Without Baggage

Water in the desert

Hank Leukart — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 00:00:00 PST

Water in the desert

A four-day backpacking trip through Death Valley's Marble and Cottonwood Canyons.

DEATH VALLEY NATIONAL PARK — “I have some bad news,” I yell below me to Wendy, who looks utterly drained as she trudges slowly to the top of the jagged ridge that I’m standing on. “We still have 1,500 vertical feet to go.” We’ve already hiked up a total elevation gain of 2,600 feet today, and Wendy looks like I’ve just hit her in the head with a baseball bat. Rich appears on top of the ridge.

“What? What?!” he groans.

“But… I… we’re almost out of water,” Wendy moans. “And the sun is setting.” She’s right. My friends Rich and Wendy and I started our 32-mile, four-day, Death Valley backpacking trip by carrying only a two-day supply of water, expecting to find Cottonwood Springs, a reliable water source, by the end of our second day. But, after winding between the towering stone narrows of Marble Canyon, we noticed a four-mile side trip on our topo map, following a portion of Marble Canyon to the west. We decided to investigate. To our surprise, the extra four miles not only required us to climb over 1,600 feet up a steep scree slope but also provoked us to drink most of our remaining water supply. Now, it’s the end of our second day, and our side trip hasn’t brought us much closer to the water at Cottonwood Springs.

When we start hiking again after catching our breath, we’re relieved that the hike mercifully drops us 300 feet before the next ascent, and it’s in this valley where we decide to spend the night.

“I think we should eat tomorrow’s cold lunch for dinner tonight,” I suggest.

“I was thinking the same thing,” Rich says reluctantly, knowing that we would have to use some of our precious remaining water to cook a real dinner. We eat our lunch-dinner quietly, with everyone in mild-panic mode. We’re all mulling over the fact that, tomorrow morning, we’ll have to (according to our guidebook) hike the alleged “crux” — a steep climb over a mountain pass — with almost no water remaining. When we finish eating, we retreat from the cold desert night into our sleeping bags, exhausted and irrationally thirsty. I feel like I’ve never been this thirsty in my life, though I suspect that I’m feeling a strange psychological reaction to our lack of water. I feel annoyed at my dumb brain, which seems to think that the best reaction to almost running out of water is to get extra thirsty. We all lie in our sleeping bags, silent, staring at the ceilings of our tents.

In the morning of our third day, we eat Clif Bars for breakfast (which don’t require water) and begin our climb, up a narrow ravine, toward the top of a high ridge. To our relief, the gradual ascent is much easier than the steep ravines that we tackled on our side trip during the previous day. When we reach the top of the saddle, we’re looking out over a sprawling, golden valley, flanked by rugged mountains. It feels like we’re about to jump on horses and start roping cattle. We don’t, but it’s an easy, downhill hike, across the expanse, to Cottonwood Springs, where the Park Ranger told us that we’d find water.

The calming walk, through an obstacle course of desert blackbrush and flanking ridges funneling us toward the first spring, helps us relax. We’ve been hiking for almost three hours when we reach Cottonwood Springs, where we’re astonished to find what looks almost like a deciduous forest relocated from the eastern US, plopped in the middle of Death Valley. We’re feeling relieved, but we still don’t see an obvious source of water. We begin infiltrating the Spring’s dense vegetation, stomping through sticky mud and algae-filled puddles, searching urgently for Cottonwood Creek. It takes us almost a half hour to move a quarter-mile into the spring through the thick foliage. Just as a cloud of discouragement begins to smother us, I hear a sound.

“Do you hear that?!” I yell back to Wendy and Rich behind me. “I’m pretty sure I hear running water!” But, when I stop moving for a moment, I’m unsure of whether I’m hearing the sound of water or just wind blowing through the trees’ leaves. I try to take a drink from my Camelbak, but the reservoir is completely empty.

Frustrated, I push through another perimeter of trees, and I find myself standing in a clearing. Suddenly, the sparkle of the sun reflecting off a vibrant creek less than 20 feet away catches my eye. It’s such a strange thing to see in the middle of a desert that I suspect, for a moment, that I’m seeing a mirage.

But, when Wendy and Rich join me, and we approach the water, it’s obvious that it’s real. We cheer. Wendy and I immediately begin filtering the water into our Camelbaks while Rich starts cooking the dinner that we wished we had eaten the night before.

We’re proud of ourselves. We’ve found water in the middle of a desert.

How to Hike Marble and Cottonwood Canyon in Death Valley, California

OVERVIEW: The backpacking trip through Marble and Cottonwood Canyon in Death Valley is a 31.6-mile, four-day hike. It's also possible to skip a difficult four-mile side-trip section, which follows additional Marble Canyon narrows leading west, and easily fit this hike into three days.
DIRECTIONS: From Los Angeles, take I-5 North to CA-14 North to US-395 North. In Olancha, turn right onto CA-190 East and follow it to Stovepipe Wells in the middle of Death Valley. Just west of the Stovepipe Wells General Store is the turnoff (leading north) to Cottonwood Canyon Road toward the Stovepipe Wells Airport. Follow this road, for about 10.8 miles, past the Airport (stay to the right and do not turn left toward the planes/landing strip). After about 5.5 miles, the road will turn sharply to the right. At about 8.6 miles, the road continues 2.2 miles west, up a wash, to the confluence of Marble and Cottonwood Canyon (marked as waypoint "1. Park Car" in the northeastern part of the GPS track's loop). These final two miles require a vehicle with high clearance (though four-wheel drive isn't necessary). If your car can't make it, though, don't worry: just get as close to the confluence as you can, park, and start hiking from there.
LOGISTICS: Because this is a loop hike, only one car is necessary. Cottonwood Springs provides water reliably year-around, but confirm availability with the Park Ranger. We saw other possible springs during our four-mile side trip into Marble Canyon (see GPS waypoint: "4. Possible Spring") and another at the beginning of the pass leading through Dead Horse Canyon, but neither seemed to have accessible water. Thus, hikers should carry at least two days of water from the trailhead, or almost three days of water if the four-mile Marble Canyon side trip is on your itinerary. Talking to a Park Ranger about available other water sources may help reduce this amount.
ROUTE: For most of the hike, the route through the Canyons is easy to follow. About halfway through the first day, in Marble Canyon, an enormous boulder blocks the canyon narrows, but there is an easy path around it (see GPS waypoint: "2. Path Around Boulder"). If you take the four mile side trip (the second half of GPS track: "Day 2"), be prepared for some climbing up a steep scree slope to the left of the main canyon, up a pass and over a ridge, starting at GPS waypoint: "5. Pass/Ravine Out." Keep close watch for this as it's not the obvious Canyon path. After this difficult climb and subsequent drop, you'll take a sharp right turn to the southwest, at a spring (though we didn't see water) with thick underbrush, to begin your hike through Dead Horse Canyon. The ravine climbs steeply southwest, drops to the valley floor, then begins climbing again at waypoint: "8. Start of Pass." Follow this ravine south-southwest until you reach the top of the ridge, looking out across the expanse of a beautiful valley. From there, the path to the first oasis of Cottonwood Springs is obvious. When you get there, if you listen closely, you can follow the sound of water to the Cottonwood Creek's water (GPS waypoint: "9. Cottonwood Springs Water Access"). While the route through the three separate springs comprising Cottonwood Springs can be difficult (the dense vegetation is sometimes impenetrable), watch for pink ribbons tied trees by the National Park to help guide you. (Or, try following our GPS track, which only rarely veers into impassable forest.) After that, it's a very easy downhill, flat hike back to the car. View our route and download the Without Baggage Marble and Cottonwood Canyon GPS track in GPX or KML format.

Copyright © 2000 - 2012 by Hank Leukart, All Rights Reserved. This essay, Water in the desert, originally appeared on Without Baggage. You do not have permission to reproduce this content in any other form or context.

Cruising Nubia to Egypt's grandest temple

Hank Leukart — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 00:00:00 PST

Cruising Nubia to Egypt's grandest temple

A guided, return trip to Egypt highlights the country's growing political problems.

NUBIA, Egypt — “I don’t think you should go wandering around by yourself,” whispers Hanaa, our tour guide, as we ride on a tour bus through Cairo. “Someone might think that you’re an American spy.” I roll my eyes. This, of course, is why I don’t like guided tours. Most guides seem hell-bent on making sure that travel experiences are as insular as possible, which makes for the opposite of an ideal trip.

It’s December of 2011, ten months after former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s resignation as a result of the Arab Spring protests, and I’m back in Egypt. This time, instead of backpacking with my friend Quinn, I’m on a Nile River cruise trip with my mom, brother Brian, and a tour guide named Hanaa. Since Quinn and I spent ten days traveling in Egypt by ourselves in March, only a month after Mubarak’s resignation, Hanaa’s suggestion that it’s too dangerous to visit some of Cairo’s tourist sites now on our own doesn’t seem credible to me.

