Club Member Spotlight

A Life Changing Event by Dale Blanchard

It is a given among travelers that there are meaningful trips from which you return a changed person. In addition, there are occasionally specific events that that precipitate those changes. Here is one of mine:

My then-wife, Marie, and I were traveling in Baltistan, a small protectorate of Pakistan. I was talking to the chief of police while filling out some forms. He had just asked how many countries we had visited in our travels and we had given him a number.

“Are you a wealthy man?” he asked.
“Oh, good heavens no,” I replied.
“Then how can you visit so many countries?”

Ah, a most interesting question. I considered for a moment. “We live in a small house,” I began.

“I live in a small house,” the chief responded. “Mine is made of mud.”

Not much point in mentioning our old, olive-green living room carpet, still in place from the ‘60s, and which so embarrasses our daughter. How could I convince this man, who lived in a tiny mud house with a dirt floor, that I was not wealthy, knowing that when I got home I would drive up my driveway, push a button in my car, and a whole section of one wall of my house would slide upward and I would drive, car and all, inside?

How could I convince this man, who no doubt got most of his vegetables from a stone-walled terrace next to his house, that I was not wealthy when I knew that if I went to the produce section of Safeway I would find six varieties of fresh mushrooms, four different kinds of lettuce, fruits beyond his wildest imagination?

How could I convince this man, who probably had to personally kill, skin, and clean a chicken if he wanted meat, that I was not wealthy when I knew that the meat section of that same Safeway store had packages of meat, beef, chicken, turkey, all prepared by someone else, all fresh, all laid out neatly for me to choose?

How could I convince this man, who probably ate rice, lentils, and apricots almost every meal that I was not wealthy when I knew that if I didn’t feel like cooking, we could simply go out? Do you want Chinese, Thai, Korean, Ethiopian, Middle-Eastern, Indian, Italian? Perhaps you’re in the mood for Mexican. Or maybe the salad bar at the Sizzler? How about Fresh Choice? Greek, you say? Of course! Sorry I didn’t think of it myself.

He saw me struggling. “I guess I was just born unlucky,” he said.

“No,” I wanted to tell him, “You were not born unlucky. In fact, you were born quite lucky. You can read and write, you have a job, a government job that has a pension waiting at the end. Most of your countrymen are far less lucky. You are only unlucky when you compare yourself to me. You were not born unlucky. It’s just that I was born incredibly, indescribably, unbelievably lucky.” But I didn’t tell him that. There was no way I could have made myself understood.

A large, magnificent mountain, but not significant enough to have been named.	Another insignificant mountain
We checked our map one day and discovered that we were surrounded by five mountains of this caliber, all over 25,000 feet high. They still were not named.	Looking down to the village of Khaplu
Another view of Khaplu	Marie sitting at the table where the police chief and I sat having our discussion

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