ni06-20_DeanAndMorrison.jpg	Kind of a microcosm of Kathmandu—the city that lives in the thirteenth and twenty-first centuries simultaneously.
ni06-32BeggarWoman.jpg
ni06-36LovelyJeans.jpg	Not all counterfeit products are made to always pass for the original. My theory is, the makers of Lovely and Tom Boy (background) Jeans want to establish their own brand-name recognition in the crowded field of from-a-distance-they-look-just-like-Levis apparel. Good thing they’re doing that, since they’re asking 925 rupees (US$18.50) a pair—not cheap for Kathmandu!	y
ni06-32HouseWithBlueWindowFrames.jpg	Domestic prettiness in the lowlands of the Himalayas.	y
ni09-07scowlingGirl.jpg	Poor girl. She didn’t like this one bit, obviously. Is it . . . is it okay that I took her picture? Never mind.	y
ni09-19JewelModel.jpg
ni10-28_2girls.jpg	Aren’t they just the most . . . lookit, they’re best friends! Oh . . . Okay, I’ll stop babbling. Anyway, I don’t feel as guilty now about that other girl glaring at me earlier.	y
ni11-04MountainAndHouse.jpg
ni13-06JohnDenverShot.jpg	Okay, here’s another one of my more famous shots (to my friends, anyway); and, yes, it’s the shot used for the “music” button on the home page. I call it the John Denver shot—my first reaction upon seeing it was: if I ever record an album of John Denver songs, this will be the cover. Trek member Susan Read took the picture at the first major mountain pass of the Manaslu trek, Rupina La (15,600’). My pose was meant as a joke; I can’t really play guitar with gloves on. The joke got funnier (to me, anyway) when I got the slide back and saw that the mist covering the mountains is so perfect, it doesn’t even look real; it looks like a backdrop from some record company’s art department. I spent $4000 to go on a trek in Nepal, just to get a picture of myself in the mountains that looks totally staged. I love it.	y
ni13-38ReflectedMountains.jpg	It’s a gorgeous day on the north slope of the Great Himalaya range, and I’ve achieved that classic mid-century Kodachrome landscape look. If this were 1955, this picture would be in the mail to National Geographic or Field & Stream—or, at least, to my insurance company, to use in their next calendar.
ni15-24BillPhotographsKids.jpg
ni17-34suspiciousfamily.jpg
ni18-07familywithCat.jpg
ni18-21_ApproachLarkyaLa.jpg	Finally, we’re approaching the 17,000 foot summit of Larkya La. It’s daybreak, but I’ve been slogging in the dark for several hours—we’d gotten up at 3:30 AM. We had to cross this summit, descend a few thousand feet of snowy steepness, and pass alongside the confluence of four glaciers before we got to anyplace flat enough to set up camp. A fourteen hour day for the speedier trekkers.
ni18-25LarkyaLaSunSliver.jpg
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ni20-03_NepaliBallot.jpg
ni20-25_PVCPorter.jpg
ni20-37_HotelMTV.jpg
ni20-35_TreeAndRicePaddies.jpg	The Himalaya is incredible not just for how high the mountains get, but how low as well. Canyons cut through the mountainsides almost down to the level of the plains south of the range. In the first couple of weeks of the Manaslu trek, we walked from about 3000 feet to 15,600 . This makes for an astonishing variety of landscapes: a few days in the tropics, a few days in a sort of southern Californian zone, then northern Californian. At about 9000 feet it starts looking like home—Oregon—except with monkeys. From there, we climbed into a kind of Scottish highlands, then into the frigid arctic. Then back down to the tropics. This picture was taken in the last few days of the trek, in the tropical rice paddies of the Buri Gandaki valley.
ni21-20_meAndSherpani.jpg