When we see our bus drive past Al-Azhar Mosque in Islamic Cairo — a mosque that I didn’t get a chance to visit on my last visit — my brother yells to the driver that we want to get off the bus to explore by ourselves. Before Hanaa can object further, we’ve escaped the tour group, and I’m leading us down the street toward Al-Azhar. As we walk by a market, an Egyptian man approaches us, says that his name is Achmed, and asks if we need directions. After he points us toward Al-Azhar, he asks about our trip, and he’s surprised to learn that this is my second visit to Egypt this year.

“Things here have become more complicated,” he says.

“Yes, I’ve been reading the news,” thinking of the ongoing protests against the country’s military rulers and worries that the transitional government will end up leading to one run by former President Mubarak’s cronies. “Who did you vote for in the parliamentary election?” I ask, referring to the recent election meant to create a new parliament to replace the one previously dissolved after Mubarak’s resignation.

“Are you a journalist?” he asks. He’s the first Egyptian who I’ve met who has seemed suspicious of me, and I sense that Egyptian feelings toward Americans have become more negative since my post-revolution visit earlier in the year. But, when I tell him that I’m just a tourist, he relaxes.

“I voted for Freedom and Justice,” he says, referring to the political party affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, a conservative Islamic group with ties to the Egyptian military that some assume will champion an Islamic government in Egypt. The party won the election. Since Achmed is a young man in his late twenties, I’m surprised. I expected him to tell me that he voted for one of the newer liberal parties, like the “Egyptian Bloc” or “The Revolution Continues Alliance,” a political party that I think I might vote for on a US ballot just for its name.

“I’m surprised,” I admit. “Do you agree with their politics?”

“Not really,” he explains, “But there aren’t any other people that I think can be trusted. The revolutionaries are not very famous and don’t have much power. No one knows what will happen if they are elected.”

“That’s interesting,” I say. “Do you still go to protest in Tahrir Square?”

“Sometimes on Fridays,” he replies, a little sheepishly.

When I was in Egypt earlier in the year, the people I met seemed so hopeful and excited for Egypt’s chance to have new, democratically elected leaders who might prioritize citizens’ interests. When I realize that the hope seems to have dissolved, or at least diminished, I feel disappointed.

When I look at Achmed, he looks even more disappointed than me.

The next day, we leave for a boat cruise up the Nile River, setting sail for Aswan from Luxor. During the trip, we’re treated to stops at many sites in the Theban Necropolis and the temples of Dandara, Karnak, Luxor, Al-Deir Al-Bahari, Medinet Habu, Edfu, Kom Ombo, and Philae. This grand tour of ancient Egyptian history enchants all of us, as we marvel at Karnak’s grandeur, the Medient Habu’s brilliant and earthy blue, green and gold paint colors, Edfu’s lavishly-carved pictorials of the fight between Egyptian gods Horus and Seth, and Philae’s picturesque island setting. Yet, I admit that, by the time we arrive at the dramatic Abu Simbel, we’re all suffering from temple fatigue.

Nevertheless, the significant fatigue-penetrating powers of Abu Simbel are twofold. First, when we disembark from our boat and gaze at the four astounding, 65-foot colossi of Pharaoh Ramesses II guarding the entrance of the Great Temple, it’s obvious that Abu Simbel is of the most awe-inspiring examples of ancient Egyptian architecture. Pharaoh Ramesses II built the two temples that comprise Abu Simbel: the Grand Temple is dedicated to himself and the Small Temple is dedicated to his favorite wife, Nefertari. The temples’ beautiful artistry is matched only by their romantic backstory: Ramesses II built the Great Temple to intimidate his Nubian enemies, but he loved his wife Nefertari so much that he decided to build a second temple dedicated to her. He ordered two statues of her in front of the temple to be built equal in size to his own — a powerful, never-seen-before gesture of love for the time’s ego-consumed rulers, who believed they were gods.

Second, Hanaa tells us that, in 1964, the rising waters of manmade Lake Nasser, as a result of Aswan High Dam construction — a public works projects designed to control floods and provide hydroelectricity for half of Egypt — threatened to flood Abu Simbel and many other ancient Egyptian temples. In arguably history’s greatest feat of archeological engineering, as the water level rose, UNESCO and Egyptian construction crews raced for four years on a $40 million project ($294 million in today’s dollars) to cut the temples into 15,000 tons of 1,036 sandstone blocks, and then move them, block by block, to a new location 210 feet higher and 650 feet back from their original site. Because the original temples were cut into the rock face of a mountain, crews also constructed a large, concrete and steel dome in which to reconstruct them.

As I tour through the chambers of the Great Temple, running my eyes across the intricate hieroglyphics and carvings covering every wall, I decide that the only thing more astonishing than the ancient Egyptians’ construction of Abu Simbel is modern man’s meticulous reconstruction of it.

The next morning, we continue sailing on Lake Nasser toward the Nubian Temples of Amada, Derr, Kalabsha, and Wadi es-Suba. We’re still impressed by the temples’ beauty and history, but it’s hard to avoid the feeling that nothing we’ll see from now on can compare to the magnificence of Abu Simbel.

Soon, our boat makes a stop along the Lake so that we can see the Temple of Amada. Though Cairo is only 700 miles away, our controlled tour of Egypt makes the capital city and the country’s political problems seem very distant.

“Though many of these temples were also moved from their original locations, some temples and sites weren’t saved from the dam and remain underwater,” Hanaa tells us.

“Wow, is it possible to scuba dive Lake Nasser and see them?” I ask.

“Oh, no, it’s much too dangerous because of the Nubian crocodiles,” Hanaa says. Again, I find myself annoyed that she’s so focused on keeping us insulated. But, as if on cue, I see two Egyptian men standing outside the temple holding crocodiles. As soon as they catch sight of us, they rush over to our tour group.

“Careful,” Hanaa warns. “The people here are desperate for money because the revolution has stopped most of the tourists from visiting Egypt. The men will be very insistent.”

She’s right, and they offer to let us hold the crocodiles (whose jaws are wired shut) in exchange for a small fee. The men, eager for cash, offer to let us wear the crocodiles as hats on our heads for some extra money. We agree to the higher charge, because, hey, you don’t get to wear a crocodile on your head very often.

Standing, with a crocodile perched on my head, in the middle of the Nubian Desert, with no visible towns or cities for tens of miles, I find myself once again feeling hopeful for Egypt. The crocodile men have reminded me that all people, including Egyptians, are infinitely resourceful.

Right now, Egypt’s political problems may seem impossible to solve. But, I suspect that, long ago, the world thought that moving Abu Simbel, two enormous temples made of 15,000 tons of rock, would be impossible for Egyptians too.

Read more about my first visit to Egypt, one month after Mubarak's resignation in 2011.

How to Take a Nile River and Lake Nasser Cruise to Abu Simbel and Nubia

OVERVIEW: Though previous Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resigned on February 11, 2011, political demonstrations and violent clashes continue sporadically throughout Egypt. Egypt's presidential elections will take place on May 23 and 24, 2012 and a new president is scheduled to take office by June 30, 2012. In addition, two American tourists were kidnapped in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula in February 2012 (though they were released after six hours). With that in mind, it's mostly business as usual in Egypt now -- except that travelers can get great deals on hotels and tourist services due to the current lack of demand. Also, you won't find yourself standing in line for anything.
LOGISTICS: We arranged for a guided tour of Cairo, Luxor, Aswan, and Nubia, much of which was on boat trips on the Nile River and Lake Nasser, through Viking River Cruises. Though our $3,000-per-person packaged arrangement (the Pharaohs & Pyramids tour) was overpriced -- the quality of the food and staterooms on our boats were not up to modern luxury standards and our tour guide functioned more like a cattle herder than a captivating Egyptologist -- the trip's logistics unfolded impressively flawlessly, and we managed to see almost all of the best sites in Egypt in an impressive 12 days. Nevertheless, if you're adventurous enough to travel to Egypt independently, you can easily save money by negotiating prices as you go and staying in less expensive accommodations. Independent travelers in Aswan and Luxor have been known to negotiate rock-bottom prices for Nile River and Lake Nasser cruises with some effort.

Copyright © 2000 - 2012 by Hank Leukart, All Rights Reserved. This essay, Cruising Nubia to Egypt's grandest temple, originally appeared on Without Baggage. You do not have permission to reproduce this content in any other form or context.

Photographs: Nubia, Egypt

Hank Leukart — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 00:00:00 PST

New Without Baggage photographs: The Temple of Amada, Temple of Derr, Wadi es-Sebua, Temple of Kalabsha, and the Aswan High Dam.

Copyright © 2000 - 2012 by Hank Leukart, All Rights Reserved. This photograph collection, Nubia, Egypt, originally appeared on Without Baggage. You do not have permission to reproduce this content in any other form or context.

