Features

ROSES, Spain — Spain’s elBulli, repeatedly voted the world’s best restaurant before it closed over a decade ago, is set to reopen as a museum dedicated to the culinary revolution it sparked.

Nestled in an isolated cove on Spain’s northeastern tip, the museum is dubbed “elBulli1846” — a reference to the 1,846 dishes ground-breaking chef Ferran Adria says were developed at the eatery.

“It’s not about coming here to eat, but to understand what happened in elBulli,” the 61-year-old told AFP near the kitchen of the restaurant he ran for over two decades.

The museum will open on June 15, nearly 12 years after the restaurant served its final dish to the public.

Visitors will be able to see hundreds of photos, notebooks, trophies and models made of plastic or wax that emulate some of the innovative dishes which were served at the eatery.

Adria pioneered the culinary trend known as molecular gastronomy, which deconstructs ingredients and recombines them in unexpected ways.

The results are foods with surprising combinations and textures, such as fruit foams, gazpacho popsicles and caramelised quails.

Under Adria’s watch elBulli achieved the coveted Michelin three-star status and was rated the world’s best restaurant a record five times by British magazine The Restaurant.

“What we did here was find the limits of what can be done in a gastronomic experience,” Adria said. 

“What are the physical, mental and even spiritual limits that humans have. And that search paved paths for others.”

‘Passion for cuisine’

Some of the world’s most famous chefs were trained by Adria at elBulli, including Denmark’s Rene Redzepi of Noma and Italy’s Massimo Bottura of Osteria Francescana.

A foundation set up to maintain elBulli’s legacy invested 11 million euros ($11.8 million) in the museum.

Plans to expand the building on the idyllic Cala Montjoi cove near the towns of Roses had to be adjusted after they ran into opposition form environmentalists.

Adria headed to the white-walled restaurant overlooking the Mediterranean in 1983 for a one month internship on the recommendation of a friend.

He was invited to join the restaurant’s staff as a line cook the following year, and became its solo head chef in 1987.

Adria bought the restaurant in 1990 with his business partner Juli Soler, who passed away in 2015.

“The most important thing that happened to me at elBulli is that I discovered for the first time passion for cuisine,” he said.

“At the table, when the staff ate together, we did not talk about football, or our weekends, we talked about cuisine.”

‘Right to close’

The restaurant opened usually just six months of the year to give Adria and his staff time to conceive new dishes.

The meal consisted of a set menu comprising dozens of small dishes which cost around 325 euros, including a drink, when the restaurant closed in 2011.

A team of 70 people prepared the meals for the 50 guests who managed to get a reservation.

Adria said he accepted that his culinary innovations did not please everyone.

“In the end they are new things and it’s a shock after the other, it is normal that it makes you reflect on what you like,” he said.

In the final years of the restaurant, demand for reservations was so high that Adria allocated seats mostly through a lottery.

When Adria decided to close the restaurant, he justified the move saying it “had become a monster”.

“I was very certain that we were right to close. We had reached what we felt was a satisfactory experience at the maximum level,” Adria told AFP.

“And once we reached it we said ‘why do we have to continue?’. The mission of elBulli was not this, it was finding the limits,” he added.

LOS ANGELES — In an industrial wasteland in Los Angeles, Kreigh Hampel is uprooting California buckwheat with a pitchfork to find out how much lead it has absorbed.

The plant’s delicate white and pink flowers belie an astonishing cleaning power, which scientists think could be harnessed to get rid of dangerous pollutants — and even recycle them.

“That’s the miracle of life,” enthuses 68-year-old Hampel, who is volunteering on the project.

“Plants really can do this work and they know how to do it, they’ve done it so many times over millions of years,” he says.

The experiment is part of a project run by University of California Riverside which has scattered carefully selected plants and fungi on this former industrial site in the hope of getting rid of the heavy metals and petrochemicals that have contaminated the area for decades. 

Danielle Stevenson, who is leading the study, says such bioremediation techniques can be much more cost-effective than traditional techniques.

“The conventional method of cleaning up sites is just to dig up all the contaminated soil and to dump it somewhere else,” she told AFP.

“That approach doesn’t actually solve the problem, right? It just moves it somewhere else.” And, she says, it costs a lot of money.

Stevenson’s project, which is being carried out on three sites in and around Los Angeles, has a price tag of around $200,000 and so far is showing very promising results.

Solar-powered 

vacuum cleaners

“In three months, we had a 50 per cent reduction of the petrochemicals and then in six months, we were getting pretty close [to that level] with some of the metals,” she said.

Stevenson, a mycologist by training, has chosen her anti-pollution weapons with care.

Oyster mushrooms have been incorporated into the soil because of their natural role in decomposition: Their underground part, called the mycelium, is sucking up diesel.

“Those same fungi that in nature would eat a dead tree will also recognise diesel oil, for example, as a food source. 

“The reason is, it’s basically the same thing. A lot of our fossil fuels are just dead stuff that got compressed over long periods of time.”

Several California native plants, including the telegraph weed and the California bush sunflower, are particularly good at absorbing heavy metals.

Stevenson thinks of the plants essentially as “solar powered vacuum cleaners: They basically suck up the metals, like lead, into their bodies”.

“When we pull out the plants, we’ve removed the lead from the soil.”

The lead and other metals can then be recovered from those plants — and even reused.

Throughout the United States and the industrialised world, commercial sites that outlive their useful life to the companies that pollute them are often just abandoned, says Stevenson.

