Mushrooms of the Himalayas of Nepal with Richard Silber

0:10 Welcome back to the mushroom revival podcast. How's everyone doing today? We got listeners from all over the globe. So sending a big hug to everyone, wherever you're tuning in and Truman in from we're about to get super nerdy and geek out in the mushroom verse with all things fungal and you know, I'm your host Alex door if you don't know me, Hello, nice to meet you. We're gonna have fun. 0:38 We have a brand mushroom revival, check us out mush revival.com. And we're gonna have fun today. I'm bringing on a friend Richard, who I've been wanting to bring on for a while. So you just came back from a trip from the Himalayas? And did I was there with a couple of PhDs and some other citizen scientists looking for mushrooms in the high Himalayas in the Khumbu region, which is the Everest region of Nepal. Nice. And why? Why are you there? Why don't you give a brief bio and who you are first for the audience who doesn't know you. So I'm a what I would call an armchair mountain climber. I've been a lawyer most of my career, but I've also enjoyed hiking and climbing in the mountains. And 1:24 more recently looking at mushrooms. And when I've gone to the to climb in the Himalayas, I always saw mushrooms along the trail, but we were hurrying the summit. So I knew I didn't have time. But I also noticed that in every key house we stayed at, there was much there were mushrooms on the menu, mushroom pizzas, mushroom soup. And I saw them drying mushrooms on the roofs of their homes. So I knew that this was an important thing. And I started this trucking company and wanted to do something different. I had gone on a climb before, once with some geologists, who were incredibly generous about sharing their knowledge of what was happening to the rocks into the structure. And I thought, this would just make an excellent way of experiencing these extraordinary places. To have a kind of a scientific look at some aspect of the ecology and mushrooms is something that I'm quite interested in. So it just seemed like it was a good idea. So we put it together. And then COVID came along, and then COVID came along. And then finally we were able to go. So that's sort of the origin story of this, frankly, 2:29 I'm pretty curious about your origin story as well, because reading your bio, seems like you're you're very eclectic in your interest. I mean, you you went to school, you studied biology, but then you also practice law. 2:46 But then, you know, you did a nose course, which I also did a nose course, in Wyoming. And that totally changed my life and actually got me into biology. And for people that don't know, Knowles is National Outdoor Leadership School, they have, you know, usually around 30 days out in the wilderness, your mountaineering, you're, I mean, you're out there with the backpack in the middle of nowhere, learning how to read a map, how to survive in the middle of the wilderness, and it's totally life changing. And you're also a mountaineer, you know, you do mountaineering, and you you know, have 3:23 this company, and you bring people out and you know, do really cool stuff. So how, how did law, biology slash mycology and mountaineering kind of come together? It all is some seamless web of perfect, oriental carpet of everything fits in. First of all, my virology background helps me to do the medical negligence cases I've done for many years. So I know enough to be dangerous. And I know how to read the literature. So that helps me to understand the puzzle of a medical mistake. And and, frankly, from that, to mushrooms is not that hard of a jump, as you know, you're looking at structure, you're looking at detail, you're looking at chemistry and substrate, and environment. And all those things are the same kinds of 4:12 things that we look at whenever we analyze a medical issue or even a social issue, you know, you pay attention to all the different components. That's what's I find so compelling about mushrooms, frankly, is that they invite this kind of close scrutiny and you're rewarded with great under or hopefully not great understanding because we know how enormous the subject is, but some little tiny insight into something truly remarkable just the fact that mushrooms per date or are live off of other mushrooms which are doing this and then you know, you have this wonderful rhythm and sequence of events, all of which are, in my opinion, fascinating. And, but I also want to say this that 5:00 I wanted to solve a problem that my Sherpa friends had, which is that when Western companies come to Nepal to go hiking or climbing, pretty much everything is handed over to the Sherpas who get paid, but they don't get to share in the larger profits from these enterprises. And my goal was to create a company that was modeled on a concept that we would split 5050 everything we ever made with my Sherpa partners. So that was a different approach that that I wanted to take, because I wanted to create a different kind of opportunity for these guys. 5:34 That is that little bit more serpentine. Well, I can say this Sherpas on big mountains over there, ended up taking all the most of the risks, and also ended up experiencing fatalities, five times the rate of other of Western climbers, you know, they're going in and out of the Khumbu Icefall, they're fixing ropes, they're going up and down. And, 5:59 you know, this is a way that I could provide opportunities for people that aren't quite as dangerous. 6:06 Then I feel that that's another great thing. In terms of my team, I have a wonderful team of Sherpa guides, all of whom are licensed high altitude guides. Many of them have summited Mount Everest, not once twice, or three or four, sometimes eight or 910 times from both the Chinese side and the Nepal side. So these are guys who are totally great about handling any kind of situation that we were in, and understanding people and being totally comfortable and safe. 6:37 That's great. And you have you have a PhD mycologist on the team as well. Can you we haven't we have we have what I consider being a Paul's foremost mycologist, Shiva devkota, who got his PhD at the University of Bern, Switzerland, and then went back to the pile to do science. But we also had the very well known Brit Banyard, who was with us poking around and adding all of his special 7:04 taste and touch to things. And then we had a PhD candidate, a Thomas Rael from Clark University. So three guys who had great mushroom eyes, and actually our Sherpa guides, once we sort of turned them into what we were doing. Their sharp eyes became another adjunct for us to finding mushrooms. And by the end they were finding as many is antibody was, so that was a cool part of it, to see their how their 7:30 understanding of what we were doing. 