I am doing it once again. I am leaving. That long trek across the globe that is as unforgiving as it is tedious. No longer do I feel the excitement of being on a plane, traveling unfathomable distances in mere days. Instead, knowing that I have done this before, I give into a quiet resolve. Only counting the day before I arrive into the parallel universe that is my other home, Nepal.

There is a strange cocktail of emotions that I experience every time I leave. Nostalgia, sadness, excitement at seeing what has changed, anxiety, trepidation, missing my family and friends even before I have left them. I inevitably try to cram in as many experiences as possible to produce fond memories until the next time I see them…

And, of course, a certain amount of inner chaos, guilt, and questioning goes on in the days leading to my flight… “Why do I do this? Why do I leave? Am I doing the right thing? Will I ever settle down again?”

The answer is always compelling to me, because I am not certain “why” I just “know.”

I am fully aware what is in store for me. I am taking the route I enjoy the most and with the best in flight movies. I love leaving Newark, New Jersey and waking up in New Delhi, India. It feels like crossing worlds, not continents.

As soon as I step off the tarmac, pass through immigration and grab my luggage and make my way towards the crowds of people yelling, the smell always hits, this overwhelming masala of smells that can only be found in Delhi. It is a combination of rotting garbage, sweet smells of chat stalls, curries, exhaust, and the essence human beings all mixed into an aroma that is choking the first time you smell it. Then and only then does the brain register the heat.

The heat is impossible, or one would think, but millions of people are still able to live- and thrive- in it. It just takes the body a little while to realize “I can do this…” All it takes is a little more focus than usual on breathing, and realizing that it really is impossible to suffocate because of the dense nature of the air.

I know I am going back to a Kathmandu that is in the throws of political chaos, fuel, water and food shortages, and limited electricity, which is really nothing new. In fact, I love getting a front row seat to the beginning of a new (maybe) Republic.

So this is just the beginning of yet another adventure. I invite everyone reading this to come along, as I am certain it will be as uncertain, chaotic and entertaining as before.

Until yesterday, airports, despite their stress, had always given me a rush. I’ve always loved walking confidently through any terminal with some trendy new handbag across my chest. O’Hare with its Accenture ads, neon-mod walkway, Mrs. Fields cookies and convenient gates. DIA with its Native American art, view of the plains, ridiculous tram and turquoise for sale. JFK with its dodgy Union Station bar, sunglassed heads and no-nonsense staff. Paris with its silly airbus system, original metrosexuals and hottie flight attendants. For years, airports were the beginning of something good. Sure, they were also fraught with stress and schedules, but I kinda live for that shit. And running through an airport makes for a very good story.

I swallowed my first spoonful of reverse culture shock yesterday at Queen Alia Airport in Amman. Our destination: Erbil, Iraq or Kurdistan. This had been a big decision for us—we’d labored over it for weeks. But not because it was Iraq. We’d researched Erbil extensively, found a couchsurfer, received two friend-of-a-friend testimonials and read blogs and even tourism articles. We knew we wanted to go. We knew it was safe to go. The problem was the money. This one transaction would be more than we’d spent in our first six weeks of traveling. But with complicated visa issues coming in and out of Syria and the PKK at the Turkish border, this was the only way.

We were going.

Wearing our most presentable attire and switching my backpack to rolling mode, we arrived precisely at 10:00 for our noon flight. With little signage, all we could do was follow the crowd and look for our airline’s logo. At some unidentified time, some unidentified person gave an unidentified signal, which prompted the waiting area of Arab businessmen and Muslim vacationers headed for Dubai to jam their way toward a small security passageway. This happened just as Michael returned with a sandwich and a latte.

Note: typical airport stress.

But because we’d been taking cheap buses and trains for the past three months, because we’d rarely maintained a schedule that wasn’t 100% flexible and because we’d learned that hurrying takes all the fun out of traveling, we weren’t used to fighting for a place in line.