The responsibility to put them right falls on poorly funded or ill-equipped local authorities, who struggle to find the money or the expertise.

Historically the problem is worse in working class or ethnic minority neighbourhoods, where politicians feel more able to ignore complaints.

In the United States, where the Environmental Protection Agency lists nearly 1,900 problem sites, only a small number of clean-up projects are carried out each year, Stevenson says.

She hopes that a cheaper method will see more sites being cleaned up.

Advocates say bioremediation’s uses are not limited to fixing former industrial sites. The process can also be used to help clean up the toxic ash left by some wildfires — an annual problem in fire-prone California.

So why is this technique still so underdeveloped? 

“Bioremediation is still considered risky,” explains Bill Mohn, professor of microbiology at the University of British Columbia in Canada. 

Unlike soil excavation, “it’s hard to guarantee that you will systematically reach the level of pollutants that are required”. 

“Whereas, we know that if you dig up the soil and send it to somebody who will take it if you pay them, then you’ve solved your problem.”

Stevenson, meanwhile, points to unhealthy prejudices about mushrooms — think of the terrifying fungi that infect the zombies of the HBO smash series “The Last of Us”.

“I get asked all the time: ‘If you introduce a fungus to clean up a site, is it going to take over, eat our house and take over the world?’” she says.

It won’t, she is quick to add.

But that is why it is important to be conducting this kind of experiment in a real-world setting, not just in a laboratory.

“I think once we get more field tests of these methods, people will feel more confident choosing some of these approaches,” she says.

Making it global debut in 2021 and introduced to regional markets in recent weeks as part of a multimodel hybrid electric vehicle launch, the Kia K8 HEV is the Korean manufacturer’s electrified answer to large, luxurious and sportily flavoured front-drive saloons like the Nissan Maxima.

Only second to the full-size luxury K9 among Kia’s saloon model range, the K8 brings a decidedly more dramatic design, more up-market experience and a host of new or improved technologies and features over its Kia Cadenza predecessor.

Aggressive aesthetic

Longer, lower and with a pronounced and predatory style, the Karim Habib-designed K8 builds on and reinterprets the modern Kia aesthetic and signature “tiger nose” grille, as first fashioned by Peter Schreyer in the late 2000s, and includes the outgoing Cadenza. With a more aggressive aesthetic, the K8 has a somewhat marine-inspired flavour. Shark-like with its slim scowling headlights, high waistline, sculpted surfacing, low-slung flowing roofline and fin-like bonnet ridges, the K8’s vast, hungry and upright grille, however, takes centre stage with a stylised diamond-like pattern.

Extending beyond the grille’s functional airflow aperture, the diamond pattern is meanwhile echoed for the K8’s angled lower running lights and side indicators. With grille, lower intake and low roof emphasising the horizontal dimension, the K8’s slim full-width rear lights meanwhile sit below a curt fastback-like boot with built-in spoiler, and draw attention to width, and — with a boomerang-like side profile — create a sense of momentum. The K8 HEV’s design meanwhile does not detract from that of regular petrol-powered versions with any unnecessary colours or elements, and is only identifiable by discrete badges.

Complementary combination

Powered by a combination of turbocharged 1.6-litre direct injection four-cylinder combustion engine developing 177BHP at 5,500rpm and 195lb/ft torque throughout 1,500-4,500rpm, the K8 HEV’s output is complemented with an electric synchronous motor producing 59BHP at 1,600-2,000rpm and 194lb/ft torque as early as 0-1,600rpm. Totaling at 227BHP at 5,500rpm and as a 258lb/ft at 1,500-4,400rpm as a combined system output, the K8 HEV is a confidently muscular performer, loosely estimated to be capable of 0-100km/h in around 8-seconds, while also returning frugal 5.9l/100km combined cycle fuel consumption. 

Driven briskly on mostly flat roads with brief but intense short bursts of acceleration, the K8 was in its element is being able direct its combined output to the task at hand, with its regenerative brakes having sufficient opportunity to recoup charge for its batteries. Impressively immediate with its punchy low and mid-range torque that underlays its power accumulation, such conditions play to the K8 HEV’s strengths and do not deplete its electric motor’s batteries, as often occurs when hybrids are driven at high power and heavy load on sustained and steep inclines.

Consummate cruiser

Thrusting forward with a sense of indefatigability at speed, the K8 HEV’s is smooth and refined as it builds momentum with disdainful ease and overtakes with effortless versatility. More impressive for a turbocharged hybrid, the K8 HEV’s engine and driveline were more responsive to throttle lift-off in winding down. Driving the front wheels with a brief chirp of the tires under full throttle from standstill and low speed, the K8 HEV’s 6-speed automatic gearbox meanwhile proved smooth and reasonably quick through ratios when using its steering wheel-mounted manual mode paddle shifters.

A consummate highway cruiser that confidently and comfortably crunches the kilometres away, the K8 HEV is smooth, stable and refined at speed. Dispatching highway imperfections with a forgiving ride quality, the K8 HEV meanwhile similarly absorbed lower speed bumps and potholes encountered during test drive on Riyadh roads in its stride, even with its large wheels and low profile 245/40R19 tyres. A seemingly better settled car in vertical movement than its smaller K5 sister, the K8 has an almost wafting quality to its ride characteristics.