Photographs: Abu Simbel, Egypt

Hank Leukart — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 00:00:00 PST

New Without Baggage photographs: The Great Temple and the Small Temple of Hathor and Nefertari.

Copyright © 2000 - 2012 by Hank Leukart, All Rights Reserved. This photograph collection, Abu Simbel, Egypt, originally appeared on Without Baggage. You do not have permission to reproduce this content in any other form or context.

Photographs: Aswan, Egypt

Hank Leukart — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 00:00:00 PST

New Without Baggage photographs: Edfu Temple, Kom Ombo Temple, Philae Temple, and the Nubian Museum.

Copyright © 2000 - 2012 by Hank Leukart, All Rights Reserved. This photograph collection, Aswan, Egypt, originally appeared on Without Baggage. You do not have permission to reproduce this content in any other form or context.

Ditch the guide

Hank Leukart — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 00:00:00 PST

Ditch the guide

Why you should fire your tour guide and lead yourself through Israel and the West Bank.

JERUSALEM, Israel — “And, there is the Edicule, the supposed location of Jesus’s burial and resurrection,” declares Yossi, our Israeli tour guide. Despite the fact that my mom, brother (Brian), and I are standing in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, Israel — the single holiest destination in the world for Christians — Yossi’s enthusiasm seems calibrated at the level you’d expect for a visit to a Starbucks.

“Take a quick look around and get your pictures,” Yossi says. “Then, there’s a great coffee shop around the corner — let’s meet there!” I realize that I’m wrong. Apparently, a Starbucks visit gets Yossi much more excited than the birthplace of the Christian religion.

During the three days we’ve spent in Jerusalem so far, Yossi has met only the minimum definition of a tour guide: he has led us to Jerusalem’s and Bethlehem’s major historical sights — the Temple Mount (one of the world’s holiest sites for Judaism, Islam, and Christianity), the Western Wall, the Israel Museum (location of the Dead Sea Scrolls), the Garden of Gethsemane, the Room of the Last Supper on Mount Zion, the Church of the Nativity, the Stations of the Cross, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre — and has given us short summaries about them. But, Yossi doesn’t seem to realize that his cursory synopses aren’t enough. His lack of enthusiasm is sapping the fun from our trip, and a simple guidebook would enable us to do everything he is doing for us for ourselves and give us more historical background.

A great tour guide isn’t a guidebook. A great tour guide is a master storyteller.

Even a mediocre storyteller would have little problem spinning a tale while leading an Israel tour, because, after all, the story of these places is one of the oldest known to man and the foundation of most of the world’s religions. A great storyteller would not only weave the sites into a rich epic about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses, drawing from the Torah, the Old and New Testaments, and the Quran, but also would contextualize the story in terms of the modern world. He would build a linear narrative, possibly starting by explaining that the Dead Sea Scrolls — one of the most important archaeological finds ever — prove that most of the text of the modern Torah and Old Testament matches the same scriptures used over 2,000 years ago. He would emphasize that though scholars agree that Jesus existed, no one really knows whether the marked locations of the Stations of the Cross and Jesus’s tomb are accurate. He might even discuss in detail the current politics surrounding the region’s religious sites and geography, mentioning the tension between Jewish, Christian, and Muslim interests over the Temple Mount and other miscellanea, like the Garden Tomb, which some (Mormons, for example) believe is the real site of Jesus’s burial.

But, Yossi doesn’t do any of that, and when we ask him if he’s willing to substitute the sights on our final day tour of Jerusalem with the nearby Red Sea and Masada — the site of one of the final dramatic battles in the First Jewish-Roman War — he says that he’s willing, but only for an additional US $500. Since I already think that Yossi’s tour is worth less than my US $16 guidebook, I convince my family to ditch him. Instead, we decide to rent a car to visit the Red Sea and Masada by ourselves.

Renting a car in Jerusalem turns out to be a small adventure in itself — when we arrive at Thrifty, one of the cashiers and an Israeli are screaming at each other in the most violent, non-violent confrontation I have ever seen in real life. We have no idea what the argument (in Hebrew) is about, but I’m suddenly terrified of whatever horrible acts the Jerusalem Thrifty carries out on its customers that result in scream-to-the-death matches. Nevertheless, though we end up having to provide a ridiculous deposit (US $1000) and agree to draconian rental terms, we manage to get a car for only US $30 for the day — cheaper than if we had tried to take a group tour bus (US $100 per person) or public bus (100 NIS/US $27 per person).

Without a tour guide, we start by heading somewhat aimlessly south, through the West Bank on Route 60, past the cities of Bethlehem and Hebron — because all Israeli road signs seem stolen from a warehouse of the greatest hits of religious scripture. We drive through the golden-brown Judaean Mountains and the barren Judaean Desert toward the city of Arad, which I remember is the closest city to Masada. In the middle of the desert, with nothing but mountains of sand and rock visible in any direction, we’re stopped by an Israeli Army soldier at a road checkpoint. She’s respectful, but she seems suspicious of our explanation that we’re driving Route 60 by ourselves to see Masada. She demands that we send all of our possessions through an X-ray machine, which prompts a lengthy and animated discussion in Hebrew between two of the soldiers, analyzing the internal circuitry of Brian’s iPad. Nevertheless, after another group of soldiers crawls under our car and finds no bombs or other weapons attached to the undercarriage, they return the harmless iPad.

“It’s faster to take Route 90 to Masada from Jerusalem, you know,” the soldier tells us before letting us leave. As we pull away, I realize that a tour guide would have taken us via the faster route, but I’m already sure that our Judaean-Mountain adventure has been a lot more fun. After winding over a desolate mountain pass and heading east, we finally land in Ein Bokek, a resort destination on the Dead Sea with access to a public beach.

Despite unnerving warning signs posted on the beach — “Do NOT jump or dive into the water”; “Do NOT immerse your head”; “Do NOT splash water on yourself or others” — the three of us put on swimsuits and wade into the sea. At first, I discover that trying to tread water in a typical way gives me the sensation that I’m going to lose my balance, fall headfirst under the water, and drown. But, even without a tour guide, we quickly become accustomed to the very strange sensation of being able to float effortlessly in a sea 8.6 times saltier than the ocean and enjoy the swim.

After our dip, we make a quick stop so that Brian can buy packages of mud from the Dead Sea for his girlfriend and friends at home (“Really!? You’re going to carry six bags of mud all the way back to the US?” I ask incredulously) and then drive to Masada.

At Masada, we learn from a short documentary film, our guidebook, and informational placards the astonishing story of the fortress, which sits atop an isolated rock plateau in the Judaean Desert. At the end of the First Jewish-Roman War, Jewish rebels and families used the fortress to hold off troops of the occupying Roman Empire during a three-month siege. Despite Masada’s nearly impenetrable defenses (spoiler), the Roman soldiers eventually scaled the plateau by building a 375-foot assault ramp and rolling tower with a giant battering ram to breach the fortress’s wall, prompting a mass suicide of the Jewish rebels hidden inside.

On the top of Masada, my mom, Brian, and I explore the ruins of the stronghold and marvel at the size of the enormous ramp leading to the top of the plateau. Experiencing the heat of the desert, the size of the fortress, and the scope of the ramp construction project firsthand makes the story of the battle come to life in our imaginations. Afterward, we follow the steep, 2.5-mile Snake Path — the same route that the Jewish rebels used to access the fortress — back to the desert floor. Without a tour guide dragging us down, we’ve regained our organic sense of discovery.

Months later, I’m still acting as my own tour guide, exploring the history of the Red Sea and Masada myself by watching the 1981, epic ABC miniseries Masada, filmed on location and starring Peter O’Toole (Commander Flavius Silva), Peter Strauss (rebel leader Eleazar ben Yair), and Barbara Carrera (Sheva, Silva’s Jewish mistress). The series is six hours long, but the vivid depiction of the sprawling story is so mesmerizing that I can’t stop watching. The almost perfect storytelling adeptly weaves together the tale of the Roman soldiers toiling for months to build a ramp and a captapult, Flavius falling tragically in love with gorgeous Sheva, Eleazar convincing his followers of their fateful end, and Flavius realizing the scope of the disaster he has wrought: “We’ve won a rock in the middle of a wasteland, on the shores of a poisoned sea.”

It’s disappointing that our tour guide Yossi’s storytelling skills weren’t half as good as Peter O’Toole’s, but there’s a part of me that’s glad. In Israel, my family and I learned that the most fun comes from doing the exploring yourself.

