Adios, Rat Race

Seanie & Steve & Baby in Sri Lanka

My father newly dead, I awoke in Sri Lanka and found out I had plans to hike into the Himalayas. Stunned, I went along without planning. Later on this day, an angry elephant sow would chase both me and Steve; he plunged down a muddy ravine to escape, and I got on the other side of a thick tree and talked the elephant out of her rage. First time i used my voice to calm a wild animal, but not the last. Sri Lanka was called "Ceylon" by the colonialists and "Serendib" by its euro-discoverers. The latter word comes from serendipity, to be lucky or find luck. Sri Lanka was a lucky place for me to start my adult explorations of the world.

fotografer unknown

Cat and Nepali Coke

Hybrids of both creatures, cat and cola. Wildness in the former, ginger in the latter, along with caffeine. One of our first stops in our steps up into the Himal. Tea houses along the way, charging a dime for a lemon tea, a dollar for a big lunch of rice and lentils.

foto by stephen f. correl

Annapurna

One of Steve's best photos. You cannot imagine the scale of the place. This shot was taken at around 15,000 feet, as high as any place in the continental U.S., and the top of the mountain is around 23,000 feet. The air is cold, clear, sharp.

foto by Stephen F. Correl

from my journal:

Annapurna South, 7.a.m. International Lodge, Chomro.
Not really a peak, move a pile of stones mounded to 24,000 feet. Two big scars: One rides from top to bottom., more of a ridge than a cleft, like the spine on a prehistoric demon; the other cuts west to east on the south face, a hideous valley that runs several thousand feet to the large valley that slopes from between that mountain and the ridge to Hiunchuli. Sturdy thing!

Blue on the Edge of Annapunra's Moraine

Dumb trick. Two thousand foot fall beneath my feet.

FOTO: STEPHEN F. CORREL

Steve Correl on top of Annapurna Moraine

Actually Steve is hanging off the ridge of the moraine which cleaves the Annapurna Sanctuary in half. He is at about 14,500 feet, and the valley floor beneath his feet is at slightly over 10,000 feet. About four Empire State Buildings below. I took this picture with my foot tamped hard on his arm just out of the frame. He took a picure of me doing the same pose; our mothers when we got back from the Himalaya almost fainted in fright.

Nepali Girl

One of Steve's most widely published pictures.

foto by Stephen F. Correl

Indhira is dead

Freaky few days at the border as we try to get into India despite the flow of Sikhs out. Indhira has been gunned down by her Sikh bodyguards, and the trains around the country run with bludgeoned corpses of Sikhs unlucky to find themselves in insanely angry mobs. Steve and I bribed our way into the country, and then commandeered a bus all the way to Varanasi. Mobs would meet us at every town, and we would give our version of events from the other towns we had driven through. Our driver seemed to think of us as charms, since the crowds weren't interested in beating up a couple of white freaks.

foto is from my journals

Blue in Disguise at Border Crossing

More to come.

foto by Stephen F. Correl

In Strange Winds in the Atacama Desert

Eerie photo of an eerie place, where the winds blow out to sea, and where the land curves as smooth as a billiard ball into the ocean. One mis-step, and you will tumble for thousands of meters into the freezing Pacific. The figure in the pisture is me, leaning against the fierce winds. The carvings into the hills are locally made and fairly recent, and come with all sorts of alien literature. Modeled on the Nazca lines, but hardly necessary given the shocking physical conditions of the desert running along Peru's coast to Chile.

Steve left for the USA shortly after this picture, and I continued southward to Puerto Montt before cutting across the Andes to Buenos Aires and Rio. I managed a circular route back trhough the Amazon to Iquitos and then Lima, where Steve and I touched down after the Glapagos and Guayaquil. I arrived at the Miami airport with thirty cents in my pocket. And my life was no longer my own.

foto Stephen F. Correl

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Nairobi Bus Not Stopping

Bustle. Nairobi. Bus is moving.

foto stephen f. correl

Blue Showers in Serengeti Rains

Not much more to say than the title. We were four in the Suzuki, and the rains were my best chance at getting clean. I told Ivan and John Johnson they should avail themselves of the water, and Ivan's icy reply was: "We don't need to bathe, thank you. We're British."

foto stephen f. correl

Silver Jackals, Meru

FOTO: STEPHEN F. CORREL

Rhinos Wake Blue

Woke up to a commotion, and this picture was snapped perhaps three minutes after I scrambled out of our tent. Wide-lipped "white" rhinos, six of them, the last in Meru, bustling through our camp accompanied by an armed guard looking for a beer and complaining dramatically about his lack of pay and respect.

FOTO: STEPHEN F. CORREL

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Dini Din, Kampala Bus Depot

I would hunt him down almost 20 years later because of how he saved our bacon in the shredded mess that was Kampala when I first visited the city. Amin was gone, but Obote had just left two years before, and he was a magnitude of evil worse than Amin.

photo by Stephen F. Correl, printed out and pasted into my journal, and scanned

Interview Notes with Biologist Craig Sholley

Note No. 2:

My shorthand for Sholley's story about meeting Dian Fossey for the first time: He'd trekked into the jungle after a long commute straight from Baltimore, accompanied by the biologist Ian Redmond, who was a friend of Fossey's. Sholley was wet and tired when they reached Fossey's cabin and Redmond knocked on the door. Fossey opened it and stood in the doorway with a carving knife in one hand and a loaf of bread in the other: "Who's the tourist you brought with you?" she snarled and then threw the bread at Sholley. "I'm just happy she threw the bread at me and not the knife," says Sholley to me, smiling. We visited him in Rwanda when he was the director of the mountain gorilla program there.

With artists hitch-hiking in work truck

Cannot remember where this was, but possibly on the road to Kigali from the mountain gorilla project in the jungle, where we met Thomas and Christine. He traveled six months in Africa and took dozen large-format pictures. She would design a beautiful booklet on Tanzanian paper with her ink sketches of the trip. They are from Liege. best thing I've seen coming from Belgium.

foto by stephen f. correl

Concert in Kigali

FOTO: STEPHEN F. CORREL

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Willy in Mack

We hitched a ride with Willy from Kigali to Nairobi taking the track south of Lake Victoria. Amazing experience.

foto stephen f. correl

The Mack Crossing Tanzania

We left Kigali on a Friday, and took six days to cross over mostly dirt track beneath Lake Victoria to Nairobi. Every day was an eye-popping adventure, including fatal truck crashes, bandits, and crazed villagers looking for fertile husbands.

FOTO: STEPHEN F. CORREL

Blue with Mr. Ali, Hotel Iqbal

More to come.

foto stephen f. correl

Lemur in the hostal at Ambila Lematso

Madagascar is a trip. This lemur was habituated and insisted on grooming every bit of hair on your body you allowed him (her?) to groom.

PHOTO BY STEPHEN F. CORREL

Madagascar Expenses Page

More to come.

Blue Gets ready, Seychelles

More to come.

foto correl

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