Smooth and spacious

A better handling car than expected of large front-drive saloons, the K8 HEV turns in with comparative tidiness and quick, direct and light steering. Pushed too hard into or out of corners, its natural inclination is for slight understeer as expected, but this can be averted by electronic stability interventions, or by easing off the throttle. Stable through fast sweeping corners, the K8 settles into body lean in a progressive and confidently predictable manner. Gripping hard at the rear, it meanwhile remains little perturbed by mid-corner road cracks and imperfections.

Classy and comfortable, the K8 HEV’s quiet cabin is a premium affair with open pore wood and diamond pattern door trim and leather, while its big, well-adjustable front seats feature plush leather upholstery. Interior design is horizontally-oriented with a large side-by-side tablet style digital instrument panel and infotainment screens. Front space, boot space and rear shoulder and legroom are terrific, but a low roofline does mean that rear headroom is not as generous as ideal for tall passengers. Thoroughly well equipped, the K8 HEV meanwhile features numerous comfort, convenience, safety and driver assistance systems.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 1.6-litre, turbocharged transverse 4-cylinders, & synchronous electric motor

Bore x stroke: 72 x 97mm

Valve-train: DOHC, 16-valve, continuously variable valve timing

Gearbox: 6-speed automatic, front-wheel-drive

Petrol engine power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 177 (180) [132] @5,500 rpm

Electric motor power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 59 (60) [44.2] @1,600-2,000rpm

Combined power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 227 (230) [169] @5,500rpm (estimated)

Petrol engine torque, lb/ft (Nm): 195 (265) @1,500-4,500rpm

Electric motor torque, lb/ft (Nm): 194 (264) @0-1,600rpm

Combined torque, lb/ft (Nm): 258 (350) @1,500-4,400rpm (estimated)

0-100km/h: approximately 8-seconds (estimate)

Fuel consumption, combined: 5.9l-litres/100km

CO2 emissions: 96g/km

Length: 5,015mm

Width: 1,875mm

Height: 1,455mm

Wheelbase: 2,895mm

Overhang, F/R: 950/1,170

Track, F/R: 1,621/1,627mm

Minimum ground clearance: 145mm

Headroom, F/R: 978/955mm (with panoramic sunroof)

Leg room, F/R: 1,170/930mm

Luggage volume: 510-liters

Doors/seats: 4/5

Unladen weight: 1,650kg

Steering: Electric-assisted rack and pinion

Suspension, F/R: MacPherson struts/multilink

Brakes F/R: Ventilated discs/discs, regenerative braking

Tyres: 245/40R19

By Sara Mahdawi
Clinical Psychologist

Stress may result from happy occasions like getting married or beginning a new profession, as well as unhappy ones like losing a loved one or running into tough financial issues.

Whether you’re a hard-working CEO, a stay-at-home parent, or an athlete, prolonged chronic stress can have a substantial impact on your day-to-day activities.

While a small amount of stress might help us stay motivated to reach our goals, excessive stress can be bad for our physical and mental health. Our body’s intricate system of physiological and psychological changes in response to stress helps us in managing a stressful situation. As a clinical psychologist, I worked with a lot of people experiencing chronic stress. In this article, I’ll equip you with some constructive strategies to deal with stress as well as situations in which getting professional assistance may be necessary. 

Coping mechanisms

There are many healthy ways to cope with stress. Here are a few strategies that have been shown to be effective:

• Exercise: A a great way to relieve stress. It releases endorphins, which are natural chemicals in the body that help reduce pain and improve mood. Moreover, exercise helps enhance sleep, which is crucial for stress management

• Mindfulness: Improves alertness and being present in the moment. It entails giving your thoughts, feelings and bodily experiences undivided concentration. By encouraging you to keep your attention in the here and now rather than worrying about the future or reflecting on the past, mindfulness can help you feel less stressed and anxious

• Social Support: Having a network of friends and family to lean on might assist to decrease stress. You may feel less alone and more supported if you speak with someone who can relate to what you are going through

• Time management: Stress can result from ineffective time management. Learning to manage your time properly might help you feel less stressed by enabling you to prioritise your activities and responsibilities

• Relaxation Techniques: Deep breathing, progressive muscle relaxation and visualisation can help to reduce stress by calming the body and mind 

When does stress become chronic?

While stress is a natural part of life, long-term stress can seriously harm both our physical and mental health. Chronic stress is stress that lasts for a long timeoften months or years. Many things such as work, family, money troubles and health issues, can lead to chronic stress. Chronic stress can have detrimental repercussions. Many health issues, including diabetes, depression and heart disease, have been linked to chronic stress. Moreover, long-term stress can cause issues with focus, memory and sleep.

When to seek professional help?

It’s crucial to receive professional help if you are experiencing chronic stress. You can enhance your mental health and build good coping mechanisms with the assistance of a clinical psychologist. Here are a few indications that it might be time to consult a professional:

• Stress is interfering with your daily routine: if your stress is causing you to have difficulty functioning at work or in your personal life

• Stress is causing physical symptoms: Chronic stress can cause a variety of physical symptoms, including headaches, muscle tension and stomach problems

• You are experiencing symptoms of depression or anxiety: Chronic stress can lead to depression and anxiety

• You are using unhealthy coping strategies: If you are using drugs or alcohol to cope with stress, it is important to seek professional help. These coping strategies can lead to addiction and other negative consequences

Navigating our way with healthy coping mechanisms is essential to maintaining a psychological resiliency that can help us to face the challenges that life throws at us.

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine

ADDIS ABABA — Armed with a bamboo ink pen and a steady hand, Ethiopian Orthodox priest Zelalem Mola carefully copies text in the ancient Ge’ez language from a religious book onto a goatskin parchment.

