Conquering a personal Everest

The Toronto Star | Saturday, March 5th, 2011

By Cindy Fan

KHUMBU, NEPAL—It could all be for nothing, I think darkly. You could reach the summit of Kala Patthar, it could still be cloudy and you won’t be able to see a thing.

I’ve been promised that the view of the Himalayas atop Kala Patthar, an oxygen starved 5,545-metre high, is worth the effort of waking at 4:30 a.m. and pushing myself, with every ounce of strength, to take one step after another up the side of the mountain. It is what I have had to do for the last nine days to get here, and at the final test my will to keep going is failing.

An hour ago I had been burrowed deep in my sleeping bag in a tea house in Gorak Shep, a trekker’s last outpost before Nepal’s Everest Base Camp. Now, hiking in this bleak greyness, all I can think of is how desperately I want to go back to sleep and finish my dream. I had been dreaming about chicken schnitzel and beer.

Seriously.

Read on…

The door of no return in West Africa

The Toronto Star | Thursday, March 3rd, 2011

By Cindy Fan

GORÉE ISLAND, SENEGAL—There is a door on the shores of this island that looks out to the Atlantic. There isn’t much to see from it, just blue waters glittering in the hot West African sun, the pleasant lapping of waves upon rock, a naked horizon that, for a dreamer, would inspire a sense of possibility. Yet for thousands of captive slaves that passed through this “Door of No Return,” the view meant being ripped from their homeland, a horrifying voyage across an ocean, and a cruel fate.

Gorée Island (Île de Gorée) is 3 km from mainland Dakar, Senegal’s capital city. Today, the inhabited island is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a respite from Dakar’s urban hustle and on-your-toes intensity. As I arrive by ferry I see lofty palms and fuchsia bougainvilleas clinging to brightly-painted colonial buildings adorned with old world shutters and terracotta roofs. Children splash around at the beach. For centuries, Gorée served as a trading post and small port to ship goods—including human cargo—on the Atlantic trade route. Read on…

Laos spices things up with unique cuisine

The Toronto Star | Thursday, February 17th, 2011

By Cindy Fan

LUANG PRABANG, LAOS—The irony of Joy’s name doesn’t escape me as he sighs and trudges over to my cooking station to show me, once again, how to stuff the ground chicken mixture into the cut stalk of lemongrass. In all fairness, Joy is a Lao chef and cooking instructor, not a saint.

Moments earlier I had been happily exuding the confidence of a domestic goddess in pulverizing the meat with herbs via mortar and pestle, discovering my knack for culinary skills that require only brute force. Anything that requires dexterity, delicacy, finesse, coordination or patience however. . . Read on…

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