alive,

and ensure that we can continue to create and share these life-changing tales of wonder and connection.

www.geoex.com

® Geographic Expeditions, GeoEx, and To the Ends of the Earth: registered in the US Trademark Office

CST #2146967-40

Image credits:

Front & Back Cover: Dennis Cox / Alamy; p. 6: John Warburton-Lee / Danita Delimont; p. 12: Jaynes Gallery / Danita Delimont; p. 18: Roger de la Harpe / Danita Delimont; p. 30: Keren Su / Danita Delimont; p. 40: John Warburton-Lee / Danita Delimont; p. 46: Peter Langer / Danita Delimont; p. 52: Design Pics Inc. / Axiom / Danita Delimont; p. 58: AWL Images / Danita Delimont; p. 72: Sivani Babu; p. 82: Frank Samol / Unsplash; p. 92: John Warburton-Lee / Danita Delimont; p. 101: Amanda McKee

CONTENTS

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Introduction: GeoEx at 40: Adventures in the Word & the World | Don George The Meaning of Adventure | Pico Iyer Patagonia: Mirror Image, with Penguins | Tim Cahill Into the Congo | Jessica Silber On a Quest in Kyoto for Traditional Woodblock Prints | Don George An Epiphany in India | Isabel Allende On Dream Mountain | Tahir Shah In Antarctic Light | Sivani Babu West of Eden: Turkey’s Archaeological Treasures | Anthony Sattin Where the World Began: Ngorongoro, Tanzania | Stanley Stewart Permissions & Credits About the Editor The Abominable Trekker | Jeff Greenwald Tibetan Bargain with a Twist | April Orcutt

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Int roduc t ion

GEOEX AT 40: ADVENTURES IN THE WORD & THE WORLD

G eographic Expeditions traces its origin to 15 intrepid trekkers who were the first American group ever allowed into the Tibetan backcountry. The year was 1981, and as they huddled in chilly exhilaration in a tent at 16,500 feet on the Tibetan side of Mount Everest, these trailblazing adventurers cajoled their leader, a spunky woman named Jo Sanders who had magically procured the precious permits from Chinese authorities, to start a company specializing in journeys to recently forbidden regions of Tibet and China. A year later, in 1982, Jo started the company, and named it InnerAsia. She partnered with travel pioneers George Doubleday and Al Read, and in ensuing years, they brought on a stellar group of impassioned travel experts, many of whom still work for the company today. Eight years later, when it announced its shiny new name, Geographic Expeditions had already established itself as one of the planet’s premier travel companies. As it evolved, GeoEx (as it quickly came to be called) pioneered adventure travel to alluring, unexplored places: the Kangshung Face of Everest, far western China, South Georgia Island, the length and breadth of Bhutan, the mountains of

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GeoEx at 40: Adventures in the Word & the World

world. To assemble this collection, I had the wonderful task of rereading the hundreds of stories we have published through the years. What a splendid and sentimental journey that was! With so many transporting stories, it was nearly impossible to narrow the selection, but finally, I chose eight pieces that cover the world of GeoEx, from our Tibetan roots to our Patagonian peaks, and that span the literary spectrum, from meditative essay to misadventure tale. To honor our pioneering heritage, we also commissioned new pieces, so that our “best of Wanderlust ” anthology includes three stories that will be published in the future on our blog. Our collection begins with Pico Iyer’s reflections on the meaning of adventure, a radiant rumination that sets the tone and context for the stories that follow. Tim Cahill celebrates the similarities—and differences—that define his two most- loved places. Jessica Silber leads us on a quest into the Congo, where we learn that sometimes what we seek is prelude to even larger discoveries. I journey on a quest of a different kind in Kyoto, along a winding pathway lit and led by the kindness of strangers. Jeff Greenwald and April Orcutt take us back to our Himalayan origins, with two tales that illustrate how the traveler’s table can be unexpectedly turned. Isabel Allende recounts an unforgettably unsettling, and ultimately inspiring, encounter in India, and Tahir Shah relates an equally unforgettable, world-widening odyssey in Morocco. Finally, in our three not-yet-published pieces, Sivani Babu illuminates the unanticipated, life-enhancing angles of Antarctica, Anthony Sattin evokes the time-spanning, and little-touted, archaeological treasures of western Turkey, and Stanley Stewart transports us back to the beginnings of the human journey in Tanzania.

northern Myanmar, Kilimanjaro’s Western Breach, snow leopard haunts in Ladakh, new corners of Patagonia, and much more. (There’s a full list of our historic “firsts” here.) The company also pioneered a conscientious approach to travel, ensuring that every trip was crafted and undertaken with respect, humility, appreciation, and an absolute commitment to be stewards of the planet, preserving and sustaining the peoples and places visited. GeoEx became renowned for building bridges of goodwill, connection, and understanding wherever they went, and their explorations often led to enduring and transforming relationships. Along with these trailblazing efforts, the company also pioneered a new way of presenting itself, producing an annual catalog that combined artful, eye-catching photography with literary writing of the highest quality. These lovingly curated catalogs became cherished keepsakes, displayed on coffee tables alongside glossy art books and favored magazines. The same literary elan that distinguishes the catalog has infused GeoEx’s blog, Wanderlust: Literary Journeys for the Discerning Traveler , since its creation in 2007. In its 15 years, Wanderlust has published many of the finest writers of our age, from Jan Morris and Simon Winchester to Francine Prose and Richard Ford, and it has won numerous awards in the Society of American Travel Writers annual travel journalism competition, the only adventure travel company blog to be so honored. ~~ With all this in mind, we thought that this year, as GeoEx turns 40, a grand and fitting gift to commemorate this milestone would be another pioneering effort: an eBook showcasing some of the finest stories and essays we have published on the Wanderlust blog, pieces that celebrate, as GeoEx has always celebrated, the wonders of the word and the