The difference today was four-figure prices. Suddenly, a schedule mishap was NOT an option.

Note: switch to present tense to increase panic level.

Michael expertly slides the sandwich plate into the top of his backpack and hands me the coffee while putting everything on his back. We attack the line from both sides in pitiful coordination and end up together just in time. After a quick passport inspection, a man who would within minutes make everything more complicated than it needs to be because he was in search of a tip, grabs my bag and leads me toward a conveyer belt, nodding and yelling CHECK! just a little too loudly again and again.

Suddenly unable to think for ourselves, we think: check? But no! We don’t want to check our carryon bags. He motions me one way and Michael another. But no! We’re together! But then we realize that DUH we are not checking our luggage yet. And that DUH, we are in the Middle East and there are gender-separated lines. Though I’ve blogged about it before, I am struck once again at how being treated like a child turns you INTO a child. This time the result being a man in a blue suit who now wants a tip.

Then there is that horrible confusion about which one of us has the tickets and which one of us has the passports and I am left wondering how I have been reduced to someone who MUST have her coffee and therefore carries it through airport security.

But then I am pushed toward the “Ladies Inspection Area” and there is no line and the buzzer keeps sounding and the woman behind the curtain keeps saying BACK! BACK! but never indicates when to come forward and I finally get there and I think she’s trying to tell me to take the lid off my coffee but I’m not really sure I don’t want to because OBVIOUSLY that’s where my bomb is hidden but when start to she indicates for me to put the COFFEE through the conveyor belt and I’m like: WHAT? But that’s what I do. And then I cut back in line, playing hardball with the rest of them and I am finally frisked by this same women who gets ruder by the second and I come out to find my purse and a man yells “Who is this coffee?” And I’m all defensive and say: “But she told me to put it there!” pointing in no uncertain terms at the women hiding in her curtained box and then some man hands it to me across the machine and I look over and watch Michael being interrogated by a man at a small brown desk with not enough to do, who I will soon find out is confiscating his rechargeable camera batteries because basically, he has to confiscate SOMETHING.

So, for the record, I am now incredibly annoyed with three people who are all basically just doing their job the best they can. I can feel the tightening of my skin as entitlement (I paid big money for this flight! Don’t treat me like shit!) and arrogance (Can you BELIEVE how disorganized this country is? And why can’t they speak a LITTLE more English?) pop my skin into the loofah-crying scales of a reptilian monster.

From here, things only get worse. We are due to depart in 40 minutes. Another wait, an immigration window, and another round of frisking later, we are somehow in the holding area for a flight to Milan. Which does explain the barrage of middle-aged German women with big pocketbooks and Frommer’s Guides, but does not help our current cause. It turns out our flight is not boarding yet. What can we do but believe someone and have a seat? I dive into Sudoku, Michael goes into his meditation mode and we attempt to change our energy before the next panic attack hits roughly twenty minutes later.

Note: Back to past tense.

In the end, we departed two hours late because of a delay in Baghdad. The flight was uneventful and I even got a shot of Michael in front of the Iraqi Airways-plastered plane before the flight attendant told me to “kindly put away my camera.”

But we felt we’d been slapped in the face by familiar patterns of the past. What hassle! What stress! If only we could have taken a bus!

Was money behind this negative energy? Could it be that lavish expenditures turn me into an instant asshole? It made some sense. The original paradigm is about possessions. When you have an expensive camera, you have to worry about losing that expensive camera, about someone stealing that expensive camera, about damaging that expensive camera. And it’s worth asking: Is the expensive camera’s benefits worth the stressful experience of keeping track of it? About the witch I become while I worry?

Our airline tickets represented the same quandary. Had they been worth it?

Yes. While jewelry, excessive gadgetry or $100 sunglasses are not, the flight was. The trick is to simply internalize frustration and panic, maintaining pleasant expressions, measured movements and soft-spoken, head-tilting reactions while the world goes to pieces in front of you.

