Parading Around in Pakistan

For $30 million, all I had to do was find a guy. It seemed easy enough.

Fed up with student loans and usurious credit cards, I thought I'd hit the lottery for real. The U.S. Government was offering a cool 30 mil to anyone who could aid in the capture of Taliban leader Mullah Omar. What a deal!

I didn't speak Urdu, but English is the other of Pakistan's two official languages. Plus I took Spanish in high school. That's practically the same thing! How hard could conversation be? With my smartphone and its infinite number of "apps," that cash prize was as good as mine.

After landing in Peshawar, I took a cab to the outskirts of the city and figured I would ask one of the locals in or near the Pashtun tribal region of northern Pakistan.

I knocked on the door of a small hut. Without much delay, the door opened, and a stocky man with dark clothes and a warm smile welcomed me in.

"Pakheyr," he said. "Salaam, Ta sanga yee."

I stared at him blankly.

He kept on talking. I tried to say who I was in English. As soon as he heard me speak, his mood changed. He kept on speaking in his native tongue, and every so often I heard the English words "Ace Ventura" and "Pet Detective."

"No, I said. "He is an actor. I am not him."

I kept trying to explain in English, but he didn't seem to understand. So I said it again.

No, no soy Jim Carey. No soy un actor."

It didn't take. They didn't seem to understand English or Spanish. Or they thought I was lying. Either way, I must have made some sort of faux paus, because things didn't seem to be going over very well. Then the man of the house broke into a sinister looking grin and grabbed a huge knife about the size of his forearm.

"I kill you, Jim Carrey." And with that he lunged at me. Uh oh! I twisted out of the way just in time. The man barrelled past me and crashed into his own kitchen.

Man, I'm outta here! While my opponent was disoriented from the crash, I bolted out of that house faster than the time I walked out of The Cable Guy.

I sprinted for hours until I had left the temperate climate of Peshawar behind--long behind. The modern city had since vanished from sight and the tribal villages were fewer and further between until they disappeared entirely. The green scenery had turned to white.

I had entered the Himalayas! Ah the safety of the snow. It was cold, though. Damn cold. I opened my backpack to put on my jacket. Ah, that felt better. At least I had come prepared for the weather.

I still had to figure out where I was. I didn't even know which way was north. I pulled out my Galaxy Samsung S2 and decided to get a GPS on my location.

Before I had time to figure out where I was, I saw an animal running towards me. Oh no! A Snow Leopard! I was exhausted from my marathon up the mountain, and now some Himalayans snow leopard was going to eat me alive!

What a way to go. Instead of tracking my location on a map, I decided to take a photo of the killer cat so that at least my friends and family would know how it ended.

But the sleek snow leopard didn't care for me. The little leopard saw a tree and leaped, shaking its branches and playing in the snow. Maybe he didn't see me?

He jumped and jumped and like a little kitten. Come to think of it, he was a kitten. Judging by his size, there was no way this was a full grown mountain cat. My heart stopped again, where was this boy's mother? If she saw me, I'd be leopard lunch. 

Groar! She growled like Chewbacca. Seriously. That's what snow leopards sound like. Or I was just delirious from being out of breath and nearly a mile above sea level. Or possibly just the fear induced by a giant jungle cat running towards me. Maybe it was a combination of all three. Was she going to teach her cub how to kill humans? The baby cub ran. I was terrified. NOOOOO!!

I let out a blood curdling scream. This was it. I was a goner for sure. Come to think of it, I even sounded like Jim Carrey when I screamed. Maybe I was Jim Carrey after all! Maybe the villager was right! I can't escape fate! This is the end!

I my raging cowardice, I hadn't notice that the cub was actually running away from me. The momma had called off her baby and I was safe. I thanked my lucky stars that momma snow leopards find me both totally harmless and not very tasty.

With that, the two snow leopards marched away, up further into the Heavens. My second brush with death had been averted. Now I only needed to figure out where I was and where to go. I took out my phone: no reception. No idea where I was. It was getting dark. I couldn't even tell which way was north. I heard some crunching in the snow. Where the snow leopards coming up behind me?

"Bravo has found the chicken. I repeat, Bravo has found the chicken."

Huh?

I turned around and saw four U.S. Navy SEALs. It was a miracle!

"You came for me!" I said, elatedly.

"Yes, we came, but not for you specifically," said the lead SEAL. "You must be one of those jackasses who thought he could find Mullah Omar."

"Yeah?"

"We 'rescue' someone like you about three or four times a week."

Ouch. And I thought the Himalayas were cold. The SEALs escorted me towards a  clearing until a helicopter arrived to take us to friendly territory. As we flew away from Pakistan, I thought about how much money I had wasted on international airfare. But in a larger sense, I think the experience made me a better person. Although deeper in debt, I was richer in life. I looked at the brave men around me and thought, what's another $100 bucks at this point?

"Guys," I said. "Tonight, where going to your favorite place in Kabul. Drinks are on me."

Tiger Tales.

We had hoped to land in Pyongyang, but at the last minute, we got a call from the State Department. No go, they said. Too dangerous. The U.S. Government will not support you. The pilot headed north, hoping we might be able land in Vladivostock while the State Department would reconsider. All of a sudden I heard the co-pilot scream, "Look out!" I turned to the window and saw the unmistakable streak of a surface-to-air-missile. The pilot banked hard--but it was too late. The missile hit the left wing and were headed straight down.

I don't know how long I was out, but once I regained consciousness, it was clear that I was the sole survivor of a plane crash. Was I lucky? Or would I envy the dead? I wasn't even sure which side of the Amur River I was standing on. Was I in Russia, or China?