This painstaking task is preserving an ancient tradition, all the while bringing him closer to God, says the 42-year-old.

At the Hamere Berhan Institute in Addis Ababa, priests and lay worshippers work by hand to replicate sometimes centuries-old religious manuscripts and sacred artwork.

The parchments, pens and inks are all prepared at the institute, which lies in the Piasa district in the historic heart of the Ethiopian capital.

Yeshiemebet Sisay, 29, who is in charge of communications at Hamere Berhan, says the work began four years ago.

“Ancient parchment manuscripts are disappearing from our culture, which motivated us to start this project,” she says.

The precious works are kept mainly in monasteries, where prayers or religious chants are conducted using only parchment rather than paper manuscripts.

“However, this custom is rapidly fading... We thought if we could learn skills from our priests, we could work on it ourselves, so that is how we began,” adds Yeshiemebet.

In the institute’s courtyard, workers stretch the goatskins tightly over metal frames to dry under a weak sun which barely pierces the milky sky.

“After the goatskin is immersed in the water for three to four days, we make holes on the edge of the skin and tie it to the metal so that it can stretch,” says Tinsaye Chere Ayele.

“After that, we remove the extra layer of fat on the skin’s inside to make it clean.”

Alongside two other colleagues, the 20-year-old carries out his task using a makeshift scraper, seemingly oblivious to the stench emanating from the animal hide.

Once clean and dry, the skins are stripped of the goat hair and then cut to the desired size for use as pages of a book or for painting.

Yeshiemebet says most of the manuscripts are commissioned by individuals who then donate them to churches or monasteries.

Some customers order for themselves small collections of prayers or paintings to have “reproductions of ancient Ethiopian works”, she adds.

“Small books can take one or two months. If it is a collective work, large books can take one to two years.” 

“If it’s an individual task, it can take even longer,” she says, leafing through books clad in red leather, their texts adorned with brightly coloured illuminations and religious images. 

Sitting in one of the institute’s rooms, with parchment pages placed on his knees, Zelalem patiently copies a book entitled “Zena Selassie” (“History of the Trinity”).

“It is going to take a lot of time. It’s hard work, starting with the preparation of the parchment and the inks. This one could take up to six months to complete,” the priest says. 

“We make a stylus from bamboo, sharpening the tip with a razor blade.”

The scribes use different pens for each colour used in the text — black or red — and either a fine or broad tip, with the inks made from various local plants.

Like most other religious works, “Zena Selassie” is written in Ge’ez. 

This dead language remains the liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and its alpha syllabic system — where the characters represent syllables — is still used to write Ethiopia’s national language Amharic as well as Tigrinya, which is spoken in Tigray and neighbouring Eritrea. 

“We copy from paper to parchment to preserve [the writings] as the paper book can be easily damaged, while this one will last a long time if we protect it from water and fire,” says Zelalem.

Replicating the manuscripts “needs patience and focus. It begins with a prayer in the morning, at lunchtime, and ends with prayer”. 

“It is difficult for an individual to write and finish a book, just to sit the whole day, but thanks to our devotion, a light shines brightly within us,” Zelalem adds.

“It takes so much effort that it makes us worthy in the eyes of God.” 

This spiritual dimension also guides Lidetu Tasew, who is in charge of education and training at the institute, where he teaches painting and illuminations.

“Spending time here painting saints is like talking to saints and to God,” says the 26-year-old, who was brought up in a church. 

“We have been taught that wherever we paint saints, there is the spirit of God.”

LOS ANGELES — Surrounded by fallen trees and languid cows, illegal cattle rancher Chacalin surveys a clearing deep inside one of Nicaragua’s largest remaining protected rainforests.

“When I came here, I knew it was a reserve. I just stole the land. I didn’t pay for it,” he says calmly, staring away from the camera.

“If they take me out of here they can take me off the land, but I don’t lose money. That’s how we operate.”

Beginning in 2016, and over several years, filmmakers Camilo de Castro and Brad Allgood visited the Indio-Maiz Biological Reserve for a documentary about the threats of deforestation and indigenous rights violations.

The roughly 2,600 square kilometre tropical rainforest bordering Costa Rica is a biodiversity haven, and the sacred home of the indigenous Rama people, but despite legal protections, it has seen a rapid influx of illegal settlers.

After violent protests erupted in the Central American nation in 2018 — in part triggered by fury over the government’s failure to tackle a massive fire in the reserve lit by an illegal settler — investigative journalist de Castro had to flee his home country.

In his absence, the situation in Indio-Maiz has only worsened, and President Daniel Ortega’s intensifying crackdown on dissent has made it too dangerous for the filmmakers to return.

This February, de Castro was one of 94 dissidents stripped of their citizenship — along with his mother Gioconda Belli, a prominent writer — and he now lives in exile in Costa Rica.

Relying on Nicaraguans within the country to send updates and images via the encrypted Signal app, the directors are now premiering “Patrol” at the Mountainfilm documentary festival in Colorado, hoping to draw attention to the situation from afar.

“This is probably the last independent documentary that’s gonna come out on Nicaragua in who knows how long,” said de Castro. 

“The government basically has put up a wall around the country so that people inside can’t hear anything coming from outside, and can’t share information about what’s really happening in the country.”

The documentary follows indigenous Rama and Afro-descendent Kriols as they patrol their lands via canoe and on foot through dense, treacherous jungle, avoiding blood-sucking ticks and predatory jaguars.