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GeoEx at 40: Adventures in the Word & the World

I also want to thank all the great writers and photographers who have contributed to Wanderlust in the past 15 years; you have expanded and enriched my life, and the lives of our readers, immeasurably. And finally, I want to thank all the great travelers who have entrusted GeoEx to take them on life-changing adventures around the world through our first 40 years. As we celebrate those decades and those adventures with these world-wandering tales, we exult also in all the trailblazing, life-changing, planet-enhancing journeys that we know are still to come. We’ve only just begun! Thank you for taking this anthology into your heart and home. We hope you’ll savor this world-and-word commemoration, and join us for 40 more years of wanderlust celebration!

What all these stories share is a fundamental sense of wonder, and wonder is at the heart of everything that GeoEx does and stands for: wonder at the riches we find, the bonds we bind, and the unexpected treasures and teachings the world bestows. We offer this anthology to you, our cherished travelers, in the hope that these stories will imbue you with that sense of wonder too, that they’ll lead you to remember heart-plucking journeys you’ve already had, and seed ideas for invigorating immersions soon to be planned. I first got to know GeoEx in 1990, when, as the Travel Editor at the San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle , I joined their journey along the Karakoram Highway in Pakistan to the fabled Hunza Valley. On that truly life-changing trip, which widened my mind and my heart immensely, I experienced firsthand the potential and power of the journeys GeoEx creates. Almost two decades later, in 2007, I began working with GeoEx and launched the Wanderlust blog (which was called Recce at that time). Now, as I look back over the past fifteen years, I feel grateful beyond expression for all the kindness, creative freedom, enthusiastic engagement, and heart-and-soul support I have received from all my GeoEx colleagues. In particular, I want to thank former Chairman George Doubleday and former President Jim Sano, who championed this literary blog from its inception, and current CEO Brady Binstadt, whose passion and vision inspire me and all of us every day. I wish I had the space here to list all my wonderful colleagues at GeoEx, but I especially want to acknowledge the marvelous marketing teams, past and present, with whom I have been privileged to enjoy deeply dream-fulfilling and life-enhancing camaraderies and collaborations. ~~

Yours in abiding wanderlust,

Don George Editor in Chief, Wanderlust San Francisco, September 2022

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Pi co Iyer

THE MEANING OF ADVENTURE

B ells were ringing on every side of me, and I could hear hymns rising in the dusk through a grating above the catholicon far below. The call to prayer struck up from a minaret nearby, and when I descended a narrow staircase, to where the crowds had gathered, it was to hear an ancient wailing and music that seemed to come from some previous world. Robed deacons were chanting above the richly colored holy books in the little Ethiopian Chapel, and when I made my way into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre itself, it was to find myself in a little side-chapel, where a candle flickered, and as she walked with a friend through the ill-lit space, a girl from France, probably 14 years old, brushed away her tears and then fell to sobbing again. I’ve never been one of those intrepid souls who bungee jumps from a high rock canyon in Utah, alas, or tries whitewater rafting in Borneo; truth to tell, I’m probably too timorous or ill-conditioned for either. But look at those first two syllables in the very word “adventure”: They speak of a sense that something wonderful is on the way, which is what I felt every moment in Jerusalem. For believers, “Advent” means the arrival of illumination or grace or redemption itself; but

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and unexpectedness to the sheer sense of style and joie de vivre everywhere apparent. I’ve loved spending a week just wandering around Venice recently, following nothing but whim; but when I’ve gone to what used to be known as the “Venice of the East,” Bangkok, I find something much less readily apprehensible to me, with shadows and grace notes and a sense of mystery around the clock that I never encountered when I was growing up in Europe. Adventure, in other words, comes in going somewhere as different as possible from the world I know; and whether I go first-class or third-, whether I travel by foot or by Singapore Airlines, is all but immaterial. Growing up in England and then California (and living now in Japan), I’ve been one of the few on our planet who’s never known homelessness or hunger or war; I’ve had all the comfort and ease I could want. So going to another place of ease and comfort would often be no vacation at all. When I travel away from home, I want to see how the other half (which is to say, 99.7 percent of our neighbors on the planet) lives and to look a little beyond my too comfortable ideas and easy assumptions. Adventure comes guaranteed and free of charge in Cuba or Haiti or my parents’ homeland, India. Some of my friends consider these trips “adventure vacations,” but to me they’re just ways of guaranteeing I’ll be startled, illuminated, expanded, and come home a slightly different person from the one who left. I love Santorini, but I got much more from the difficult time I spent in Yemen, on my way to the beautiful Greek island. The world for me might be an “Advent card,” of the kind I knew when growing up—though perhaps it would be better to call it an “Adventure card,” in which, one by one, I open windows to find the surprise and present hidden behind each secret door: Cambodia, Syria, Bolivia, Tibet; Colombia, El Salvador, North Korea, South Africa. Yet unlike in an Advent card, there are many more than 25 windows in an Adventure

