Reply #8: This is outrageous.

[spindrifter]

I was there last year. I can assure him that it is not romantic. For one thing the freaking weather is abominable. In the summer, most areas are freakishly hot, as in desert. In the winter, it is colder than cold. People are starving because they can't get food in their mountain villages that are cut off due to snow. Since people burn cow dung for fuel, the air is filled with you-know-what. On top of that, years of drought have killed off a lot of the plants that used to grow there and there is almost always loads of dust, some of it fecal. It took me almost two months to get over the nice chest cold I brought back. I was lucky--I didn't get the intestinal problems some of my colleagues did.

And that is only the physical stuff--not the "romantic" opportunity to get up every day not knowing if you or someone you knew was going to make it through the entire day without getting hurt, killed or kidnapped.

F*ck you, *.