It chronicles their encounters with ever-swelling ranks of newly arrived illegal settlers. Many are in the pocket of wealthy cattle ranchers living outside the reserve, and are paid to clear the land before the cows arrive.

During the filming, an indigenous patrol encounters a large, sophisticated ranch that has sprung up in the rainforest, and leaders report it to police and Nicaraguan government officials.

But they are told they must pay up if they want police to investigate, while a meeting with a minister fails to materialise.

While rampant deforestation is not unique to Nicaragua, Allgood said the situation is different from places like the sprawling Amazon, because Indio-Maiz is a “small area” where “it would not be difficult to put up a barrier to prevent people from going in”.

The government is “turning a blind eye — it’s in plain sight, but nobody pays attention”.

Meanwhile, the land conflict has spilled into violence. Nicaragua has recently seen a string of murders of indigenous people by settlers, many of which go unpunished.

“There’s a lot of racism involved,” said de Castro. “I would say we’re filming the last stage of 500 years of colonisation in Nicaragua.”

Ninety per cent of deforestation in the region is driven by illegal cattle ranching, according to Christopher Jordan, Latin American director for conservation group Re:wild.

“Government corruption allows them to steal and deforest the land without consequences,” he says in the film.

Beef is one of impoverished Nicaragua’s largest exports. This tiny country, the size of Mississippi, is the United States’ sixth-biggest global supplier.

Since 2015, a US law requiring beef to carry a “country-of-origin” label has been dropped, meaning consumers rarely know if their burgers or steaks come from animals reared on Indigenous forest lands.

While many importing companies claim to check the origin of their beef back to its original farm, de Castro and Allgood say this is not possible in Nicaragua, where the traceability process is too opaque.

“We talk about oil, we talk about mining... but the food industry is still not something that’s getting enough attention,” said de Castro.

“What we want is for consumers to be more wary, to ask questions when they buy beef at the supermarket.”

As for the Nicaragua government?

“What we need is political will, to really make them make an example of some of these illegal cattle ranchers and throw them in jail,” he said.

“Once they throw a few of them in jail, people will think twice about going in. That’s what we want. We want the government to uphold the law.”

KATHMANDU — Seventy years ago, New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Nepali Tenzing Norgay Sherpa became the first humans to summit Everest on May 29, 1953. 

The British expedition made the two men household names around the world and changed mountaineering forever.

Hundreds now climb the 8,849-metre peak every year, fuelling concerns of overcrowding and pollution on the mountain. 

AFP looks at the evolution of the Everest phenomenon.

What is the mountain called?

Initially known only to British mapmakers as Peak XV, the mountain was identified as the world’s highest point in the 1850s and renamed in 1865 after Sir George Everest, a former Surveyor General of India. 

On the border of Nepal and China and climbable from both sides, it is called Chomolungma or Qomolangma in Sherpa and Tibetan — “goddess mother of the world” — and Sagarmatha in Nepali, meaning “peak of the sky”.

How has climbing Everest changed?

The 1953 expedition was the ninth attempt on the summit and it took 20 years for the first 600 people to climb it. Now that number can be expected in a single season, with climbers catered to by experienced guides and commercial expedition companies.

The months-long journey to the base camp was cut to eight days with the construction of a small mountain airstrip in 1964 in the town of Lukla, the gateway to the Everest region.

Gear is lighter, oxygen supplies are more readily available, and tracking devices make expeditions safer. Climbers today can summon a helicopter in case of emergency.

Every season, experienced Nepali guides set the route all the way to the summit for paying clients to follow.

But Billi Bierling of Himalayan Database, an archive of mountaineering expeditions, said some things remain similar: “They didn’t go to the mountains much different than we do now. The Sherpas carried everything. The expedition style itself hasn’t changed.”

What is base camp like?

The starting point for climbs proper, Everest Base Camp was once little more than a collection of tents at 5,364 metres, where climbers lived off canned foods. 

Now fresh salads, baked goods and trendy coffee are available, with crackly conversations over bulky satellite phones replaced by WiFi and Instagram posts.

How does the news of a summit travel?

Hillary and Tenzing summited Everest on May 29 but it only appeared in newspapers on June 2, the day of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation: the news had to be brought down the mountain on foot to a telegraph station in the town of Namche Bazaar, to be relayed to the British embassy in Kathmandu.

In 2011, British climber Kenton Cool tweeted from the summit with a 3G signal after his ninth successful ascent. More usually, walkie-talkie radios are standard expedition equipment and summiteers contact their base camp teams, who swiftly post on social media.

In 2020, China announced 5G connectivity at the Everest summit. 

What are the effects of climate change? 

Warming temperatures are slowly widening crevasses on the mountain and bringing running water to previously snowy slopes.

A 2018 study of Everest’s Khumbu glacier indicated it was vulnerable to even minor atmospheric warming, with the temperature of shallow ice already close to melting point.

“The future of the Khumbu icefall is bleak,” its principal investigator, glaciologist Duncan Quincey, told AFP. “The striking difference is the meltwater on the surface of the glaciers.”

Three Nepali guides were killed on the formation this year when a chunk of falling glacial ice swept them into a deep crevasse.

It has become a popular cause for climbers to highlight, and expedition companies are starting to implement eco-friendly practices at their camps, such as solar power.

What is the impact of social media?

Click, post, repeat — the climbing season plays out on social media as excited mountaineers document their journey to Everest on Facebook, Instagram and other social media platforms.

Hashtags keep their sponsors happy and the posts can catch the eyes of potential funders. 

