Getting Informed

In the months before departing for Nepal, which also included prerequisite time waiting for a BIG check, I spent many hours chatting with my great friend Mary Evans about Nepal. She'd lived there for about 10 years, jumping ship (the Heraclitus) in India and falling in love with the subcontinent and ending up in Kathmandu. Mary had developed many kinships with artists, writers, and performers there and therefore had endless amounts of advice and information to share. She really hooked me up w/ great leads and directions.

I also spent many hours online, hanging out on the ASIA: INDIAN SUBCONTINENT branch of the THORN TREE TRAVEL FORUM, which is so helpfully hosted on the LONELY PLANET website. The first-hand accounts and tidbits of advice offered by travelers in this forum were incredibly useful and helped me construct a better mental image and attitude of what was to come on MY trip. Go check out this wonderful link if you have designs on kicking the hometown dust off your shoes and getting out for a trip:
http://thorntree.lonelyplanet.com/.

As soon as I got the word out that I was going to Nepal, EVERYbody seemed to know SOMEbody who'd been there. And so the info-flow increased incrementally, day by day, as emails and phone messages poured in. I am eternally grateful to everyone who shared with me during that intense time of info-collecting. My acquaintance, Zeek, became my closer friend, because he had recently been to Kathmandu. We spent hours together one day, talking endlessly about Nepal; he even gave me his first aid kit leftovers to take with me.

I got some shots (Hep A, DT, IVP) and bought some anti-malaria medicine. I even visited with the folks at the International Travel Clinic at the Tarrant County Health Department. You hardly realize what cool resources are made available by the county, state, and gov, until you're in a position to be curiously seeking them.