Yes. Well. Of course. Next time I’ll know. But damn that G.I. Joe. It sure doesn’t feel like half the battle.

The other day we realized that we’d hit hotel bottom here in Amman.

Besides the piles of decade-old dirt in the corners, the obscene toilet, and the smelly blankets, its usually about 50 degrees in our room. To combat the cold, we’ve been sleeping together in one very small bed to keep warm. Which would be a good idea, except that due to our two-inch thick, malformed mattress, it’s like sleeping in a bathtub, with both side at a 70 degree slope. The owner, gold-toothed Tony, with his cardigan, Palestinian symbolizing keyeffieh and New York baseball camp shuffles around with his father and another unidentified mustachioed man. Mealy but mellow and always acting as though he just smoked a doobie, Tony embodies flow. Which would be great if the whole place didn’t have such a nursing home feel to it. Or if he didn’t tell smokers it was okay to “ash on the floor”. Or if the alley its in didn’t include a bum hangout.

But here we are, at $10 a night in the Cliff hole hotel, boiling eggs, drinking Nescafe coffee, sleeping in our clothes and finding a sliver of sunlight to sit in as we start the day. And we’re still lovin’ this life, always ready to get on the road again, goin’ places that we’ve never been, seeing places that we’ll never see again. (We usually can’t wait) to get on the road again.

(Graphic compliments of the graphic wizardess and new mother, Keri Smith at Wish Jar)

Willie Nelson. . . .Herman Hess, maybe mixing icons is a little like mixing metaphors. Just another rule I’m choosing to break.

We’re alive and doing fab. Please don’t anyone worry about a thing.

One of the things we’re accustomed to, in our nomadic life, is the presence of second-world elevators. The kind where you actually watch the rectangle floors go by, like some kind of early 90’s thriller where the journalist resorts to microfiche in the downtown library.

Some elevators are also void of short-term memory. So, for example, if you get in with a fellow stranger and you push Floor 8 and then they push Floor 2, the elevator will go to Floor 8 and then settle into sleep as if it’s job is finished.

We know about the quirks.

A few weeks ago, in the beginning of Beirut, we were in an elevator destined for the fourth floor Inma Center office. As we rode, I thought out loud, (as my inner monologue is so completely worn out from keeping quiet in front of all these strangers!)

“I wonder what happens when the electricity goes off while you’re in the elevator?”

And at that very moment (and I mean that VERY moment) like a good drama student should, the elevator slowly came to a stop between floors.

So we pushed another button. And it began moving (whew), landing between another couple floors (ack). And we did that again. And then we did that again. Ffffuuuuu. . . .and, eyes squeezed shut, we rode to the bottom, where I banged open the door and embraced the stairs.

Michael rode back up. Show off.

We were rolling on a smooth highway. Mercedes’—some asphalt scraping and others probably purchased outright—wove past. Rob, the Dutch director of Inma Foundation, a group which helps disadvantaged communities of Lebanon, including Palestinian refugees, was at the wheel of this Land Rover, positive energy sprouting from his expression. Eagles sang We Are the Sultans. . .The Monday before, we’d had dinner with Suzanne, a friend of my friend Kelly Korak, a talented graphic designer in Denver. Suzanne volunteers for Inma. In a whirlwind discovery of matched skills and needs, cooperation naturally came about. In exchange for a free flat, a loaned laptop and a small stipend, Michael would design a website and create mini documentaries on their projects. I would organize and compose their content and stories.

Today, we were on the way home from South Lebanon, where Michael had filmed and photographed Inma’s renovation project of a village impacted by the Lebanon-Israel Summer War of 06.

Now, from the west, cypress, stone and sea glared at me, powerful with sunshine. You see, it all screamed, you’ll never figure out this country. Not even if you stayed a lifetime.