That applies to both foreign climbers and their now tech-savvy Nepali guides.

“Everyone posts nowadays, it is part of how we share and build our profile,” said Lakpa Dendi Sherpa, who has summited Everest multiple times and has 62,000 Instagram followers.

Mountain of records?

Veteran Nepali guides Kami Rita Sherpa and Pasang Dawa Sherpa both scaled Everest twice this season, with the latter twice matching the former’s record number of summits before Kami Rita reclaimed pole position with 28.

There are multiple Everest record categories for first and fastest feats of endurance.

But some precedents are more quixotic: in 2018, a team of British climbers, an Australian and a Nepali dressed in tuxedos and gowns for the world’s highest dinner party at 7,056 metres on the mountain’s Chinese side.

GOHALOPATA, India — Decades after inspiring a best-selling novel that brought readers into slums near Kolkata, 86-year-old ascetic Gaston Dayanand is still working for India’s poorest.

His life helping people in the mega-slums of Pilkhana formed the plot of Dominique Lapierre’s 1985 book “The City of Joy”, which was later turned into a Patrick Swayze movie.

Born in 1937 to a Swiss working-class family in Geneva, Brother Gaston said he remembered deciding at six years of age to dedicate his life “to Christ and the poor”.

“I never wanted to be a priest,” the brother of the Prado congregation told AFP at the Inter-Religious Centre of Development (ICOD), an NGO he co-founded in Gohalopata, a village 75 kilometres southwest of Kolkata.

“The church would never have let me live in a slum with the poor, but my life was about sharing with the poorest.”

A trained nurse, Brother Gaston arrived in India in 1972 to work with a French priest in a small self-help centre in Pilkhana.

“It was the biggest slum in India at the time, they said in the world!”

Having arrived on a tuk-tuk, he surprised the local residents by entering on foot.

“I didn’t want to enter a place where there are so many poor people, on a rickshaw, like a rich person,” he said.

“I went to places where there were no doctors, no nongovernmental organisations, no Christians. That is to say, places that were completely abandoned.”

‘Chicago on the Ganges’

One day in 1981, Brother Gaston said he received a visit from Dominique Lapierre, who was “sent by Mother Teresa”.

The well-known French author, who wanted to write a novel “about the poor”, convinced the ascetic of his sincerity.

The two men became friends.

Lapierre, who died last December, described Brother Gaston as “one of the ‘Lights of the World’ whose epic of love and sharing I had the honour of recounting in my book ‘The City of Joy’.”

Translated throughout the world, Lapierre’s novel, published in 1985, sold several million copies.

“He financed all my organisations at a rate of $3 million a year, almost all his royalties, for almost 30 years,” Brother Gaston said.

But the film adaptation of the novel, in which Swayze plays a fictional doctor, displeased him: “I frankly hated this film. ‘The City of Joy’ has become ‘Chicago on the Ganges’.”

Surrounded by leprosy

At the time of Lapierre’s visit, Mother Teresa was receiving medicine from all over the world.

She donated large quantities to the self-help centre, which Brother Gaston was able to use.

He trained nurses and established a dispensary.

“I had the medicine, I didn’t need anything else,” he said.

“We quickly had more than 60,000 patients the first year, 100,000 the second. Three years later, we had a small hospital.”

As soon as he arrived in India, he decided to adopt the nationality.

“It took 20 years, of course,” he said.

Brother Gaston was born with the surname Grandjean.

In India, he chose the surname “Dayanand”, meaning “blessed (ananda) of mercy (daya)”.

He worked for a long time with Mother Teresa’s brothers caring for people suffering from leprosy in Pilkhana.

“I stayed for 18 years, surrounded by 500 lepers, in a very small room,” he said.

Abdul Wohab, a 74-year-old social worker, said: “Gaston is a saint.”

‘A board to sleep on’

Now white-haired and confined to a wheelchair, Brother Gaston is still trying to help those in need in the northeastern province of West Bengal.

Of the 12 NGOs he founded since moving to India, six are still active, including the ICOD, which has taken in 81 people of all faiths, including orphans and the elderly, as well as those suffering from disabilities and mental health problems.

Brother Gaston said he spends “three-quarters of [his] days meditating” on his bed, facing Christ.

“I had never had anything else but a board to sleep on. Now I live like a bourgeois in a big bed,” he said.

“But it’s not me who wanted it,” he added with a laugh.

“The worst part is that I accept it.”

The ICOD’s co-founder and director, Mamata Gosh, nicknamed “Gopa”, watches over the man who taught her to be a nurse 25 years ago.

“Before him, I didn’t know anything,” the 43-year-old told AFP.

“He is my spiritual father.”

Brother Gaston’s day begins at 5:00 am with three hours of prayer, in front of a reproduction of the Shroud of Turin overhanging an Aum, the symbol of Hinduism, in his tiny oratory adjoining his room.

Dressed all in white and barefoot, he sits in his electric wheelchair and visits each of the residents of the thatched hamlet, then returns to his room in the late morning.

On his bedside table sits a Bible, a crucifix, his glasses and an old laptop that he uses to keep in touch with his NGO’s donors.

“I will earn my bread until the last day of my life,” he said.

Combining lightweight agility and driver involvement with fast driven unpaved terrain, the off-road sports car harks back to a bygone age when manufacturers entered their most athletic and desirable models onto gruelling rally stages, such cars are, however, now a tiny niche indulged by few manufacturers. From rally stage greats including the Ranault Alpine A110 and “Safari” Porsche 911s to the specially developed Lancia Stratos, raised and beefed versions of low slung sports cars were the norm, and rear-drive dominated on the rally circuit, with the last such great holding out against the Audi Quattro four-wheel-drive rally revolution being the Lancia 037.