even for those without belief, the word seems to be standing on tiptoe, offering a sense of bright expectancy and attention. It all but reminds you that adventure has less to do with the place where you’re going—or with what you’re going to be doing there—than with the spirit that’s propelling you on the journey. Every one of us knows how a trip across town can be an adventure, sometimes more than we would like. I often remember perhaps the best New Year I ever spent, which—because it was in Ethiopia—happened to come six days before Christmas, as it is on the pre-Julian calendar still observed in Abyssinia. An old school friend and I were in the magical little village of Lalibela, and when we arose it was to walk through the labyrinth of rock-cut churches carved underground in the middle of Ethiopia’s high plateau. Devotees in white were everywhere, and priests, with thick beards and staring eyes, rocking back and forth over the palm-sized volumes in their hands. Five days later, on Christmas Eve, all Addis Ababa seemed to be full of people holding candles and singing hymns in graveyards and jam-packed churches as if the Advent were happening at that moment. Around them were unpaved streets and half-finished hotels that seemed to embody a place that, to Western eyes, could not have looked less hopeful or prosperous. And the material need so painfully obvious on every front only compounded and deepened the spiritual fervor all around. Adventure appeared to be telling me here how what we have externally lives in a very complex relation to the much deeper question of how rich we are. I love going to Paris, of course; but when I go to the “Paris of the Middle East,” Beirut, I find just as much sophistication and savoir faire as I’d encounter along the avenue Montaigne, but accompanied by a landscape as radiant as in Saint Tropez, a populace as charming and multilingual as I’ve found anywhere and a political and historical complexity that gives texture

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card; you can keep on opening them forever—even very close to home, if you don’t have the time or resources to travel far— so that the sense of exploration doesn’t end, but deepens with every new opening. The beauty, perhaps the point, of adventure for me is that it is not confined to your vacations, your moment of skydiving, your turning a corner in a city you don’t know. Find the spirit that is its center and it becomes something you bring back into your “regular” life. New Year’s Day, perhaps both Jerusalem and Ethiopia taught me, need not come only on January 1.

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Pico Iyer is the author of sixteen books, translated into twenty-three languages, including Video Night in Kathmandu , The Lady and the Monk , The Art of Stillness , Autumn Light , and, coming at the end of the year, The Half Known Life . He has been delighted to work many times with GeoEx and to appear on its stage at regular intervals.

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PATAGONIA: MIRROR IMAGE, WITH PENGUINS Tim Cahi l l

T he single question a travel writer most often hears is: What is your favorite destination? I think most of us who deal with the question as a matter of course have formulated some easy answer. I generally say something like, “Well, it’s like asking about a favorite meal. It’s hard to specify. Sometimes only a greasy burger will do; sometimes it’s got to be pheasant under glass.” Except when Don George asks you, he keeps poking until he gets an answer. So, yes, Don, my favorite place on earth, aside from where I live, is Patagonia, by which I mean the southern cone of South America, which includes parts of Chile and Argentina. (There are more exact definitions, but when people say Patagonia—unless they’re some fussy geographer—that’s what they mean.) I like Patagonia because it is big and lonely and flat and windswept and barren, except where it is big and mountainous with glaciers glittering against a pale blue sky, or where it is green and grassy with tidewater glaciers dropping through the greenery into the sea. The places I like best are the parts of Patagonia that have contrived to be very much like the place where I live, in

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Montana, on the somewhat dry fire-prone east side of the Rocky Mountains. The southern hemisphere mirror image of my home landscape is located in Argentina on the semi-arid east side of the Andes Mountains. In both places you will find fat cattle in the fields, big dumb trout in the rivers, glaciers on the shoulders of the mountains, people on fast horses, and vistas that stretch on out toward eternity. Folks seem to be cut from the same cloth: They tend to be self-sufficient, taciturn, apt to tell a few tall tales, and ready to grill any amount of meat—which is the only thing they really brag about. It is no surprise that this area of South America is where Butch Cassidy, The Sundance Kid and Etta Place took up ranching when they fled from the United States under some pressure from the law and the telegraph. The countryside could stand in for the American West in any movie. In fact, the town nearest their ranch, Cholila, was home to a number of outlaws from the United States who’d settled there for the same reasons Butch and Sundance did. The gringo outlaws held the upper hand in the town for a time, due entirely to their skill with handguns. Argentines are notorious knife fighters, but the man who brings a knife to a gun fight is a fool. And the good folks of Cholila were no fools. They soon hired a gun-slinging sheriff from Texas to help clean up their town. The family still lives in Cholila. I met one young man who claimed relation to the sheriff. He had blond hair, blue eyes, spoke only Spanish, and said his surname was Parks. Not far from Cholila proper, down a gravel road, is the ranch where Butch and Sundance lived: a couple of log cabins in a state of ramshackle collapse. The famous outlaws, I was told, were good citizens at home. (Some of the old Welsh settlers disagree.) If they robbed anyone or anyplace, they traveled a far piece to do it. About 800 miles south, in Rio Gallegos, they were said to have robbed the bank on February 5th, 1905. I drove from Cholila to Rio Gallegos, which is at the bottom

