Arctic Ice Caves

By snowcat up the snow-covered glacier, we reach the crest and finally the roar and rumble of the beast comes to a halt. My redheaded, freckle-faced driver and guide, Ingrid, a 30-year old native of Svalbard, Spitsbergen, jumps out of her perch into the permafrost. She hands me my crampons and helmet and tells me the headlamp is turned on by a button on the left. Ingrid explains that the rifle is in case we encounter a polar bear on the way out of the ice cave. There is a small ditch dug out of the snow and a shovel just in case. A wood plank stands on end to one side of the ditch. Ingrid lifts it to uncover a narrow hole. She points. We are headed down she tells me. I grab the rope and try in vain to find some footing in the ice. I lower myself down the narrow hole in the ice and land hard at the bottom. What lies ahead are winding pathways cut into the glacier over the millenia by the summer melt. Every year when it freezes and the cave can be re-entered the landscape of the passageways has changed from the year before. The curving walls appear as though they will close in on each other, crushing us. We crawl, we slide, we climb and slither deeper. The cave looks like glass. The glass is ribbed, studded by giant icicles, clear or white or blue, lit only by our headlamps. There is no sound but the crackle of the ice pack under our crampons. The temperature outside is about zero farenheit, but inside the cave the farther we travel it is getting warmer, uncomfortably so as I am dressed for sub-zero conditions. My left hand is badly hurt from the day before, bruised, swolen just below the wrist, and causing me excruciating pain any time I move it. But I have no choice now. My hands, my arms, my back and legs are all needed to engage the terrain of the interior of the glacier. About an hour and a half in, we reach a small crevice filled with water. We can go no farther; it is time to turn back.

Just before we reach the rope to climb up and out of the hole we stop and drink a hot black currant juice from a thermos. Ingrid tells me about life in Svalbard when she was little. Her father worked in the coal mine. In those days, there were only miners and scientists in Spitsbergen. The miners lived in housing owned by the company. There were no shops or stores. The miners filled out a list at the company and every month the ship would come in from Norway with their kilo of sugar and other non-perishable foods. What was left of the miners`s paycheck was paid with a currency printed by the coal company and usable only in Spitsbergen. In fact, there were three different currencies, depending on whether you worked in a Russian mine, a Norwegian mine or for the government as a research scientist. But, as there was no place to shop, there was no need, and by this system, the company never really paid its workers at all. The company simply fed, clothed and sheltered the employees and their families. There was no retirement here. When the worker retired, he had to move his family out of the company housing and leave the island. Today, there is private housing and workers are paid in Norwegian kroner. Still, people generally stay only a handful of years in this place.

Climbing back out of the hole and feeling that arctic air and the sun reflecting off of the snowy cliffs feels exilerating, and worth being tossed around in the beast again back down the glacier.

78th Parallel

The beginning of March brought the first light to Spitsbergen, an island of snow and ice peaks north of the Arctic Circle, home to polar bears and itinerant scientists from Norway and Russia. There is no light here until March. It is pitch blackness. It is impossible without a watch to know whether it is 2 p.m. or 2 a.m. The sun shows up in March. By April, there will be no more sunsets. There will be no darkness, at all, but then there will be blackness again. Now there is light in the day and darkness by 9:00 p.m., but blackness only between about midnight and 4:00 a.m. I spent today dog sledding through icy peaks and snowy valleys, the black or tan or gray fur of my huskies, and the sky above, the only crack in the whiteness around me. I was thrown from my sled three times, landing on my cameras, bruising falls that have left one hand with what I hope are only badly bruised bones and no fractures. One camera is down, inoperable. I cannot tell if I it is the minus-20 degree temperatures or my unintentional flights and landings. Tomorrow will bring more adventures.

