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Recently, I photographed a wedding for a friend here in Windsor. They were married at the lovely Path of Life Garden and had their reception at our Inn. It was the perfect, early spring weather and everything about the day was just right. Intimate, Casual, Happy, Colorful, and Fun!

I have a very casual style and sometimes individually the photos might seem random but and I love putting them together in a book. The images together tell a much clearer story of the day. I also love creating custom patterns for the book. It’s the perfect project for me. Here’s the digital flipbook from the day.

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This was a recent logo job and house style for a community women’s club.  I worked up several options according to some of the ideas they sent but I also worked up this one from an idea I had wanted to work on. It is always fun when the client picks the logo you like the best. They had everything printed up and sent me copies and I think they looked great printed on the creme paper with the dark grey logo.

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After Shigatse, we traveled 475 km to the Nepalese border. Here are our travel accounts after we found internet in Katmandu. These are long and our unedited thoughts–as a warning. The road we talk about is actually called the “Frienship Highway” which is quite ironic considering what’s it’s like. Since we travled most of it after dark and were too nervous to move, we have no way to document it but the video here is of another Himalayan road in Shimla, India gives a very good idea.

My account:

ok. here goes but bare with this internet connection and we’ll see what i can articulate at this moment in time. mike has also written his account….like the gospels, his will no doubt be very lively and mine full of odd details. we woke up at 6:30AM on Tuesday morning to make our way down to the Shigatse bus station where we had stopped by the day before to check on getting a bus to Tingri and onto the border of Nepal. Didn’t seem like it would be a problem. The air was very chilly and even though it was passed 7 when we were walking, it could have been the emptiness of the middle of the night due to the fact that Tibet is on the same time as the rest of china but is thousands of kms away. the night/morning sky was that silver blue as the sun was thinking about rising.

at the bus station the man shook his head when we asked about a ticket and then the bus driver did as well. so mike and jason pulled out the serious chinese and explained that we had been to the police station the day before and he assured us we didn’t need a permit if we weren’t going to Everest Base Camp (that’s right, we WERE that close and didn’t go, but you don’t want to get me started and we got incredible views as it was) and straight to Nepal but they were not having it…wouldn’t say panic, because we weren’t on a tight time frame but more just annoyance and confusion and the lines of communication and the complete ambiguity and uncertain situation that Tibet is in a constant of flux when it comes to foreign independent travelers. It is NOT unsafe but no one really knows what is going on, so it seems but luckily we had chinese speakers in our midst ( rock stars!) and so while Lucy and I waited in our of our favorite internet gaming haunts, they ran around trying to get the police to give us some sort of notary that we could travel by bus. 2.5 hours later, and sure the thought drifted through my mind of mike being dragged out of some heated conversation into a Tibetan holding facility ( very brief thought) and Lucy and I being on the internet in Shigatse the rest of our days but not long after that thought, they were back and told us the office hadn’t even opened and so we (clinging to what the police told us the day before) hired a taxi to take us the 4 hour drive to New Tingri ( the last city before the turn off to Everest Base Camp) which was as far as he said he was allowed to take us according to China’s policy but really we found out it was because his little car would have self destructed on the road we would have to traverse.

That ride was pretty uneventful but the landscape was incredible with more of the stark mountains, red earth, and sand dunes, but blue blue sky. Desolate areas for sure. He stopped the car once and disappeared behind a mound to relief himself and perhaps make some sort of dealings in a shady room in another little town…hey, whatever you have to do right? It seemed that most of the people where these turquoise studs with a bit of coral that hangs from beind the ear…as a side note, I really like them and once when mike needed to go he was directed to the toilet which was just a plot of land across from the school. Most of the drive was along a very new and flash highway that was nearly deserted with the occassional check point that our driver needed to show his ID but I will admit I always held my breath just because the farther we got, the less i wanted to get someone who made us take the very long trip back to Llasa but it was fine and friendly.