Ariel Nomad

An off-road sister to the superlative supercar-humbling ultra-lightweight Ariel Atom sports car, the Nomad launched in 2015 and shares the same basic exposed and rigid tubular steel space frame construction and mid-rear transverse engine layout. A more rugged interpretation, the Nomad features full rollover safety cage and chunky high sidewall 235/75R15 tires to soak up punishment and provide traction. It meanwhile sits significantly higher, with generous 330mm ground clearance and extreme 71° approach and 82°departure angles to traverse off-road obstacles.

Equipped with minimal bodywork and tough plastic mudguards, the Nomad’s light aluminium double wishbone suspension features adjustable outboard Bilstein dampers and twin Eibach springs each side. Its longer suspension travel meanwhile both allows for driving fast in off-road conditions, and enhances on-road comfort. Reminiscent of a dune buggy in appearance, the Nomad is slightly heavier and slower than the Atom, but is nevertheless a highly agile and nimble machine with quick 1.7-turn un-assisted steering and compact 3.2 metre long dimensions.

Savagely swift and perhaps as capable on-road as it is off-road, the Nomad is powered by an eagerly high-revving Honda-sourced naturally-aspirated 2.4-litre four-cylinder engine driving the rear wheels through a 6-speed manual gearbox, and delivering precise and progressive throttle control. Developing 235BHP at 7,200rpm and 221lb/ft at 4,300rpm, the featherweight 670kg Nomad pounces through 0-100km/h in just 3.4-seconds and onto a 201km/h maximum. The Nomad also features four-point harnesses and optional spot lamps and a zip-up roof and doors.

Specifications

Engine: 2.4-litre, mid-mounted transverse 4-cylinders

Gearbox: 6-speed manual, rear-wheel-drive

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 235 (238) [175] @7,200rpm

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 221 (300) @4,300rpm

0-100km/h: 3.4-seconds

Top speed: 201km/h

Length: 3,215mm

Width: 1,850mm

Height: 1,425mm

Wheelbase: 2,348mm

Ground clearance: 330mm

Weight: 670kg

Approach/departure angles: 71°/82°

Suspension: Double wishbones

Tyres: 235/75R15

Morgan Plus Four CX-T

Produced in just eight examples in 2021, the magnificently madcap Morgan Plus Four CX-T is a showcase for Morgan’s potential and a reflection of the British sports car maker’s past. Inspired by Morgan’s historic adventure and durability trial vehicles, the CX-T’s design is ruggedly purposeful, but decidedly retro. Developed in collaboration with Rally Raid UK, the CX-T is a rally-like overland off-road vehicle based on the standard new CX-generation Plus Four sports car’s thoroughly modern and stiff bonded aluminium frame.

Gaining SUV-like 230mm ground clearance, wider stance, chunky off-road tyres, underbody protection, a rigid exposed external roll cage for safety, and a redesigned rear-side port exhaust for an improved departure angle, the CX-T’s sturdier components, two externally-mounted spare tires and tool and storage containers lightly increase its weight over the 1,013kg standard Plus Four. It meanwhile incorporates modified Morgan Plus Six suspension wishbones with EXE-TC coil-overs and bump stops for deeper compression and improved traction, stability, compliance and durability.

Driving its rear wheels through either 6-speed manual or 8-speed automatic gearbox options, the CX-T meanwhile shares the Plus Four’s BMW-sourced 2-litre twin-scroll turbo four-cylinder engine. Producing 254BHP at 5,500rpm and 258lb/ft at 1,000-5,000rpm, it is expected to match or slightly lag behind the standard version’s 5.2-second 0-100km/h acceleration and 240km/h maximum. Low revving with a broad and versatile torque sweet spot, the CX-T meanwhile also uses a BMW-sourced lockable limited slip differential for enhanced off-road traction and agility.

Specifications

Engine: 2-liter, twin-scroll turbo, in-line 4-cylinders

Gearbox: 6-speed manual, rear-wheel-drive, lockable limited slip differential

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 254 (258) [190] @5,500rpm

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 258 (350) @1,000-5,000rpm

0-100km/h: 5.2-seconds (estimate)

Top speed: 240km/h (estimate)

Ground clearance: 230mm

Weight: under 1,100kg (estimate)

Suspension, F/R: Double wishbones/multi-link

Tyres: 215/70R16

Porsche 911 Dakar

Inspired by the 1984 Paris-Dakar rally winning Porsche 911 racer, the latest iteration of the Stuttgart manufacturer’s brand defining rear engine sports car is a higher riding off-road tuned beast based on the current 911 GTS, and is powered by the same twin-turbo flat-six 3-lire engine. Launched earlier this year and limited to just 2,500 examples, the slightly taller 911 Dakar is the German manufacturer’s less extreme answer to aftermarket “Safari” style Porsche conversions from tuners like Gembala.

Somewhere between what an Outback variant is to the Subaru Legacy and a Raptor is to a Ford F150 in how heavily modified it is, the 911 Dakar’s 161mm ride height and 14.2° approach, 16.2° break-over and 16.4° departure angles are certainly improvements, but do not make it an extreme off-roader. It is, however, more of a road legal rally-style sports car for dirt roads, snow, sand and dusty flats, and features 245/45R19 front and 295/40R20 rear off-road tyres, and optional height adjustable suspension.