How to see Jerusalem, the Red Sea, and Masada in Israel

OVERVIEW: Jerusalem is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world and is home to some of the world's holiest religious sites: the Temple Mount, the Western Wall, the Israel Museum (location of the Dead Sea Scrolls), the Garden of Gethsemane, the Room of the Last Supper on Mount Zion, the Church of the Nativity, the Stations of the Cross, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The nearby Red Sea, made famous by the story of Moses parting its waters in the bible's Book of Exodus, is one of the saltiest bodies of water in the world (average salinity of 40%). Masada, the mountaintop fortress which was taken under siege by the Roman troops at the end of the First Jewish-Roman War, is only 12 kilometers from the public beach on the Red Sea in Ein Bokek.
LOGISTICS: Take a flight to Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv, Israel. Then, to get to Jerusalem: take a 60 minute taxi (180 NIS/US $48) or shared taxi (50 NIS/US $13) ride; a 60 minute bus ride from Tel Aviv's Central Bus Station to Jerusalem's Central Bus Station (the Egged bus 947 leaves every 20 minutes and costs 21.50 NIS/US $6); or a 90 minute train ride from Tel Aviv's Merkaz/Savidor station to Jerusalem's Malkha station (leaves every hour and costs 20 NIS/US $5). We arranged for a Jerusalem tour guide through Viking River Cruises and Gordon Tours, though our tour guide left a lot to be desired. After you've seen the sites in Jerusalem, the fastest and cheapest way to visit the Red Sea and Masada is to rent a car (US $30 for the day from Thrifty). It's also possible to take a group tour bus (US $100 per person; ask a hotel for details) or Egged public buses 486 and 487 (100 NIS/US $27 per person).
DIRECTIONS: The fastest route (about 90 minutes) from Jerusalem to Masada and Ein Bokek is via Route 1 east to Route 90 south. As you drive south on Route 90, you'll see a right-side turnoff ("Metsada Junction") to Masada about 12 kilometers north of Ein Bokek. If you're feeling a bit more adventurous and want to drive south through the West Bank and Judaean Mountains, you can try taking the route we took by driving Route 60 south to Route 356 south to Route 317 south to Route 80 south to Route 31 East to Arad. From Arad, you can drive Route 31 east to Ein Bokek on the Red Sea and then north to Masada.

Copyright © 2000 - 2012 by Hank Leukart, All Rights Reserved. This essay, Ditch the guide, originally appeared on Without Baggage. You do not have permission to reproduce this content in any other form or context.

Gummy penguins for breakfast

Hank Leukart — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 00:00:00 PST

Gummy penguins for breakfast

How not to take my eight-year-old nephew, and other newbies, on a first-time backpacking trip.

BIG BEAR LAKE, California — “You can get whatever snacks you want,” I tell my nephew, Luke, as we walk into a grocery store. I’m about to take him on his first hiking and camping trip. “One of the best things about hiking is that you can eat anything you want!”

“Gummy penguins?” he asks timidly, reaching for two bags on the shelf. It’s obvious that his parents don’t usually let him eat gummy penguins.

“Whatever you want!” I say. I treat him like an adult, because I don’t really know what else I’m supposed to do.

When we arrive at our campsite near Big Bear Lake in Southern California, Luke is enthralled by my ultra-light backpacking tent, which I teach him to construct in less than two minutes. Luke rushes impatiently through our classic camping dinner of hot dogs and s’mores, because he can’t wait to get back inside the tent. After the sun sets, we crawl inside, and Luke produces a bag of board games that he’s brought. I chuckle, because playing board games is my favorite part of backpacking trips too. While we nibble on gummy penguins and move wooden pirates onto sailboats, I realize that Luke may not be the only eight-year-old on this camping trip.

On another backpacking trip, in January, five friends and I spent hours playing the party game Time’s Up (a boxed version of Celebrity) during a three-day journey on the California Riding and Hiking Trail (CRHT) in Joshua Tree National Park. My friends Brad and Julie had never been on an overnight backpacking trip before, so we decided on the 37-mile CRHT, which is almost totally flat, easy to follow, and warm enough for day hiking, even during winter. At night, however, even with the comfort of a campfire and board games, Brad and Julie found themselves shivering from the cold winter temperatures, even in their sleeping bags. Though I had warned them about frigid desert nights and sent them a gear list, I had failed to order them to bring fluffy down jackets, naively wanting to avoid paternalism and nagging. When I woke the next morning to a thermometer reading 20°F degrees and campers reluctant to leave their sleeping bags, I feared that Julie and Brad wouldn’t voluntarily join a backpacking trip ever again.

A few weeks later, Wendy, Rich and I took my friend Rose on her first backpacking trip to Sykes Hot Springs in Big Sur, California. The trail, one of the most popular in California because of the sauna-like swimming pools at the end, was infested with first-timers carrying badly-fitted and over-weighted packs. Though I gave Rose lots of guidance about how to pack and handle her backpack, her biggest concern ended up being about going to the bathroom in the wilderness. After lunch on our first day, she announced to the group that she needed to excuse herself, taking some toilet paper and hand sanitizer with her. I didn’t think much about giving her advice. Fifteen minutes later, she returned, looking uncomfortable.

“I, uh, couldn’t do it,” she said. Wendy, Rich, and I tried to suppress our laughter. Not accustomed to counseling adults on how to go to the bathroom, I looked to Wendy, who coached Rose to find a very private spot behind a tree and relax. After another 15 minutes, Rose returned.

“I was successful!” she said. But she looked traumatized, as though she had already decided that she would never venture more than 10 feet from a toilet ever again. I felt like the experience was my fault, and I realized that my teaching skills — both for children and adults — needed some honing.

On the second day of my camping trip with my nephew, Luke, I offer to make eggs for breakfast, but he’s not interested.

“I want gummy penguins,” he says.

“Fine with me,” I say. After all, someone who wants to eat gummy penguins for breakfast is someone I understand — and every penguin’s tummy is filled with a gooey, tart liquid! While packing up our camp, we manage to eat almost two entire bags of the penguins.

“Time to go hiking!” I say excitedly, trying to pique Luke’s interest. I’ve planned a very easy, one-mile hike for Luke’s first hike, but his face starts looking pale as I drive my car up the windy mountain road toward the trailhead.

“I don’t feel good,” he mumbles. “I get motion sick.” Your good parents also probably don’t usually let you eat an entire bag of gummy penguins for breakfast, I think. But, as soon as the car stops moving at the trailhead, Luke starts looking healthier.

“Okay, get your backpack, and put on pants instead of those shorts,” I say. “It’s cold out.”

“But I want to wear shorts!” he retorts.

“Fine with me,” I say, because, well, that’s what I would say to an adult.

We’ve hiked about a half-mile (ten minutes), and he seems to be having fun climbing on rocks near the trail, when suddenly, Luke announces: “I don’t like hiking. Can we turn around?”

“Luke, this hike is a loop. We can turn around, but it will take just as long to go back as it will to go forward,” I explain.

“I don’t like hiking!” he whines. Then, he starts crying.

I try to reason with him like I would with an adult, but it occurs to me that I’m wasting my time. He doesn’t actually dislike hiking. He dislikes feeling sick and cold. Yet, here I am, dragging an eight-year-old child, with a stomach filled to the brim with high-fructose corn syrup and wearing shorts, through a 40°F forest.

We return as quickly as possible to the car. Immediately, Luke, seems happy again.

“Can I have more gummy penguins?” he asks, as our car snakes back down the mountain. This time, I’ve learned my lesson.

“No more,” I respond. He doesn’t complain.

How to Hike Joshua Tree's California Riding and Hiking Trail

OVERVIEW: Joshua Tree's California Riding and Hiking Trail is an easy 37-mile, one-way traverse starting at Black Rock Campground and ending near the North Entrance Station. The entire trip can be completed in three days because the trail is so flat and well-maintained, though the trip can be extended to four days. If you decide to spend four days on the trail, you can add the summit of Quail Mountain, Joshua Tree's highest point, to your itinerary.
DIRECTIONS: Joshua Tree National Park is a 2.5-hour drive from Los Angeles. From Los Angeles, take I-10 East to CA-62 North (Twentynine Palms Highway). Then, to get to Black Rock Campground, turn right from Twentynine Palms Highway onto Joshua Lane, and follow it until it dead-ends into San Marino Drive. Turn right, then turn left onto Campground Road. A backcountry information board stands at the California Riding and Hiking Trail trailhead.
LOGISTICS: Cars can be parked at the Park's designated backcountry boards, but you'll want to cache a second car at the end of the trail if you're hiking in only one direction. Remember, no water is available in Joshua Tree. Hikers must carry all of the water they'll need for the entire trip or they must cache water in advance.
ROUTE: The simplest three-day itinerary for the California Riding and Hiking Trail is as follows. The distances while carrying backpacks may seem long, but the flat and easy trail makes for a relaxed trip. Water can be cached in advance at the car-accessible backcountry boards on Keys View Road and Geology Tour Road.
- Day 1: Black Rock Campground to backcountry camping in Juniper Flats, near Keys View Road (12 miles)
- Day 2: Juniper Flats to backcountry camping near Geology Tour Road (12 miles)
- Day 3: Geology Tour Road to the North Entrance Station (12 miles)
However, keep in mind that backcountry fires are prohibited in the Park. Because we did this hike in the winter, we decided to stay overnight at campgrounds so that we could build campfires. In addition, we wanted to summit Quail Mountain, Joshua Tree's highest point. The following campground itinerary has the added benefit of allowing hikers to cache both water and camping equipment at the car-accessible campgrounds before the hike. But, keep in mind that driving from Black Rock Campground and Upper Covington Flat to Belle Campground takes about an hour (one way).
- Day 1: Upper Covington Flat to Quail Mountain summit to Ryan Campground (16.3 miles)
- Day 2: Ryan Campground to Belle Campground (12.6 miles)
- Day 3: Belle Campground to North Entrance Station (6.2 miles)
Hikers can easily add another day at the beginning of this itinerary, hiking from Black Rock Campground to Upper Covington Flat, to complete the entire trail in four days. View our route and download the Without Baggage Joshua Tree California Riding and Hiking Trail GPS track in GPX or KML format.