of South America, situated across the strait from the island of Tierra del Fuego. On my drive, I might have been looking at the flatlands of eastern Montana—except that every now and again, I’d look out my car window and see an ostrich-like creature running over the plains at a goodly place. The Lesser Rhea is a jolting surprise, especially if your mind is somewhere in Montana. Rio Gallegos is a small town, with a small square, and the bank that Butch and Sundance are said to have robbed was still there a few years ago when I visited. I imagined the daring daylight holdup, full-on Western movies-style: bandana- covered faces, six guns and horses, a familiar scene from any number of movies. Except that not far away, there is a large colony of Magellanic penguins. So … a daring daylight robbery with six guns, horses, and penguins underfoot . That’s what I like about Patagonia: It is a bizzaro version of the American West. Sometimes I tell people about the ostrich-like creatures, the penguins, the freakish and eccentric shapes of the ragged looming mountains. I don’t really tell them that I love parts of Patagonia because they look precisely like Montana. I’m a travel writer. I should have more exotic tastes in destinations. But every time I leave for Patagonia, I feel like I’m going home. Tim Cahill is one of America’s most renowned adventurers and travel writers. He is the author of nine books, including such revered titles as Jaguars Ripped My Flesh , Pecked to Death by Ducks , Road Fever , A Wolverine is Eating My Leg , Pass the Butterworms , and Hold the Enlightenment . A founding editor of Outside magazine, he has written hundreds of articles for Outside , National Geographic Adventure , Esquire , T he New York Times Book Review , and other national publications, and has co-written * * * * *

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three Imax screenplays, two of which were nominated for Academy Awards. He lives in Montana.

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INTO THE CONGO Jess i ca Si lber

F orty feet beneath me, one hundred feet above me, and for a hundred-mile radius around me, the forest was bellowing. Standing on the raised camp deck, I was eye-level with the canopy of the Congo Basin. The chirps, howls, hoots, and screams that surrounded me suggested a place rich with life, but the sounds were disembodied. My eyes probed the landscape. I saw clusters of vines seize and shake; I saw leaves release from branches and float downward. But I never saw the twitch of a tail, or the flutter of wings, or the grip of the horny foot that shook them loose. This was frustrating because I was here to see. Gorillas, specifically. Six hours earlier, I had arrived in Odzala-Kokoua National Park with seven other gorilla pilgrims—all Americans who’d endured the paperwork, cost, and 24-plus hours of flying to come to the Republic of the Congo, just to experience a moment in the presence of the world’s last western lowland gorillas. In the gray haze of morning, our aircraft rolled onto a lawn that had been scooped out of the jungle specifically to welcome pilgrims like us. I stepped out of the fuselage and took my first look at the second-largest rain forest on earth. I saw an obscure thicket of vegetation under a heavy sky.

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Three waiting men in khaki stepped forward from a fleet of Land Cruisers. Karl, in his early twenties but with sure-footed confidence, introduced himself as the head guide. We regarded him already with gratitude: Here was the leader who would guide us to the experience of our lifetimes. But there was business to take care of first. Karl confirmed politely with a smile that there were no toilets at the airstrip, only rain forest, and that this would be the reality for miles. Thus prodded, I and two others walked to the edge of the airstrip to take care of business. We folded ourselves, origami- like, to fit into the vegetation. Inside the breathing, heaving forest, we found ourselves completely invisible to each other but observed by hundreds of millions of spoon-billed, heavy leaves that quivered atop slender stems. I felt miles away from the women just a few feet from me. “That is marantaceae !” Karl shouted over the engine as the Land Cruisers muscled into the jungle and spoon-billed leaves slapped against the vehicles. I’d heard the word before in reference to the family of tropical plants that dominated this forest, but the term had been unwieldy and unmeaningful to me. Now, confronted with uncountable billions of marantaceae , I understood the challenge that the researchers in Odzala faced when they first attempted to study the gorillas. Even a family of 400-pound individuals could glide away in this landscape. At camp that night, sipping on fizzy gin and tonics with shreds of lime, we gathered for a briefing on what we were about to experience. Gorillas are dying and their conservation has been mismanaged, Karl explained. They are unlike almost all other species on earth. They have emotions and solve problems; they comprehend some of our language; they are self-aware. Yet as the human population nears seven billion, the western lowland gorilla population plummets toward 100,000. Those dire statistics had brought us here. Some of us had

previously trekked in Rwanda or Uganda to view the mountain gorilla, a species that was—you winced to think of it—even more critically endangered than the gorillas we were about to see. They described those gorillas’ gestures and displays of comfort and affection. They described seeing wonder in the eyes of the babies. They described it as life-changing, mind- bending, activism-inspiring. I was ready for that life-changing moment. I hoped I’d be struck with the same inspirational thunderbolt when a gorilla looked at me. Dr. Magda Bermejo, the project’s leader and chief researcher, joined us after dinner to talk about her work as we reclined on cushions that generously sponged back the moisture of the rain forest. Straightforward and serious, she had dedicated years of research to the preservation of the western lowland gorilla. Over the course of 10 years, she and her team had worked to earn the tolerance of the area’s gorilla families. They had endured the resistance of the marantaceae and a devastating Ebola outbreak. They earned the gorillas’ trust and the community’s support, and laid the foundation of a tourism venture with a set of protocols, accommodations, infrastructure, and a purpose: Bring people here, show them the gorillas, and then send them home to evangelize their plight. Then she said something that surprised me. “In the beginning,” she said, “when guests came, we saved the gorilla tracking for last. Not anymore. You have to go out to see them first, to calm your obsession with gorillas.” She explained that in our lust to encounter these animals, we’d fail to appreciate each part of life that sustains a gorilla: the fruit that they eat, the time of year when the trees drop the fruit, the birds that disperse the seeds of the fruit, the trees that yield twigs for the nests of the birds. “You miss the forest for the gorillas,” she scolded gently. ~~