When we arrived at our destination, there was pretty much nothing there except a few little shops and the Snowman GuestHouse and the Chengdu Restaurant and a rope across the road with a police man. Totally felt like a deserted dusty wild west town. Because Mike is cool, he just rocked up to the policeman and told him we wanted to go to Zhangmu (the border town to Nepal) and the police smiled and said he would ask around so he left his rope post (letting several cards go by and we tried to convince our driver to take us the rest of the way but thats when he told us with a cute little hand motion that his car would fall apart (little did we know…) and that’s when Mike came out from a convieniet store and and a late 80s white jeep cherokee with a “ski patrol” insignia on the side pulled up beside us and this was going to be our bessie, our vessle to the border. We hadn’t been waiting for more than 10 minutes when we had a ride and were back on the road. We had originally arranged Mr. Driver Man (what we now fondly refer to him as) to take us to a city quite close but the cop at the rope thought he was taking us all the way to the border and handed him money to buy him his favorite soup but Mr. Driver Man told him that we didn’t want to go that far but being in that car, we just wanted to all the way so we paid the money to go all the way which was a lot more because he told us the road was a bit rough, ha! We were off.

Ten minutes later we made it to THE checkpoint. The elusive one that all the foreigners in Tibet seem to be talking about and the first policeman asked us for our permit and I felt a waft of anxiety (that dang permit) but Mr. Driver Man was actually “the” man and 10 minutes later we were back on the road and as we weren’t going to Base Camp, it was just a quick check. Not long after, we were passing the turn off to Base Camp and we all felt fine, despite the fact that pretty much everyone we talked to said we HAD to at least try and get in but we didn’t come to go and in my very humble opinion the experience we had i would NEVER give up to go on an organized tour to Base Camp. Yes, it is true that due to the recent activities with protests and Bush meeting the Dalai Lama that Tibet had been forced into a position of defense and permits were stopped if wanting to see some monestaries, sights, and base camp so there was a buzz of confusion everywhere foreigners hung out and most people felt they had to join a tour and if you wanted to go to the base camp you really did but it was all buzz and we wanted to find out for ourselves (not trying to defy just purely wanting first hand information) so that’s why we went to that monestary on our own and took public buses and tried to get a permit in Shigatse which is when we saw that there was actually no way to go to Base camp without a permit so why join a tour?  On our own we went so there weren’t many foreigners doing it that way and we even went further to get some shop owner to drive us and it wouldn’t have been as easy without some chinese speaking.

anywho…passing the road to Base Camp we soon came to an opening a there she was, Everest peaking out and very magestic and holy hell I never thought I would be THAT close so I felt pretty special even though she was just peaking out in the distance. Why I call Everest she? Only a woman could be that majestic…bu dum dum chi. The town of Tingri, “Home of a wicked view of Everest” was another dusty wild west town with lots of people milling around in colourful headscarves. I mean think if your hometown had that view. And as we passed through town Mr. Driver Superhero Man told us that this is where the road was going to get a bit rough and yeah, it got a bit washboardy and dusty, dusty for sure! I became addicted with looking behind us as the view of everest just got better and clearer…so cool. It was amazing to look to the right and see these arrid golden hills and to the left and see the Himalayas. There would be villages dotted in the distnance but besides the dust of the road our our Ski Patrol Jeep, that was pretty much it until…we hear a clank and we pulled over to the side of the road and stopped.

I waited for Mike to report and the steering arm had completely come off the left front wheel but that is all I will say about that and maybe Mike’s account will say more. But that is very bad so we all got out of the jeep into some beautiful sunsetting golden light on the meandering river with frigid water and watch as our Driver Superhero took off the wheel and totally pulled a McGyver…a quick fix but a fix none the less. We also took this pause to notice how awesome our hair looked being dusted for the past hour and it would remain that way until we got to Nepal yesterday. I got an idea of what Mike will look like with grey hair…not too bad

On the road again and just a few minutes later we were pulling over into a place that said ” The Ritz, guesthouse and restuarant” our our MDSH (Mr. Driver Superhero) was asking if anyone could fix cars. We all got out and waited as some skinny leather-face man rigged up his welding machine and put on his sunglasses and started welding away at the steering arm. Again, maybe Mike will say more about this but as this was happening Lucy and I were falling in love with one of the local Dustball kids ( totally covered in dust so their eyes really stood out white) who just sorted of hung around but wasn’t begging or anything. He was wearing a back pack so I thought he was waiting for a bus but he was just waiting for…anything. He had the most hopeful sort of eyes so I went to the jeep to see if I could find anything and I got my hands on one of these individually wrapped bread rolls we had called, “Europe Bread”  but when I turned around he was right behind me with eager eyes. I gave him the roll and I have never seen such a light pass through someones face and his smile was gold. real gold and my heart broke as he literally skipped away with his little roll. what a cutie! Soon our car was all welding together costing a wopping 1.50US and Europe Bread Boy was back, I gave him another bread and saw that same light but this time tied to take a picture. We waved, he smiled and waved back and the next part of the trip was only going to get more incredible…more on that later….read on for Mike and Jason’s accounts.