Seasonal canvas signs reached out from the medians. First a row of red McDonald’s ads in Arabic. Then a soft beige variety, announcing the Shiite Muslim holiday of Ashouraa, a ten-day period of memorial and prayer for Hussein, grandson of Mohammed, a martyr slain by the Sunni Muslim sect aver 1400 years ago.

As we entered greater Beirut, the cars slowed, forced to make their own decisions (which included parking and ramming) at four-way intersections void of stoplights or traffic cops. Meanwhile, tanks guarded embassy walls. Trendy, black-and-white, Von Dutch fatigue’d troops, youthful and shouldering assault rifles, patrolled the empty, sepia-toned house of parliament, where elections had been delayed for the 12th time since November. The government was choosing their battles. Literally. And when they couldn’t elect a president, vehicular misdemeanors hadn’t even made the spreadsheet. Of course, neither had electricity–outages were daily, frequent and for hours at a time. Mass transit was non-existent. Saltwater ran from our tap. DSL was a joke. While yellow cranes and bulldozers swung to life by 7 AM, clicking together a lego-land of investment from Lebanese who’d fled abroad in the last quarter century, state-owned skyscrapers stared out to sea with dark empty sockets, skeletons with no closet.

In Hamra, Lebanon could be described as chaos driving a Lexus, confusion carrying a Prada pocketbook, conflict ordering a grand latte. It was the inverse paradigm of the traditional developing country. Rather than shirt-off-their-back hospitality wrapped in a corrugated-tin-topped shack, we found this neighborhood in shades and shopping at Mango, attempting to hide the heartache of war, ignore the instability and ride the melo-dramatic rollercoaster of a power struggle which goes up and down and around again.

In our middle class Muslim neighborhood, coiffed men sold magazines, pasta, shampoo and tahini from tidy grocery stores on narrow streets lined with barricades, each striped in red and stenciled with a green tree, the Lebanese flag. Nearby, lavish home interior boutiques sold velour throw pillows and hallmark cards. Sweet shops boasted 47 different kinds of nuts. Riots about bread prices recently occurred–so we heard. If you wanted food fast, Pizza Hut delivered.

Not far away, ten-year olds used plywood for guns as they played in a field of trash. Unscrubbed potatoes rolled around a corner wagon. Under Saeb Salem Boulevardskirted women sold spinach. Out near the airport, what started as a Palestinian Refugee Camp in 1947 had become more like a Palestinian Quarter of poverty.And a few miles from there was Spinneys, an extra-strength shopping plaza full of high-priced, imported cottage cheese, Campbells Tomato Soup, and all that crap you buy at Target, too. Attached was a McDonalds, a Starbucks and a Claires in case you needed some cubic zirconia with your Coke.

But our flat, where we eat, sleep and watch Carnivale, (because, you know, we need something dark and brooding in our life) , is the biggest oxymoron of them all. Here, the drapes are more like DRRRRAPES, ideal for a drawing room in Versailles, or maybe playclothes if, say, I happened to be a governess for English-speaking children in 1940’s Austria. Our bed is so big that if Michael farts, I can lie on the opposite side, unaffected. Nearby is a love seat–obviously the one Kate Winslet posed upon before the ship went down. Chandeliers with cherubs–some winged, some wincing–bounce from the ceiling of all seven areas. Around every corner are white-washed women in stone, each trying out for the part of the “bare-breasted nymph #2″. There are four televisions, multiple luxury appliances, two stereo systems, one piano, three scary giraffe CD holders, around twenty-five lamps and a lot of shit that has been marinated in liquid gold.Yet the walls sprout far too few outlets to support such extravagance. We found just a handful of lightbulbs in the entire place. The televisions display four fuzzy channels. Our stainless steel oven simply doesn’t function. The microwave sprouts sparks. The water cooler leaks. There is no shower curtain. The heat is confined to areas that have a door.I am certainly not complaining. But this was, this is, Beirut–schizophrenic and sure of themselves all in the same Altoid-flavored breath.