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My eyes opened to darkness at 4:30 the next morning. Outside, a creature cried and cried, its lungs ramping up until it was all-out screaming. As the sky bruised into dawn, we gorilla pilgrims ate breakfast in silent meditation. Our minds were already with the gorillas, imagining what sharing their space would be like, wondering if the dials on our cameras were poised to the right settings. Before we hit the trail, Karl introduced our trackers, men critical to the success of our expedition. David and Calvin had grown up just miles away. They were among the few people on earth who had mastered the language of broken twigs and decaying fruit, who could isolate the single important notes in the vast jungle orchestra. While we sipped coffee in the dark, they’d tracked the gorillas to their previous night’s nests. With this head start, they would trace the gorilla’s steps—and swings, and swaggers—through the marantaceae to wherever they were now. Backpacks swung onto shoulders, we departed camp. Raindrops hung indecisively from the tips of marantaceae . Insects tuned their instruments. I wasn’t sure how far or long we’d walked when we heard the first, heart-stopping bellow; I would realize later that the Congo obliterated the concepts of time and mileage, scrambling these units of measurement. David brought out a pair of garden-type shears and clipped the foliage for what seemed like years. Finally, in the dim growth, I saw a face—a gorilla, concealed by marantaceae and, by the sound we’d heard, annoyed by our approach. It saw me, too, and moved its head to better perceive me through the forest. He or she stood still, focused and surprised. Then, in a tree, we saw a female gorilla appraise us, touching her finger to her lips as if unsure what to do. She turned and climbed higher, her ropy limbs hooking on vines and trunks, her motions circular and fluid, regarding us over her shoulder

from time to time. Time hung like a weight as we watched a whole family emerge. For the first time since we’d arrived, the forest felt silent. Our camera shutters boomed like slamming doors. All too soon, at a signal from David, we snapped our final pictures and returned to camp. Back in camp, I sat on my deck and replayed scenes of an hour that had been planned for months but that was already in the past. I scrolled through the images on my camera. Elation was replaced by something that resembled disappointment: There was nothing there that National Geographic hadn’t already done better. No image was adequate to communicate what I’d seen. There was no new information here that would persuade the world against extinction. I set my camera aside and tried to discern if I’d found new clarity about the state of the world. I fumbled for something inspiring to say when people asked what I’d learned. Yes, I had pictures of the gorillas. But I was increasingly sure that I hadn’t absorbed their primate wisdom. Hours passed as I sat on the deck. Slowly, the forest seemed to habituate to me. Spiders the size of my thumb flickered up the edge of my pants. Butterflies settled on my discarded hiking boots and froze there in a sort of trance state. I accumulated ants and fallen twigs. When I stood to shake them loose, the butterflies convulsed into life, saturating the air so completely that I had to shut my mouth to avoid breathing them in whole. ~~ “Back to reality now,” one of my fellow pilgrims had sighed as we trudged back to camp, though in fact we still had a week to spend in the rain forest. In the days following our gorilla sighting, we plunged again and again into the vibrating rain forest. On an excursion out of camp one afternoon, Karl pointed out a brilliant jewel-pile of butterflies feasting on a heap of dung. I squatted to zoom my lens in on them. I thought of

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the butterflies that had exploded into the air at my tent and commented on how many there seemed to be here. “That’s a good thing to see,” Karl said. “Butterflies are a sign of a healthy rain forest. A healthy any ecosystem, actually.” How? A butterfly’s biological needs are so precise, their metrics for survival so small, that if you see them recurring year after year, it means the region has a stable enough climate to sustain their annual life cycle. I suddenly marveled at this cluster, a glittering still-life on a steaming pile of poop that was unaware of their role as a spokespecies for the health of the planet. My anxiety began to ripen into awe. As the days passed, I recognized the shapes of plants beyond the dominant marantaceae . Suddenly, no two leaves appeared the same—as though each plant had been confronted with the same question of survival but had come up with a different answer. I came across a species that curls its leaves when touched, and we took turns stroking our fingers down its stem, causing it to shiver and retract. Each time we passed this plant, I paused to tickle it, engaging in a fresh dialogue with the forest that started when the obsession with gorillas ended. One afternoon, as I trailed behind the group, a flicker of movement on the ground beckoned to me. I stepped closer. It was a scene of carnage: an army of ants overtaking a grasshopper. The grasshopper thrashed pitifully. The ants were improbably huge as if each segment of their bodies was magnified 100 times, and they were relentless. I felt a screaming pressure on my calf. My eyes dropped and zoomed to see renegade ants seizing my boots, my socks, the hem of my pants. Sweat formed immediately as ants used their jaws to pick-axe up my legs. A member of our group noticed my panic and shielded me as I tore at my clothes, dislodged the last of the ants and composed myself, but I spent the afternoon slapping intruding hairs away from my face or startling at the