How to Hike to Sykes Hot Springs in Big Sur, California

OVERVIEW: The trip to Sykes Hot Springs in California's Ventana Wilderness is a 21.6-mile, two-day, round-trip hike. Though Sykes is a very popular California backpacking trip, it is not easy, even for fit hikers: the trail's relentless, rolling hills require backpackers' knees to endure a 5,502 total elevation gain (and loss).
DIRECTIONS: The trailhead for Pine Ridge Trail, which leads to Sykes Hot Springs, begins at Big Sur Station, a five-hour drive from Los Angeles or a three-hour drive from San Francisco. From Los Angeles, take US-101 North to San Luis Obispo, then take Pacific Coast Highway North (CA-1/Cabrillo Highway) to Big Sur Station, just north of the northern boundary of Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park. From San Francisco, take US-101 South to San Juan Bautista, where US-101 merges with CA-156 West. Then, merge onto Pacific Coast Highway South (CA-1/Cabrillo Highway) in Castroville and proceed along the coast to Big Sur Station, just south of the southern boundary of Andrew Molera State Park.
LOGISTICS: A parking lot at the trailhead accommodates cars for $5 per day. Water sources are abundant along the trail, but be sure to take a water filter.
ROUTE: Pine Ridge Trail is easy to follow to the Big Sur River. Upon arriving at the River, the Hot Springs can be found by turning left and hiking about a half-mile down river. The Hot Springs are high on the river bank to your left. Campsites abound along the river in either direction, so don't be discouraged if crowds have already taken the obvious ones. View our route and download the Without Baggage Sykes Hot Springs GPS track in GPX or KML format.

Copyright © 2000 - 2012 by Hank Leukart, All Rights Reserved. This essay, Gummy penguins for breakfast, originally appeared on Without Baggage. You do not have permission to reproduce this content in any other form or context.

Photographs: Dead Sea & Masada, Israel

Hank Leukart — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 00:00:00 PST

New Without Baggage photographs: Swimming in the Dead Sea and hiking the Masada’s Snake Trail.

Copyright © 2000 - 2012 by Hank Leukart, All Rights Reserved. This photograph collection, Dead Sea & Masada, Israel, originally appeared on Without Baggage. You do not have permission to reproduce this content in any other form or context.

Photographs: Jerusalem, Israel

Hank Leukart — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 00:00:00 PST

New Without Baggage photographs: The Mount of Olives, Room of the Last Supper, Church of the Nativity, Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Wailing Wall, and Via Dolorosa’s Stations of the Cross.

Copyright © 2000 - 2012 by Hank Leukart, All Rights Reserved. This photograph collection, Jerusalem, Israel, originally appeared on Without Baggage. You do not have permission to reproduce this content in any other form or context.

Photographs: Sykes Hot Springs, Big Sur, Ca.

Hank Leukart — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 00:00:00 PST

New Without Baggage photographs: A two-day backpacking trip to Sykes Hot Springs in Big Sur, California.

Copyright © 2000 - 2012 by Hank Leukart, All Rights Reserved. This photograph collection, Sykes Hot Springs, Big Sur, Ca., originally appeared on Without Baggage. You do not have permission to reproduce this content in any other form or context.

Drunken horses

Hank Leukart — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 00:00:00 PST

Drunken horses

A romantic comedy in Lìjiāng and Dàlǐ, China.

This is the seventh and last essay in a series about traveling across Southern China. Start with the first essay to get the whole story.

DÀLǏ, Yúnnán, China — “Let’s meet at the water wheel,” I say into my cell phone, aware that I sound like I’m reading from a script for a bad romantic comedy. I’m setting up a date with a 25-year-old Chinese girl named Christine or Yin — depending on whether you’re an English or a Chinese speaker — who I met a few days before while she was working as a receptionist at a hotel in Lìjiāng, China. On the way out of my inn, I glance at the entrance sign, which reads: “Mid-Leuelf Haliday Viewing Hatel.” This is going to be a hilarious rom com, I think, as I head toward Lìjiāng’s most famous and romantic landmark.

The 12-foot-tall wooden water wheel at the entrance to Lìjiāng Old Town (an UNESCO World Heritage Site, quickly being destroyed by careless development), illuminated by spotlights, glows golden yellow in the darkness, as I search a sea of hundreds of Chinese tourists for Christine. Though she is attractive, I admit that I’ve asked Christine to have dinner partly because her fluent English gives me a chance to get some of my burning questions about China answered by someone with whom I can communicate. As an added bonus in terms of learning about China, she is a member of the Bai ethnic minority, one of 55 recognized minority groups apart from the country’s Han Chinese majority.

“Where should we eat?” I ask after finding her, standing five feet tall with black hair and a checkered wool coat, hidden in front of the water wheel. “You know the Lìjiāng restaurants better than I do.”

“Have you had Across-the-Bridge Noodle yet?” she asks. I tell her that I have no idea what she’s talking about. I’m already starting to suspect that I may have judged her English too kindly.

“Follow me,” she says. As she leads me through the maze of narrow alleys of Lìjiāng’s Old Town, she starts telling me a story about a faithful Bai wife who once had to take soup across a bridge to an island where her husband was studying for his imperial exams (the tests used to determine those fit for the government bureaucracy in Imperial China).

“She loved her husband very much, so she was frustrated when the soup always became cold on the long walk to visit him,” she explains. “So, one day, she decided to separate the ingredients and bring him a boiling hot broth covered with a layer of oil. It stayed hot for the entire trip, and her husband loved the hot broth because it let him cook the soup’s ingredients as he ate.”

Sure enough, soon after we sit down at the restaurant, the waitress brings us a boiling hot broth with a variety of raw vegetables, seafood, and meat. Christine and I start cooking our food together, but I keep losing vegetables and meat in the broth due to my incompetence with chopsticks. I’m embarrassed, but Christine laughs and her eyes twinkle. Playing the role of the tale’s dutiful Bai wife, she starts feeding me the hot food with her chopsticks. I feel ridiculous, but our meal ends up seeming a little like the Italian restaurant spaghetti scene from Lady and the Tramp — transported to a bizarre, Chinese-noodle rom com universe.

While we eat, Christine tells me that she grew up in a very rural nearby county, working on her parents’ farm. When she performed well on China’s high-pressure, college-entrance exams, she ended up being one of the few people in her county and the only in her family to go to college, where she perfected her English. After teaching for a couple years in a poor, rural farming town, she decided to move to Chinese-tourist haven Lìjiāng, a city of 1.2 million people, to make more money. There, she got a coveted job as a receptionist at an expensive international luxury hotel due to her excellent English.

“Do you like the job?” I ask.

“Sometimes, but I don’t really understand it,” she says. “How can people spend US $1,500 on one night in a hotel villa? It doesn’t seem fair to the poor kids in my school who didn’t even have clothes.” When I ask her about her salary, she tells me that she earns US $2,000 per year and lives in a hotel dorm with four other employees.

“I can’t imagine spending that much on a hotel room either,” I respond. (Though I met her at her hotel, I was there only to have dinner at its restaurant before returning to my US $20/night hostel). “Some people are very rich, though.” She looks visibly distraught.

“My manager, who I work harder than, makes US $16,000 a year!” she complains. “It doesn’t make sense!” I feel like she’s expecting me, an American, to justify capitalism and her hotel’s employee pay structure — or even fix it — but I have no idea what to say.

“Well, it’s clear that China has changed a lot in the past ten years,” I say vaguely. “Do you think the country’s move toward a free market is a mistake? Are you worried about the future?”

“I have a great hope for China,” she says. “Things are much better. But, I’m very worried about economic inequality.”

“Yes, it’s a problem everywhere in the world,” I say, thinking of the woman in Tiger Leaping Gorge who latched onto me for US $3 and wouldn’t let go. When I mention Tiger Leaping Gorge to Christine, she tells me that she’s never visited it — despite the fact that it’s only a two-hour bus ride away.

