Thirty years after my daughter Maile's Himalayan initiation, a 125-mile trek along Bhutan's Snowman route, we recently repeated the ritual with Maile's 8-year-old daughter, Ua. Only this time around, we were “glamping” with a pack train, a cook, and a guide that spoke perfect English and had actually been to our final destination!
This year, at the end of three months in Bhutan, Pakistan, and India, I was powerfully drawn to the slums of Lahore and Kolkata: their rich color, their fascinating characters, and especially their friendly and open people. Feeling both safe and spellbound, I roamed Kolkata's worst slums day and night, meeting hustlers, con artists, thieves, drug dealers, prostitutes, addicts and beggars...as well as lots of honest, hard-working people including quite a fewhijra,or transsexuals.