Then I hears a growl. International boundaries were the least of my concerns. A Siberian Tiger! He sauntered, slowly, as if teasing me. These fierce creatures eat photojournalists for sport. It's their game.

My one hope was to somehow distract the mighty animal and hope for an escape. I grabbed my Nikon D5200 DSLR and set the flash bulb to Christmas Party. Hey, if I didn't make it, at least I would go out with a blast . . .

But really . . .

I was taking photos of the Tigers at the Bronx Zoo. All of a sudden a group of pre-teenage schoolchildren showed up. This furry beast decided to give everybody a show. He hustled towards us and displayed his fangs in the most menacing way possible. 

Then he plopped down on the snow, belly up, paws in the air and started wagging his tail like an 800 house cat. What a ham!

How he likes to mock the hipsters and their silly little manicured mustaches!

Ho Ho Ho! It's time for the Holiday Train Show!

All aboard! Nicole and I were fortunate enough to take advantage of Bar Car Night, a special, after hours exhibit of the New York Botanical Gardens Holiday Train Show. While Nicole and I have visited the show every year since moving to the Bronx, this year had us (well, at least me) aching with anticipation.

Model Trains seem to make every Christmas a little more merry.

You see, a few months ago, Nicole was in the thick of reading Empty Mansions, a sort of documentary of copper king W.A. Clark's fabulous wealth, and its effect on his daughter, Huguette. Nicole was sharing her disbelief over the opulent splendor that was W.A. Clark's 121-room mansion. The list of amenities was truly incredible: An art room the size of a gymnasium with priceless paintings from all over the world. A $120,000 pipe organ that was built inextricably into the walls. A corkscrew marble staircase imported from Maryland. 

Clark Mansion, in its Modern Incarnation.

"Just to think," said Nicole. "An amazing building like that, right here in New York, and I've never seen it."

Clark Mansion as viewed from Central Park.

True. Very few people are old enough to remember W.A. Clark's tribute to himself on Fifth Avenue and 77th Street. My 90 year old grandmother was four years old and living in Brooklyn when the Clark Mansion met the wrecking ball. Much of the interior of the mansion was given out in W.A. Clark's will, or sold, but not every piece survived. The pipe organ now sits in a landfill in Queens; the marble staircase rests at the bottom of New York Harbor. But I politely told Nicole that she had seen W.A. Clark's mansion before.

"Where? She asked. And then I reminded her: It was just made out of plants!

960 5th Avenue as it appears today.

So once we found out about Bar Car Night, we were thrilled. The Holiday Train Show in and of itself is very exciting. It is a place where visitors can enjoy New York's finest and most iconic edifices, constructed out of leaves, berries, flowers, and twigs. Bar Car Night is a special occasion  just for grown-ups. Visitors can pay a little extra to avoid the crowds--and enjoy a complimentary drink on the house. We took advantage of Bar Car Night this past Friday, and Clark Mansion did not disappoint: it was bigger and grander than ever before. On its pedestal, the plant-based version of the old building was even taller than me. 

Despite the recent attention garnered upon Huguette Clark within the last two years, not many passers by recognized either the mansion or W.A. Clark. One woman was flummoxed when she saw the building's lifespan on the faceplate. 

"1904 to 1927?" That sure didn't last!" She shook her head and walked away. Not everyone was astute enough to read the inscriptions, however. I made the mistake of engaging conversation with somebody who was taken aback by the presentation of Pennsylvania Station.

Pennsylvania Station, in its plant-based structure.

"Wow," said a middle-aged man, as Nicole snapped a photo. "I've never seen Penn Station from the outside before."

I was only trying to be helpful when I said that the original Penn Station was demolished half a century ago. Oops.

The original Penn Station, before its untimely demolition in 1963.

"Yeah, I know, but I've never seen it from the outside before!"

Sigh. The tracks are still there, and the train's run every day as they have for over a century. But above the tracks where over half a million riders get on and off every day, sits Madison Square Garden. And its pretty hard to miss. So yeah, chances are if you have walked by 7th Avenue and 34th Street, you've seen it from the outside.

Penn Station today: Madison Square Garden atop 600,000 passengers.

Not every Bar Car Patron interaction ended in frustration. One passerby had a hard time recognizing a replica of Hell Gate Bridge (one of New York City's ten major suspension bridges). Once I referred to it as the Amtrak bridge between Queens and Randall's Island, a light bulb went off in his mind as it illuminated something he had seen before. He knew it as the bridge he sees when he drives over the Triborough Bridge.

"No wonder I couldn't recognize it [Hell Gate]; I can't drive over it!" We chuckled.

Most of the show is very recognizable. The Statue of Liberty, JFK International Airport, and just about every prominent skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan are perennial favorites. One must be patient at some of the more popular installations.

Al Khazneh, a new addition to the Holiday Train Show!

Not every model plant house at the train show is a tribute to New York's great monument, past and present. The makers of this fine art projects do like to add a new piece here and there from outside New York. This year, I was quite impressed to see Al Kazneh. Although the name may not be familiar, viewers will soon recognize its unmistakable facade from its famous appearance in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Hey, I may never get to see Petra, Jordan in my lifetime, so I'll take what I can get!

Al Khazneh, virtually unchanged after two millennia.

The New York Botanical Gardens Holiday Train Show runs through January 12th, with two more "Bar Car" exhibitions on Friday, December 20th, and Saturday, December 21st.

Battery Park at Sunset.