“You’ve seen more of China than I have,” she says. “I’ve never left Yúnnán Province.”

“If you could go one place, anywhere in the world, where would you go?” I ask her.

“The Sagrada Família,” she says, referring to the well-known, unfinished Catholic church in Barcelona, Spain. “A Catholic missionary once gave me a bible, which at first read I thought was just a fairy tale. But, then I came to believe that God is all powerful, and I became a Christian. I saw the church once on TV, and ever since I’ve wanted to visit it.”

For a fleeting moment, I have an urge to buy the US $1,400 roundtrip ticket to Barcelona for her right then and there on my iPhone. It would be cheaper than staying one night in her hotel, after all. But, I can’t imagine that she’d approve of using that much money for a plane ticket either.

And, then, despite my vehement protests, she insists on paying for our Across-the-Bridge Noodles.

When we return to the water wheel and say goodbye, I get the feeling that I’ve just met the sweetest girl in all of China. I want to tell her to visit me sometime in Los Angeles, but I don’t. Instead, I silently wish that, if she ever gets a chance to take a trip out of the country, she goes directly to Barcelona.

I spend the last day of my three-week China trip in nearby Dàlǐ, wandering in the shadow of Cangshan Mountain, through markets filled with vivid navy and white Bai wax-dyed cloth, the textile for which the town is famous. At dusk, I’m surprised to hear U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” drifting from a street corner. I go to investigate, and I meet two street musicians: an American named Scott and an Irishman named Nick. They tell me that they met while traveling in China years ago, started a band, and, like so many other backpackers who I’ve met during my trip, never left.

“Chinese pop music is so horrible,” Scott explains, “that we felt like we had to start a rock band. We make enough money playing gigs and on the street to get by.” Nick suggests that I stop by Bad Monkey, Dàlǐ’s oldest expat bar, where they often play live music.

So, after dinner, I walk into Bad Monkey by myself. Scott and Nick see me and nod, as they strum away, playing American rock classics, a welcome change from the sappy ballads I became accustomed to in Yángshuò. I look around the bar, which is full mostly with Chinese tourists, but, a pretty, dark-haired, blue-eyed Western girl sitting with two other Western guys catches my eye. When I ask the girl if I can join her table, she introduces herself as Tessa, and says that she’s a Dutch medical student. She also introduces me to her two friends, whom she just met: Kevin, a student from Utrecht, Netherlands, and Tom, a carpenter from the UK.

“I think we should start a band,” I tell them, as we drink a table full of Tsingtao Beer. “It’s my last night in China, and I’m not ready to leave. See those guys on stage? They started a band and never left. I think we could do it too.”

“I’m in,” Tessa says as she takes a swig of beer. “Let’s name the band Drunken Horses.” And, just like in any good romantic comedy, I fall in love with her immediately.

The night turns into exactly the kind of night you want to have on the last night of a long trip. The beer keeps flowing (much of it bought for us by a drunk Chinese tourist) as we plunge into a manic planning session for the Drunken Horses’ first album. We decide that Kevin will play drums, Tom will play harmonica, Tessa will be the lead vocalist, and I’ll play guitar. We agree that the album’s first song will be titled, “Mr. Ed,” in keeping with our horses theme, and it will be a homage to the famous television steed. After Tessa tells us the sad story of a breakup with an ex-boyfriend, we write the lyrics for a second tune titled, “When You Break Up With Your Boyfriend and He Gets Rich.” After a multicultural car crash centered around our trying to order French fries, we write a third track titled, “French Fries, Chips, Crisps, and Ketchup.”

As the night winds down after we’ve hammered out most of the details of our band’s album, Mr. Big’s “To Be With You” starts playing on the bar’s stereo. Tessa and I, sitting side by side, look at each other. We start harmonizing together, singing the song as a duet.

I’m the one who wants to be with you,
Deep inside I hope you’ll feel it too.
Waited on a line of greens and blues,
Just to be the next to be with you.

Even with the abysmal acoustics at this obscure dive bar in rural China, we sound good. I realize that we’d make a pretty great band.

Copyright © 2000 - 2012 by Hank Leukart, All Rights Reserved. This essay, Drunken horses, originally appeared on Without Baggage. You do not have permission to reproduce this content in any other form or context.

A battle of wills

Hank Leukart — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 00:00:00 PST

A battle of wills

Trekking China's Tiger Leaping Gorge, one of the world's deepest canyons.

This is the sixth essay in a series about traveling across Southern China. Start with the first essay to get the whole story.

TIGER LEAPING GORGE, Yúnnán, China — “Sean advertises on his web site that he was the first person in the Gorge to marry a beautiful foreign woman,” Maren tells me while we’re standing under a red People’s Republic of China flag, looking out from a viewpoint above the lush expanse of China’s rugged Tiger Leaping Gorge in Yúnnán Province. “He also says that he was the first to do business with foreigners and is the only person to speak out about protecting the wilderness area of the Gorge.” I chuckle, but I realize that, after three weeks of backpacking through China, I’m starting to take the country’s eccentricities for granted.

“Well, he sounds like an interesting guy,” I say as we continue hiking. “Let’s agree that we won’t leave the Gorge without seeing an actual leaping tiger and meeting Sean and his drop-dead-gorgeous, Swedish wife.” After some further iPhone research (Chinese 3G networks, which seem to penetrate every obscure corner of China, further prove American suspicions that US cell phone networks are managed by idiots), I discover writer Scott Carrier’s “Greatest Fishing Story Ever Told,” a 2001 Esquire essay partly about visiting Sean in the Gorge. I realize that we’re on a quest to meet a Chinese celebrity.

I met Maren and her husband Joseph during breakfast in a small guest house (Jane’s) earlier in the morning before starting our hike, and I’m relieved to have run into them. They’re the first native English speakers who I’ve encountered since beginning my China backpacking trip three weeks ago, and it’s a pleasant change to have some friends during the two-day, 22-mile hike through Tiger Leaping Gorge. The Gorge, one of the deepest canyons in the world, measures 12,795 feet from the waters of China’s Jinsha River to the snow-capped mountaintops of Hābā Xǔeshān and Yùlóng Xuěshān.

As we hike past a small, green bamboo forest with high mountain peaks towering overhead, Maren tells me that she and Joseph live in Washington DC; she’s a teacher and he’s a labor economist for the DC Metro. The two are celebrating the birth of their first child, Adelaide. Imagining a city halfway around the world with English-speaking bus drivers, American school teachers, and a White House seems strangely alien, and I realize that I’ve been enveloped in Chinese culture, without any English-speaking companions, for a long time now. The 50-year-old Chinese man passing us on our narrow dirt trail carrying 75 pounds of hay to feed his cattle somehow feels more culturally relevant to me than Capitol Hill does right now.

Maren and Joseph seem to feel the same way; the three of us spend our time hiking trading stories about Chinese culture and travel, neither to prove our backpacking mettle nor position ourselves as sophisticated outside observers, but instead as an attempt to interpret and understand what we’ve seen during our time in the country. I tell them how devastated I was that, when I arrived in nearby Lijiang, the temperature was 35°F instead of the 75°F that the government-provided weather forecast had predicted. I had spent three hopeful weeks looking forward to a balmy escape from the chilly weather I endured in Huángshān and Yángshuò. To my surprise, Maren and Joseph lament that they also spent their trip fantasizing about the warm weather, only to have been duped by the same false forecast. I tell them that I learned in a book that, as recently as 1999, the Chinese government reported fake (more pleasant) weather forecasts to the Chinese people, partly to avoid giving workers days off due to blistering desert temperatures. (Supposedly, they have stopped now.)

As we walk past a green and brown maze of rice terraces and an ugly tangle of electrical lines covering the side of the Gorge, Maren and Joseph tell me about their visit to the Splendid China theme park and report that they (like me) found their experience unnerving.

“It was a little weird, right?” Maren said. “I can’t tell whether the Chinese minority performers were just being used as blatant government propaganda or whether there’s an authentic feeling of goodwill between the Han Chinese and the rest of the country’s inhabitants.” I’m embarrassed when it occurs to me how little I know about this topic; I haven’t managed to have any lengthy chats with a single Chinese ethnic minority during my trip in China.

We walk past a canopy of trees sprinkled with orange kumquats, trying to hash out the answers to many other Chinese cultural mysteries: Is there really no privately-owned land? Is it possible to start a capitalist enterprise outside of Special Economic Zones Shenzhen and Guangdong? Why does the Chinese government block access to Facebook and Twitter but allow access to China-based copycats Renren and Weibo? I’m relieved that we’re able to hammer out partial answers to our questions based on what we’ve learned during our time in China, but I’m also embarrassed that we don’t have any great answers. It occurs to me that our discussion would make for a particularly hilarious issue of Modern Jackass: Chinese Culture Edition, the imaginary magazine that publishes expert analysis by non-experts. Surprisingly, it’s taken two Americans to remind me yet again that it’s essential that I break through the Mandarin language barrier before leaving China.