unseemly lunge of a marantaceae leaf. The Congo was a full-body experience, I thought the next day as I stepped carefully over a hissing rope of ants that bisected our trail. It was impossible to appreciate with sight alone. We had come to see gorillas, but for the rest of the trip, we could not rely on our eyes to give us the returns we expected. Rarely did an animal expose itself. Rather, a noise or track would make us twist and contort just in time to see the whip of a disappearing tail or the flash of an iridescent feather. But instead of disappointment, I felt breathless elation as again and again, we experienced meaningful encounters from suggestions of a presence. Karl saw the knuckle-drag of a chimpanzee and his eyes widened as he appealed to us to consider the possibility of our sharing the same space with wild chimps that might never have come into contact with humanity before. As I considered this, I felt a thrill that I had never experienced from staring at something and clicking a shutter. Here was the V-shaped footprint of a Congo clawless otter. A tree that evolved without bark so it wouldn’t be engulfed by strangler figs. A skyscraper of spider webs, built communally, where all spider residents split the spoils that fluttered in. Humans could also eat the web in an emergency situation, we learned, if they were inclined to boil it into a foul-tasting stew. ~~ One morning, we waded across a shimmering bai , a salt marsh rich with minerals, into the jungle. As we neared the edge of the forest, hundreds of green pigeons rose from the trees in a tremendous exhalation. As we stepped into the jungle, smells crawled up my nostrils: rotten and sweet, vegetative and fresh, sticking to my face and clothes. Suddenly, the bush near us spasmed. At the front of our cortege, Karl’s whisper had all the urgency of a scream: “ Bongos! ” We moved clumsily toward the source, hearts pounding, then caught our breaths and squatted to glare through the

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lower stories of vegetation for a sign of the elusive antelope. But it was our ears that had to re-awaken, to step out of their supporting role to the eyes, and provide information. How many footsteps were those? How large was the animal? What direction was it going? What the hell was it? There was the flash of a red rump, less impressive than the thunder of its sound. In the quiet of the bongos’ retreat, a hornbill flew overhead with such gusto that its wings sounded like propellers. Perhaps to distract us from the disappearing bongos, Karl began to explain how hornbills effectively disperse seeds in the rain forest. The birds’ guts go easy on seeds, and their flight range is impressive, spreading the seeds a generous distance from the parent tree. No one had probably ever visited the Congo just to see a hornbill, I thought, a scruffy bird that looked as though someone had welded two beaks onto its face. Yet the Congo existed partially because of the work of these birds. As we emerged from swampy forest into dry savannah, nearly at the end of our walk, the forest emitted a loud wail to my left. I kept walking, assuming this was another yowl of a bird. But Karl gasped. “That is a chimpanzee!” Our heads whipped to the side, and yes, could it be?—there was a black form moving in the branches of the distant trees. Our hands flew to binoculars and cameras. Karl herded us into a semicircle, chattering with unconcealed excitement. “This is unbelievable! I cannot believe this! They have not even moved at the sight of us! This is incredible. Incredible! I have to say this could very well be the first time they have seen humans. Yes, this is very possible, even probable.” Wild chimpanzees, unaccustomed to any human presence— how many creatures left on earth could share that distinction? Chimps were even more skittish than gorillas, and it had taken years for Dr. Bermejo to get the gorillas to tolerate her.

Travelers wouldn’t come to the Congo with a hope of seeing a chimpanzee. A gorilla was a more reliable draw. A deep mechanical rumble jerked my eyes away from the chimps to see the supply plane ascending from the nearby airstrip. When I turned back, the chimps had melted away. No one had managed to take a decent photo; no long lens would ever be long enough. I would have to be content with the memory of that first long wail, the wobbly mental image of their long dark bodies. Still, we were exhilarated. We replayed the scene as we returned to camp in a Land Cruiser, revisited by the same enthusiasm we’d had for the gorillas. Night fluttered down on us, and ahead of the vehicle, two pennant-winged nightjars fireworked into the air, long feathers like a trail of smoke. I thought back to what Dr. Bermejo had said about our obsession with gorillas. Was it because we saw gorillas as extensions of ourselves? Was it because we believed that if every person came face to face with a gorilla and recognized him or herself, we would elevate their status to something that requires our urgent and personal care? But then again, I thought, people came face to face with gorillas all the time in zoos. There was something about the forest that activated their magic. As humans, we don’t see the forest as an extension of ourselves. But it began to dawn on me then that we, like the gorillas, were extensions of it. Being in its midst, I had the impression that if you leaned on a tree for just one cosmic moment, your hand might sprout into the trunk and you would coil up it for energetic miles until you burst into the canopy, gasping for light. That if you let a bare toe linger too long into the mud, your humanity would dissolve and you’d sweep up into the circulation of the rain forest. All of your cells would shoot up into the tree trunks and convert from matter into sugar and drop down to the ground as big fruit that burst open

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with rot, to be dismantled and carried off by ants as morsels and molecules that were once your hair and eyelashes and fingernails. As I approached my final moments in the Congo, it was the entire ecosystem that had kneaded me into awe and delight. ~~ On one of our last nights in camp, we embarked on a night walk. Equipped with headlamps and torches, we stepped into the screeching bush, shining lamps onto millipedes, watching for flashing eyes, listening to bats lunge at the bloated fruit of strangler figs. Karl asked us to turn out all of the lamps, to absorb the sounds of this new environment. The lights blinked out and the hoots and howls seemed to crescendo in my ears. I thought of that first day as I stood on my deck, straining to see, frustrated by the invisible source of the sounds. I thought about the work of the hornbills and the shyness of the chimps and the sense of hope that a group of butterflies can bestow. I thought about Dr. Bermejo’s appeal to see the gorillas, to feel moved by them, but to strain to appreciate everything else, even if it required more effort. In the darkness, I closed my eyes and listened.