Theravada Buddhism

Throughout Southeast Asia, Buddhist monks abound, and visitors are spellbound. Theravada Buddhism is practiced most prominently in Laos, Cambodia, Burma, Thailand and Sri Lanka. The Theravada Buddhists believe that one cannot attain Nirvana by simply living an ethical life, by devotion or by the grace of gods or spirits. Rather, insight can be achieved only through experience, critical investigation and reasoning. Attaining insight is completely a matter of personal responsibility. The Buddhas are nothing more than teachers of the Noble Eightfold Path to the Four Noble Truths: (1) Dukkha (suffering), (2) Dukkha Samudaya (cause of suffering), (3) Dukkha Nirodha (cessation of suffering), and (4) Dukkha Nirodha Gamini Patapada (pathway to freedom from suffering). Suffering is the state in which all humans live, tied to the cycle of birth, illness, aging and death. We suffer due to the Five Hindrances to self-awakening and liberation from the illusion of reality: (1) sensual desire, (2) anger or ill-will, (3) sloth or boredom, (4) restlessness or worry, and (5) doubt. While not entirely impossible for a lay person to attain Nirvana, it is the monks who are thought be be on the path to enlightenment.

Laos: Land of One Million Elephants

What a difference a day makes when leaving Cambodia for Laos. While Cambodia is flat, Laos is a beautiful, lush and mountainous country, even though it is land locked. While Cambodia suffers from overwhelming poverty and illiteracy, Laos fares better, particularly as the influence of Vietnam has waned and that of Thailand has risen. Laos is notably well kept and absent the begging children common in Cambodia. On the other hand, Laos remains firmly within the sphere of communist totalitarian regimes. Like Cambodia, the French occupied and colonized Laos (90 years in Cambodia, about 50 years in Laos). After the French abandoned its colony in Laos, the royal family returned to rule the country. Under the Geneva Accord of 1962, Laos was officially recognized as a neutral state. The Vietnamese used Laos as a springboard for attacks on the French in Vietnam, ignoring Laos' neutral status. The Chinese and Vietnamese used Laos to supply loyal forces in South Vietnam, and the Americans launched a war known as the "Secret War" in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to stymie the Viet Cong. Nixon relied on airpower, dropping an average of one planeload of bombs, every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years on this tiny nation (with a population at the time of approximately 4 million). The U.S. dropped about half a ton of bombs per Laotian by 1973.

Tonle Sap

Tonle Sap is the largest lake in Southeast Asia and is home to a floating village of mostly Khmer people who live in makeshift shacks that float on the lake and are moored to the shores and to each other. Mothers and daughters barely past toddler motor in skiffs to catch up with boats carrying tourists and at breakneck speeds the young girls jump from skiff to boat with a basket of sodas or snacks in the hope of making a dollar. But the lake has its beauty and this floating community holds an undeniable fascination for those who water out to watch the sunsets.

Killing Fields

Throughout Cambodia the signs of one of the worst genocides and most horrifying and perplexing brutalities of all time are in plain view. The Khmer Rouge killed 1.7 million of its own people, brutalized millions more in horrific labor camps, starved the people and killed them when they became useless. I will be posting a series of pictures of pictures taken by the Khmer Rouge inside a high school in Phnom Penh that the Khmer Rouge converted into a torture and extermination facility, while forcing two million residents to evacuate the city into labor camps throughout the countryside. Even today, former members of the Khmer Rouge are welcomed into the ranks of one of the most corrupt and repugnant governments on the planet, a government that continues to starve its people and ensure that the populace remains illiterate and uneducated, while the "elite" fleece the country of financial support mostly from China and demand bribes and payola from the impoverished. 35% of the country makes less than $1 a day. Those who criticize the government still disappear. As the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, parents sell their 12-year old girls into prostitution as the sex tourists prey on this people's suffering.

Angkor Wat

The largest religious structure in the world by area at 120 square miles, Angkor Wat comprises roughly 1,000 ancient temples conceived and constructed from the 10th to 13th centuries. The majesty of the temples reins despite competing religious tides from Buddhism to Hinduism, during which religious symbols, statutes and carvings were erased for all time, despite robber barons, including imperialists and corrupt governments, and brutal wars. It is one of the most photographed places in the world and so, when I return, I will post only a few that are uniquely my own perspective. Merry Xmas from Angkor Wat.