When the sun sets, we decide to stop at the Tea Horse, a small guest house sitting below massive, jagged mountain peaks, to find dinner and a place to sleep. We’re drawn in by a sign advertising a masseuse, but, inside, the innkeeper tells us that the masseuse left many months ago and never returned. We don’t bother trying to ask why she’s still displaying the ad. Joseph, Maren, and I spend the night around a fire pit, chatting with a friendly Korean family, an eccentric farmer’s son from rural Ireland, and a madly-in-love couple from France. While sipping Tsingtao Beer, Maren, Joseph, the French couple, and I make a pact to spend the next year learning Mandarin and then return to China together, better suited to work out China’s cultural mysteries.

On the second day of our hike, we wander down a steep side trail from Tina’s Guest House high in the Gorge toward a place on our map labeled Middle Tiger Leaping Rock, a granite outcrop in the water at the Gorge’s bottom.

“Finally, we’re going to get to see some tigers leap across the Gorge!” I joke. Joseph looks skeptical.

More than a few times, local Chinese farmers occasionally block our path along the way and (illegally) demand, using signs in badly translated English, that we pay a small fee to use the trail, insisting that they maintain it. It’s a common annoyance in China’s badly-regulated wilderness areas, but we comply with their meager demands just to keep the peace. After paying yet another Y20/US $3 to stand on Middle Tiger Leaping Rock in the middle of the Jinsha River — where we see not one leaping tiger — we continue walking toward Walnut Garden, hoping to find Chinese-celebrity Sean. We know we’re nearing his village, because we see crude advertisements for guesthouses spray-painted on boulders bordering the trail. China may know how to build amazing cell phone networks, but effective wilderness protections and the cultural shifts that come along with them are still decades away.

On the final stretch of the trail leading toward Walnut Garden, a small, 40-year-old Chinese woman stands in our way and demands that we each pay an additional Y20/US $3 to continue. By now, we’ve each paid about Y60/US $10 to these extortionists, in addition to a legitimate Y50/US $8 entrance fee at the wilderness area’s entrance. I’m fed up, and I refuse to pay the woman, since she’s trying to collect fees illegally. Nevertheless, she continues to block the trail. I raise my voice and begin yelling at her in English to move aside, but it doesn’t seem to help, so I forcefully push past her. To my surprise, as I move by, she grabs me and then latches her entire body onto my backpack with both arms, like a boa constrictor trying to suffocate its prey. As I make my way up the trail, I look back and see that I’m dragging a screaming, 100-pound Chinese woman behind me. She won’t let go.

Maren and Joseph look at me baffled and helpless, as though this is the first time they’ve ever seen a battle of wills between a six-foot-tall American man and a five-foot-tall Chinese farming woman. As I continue dragging her up the side of the Gorge, I decide that, despite the possible effectiveness of the strategy, I’d never forgive myself if I punched her in the face over $3. (Still, I’m annoyed that she’s depending on my civility to extort money.) I consider phoning the Chinese police, but I can’t imagine that the inevitable ensuing hassle (in Mandarin) would be worth my time. So, reluctantly, each of us pay her Y20/US $3. I feel frustrated that we have been defeated so soundly by a tiny Chinese woman.

Nevertheless, when the three of us arrive at Sean’s Guest House ten minutes later, we’re thrilled at the prospect of finally meeting Sean, partly because we’ve endured unrealized promises of leaping tigers, propagandist weather reports, and desperate Chinese farmers to get here. The three of us sit at a table in the guest house’s outdoor restaurant, looking out at the severe, dark rock slabs of awe-inspiring Tiger Leaping Gorge. I look down at my menu, which reads unintelligibly:

“If you Are our Friend, you can have OR get Real Good Stuff for smoke or eat in our place, But if you have to pay it!! If you don’t or with out ask, we do not Give You, so you don’t have to worry If you don’t Like it!!!”

I turn around, expecting to see Sean demanding a large fee for a plate of pot brownies. Instead, a very attractive, 30-year-old Chinese woman asks us in weak English if we’d like to order food. My brain starts churning, trying to find inoffensive ways to ask her if she knows that she is being advertised on the Internet as Sean’s beautiful, foreign-born wife.

“Is Sean here?” I ask. “We’re dying to meet him. You know he’s like a celebrity, right?” She looks a little confused.

“No, Sean in town getting supplies,” she says, apologetically. “But, I help you with anything.” Trying to proceed cautiously, I ask her if she is his wife.

“Yes, we married!” she responds.

“And how long have you lived in Walnut Garden?” I ask.

“I was born here and have lived here all my life,” she answers. For us, this information puts into doubt everything Sean has claimed on his web site. Maren, Joseph, and I glance at each other, looking like six year olds who have just been told that Santa Claus doesn’t exist.

While we sit, I find Scott Carrier’s Esquire essay on the Internet and begin reading it aloud. We learn that the Chinese Red Army killed Sean’s sister and threw Sean into a fire during the Cultural Revolution, burning his body and maiming his arm and hand. Nevertheless, he educated himself (handicapped kids were not permitted in Communist schools) and figured out how to make a living for himself helping tourists in Tiger Leaping Gorge.

Then, sadly, I find a blog post describing the death of Margo Carter, an Australian woman who — to my surprise — purportedly was married to Sean until her death during a trek in the Gorge in 2010.

In my head, Sean’s web site changes from a wacky curiosity to a romantic memorial. As we eat our food, I mull over the tragedies of China’s Cultural Revolution and the difficulties of surviving poverty in modern, rural China. I sit in disbelief that I fought with a Chinese farmer over three dollars. I feel relieved that I lost.

Read the last essay in this series about traveling across Southern China, in which I go on a date with an English-speaking Chinese girl.

How to Hike China's Tiger Leaping Gorge

OVERVIEW: If there's one place in China that should compel you to put on hiking boots and trek, it's China's scenic Tiger Leaping Gorge. One of the deepest gorges in the world, the Gorge is not as pristine as a US National Park, but its snow-covered peaks and sparkling river water have not been destroyed (yet) by development and tourism. The hike on the High Trail from Jane's Guest House in Qiáotóu to Tina's Guest House above Middle Tiger Leaping Rock is a (very easy) 15.4 miles. The additional side trip from Tina's to Middle Tiger Leaping Rock, Sean's Guest House, and back to Tina's to take a bus back to Qiáotóu is an additional 6.4 miles and is a bit more strenuous due to the steep trail to the bottom of the Gorge and back.
LOGISTICS: The fastest way to get to Qiáotóu is to take a flight to Lìjiāng from any major Chinese city, and then take one of the frequent two-hour-long buses from the Lìjiāng long-distance bus station to Qiáotóu (Y20/US $3). At the end of your hike, Tina's Guest House can arrange for a bus ride back to Lìjiāng. Beyond Tina's, ask any guest house for help with your route and getting back to Lìjiāng.
ROUTE: On your first day, try hiking from Jane's Guest House in Qiáotóu to the Half Way Guesthouse (about 10 miles). On the second day, it's another 10 miles from Half Way to Tina's, Middle Tiger Leaping Rock, Walnut Garden, and back to Tina's for the bus back to Qiáotóu. Resilient and adventurous trekkers can continue to the ferry pier in Daju and then on for at least two more days to Hābā and Báishuĭtái. The trail for this extended hike isn't as obvious; Sean's Guest House or Woody's Guest House in Walnut Garden can help you with a route or arrange a guide. View my route and download the Without Baggage Tiger Leaping Gorge GPS track in GPX or KML format.

Copyright © 2000 - 2012 by Hank Leukart, All Rights Reserved. This essay, A battle of wills, originally appeared on Without Baggage. You do not have permission to reproduce this content in any other form or context.

Photographs: Cottonwood and Marble Canyon, Death Valley, Ca.

Hank Leukart — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 00:00:00 PST

New Without Baggage photographs: A four-day backpacking trip through Marble and Cottonwood Canyons in Death Valley National Park.

Copyright © 2000 - 2012 by Hank Leukart, All Rights Reserved. This photograph collection, Cottonwood and Marble Canyon, Death Valley, Ca., originally appeared on Without Baggage. You do not have permission to reproduce this content in any other form or context.

Photographs: California Riding and Hiking Trail, Joshua Tree, Ca.

Hank Leukart — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:00:00 PST

New Without Baggage photographs: A three-day backpacking trip on Joshua Tree National Park’s California Riding and Hiking Trail.

Copyright © 2000 - 2012 by Hank Leukart, All Rights Reserved. This photograph collection, California Riding and Hiking Trail, Joshua Tree, Ca., originally appeared on Without Baggage. You do not have permission to reproduce this content in any other form or context.