Jason’s account:

Hey, we have had a very exciting couple of days coming over the border to Nepal from Tibet.  We left the town of Shigatze early Tuesday and headed west towards the border.  The highway, which was in great shape, was almost abandoned.  Our driver made several stops to meet with some shady characters along the way.  I don’t know how i feel about being a drug mule, but oh well.  We came to a small town that felt like we were in the old west.  Our driver told us that was the end of the road for him because the road would get much worse.

we got out and started looking for someone to take us the rest of the way to the border because we were determined to get out.  Not that we didn’t like tibet, I actually really like it, its just that it was time to go.  Of course we picked the cheapest guy and maybe we should have questioned our choice when his old jeep cherokee could barely start.

The guy driving was a super nice chinese fellow.  We made our way through a checkpoint that was swarming with ugly europeans and passed right by the turn-off for Everest base camp (we were over trying to get a permit) and actually got a pretty cool view of the world’s tallest mountain a little ways farther down the road.  We drove through the town of Dingri and the nice road gave out to dirt.  The terrain we were driving through was beautiful but appeared lifeless.  Little settlements and lots of sheep, goats, and yaks.  Most of the traffic on the road were horse drawn carts carrying traditional tibetans.  The road got a little rough and I heard a bit of a grinding noise; the driver pulled over and got out to inspect the car.  The steering arm that connects to the right front wheel had come loose and was dragging on the ground-and basically made steering impossible.  after a quick fix with bailing wire we were back on our way and the steering problem seemed to be fixed.  The next little settlement we came to he pulled in and told us he would get it fixed.  out of this mud brick building came one of the more unique looking fellows i’ve seen on the trip.  Our driver and the man started scanning the dirt yard for bits of metal with which they started welding the steering arm securely into place.  After the first weld our driver hit it several times with a hammer and told him that he needed to do it better.

I think that if we knew what was coming ahead as far as road conditions go, we never would have gotten back in with such a sketchy weld job, but these guys know what they are doing, right? We continued up and up a mountain pass through an area that reminded me of Death valley, by the time we topped out we were at 16,568 feet and had an absolute beautiful view of snow capped peaks of the Himalayas.  We got out and could tolerate the cold only long enough to take a few pictures, but it was definately one of the most dramatic scenes I’ve ever seen.  When we got there it was dusk and it got dark fast but the near full moon also came up.

The description of the climb down towards the border is that it drops about 2700 meters, we assumed we had done a lot of that in the first hour or so down, but we hadn’t.  We got into a tighter river valley that quickly turned into a steep-walled canyon.  The road was under repair but the way was good and the river not far below the road.  Our driver suddenly stopped and made another inspection.  The engine was in danger of overheating because his new radiator hose cracked and was draining water all over.  We made our best attempt at repair and the three of us (Mike, our driver, and me) climbed down the steep talus slope to the river, filled up all the water bottles we had and climbed back up to the car.  The fix worked good enough to get us the short distance down to a small village who surprisingly enough had a guy that could fix the problem.

We ate dinner (our first meal all day) and waited for him to return.  I checked email and was warned by the internet xiaojie that the road down was very dangerous.  Of course I waved it off and we were back in business.  Of course the road was very dangerous as the trip from the plateau to Nepal occurs in short distance.  The next 33 km to a border town called Zhangmu is on a dirt/mud road that is usually wide enough for just one car but that has large trucks coming up it frequently.  The road clings to the side of the cliff and in the moon light the bottom was out of sight most of the time.  By this time it was midnight and the moon casts errie shadows on the canyon.  Several times we had to stop to let traffic coming the other way pass and several times our vehicle died and we would have to get out and push start him.  The first time was fun but the other times that we had to push him were downright scary.  The thought of plunging over the edge and dieing was with me throughout the trip.