* * * * *

Jessica Silber spent many years exploring the world’s most spectacular places and cultures as a trip designer with GeoEx. She now lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she is studying environmental justice and ecology.

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ON A QUEST IN KYOTO FOR TRADITIONAL WOODBLOCK PRINTS Don George

W atching the Olympics over the past few days has mentally transported me back to that country and culture which have been so intimately intertwined with my life for the last four decades. As I have been imagining my return to Japan, one memory has crystallized in my mind: an unexpected journey I undertook 13 autumns ago, shortly after I had joined GeoEx, when I was given a quest by the company’s then head, Jim Sano, a Japanophile himself and a devotee of ukiyo-e woodblock prints. When Jim learned that I was about to leave on a family trip that would include Kyoto, he asked if I could undertake a special mission. “There’s a wonderful little shop in Kyoto that specializes in woodblock prints,” he said. “It’s in the covered shopping area near the river. Everyone knows it. Could you go there and look for some woodblock prints that might make good covers for the catalogue?” This seemed simple enough and I enthusiastically agreed. Little did I know what an adventure would ensue! ~~ After four fulsome days in Tokyo, my wife, daughter, and I took the Shinkansen to Kyoto, where we planned to stay two

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On a Quest in Kyoto for Traditional Woodblock Prints

nights before continuing to her home island of Shikoku. The next day, while they went clothes-shopping, I went woodblock print-hunting. Jim hadn’t remembered the name of the shop, so I had done some searching on the Internet. My cyber-sleuthing turned up one good candidate: a sleek-looking woodblock print shop called Art Shop Ezoshi, which had a handsome website and what looked to be a large inventory of both traditional and modern woodblock prints. The only disconnect was that even though it was located not far from the river in Gion, a very traditional quarter and a suitable location for a woodblock print-selling shop, it was not in a covered shopping area. I took the train from our hotel’s neighborhood to Kyoto station, got out, and looked around. Suddenly the folly of my quest hit me. Here I was in a city of 1.5 million people—many of whom were streaming around me at that very moment— with one day to locate a specific woodblock print shop and find some suitable catalogue covers. I was the Don Quixote of woodblock print-shopping. I found an information desk in the train station, brushed off my somewhat rusty Japanese, and asked the woman there how to get to the covered shopping area near the river. She cocked her head a bit and a worried look shaded her eyes. “Which river?” she said. Ah, I thought. Which river. Here was a possibility that had not presented itself to my innocent brain. From previous visits to Kyoto, I thought I knew the area that Jim was referring to, and I remembered that there was a Starbucks very prominently situated right on the river near the shopping area. “The one near the Starbucks,” I said. She looked at me with increasing worry. “There are many Starbucks,” she said. “Ah, yes,” I said. “Um, I’m looking for a shop that sells

traditional woodblock prints.” I could tell that she wished her coffee break had come ten minutes earlier so that some other colleague could be dealing with this hapless foreigner. “Just a minute, please,” she said, with a slight bow. She skipped into a nearby office where I could see her huddling with a klatsch of colleagues, each of whom took turns glancing with barely disguised astonishment in my direction. By the time she came back, I had decided to postpone the search for the covered shopping area and try Ezoshi first. “I spoke with my colleagues,” she began, “but we are not sure which shopping area you are seeking.” I unfurled print-outs of the Ezoshi website and showed them to her. “That’s OK,” I said. “Thank you for trying. Could you tell me how to get to this shop?” She looked at the print-out, and relief swept like sunshine across her face. “Oh, yes!” she said. “Gion. Shinmonzendori. This is the old antiques area. You exit through those doors”—she pointed behind her—”and look for the bus number 4A. You should get off at the intersection of Shijo and Kawaramachi streets.” Eventually I danced my way through a Busby Berkeley choreography of flowing people and buses to the 4A stop, got on the bus and asked the driver to tell me when we reached the Shijo-Kawaramachi stop. Twenty minutes later, he nodded kindly at me and I disembarked. A few minutes of walking took me to the river and then across it to an area where green willows bowed gently over glittering canals and narrow slick-stoned alleys were framed with weathered wooden shops. I passed enticing closet-sized eateries and an exquisite cobbler’s shop where strips of leather were displayed like museum pieces and an elderly artist in an apron crafted shoes the old-fashioned way. I picked up his card and vowed to come back someday. I paused at a storefront stall to buy a green tea soft ice cream,

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then wandered by shop after shop showcasing ancient tansu chests, ceramics, and lacquerware. Finally I came upon Ezoshi, an elegant two-floor store with a wide selection of traditional and modern woodblock prints. I was especially moved by some of the 20th-century works, which showed a delicacy and grace that I thought had disappeared at least a century before. But even though they did have some copies of the traditional works of 18th- and 19th-century masters like Hokusai and Hiroshige, I didn’t find what I was looking for. I asked the young attendant if she knew of any woodblock print shops located in a covered shopping area by the river. She cocked her head slightly. “I’m not sure, but you could try the area called Teramachi. It’s a covered shopping area just across the river. You could try there.” ~~ So I set out for Teramachi. But I had only walked a few doorways when I spotted a foot-wide stone pathway lined by green plants winding alluringly away from the street. Near the beginning of the path was a small wooden sign with the neatly ink-brushed words “Café Gallery.” I was hungry and intrigued, so I followed the pathway. It wound inward about 15 feet and then turned to the left toward a sliding doorway. As I approached, a woman in a dusky lavender kimono with her gray hair in a neat bun brushed with a quick bow by me. I slipped into an elegant spare space with six stools set at a sleek counter. Three traditional Noh theater masks were displayed behind the counter. There was no other adornment. An elderly woman with a kind, lined face welcomed me with a hearty “ Irasshaimase! ,” presented a one-page handwritten menu with a precise grace, as if it were a tea ceremony bowl, and asked what I would like. I ordered a coffee and a chocolate cake, then complimented her on the beautiful shop and asked how long it had been there. “Fifteen years,” she said. “It was started by the woman who