Chinese propaganda, in miniature

Hank Leukart — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 00:00:00 PST

Chinese propaganda, in miniature

Have you ever missed a flight and ended up at Genghis Khan horseback battle reenactment?

This is the fifth essay in a series about traveling across Southern China. Start with the first essay to get the whole story.

SHĒNZHÈN, Guăngdōng, China — I’m incredulous that my cell phone reads 7:45 AM and I’m still in my Hong Kong hostel in Causeway Bay. HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE!? I wonder. Okay, if I leave now, I can still make it to my flight, I tell myself. But I’m in total denial. Boarding my 9:55 AM flight to Guìlín at the nearby Shēnzhèn airport is a preposterous fantasy, because the bus trip from Hong Kong requires a stop at both Hong Kong’s and mainland-China’s immigration checkpoints (under the same roof), a trip which, at a minimum, takes 90 minutes.

Nevertheless, the obvious obstacles don’t faze me. I WILL MAKE IT, DEFINITELY! I tell myself. I’m a religious airport optimist, believing that I can make it to any flight departure on time, if I just have enough faith. I pack up as fast as I can, almost murder the hostel owner for taking ten minutes to find my deposit money, sprint to the Hong Kong subway, and slide into the bus station just in time for the 8:15 AM bus to the airport. Maybe the immigration officers are running efficiently today, I think, continuing my insane optimism.

Amazingly, they barely look at my passport — apparently, there’s no one on Earth trying to sneak illegally from Hong Kong (considered the world’s freest economy) into mainland China — and I speed through both immigration checkpoints in about ten minutes. Still, I don’t arrive at the airport check-in desk for Air China until 10:10 AM. Even now, I continue my delusion, sure that the woman at the desk will tell me that the flight has been delayed. Instead, she tells me matter-of-factly, without any sense of apology, that the flight departed 15 minutes before my arrival. She tells me that the next flight isn’t for another 12 hours.

In my American way, every possible flight and airport permutation runs through my head, and I ask her to search for flights from all airports within a four-hour bus ride to all airports within four hours of Guìlín. The fear of the inevitable destruction of my eternal airport optimism combined with the prospect of being trapped for the day in Shēnzhèn — one of China’s Special Economic Zones (SEZ), in which the free market reigns, but the beautiful outdoors does not — is making me ill.

In her Chinese way, she pushes a few keys on her keyboard and reports back: “It impossible.” She smiles. I frown.

I AM GOING TO VOMIT ON THIS CHINESE FAMILY, I think as I take a bite of a cheeseburger in the Shēnzhèn airport’s McDonald’s (apparently, Communism is dead in the SEZs). I realize that my rule about never eating non-native food in foreign countries exists for a reason; I don’t know what I’ve put in my mouth, but it shares no DNA with American fast food (which, admittedly, is bad to begin with). The families in the McDonald’s look at me like I’m crazy when I spit out my bite of “hamburger” and discard my entire inedible sandwich and inedible French fries. They should just be happy that they’re not covered in vomit, I think.

I spend a couple hours moping. I wish that a band of Chinese con artists would appear and try to scam me out of $10,000, because anything would be more fun than sulking in this airport, I think. The word “anything” arrives in my brain as a realization. I check my backpack at a luggage storage desk and jump aimlessly onto the Shēnzhèn subway. (Though the US has a woefully inadequate, crumbling transportation infrastructure, China has 16 major cities with mass transit rail systems and 16 more cities’ subways scheduled to be completed in the next three years.)

As I analyze the subway map, two stops catch my eye, mostly because their names are abnormally written in English: “Window of the World” and “Overseas China Town.” Using my phone, I learn that Window of the World is a Chinese theme park boasting 130 miniature reproductions of the world’s most famous tourist attractions. I’m intrigued, but, then, I read about another theme park called Splendid China Folk Village (at “Overseas China Town”) which has miniaturizations of China’s important historical sites and faux villages featuring clothing, architecture, and the daily life of China’s 56 ethnic minorities. Though I’m a little worried about what will happen to my ego when surrounded by miniatures — already, my six-foot tall height makes me huge in China — I’ve been interested in learning more about China’s minorities since I set foot in the mainland. I’m also excited to see The Great Wall (even in miniature), because it’s not on my itinerary for this southern-China-only trip.

In the park, overwhelmed by its size, I try to consult a posted “Total Navigational Chart” — seriously, it’s like all Chinese translators are trained at Getting Your Point Across in the Wackiest Way Possible University — but the Chinese characters on the map seem to negate my inherent map-reading ability. So, I wander around, without direction, past a traditional dance show and toward a street of food vendors, where I buy and eat a sweet, unidentified Chinese pastry. Soon, I start feeling like Alice in Wonderland, towering over both the miniature historical sights and the park’s Chinese tourists. BEWARE OF ME: I’M A TERRIFYING, ENORMOUS GIANT FROM CALIFORNIA! I want to yell.

Yet, stomping around as some kind of off-kilter, Western ogre, seeing all of China’s important historical landmarks as miniatures, in a single hour, feels hollow. It’s sad to see the Leshan “Grand” Buddha Statue — the 233-foot-tall original is the tallest pre-modern statue in the world — at a height of only 40 feet, despite the park’s nonsensical boasting of the reproduction’s “excellent facilities like awful posture, bold lines, concordant proportion, serene expression, graceful bearing.” Beijing’s Forbidden City looks more like more like a Playmobil toy than something awe inspiring. But, I do get my only chance to see the Great Wall of China — in miniature, made with six million hand-laid bricks, with Shēnzhèn apartment buildings towering behind it.

I hope this guy knows that I know that this isn’t the real Great Wall, I think, when I ask a miniature tourist to take a photo of me in front of it.

Next, I galumph through the park’s “folk villages,” which, to my Western eye, seem a lot like Chinese government propaganda exploiting the country’s ethnic minorities. The People’s Republic of China takes great pains to appear magnanimous toward its minorities, but international watchdogs frequently criticize the government for human rights violations and its brutal treatment of its Tibetan and Uyghur minorities (not unlike the US’s historical treatment of Native Americans). Incidentally, a Splendid China theme park operated in Orlando, Florida between 1993 and 2003 frequently attracted protesters claiming that the Chinese-government-owned park was just a huge piece of Communist propaganda. I try to think of an equally-dubious, analogous U.S. propaganda piece — like a Native American theme park with a miniature village for each tribe — but only Epcot’s (very different) World Showcase comes to mind. But, since I seem to be the only person in the park worried about the park’s affected tone, I sit back and enjoy the shows. I watch members of China’s Yao minority compete in a top spinning competition, the Miao minority harvest coconuts, and the Bai minority perform a folk dance in traditional costumes. I don’t learn much, because, as usual, I can’t understand anything that anyone is saying. If only it were possible to learn Mandarin in three weeks, I wish.

After the folk dance, I notice that everyone in the park seems to be heading in one direction, so, I follow them into a stadium in the center of the park. Everyone in the stands seems intensely excited. Soon enough, I’m watching a gleeful horse battle reenactment titled “Unparalleled Hero,” in which Mongol-leader Genghis Khan “complete[s] the great undertaking to unite all tribes and establish Great Mongolia Empire via years’ hard warfare based on his firm will and outstanding military talent.” In short, it seems, the show is about Genghis Khan forcing the region’s ethnic minorities to succumb to his military might.

I have no idea how to reconcile the assimilation theme of the horse battle show (a sort-of gloating reenactment of Custer’s Last Stand) with the minority village shows I’ve just seen.

After the show ends, as I tramp out of the park — looming over the miniature Great Wall of China one last time — nonsensical Chinese propaganda messages tumble through my head. I make a mental note to delve more into China’s relationship with its ethnic minorities, once I’ve shrunken back to my normal size.

Read the next essay in this series about traveling across Southern China, in which I hike through Tiger Leaping Gorge and find myself in a battle of wills with a Chinese farmer.

How to Visit Splendid China Folk Village in Shēnzhèn, Guăngdōng, China

OVERVIEW: Splendid China Folk Village Theme Park boasts 82 miniature reproductions of China's most well-known tourist attractions as well as 21 fake villages designed to educate visitors about China's 56 ethnic minorities.
LOGISTICS: After arriving in Shēnzhèn, take the Metro's Green Line to the OCT (Overseas China Town) stop. No, I have no idea what this station name means, but it's a tourist resort neighborhood -- comprising parks Splendid China Folk Village, Window of the World, and Happy Valley -- akin to Anaheim, California and Orlando, Florida. From there, it's a 2-minute walk to the Splendid China Folk Village entrance. Admission is Y120/US $20. Luggage can be checked at the entrance if necessary.

Copyright © 2000 - 2012 by Hank Leukart, All Rights Reserved. This essay, Chinese propaganda, in miniature, originally appeared on Without Baggage. You do not have permission to reproduce this content in any other form or context.