Pressing down on the rear wheels to develop excellent off the line traction, the 911 Dakar’s engine produces 473BHP at 6,500rpm and 420lb/ft throughout 2,300-5,000rpm and powers all four wheels through a quick automated dual-clutch gearbox. Carrying its 1.6-tonne mass through 0-100km/h 3.4-seconds and onto 240km/h, the 911 Dakar meanwhile features adaptable off-road driving modes and an off-road optimised centre differential to ensure road holding and agility over loose surfaces. Four-wheel-steering meanwhile further improves agility and stability.

Specifications

Engine: 3-litre, twin-turbo, rear-mounted, horizontally-opposed 6-cylinders

Gearbox: 8-speed automated dual-clutch, four-wheel-drive

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 473 (480) [353] @6,500rpm

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 420 (570) @2,300-5,000rpm

0-100km/h: 3.4-seconds

Top speed: 240km/h

Length: 4,530mm

Width: 1,864mm

Height: 1,338mm

Wheelbase: 2,450mm

Ground clearance: 161mm

Approach/ramp/departure angles: 14.2°/16.2°/16.4°

Weight: 1,605kg

Suspension, F/R: MacPherson strut/multilink

Tyres, F/R: 245/45R19/295/40R20

By Nathalie Khalaf
Holistic Counsellor

One of the most beautiful experiences we can be blessed with in life is loving others and accepting their love in return. Relationships come in many forms: Those we have with our selves, with our parents, our siblings, our pets, with our extended family members, our romantic partners and society as a whole.

Our parents

The first relationship is the one we experience with our parents. As children we are sponges, absorbing the things we experience mentally, emotionally and physically. It is this early relationship with our parents that paves the way, setting “patterns” in terms of how we view our future relationships starting with our “selves”.

I intentionally separate “our” and “selves” as I feel it’s important to emphasise the “self’ here. If our parents showed us love and acceptance regardless of how we were as children, this will set the foundation for our self-love and acceptance in later life.

If we sensed negativity from our parents’ look, or detected altered tones in their speech (perhaps disapproval, anger or sadness), the same process occurs. This time, we are locked in a cycle of doubting, even disliking our selves as we mature. One of the most powerful quotes I’ve come across by Gibran Khalil Gibran, reads “God said ‘love your enemy, I obeyed him and loved myself’. For me, it shows the importance of not only physical health, but emotional health too. This helps develop healthy relationships as adults. It all starts and ends with us.”

A reflection of childhood

The way we are treated and brought up as children has everything to do with the way we treat our selves as adults and that becomes our “default programming”, or “internal dialogue”, so to speak.

If we weren’t hugged by our mothers then we will find it difficult to hug or hold our future partner or children. If we received conditional love from our parents, for being good girls or boys; if we did what pleased them by not making noise, not crying, not shouting, not voicing our opinion, not disagreeing with them, etc., then we will also express that same conditional love towards our selves.

There may come a day when we will struggle to accept what we are going through, or have difficulty accepting and loving “the new person we have become”. That sentence in itself carries a flawed concept; there is no right or wrong way to be and change is a constant in life.

Pulsating energy

We are made of pulsating energy. If, as children, we were loved unconditionally by being allowed to cry, scream, shout, voice our opinions, then that is also the love we will give to our selves and eventually others, be it friends or romantic partners. I am not saying parents have to let loose their children’s upbringing completely. Instead, parents can work on becoming more aware of themselves in order not to project what they want, or wish they could have been, vicariously onto their children.

Children are not born to be the clones of their parents, they are completely unique individuals. Parents can, and should, guide them along the way , but the red tape is trying to mould their child into improved versions of themselves.

Yes, this can be challenging, especially when we, as parents, are not conscious of our own ego, through which our behaviour plays out. But that’s for another article, so stay tuned!

When we love and accept our selves as we are, we approach others from a “full cup” instead of “one that needs to be filled”; we can begin to live life without the need for external validation. We have all heard the expression “that person completes me” but this is the wrong outlook, something we have been conditioned to believe, for no one is born “incomplete”.

Opposites attract?

Whether we believe in God or energy, God creates perfection, we are perfect. Therefore, we are all complete just the way we are. The expression “opposites attract” is more ideologically sound, simply because it means that on an energy level we have identified with certain aspects of our selves (aspects judged as good, in order to receive love and acceptance) and rejected other aspects (aspects judged as bad, which will block us from receiving love or acceptance).

The law of opposites will play its role in completing that energy circle. So, if you feel you are “such and such a person” (by placing your self in a box of certain attributes) you will automatically attract someone who has placed themselves in a box of the opposite attributes. Anything we feel we want to fix or change in others is a good indication for what needs healing within our selves.

When we grow up not fully loving, accepting or believing in our selves, we emit that responsibility onto others and that’s where things go wrong. As children we are expected to be a certain way in order to receive love. In fact, what happens is that the masks we wear become too heavy to bear after a while and who we truly are (all aspects of our selves) is what will show. Most of us become adults reflecting with conditional love towards our selves and therefore others because we have expectations of how “they should be”; men and women should be this and do that, for example, or, a partner should be… so. It is a vicious cycle. We do not really see the other person, but project an image of who we expect them to be, based on our past experiences instead.

When we choose to let go of expectations for our selves and replace this with pure acceptance of all that we are, it becomes easy to accept and love others, because we see them for who they are.

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine