Airport hotel bars, flashback to 1985 on the radio, bizarre snacks yet kind of delicious. Having hurtled through space on a packed crying baby kind of flight, here I am in Dubai.

It won’t be the gold plated, shiny Dubai of some of my fellow travelers. No, my time here feels more like Cleveland before the rust belt bust, except there’s Aljazeera on the TV and not CNN and the world looks mighty scary out there in TV Land, all of a sudden so much closer to me than my cow town. The men are in non-western wear (including one with some spectacular Elvis sideburns and pompadour) and right now there are no nice women in sight. This is not the USA.

Some times the getting to is part of the arriving. When was the last time I heard the song The Lady in Red? Foreigner? So many trips backwards in time, with music. Just when I am at the middle part of getting somewhere is when I clear out the cobwebs. What happened last weekend seems less important, work begins to fade, space is made in my mind for the next weeks new sights, and a small tunnel to those old thoughts is opened up.

Nepal, this time tomorrow.