was leaving just as you walked in. She’s on her way to Tokyo to meet with a director. She’s one of the most famous masters of Noh mask painting in Japan.” She asked what I was doing in Japan and I told here I was on a satogaeri —a going-back-to-the-birthplace visit—with my wife. “Oh, really!” she said. “I have an international marriage in my family, too. My daughter is married to a Frenchman and they live in Normandy. He is 20 years older than her! They restore ancient homes. My daughter loves antiques—I think maybe that’s why she loves her husband,” she said with a wink. “Excuse me a moment,” she said suddenly and shuffled into another room. Minutes later she re-emerged bearing a yellowed issue of the Asia edition of Time magazine. The magazine was opened and she pressed it into my hands. “Look at this,” she said. It was an article about the ancient art of Noh mask making. “That’s the owner of this shop,” she said, pointing to the well-thumbed page. We talked about how Kyoto still nurtures old artistic traditions and how it retains a graciousness and calm that much of the rest of Japan has lost. Then I remembered my quest. “I’m looking for a woodblock print shop in a covered shopping area near the river,” I said. “Do you have any idea—?” “Go to Teramachi,” she said. “It’s just across the bridge. Maybe a 10-minute walk. Good luck!” And she bowed me out the door. ~~ As I approached Teramachi, I saw the Starbucks I had been thinking of, perched incongruously among traditional Japanese restaurants with platforms overlooking the Kamo River, where diners on fine summer nights can sit outside, eat grilled fish, and watch dusk color the sky like a kimono obi. I entered the thronging neighborhood of covered shops and stopped at a coffeehouse. “Do you know a woodblock print shop near here?” I asked. The twentysomething waitresses

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looked at each other and shook their heads. They called over the slightly older twentysomething manager. “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I don’t know of such a shop,” he said, with grave politeness. I asked at an electronics store. I asked at a shoe boutique. Then a little Japanese lantern went on in my head and I realized I should choose the people I asked according to the nature of my question. I found a kimono shop and walked into a hushed world of glorious textures, colors, and forms. The wizened proprietress was sitting at a low desk in the back, sipping green tea from a blue and white porcelain cup. “Excuse me,” I said. “I’m sorry that I’m not shopping for a kimono, but I’m actually looking for a woodblock print shop. Do you know of an ukiyo-e shop in this area?” She paused and looked astutely at me. “Saaaahhhhhhh,” she exhaled in that Japanese way of saying, “That’s a tough one— let me think about this for a bit.” She looked off into space, then back at me again. “I think there is such a shop. Yes, of course, I’m sure it’s still there. I think you mean the shop called Daishodo. They specialize in woodblock prints.” “Ah, that’s wonderful!” I said. “Can you tell me how to get there?” She looked at me appraisingly again. “Let me see.” A hand absently brushed her cloud of white hair. “Ah…” She searched the air. “OK!” she suddenly said. “I’ll take you there.” She abruptly stood up, walked me to the entrance of her shop, turned a neat hand-printed sign on the door to say “Closed” and strode out into the thoroughfare. “This is a good excuse for me to take a little walk,” she said with a laugh. And off we went. She led me twisting and turning through the lively streets— sales being shouted here, jingles spilling out of storefronts there, people shopping everywhere—for almost 20 minutes. As we walked, she told me about the festivals. “Fall is the best time to be here,” she said. “I love the Jidai festival. They parade all

the ancient clothes and cultural items. The history of the city comes to life before your eyes! You must come back. And the color of the momiji maple trees in the hills! So beautiful. Oh, every year I am as excited to see it as if it were the first time.” She told me she had been in business for four decades. “Kyoto’s changed a lot in that time,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s much busier and noisier now. But still there are neighborhoods where the old Kyoto survives. People still care about tradition here, and craft. Some of the finest artists in Japan still have their workshops right around here,” and she swept one arm elegantly over the covered streets as if she were the proud curator of old Kyoto. At the end of the next block, she said, “I think it’s right around here.” And when we reached the end of that block, she said, “It must be the next one.” After a few more such blocks, just when I was beginning to feel like I had led this poor kind woman on a wild woodblock chase, suddenly she pointed excitedly. “There it is! Daishodo!” She pulled my arm urgently across the street. “Is this the place you were looking for?” Beautiful woodblock prints hung artfully in the front window and I could see that the shop was crammed floor to ceiling with delicate colorful exquisite ukiyo-e —just what I was looking for. I thanked her as profusely as I could, bowing as low as I dared. She bowed in return and said with a crinkly smile and a twinkle in her eye, “It was my pleasure! Enjoy your stay in old Kyoto!” I walked into woodblock wonderland: shelf after shelf after shelf of landscapes, geishas, bird studies, city scenes, country scenes—and the travel landscapes I was looking for. Two floors of them! After a heavenly hour of looking, I emerged with five beautiful woodblock prints. And even better, I emerged with a renewed sense of the kindness and grace that imbue the streets and shops and

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