During the ride we passed several big streams that went right over the road.  At times we would regain the river and then suddenly it would plunge away again seemingly thousands of feet below.  After three hours of white knuckle driving we made our way to the border town of Zhangmu, we paid our driver an extra $100 and found a hotel, the time was around 2:30 in the morning.  The closest hotel was what i called the Whoretel and was the creepiest place I’ve ever stayed at.  I didn’t drink any water because I didn’t want to have to use the toilet it was so bad.  We stayed up talking about the events of the day realizing that if we had known what we were getting ourselves into we proabably wouldn’t have gone, or at least we would have gotten a decent vehicle.

We got up the next morning and made our way through the chinese border, walked nine km down similar road to the Nepalese border.  the mountain sides were full of trees and waterfalls, it was an amazing change from the barren plateau of tibet.  As we approached the border the immediate change of culture was shocking.  We were definately out of china and in Nepal.  The women were all wearing Saris and the poverty was very apparent.  The border took a few minutes to get through and we were immediately greeted by a man willing to take us the four hours to Kathmanduin his small toyota.  The drive to Kathmandu stayed in canyons and mountain tops, passing buses full of people both inside and on top.  We saw one truck rolled on its side, a burned out bus, a scene where a car had recently rolled off the road down a hill, and what I’m pretty sure was a dead man off the side of the road.  This place is definately different.  We got to the city and we can’t wait to leave.  We will head out tomorrow to the countryside to try some trekking for 4-5 days and from here I will fly to China to continue my travels by myself.

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As the archived blog post mentioned, we took a bus from Samye to Shigatse, Tibet. Here are some photos of that first night we wandered around after finding a hostel. The sun cast warm light (and just warmth) on the city as we walked around. The second the sun dipped behind the mountains, it was coooold. We were at 12,600 ft (3840 m) in late October, afterall.  Just like in any country or culture, there are “types” of people. In Tibet, we couldn’t contain the people watching. Amazing. All of them, for real. There was one “type” of woman we saw that generally wore a leather jacket or cropped coat, turquoise earrings (of course), a long dress, and a cowboy hat and looked regal = cowboy princess. We were high plateau desert so everything was covered in dust, especially the kids = dust ball kids. After some wandering, Mike found a huddle of people playing checkers and he joined in. Lucy, Jason and I hung around a square area where people were milling around, chatting. We waited in line for some friend potatoes and watched a cowboy princess chat with her friends as some dust ball kids chowed down some chips iven. In fact, while we were in the square I snapped one of my favorite photos, ever in the whole world (as my son would say). These two dust ball kids had been hanging around us as we played by a few statues but as they ran away, the held hands and skipped away. Their happiness was, well, perfect, especially in the setting high desert sun. Covered in dust and absolutely happy.

The next day, we would start the quest for a permit to travel overland to Nepal. We were told in Llasa that we could obtain one there. Oh really….you’ll want to read the next post. Well, that is presumptuous but i think it was pretty thrilling.

Un-earthing my travel photos from our big trip back in 2007 has ignited my memory and I feel like I need to write. However, I don’t have the luxury to really craft, edit and curate my thoughts so I will just bust out what I can as time allows. I also think I might need to go back and cover China as well. Remembering our travels gives me an energy and excitement I have been missing.

P.S. I want to go traveling.

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Five years ago, I was traveling in Tibet with Mike, my sister-in-law, Lucy, and friend Jason. On the 20th, we made our way from Llasa to Samye to visit the first Buddhist monastery built in Tibet. As we traveled those 3 months I tried to update my personal blog when we had internet as a way to check in with family and journal the trip. Here is my (unedited) post about Samye and a few pictures from that day.

P.S. I miss traveling.

original blog post:

The other day we got ourselves up nice and early and headed to the bus station to organize a ride to Samye which is 150 kms southeast of Llasa and is where the first Tibetan monestary is built in the 8th century. Upon arrival to the bus station, we each experienced a bit of what Britney Spears must tackle everyday with the pappis, as we were swarmed with men asking us where we wanted to go and then following us in a heard as we walked towards the station. I am so glad Mike and Jason can speak chinese…it has made what could be tricky so very not. So in Llasa you can get lifts in peoples’ personal cars and they issue you with official bus tickets. odd. It was quite a thrilling ride those 150kms. Pigs, yaks, goats, sheep, and cows in the road and people seem to be hard pressed to stop…they just lay on the horn.The landscape is stark and vast and dry. Very Central Otago for those of you who know that landscape. After a very zippy trip our driver dropped us off at this river where we were meant to catch a ferry across to the monestary. It looked deserted so we weren’t so sure if we had just been abandoned in the middle of nowhere but soon a Tibetan family arrived and we pretty much fell in love with them. We offered them a bread roll, we tried to communicate as best as we could but after the warmed up to us, it was all smiles and head nods. I asked them if I could take their picture and the father took off his jacket and sat like a chief for a portrait and the mother took off her head scarf. They were very eager to see their pictures and seemed pleased. While waiting for the ferry, MIke and Jason found some perfect skipping rocks and soon our Tibetan father joined in with them. It was cool to see them and then lots of other men join in. But then we soon made our way to our ferry which was really like a big row boat with a lawn mower motor stuck in the water. We meandered through sand dunes and islands for 45 minutes until we got to the other side where we were met by a minibus that drove us the last 20 minutes to a wall village and monestery passes sand dunes and tall gray mountains. At Samye, they have accomodation for monks, pilgrims, and travelers to the monestary. That is all there is to see so we made our way over and enjoyed a more relaxed visit to the monestary than the ones in Llasa. They are such ecclectic, almost frenetic, collage-like sacred spaces. Metals, Papers, flowers, candles, tiles, pictures, paintings, sculpture, statues, they have it all right there. Our Tibetan family had obviously made their way to this particular sacred space and we saw them in the main chapel saying their prayers with their daughter hanging around their knees. This particular monestary was really well taken care and after we had been through the whole thing we were on our way out and this little tiny old woman thought we hadn’t been upstairs so she urged us and even walked us towards the stairs and we just didn’t want to break her heart so we went back up but snuck out the back making sure she didn’t see us. The people in Samye were very welcoming and friendly but we have found the customer service in Tibet to be….uh….non existent. We had a nice fried rice and cabbage dinner at the local restaurant and a relaxing evening. It was nice to be out of the city and not in a room right outside a Yak butcher like in Llasa. We woke up early (mike really early with his first travel vomit which was luckily up on the room) but all of us had special experiences in the squats at the hostel. Holy boy, these ones were amazing…shoots in the floor that depended on gravity to move the goods or should I say bads? We got back on the bus that took us back to the boat but we did awake to snow on many of the surrounding mountains so we packed on all our layers for the chilly ride across the river. We boarded the motorized row boat and made our way across pretty quickly and luckily there was a bus right there going towards Llasa but we got dropped off midway and got a bus to Shigatse which we thought was going to be a couple hours but was actually 4! The road was paved most of the way but for the second half it was really bumpy but through beautiful canyons and landscape that was similar to the South west desert of New Mexico just without the cactus and really high snowy peaks in the distance. Oh Boy it was quite the ride through some very desolate places really. Finally we arrived in Shigatse and we found ourselves a dorm room, some food, and some internet. We are going to be hanging out here for the next couple days until we can get the permit to travel the 4 days to the Nepal border which we made quite a significant move towards today. Yes, is is getting colder but still nice and warm in the sun. There are a few monestaries here that we will visit and the monks all wear these boots that look warm and sturdy and are kind of funky so I want to see if I can get some…until the next time a few pix on the site.

Chris

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My back up can’t back up because my hard drive is full…of pictures! Thousands of them. Of course, as I opened folders to cull, I got sucked in. Yet, I never look at them and certainly don’t get them printed and hung. Many of them aren’t great pictures but are memories that I have a hard time deleting. So in an effort to look back, I am going to post a shot from  this day back in the day, from time to time.

This was taken on the ferry from the South Island to the North Island of New Zealand.  I was doing a course in interior/exterior painting at the Chrischurch polytech and Mike was doing his Honours degree in Religious Studies at Canterbury University. I remember Mike got a cup of chips (fries) on the ferry and we went up to check out the sunset on deck. This is what we saw via our point & shoot.

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The last weekend in August I had the opportunity to take pictures at the wedding for a family I have known since I was nine. Since I was Christy. It was in the midst of that quintessentially glorious August weather (not to hot, not too humid) on a hilltop in rural Vermont where dreams are made. It would have been impossible to take a bad picture of these people and this place. Bur, the photos look better as a collection and story so I made them into a wee digital book you can see here.

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These gorgeous gals asked if I could take some senior shots for them. I loved that they wanted shots together too.  Their friendship was kinda intoxicating and that paired with these late summer evenings when there is just a hint of fall in the air have me reminiscing and missing my friends…late summer evenings always have me reminiscing, I do believe.

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