7:33 Not only I think, enhance the experience for them, but helped us as well. 7:38 What is the general 7:41 is a very broad question, but if what is the general kind of mushroom culture there 7:47 and kind of status of the research? The best example of that is as we were hiking along, we came upon a birch forest and everybody went, Oh, well, let's take a look. And they indeed found birch boletes and gathered some up and then as we hiked another, you know, half a kilometer into this little village and into a tea house for lunch. He was serving mushroom soup made from the same mushrooms you know, that we discovered. So clearly there there there know about this stuff, they're utilizing it for their food and protein. 8:19 That we also came across people that were growing mushrooms on straw. So that was interesting oyster mushrooms. 8:28 And, but also, interestingly, two things are happening. There is also a terrible confluence of issues associated with mushroom poisonings in Nepal. And this was exacerbated because of COVID COVID created you know, kind of an economic shutdown created food scarcities, especially in the more rural areas. And so children generally were sent off into the woods to gather mushrooms and there's two species of aminated one of which is edible, the other is toxic, that get confused and so part of what we were doing was to talk about how to distinguish these two species and that you can't boil away the toxin as is sometimes commonly thought that if you just cook a mushroom long enough, you can be 9:15 uncoupled that's toxics toxicity, but we know that that's not the case. So we had the opportunity of having informal discussions with people in different communities about that problem. 9:27 So so both things are happening the same time they're using mushrooms obviously and and sometimes they're getting confused but I had the experience of hiking up to Nam shape of bizarre with my friend Shiva and we were gathering boletes for pizza and a woman came along and saw what we were doing and grabbed the mushrooms out of my hand and threw them into the woods and said to Shiva, don't poison your client with those poisonous mushrooms. We knew they were okay. 9:54 And we've made pizza and everybody lived obviously. But it was interesting that she thought that these were not 10:00 it safe for us and tried to stop us from 10:04 doing this thing. So both things happen at the same time. Sometimes they don't know that this is poisonous, sometimes they think something is not suitable and they don't avail themselves of it. So they could, you know, yeah, it would be something, how they were all over the place. 10:19 Has Shiva expressed it being difficult for him to conduct research in Nepal or his had been super welcoming? Has there been a lot of funds? 10:31 Does he have a lot of access to funds and resources? Or is it kind of difficult, you know, in a lot of countries is just not that much understanding about mycology. So it might be hard to get grants or hard to get funding or just resources in general. Just because there's, you know, lack of an understanding or I'm just kind of curious. I want to wrap my head around, kind of the Sure. Well, first of all, he's a he's really somebody who's dug in into the mushrooms in Nepal, he's written a lot about caterpillar fungus yarts, a Goomba. Both from the, I'd say the basic mycology of it, but also the socio or the Ethno mycology of it, right, the environmental impacts of this, this mushroom this 11:18 intimo, pathogenic mushroom. 11:22 At the same time, I don't think I've ever met a scientist who didn't, you know, it wasn't on the hunt for the next grant, you know? Yeah, definitely. I'm worried about how you know. So I think that's also true for him as well. One of the things that I really admire about Shiva is that he came back to Nepal, oftentimes people who go and get their PhD at an American or European place, see the world outside of Nepal and and conceal a different kind of life for them or lifestyle. But Shiva came back, and has worked with other Nepali scientists to instill a sense of 12:00 commitment to staying in Nepal and utilizing those, those intellectual resources for the betterment of the country. I think we all kind of understand that problem of brain drain from developing countries, really leaves, takes the situation makes it worse. So he's been working throughout his whole career in that kind of 12:22 aspect of keeping or doing work that will help do science in the fall. 12:31 But like I said, I think I know Shiva, and I know that we're he's always on the hunt for resources to do the next research project that he'd like to do. He did however, just recently have a species of foliose lichen named after him. These researchers honored him with this beautiful low barrier deaf co de, which is a very interesting, bright green, beautiful foliose lichen that now bears his name. So he was honored by these Chinese scientists who knew of his work and they'll feel the bike analogy. So that's super cool. And was this the first time you did the trek? Because of coconuts? It was, yeah, congrats. That's awesome. Yeah, and you just wrapped it up. And I'm bummed that I didn't go I have so much going on this year that could not make it happen. But 13:24 because I didn't get to go and I wanted to, I kind of want to relive this right now and an auditory experience and use my imagination of what what could have happened or maybe in a future year or for other people that you know, have never gone to Nepal and want to experience maybe an auditory meditation and transport themselves on this journey, this 18 day journey by the way. Can you take us through of like from day one all the way to 18 You know, what happens day to day and kind of couple of things. A 13:57 couple things I want to say is we started off the track in Katmandu with a very spiritual moment of have got everybody up at 430 in the morning in order to climb to the highest point in Katmandu, where there's a famous Buddhist stupa, 14:11 the temple of shrine boo, sometimes referred to as the monkey temple, because there are monkeys there. And this is just a very spiritual, beautiful place and I wanted everybody to be on top of this thing when the sun came up over Katmandu, which we were able to do. And there weren't very many people around a few people chanting, turning prayer wheels, and we had a wonderful guide, who talked to us about all the different spiritual influences that made up this special place. So the trip started, or the trek started with this kind of touch point of spirituality, which I really wanted to instill in my clients the sense that we're not just in a place but we're in a place that also will involve you in your own spiritual path, frankly, and to do it in a way that isn't coercive, you know, just to expose you to things 15:00 So it's really enough sometimes just give people the space to look out over the horizon, see the sun come up and hear people chanting Buddhist, Tibetan Buddhist chants, and to hear the sounds and rhythms of that. So that was our first day. You know, trying to follow along on your, your website, you have an itinerary that breaks it down. Okay, which is great. 15:23 This, I see two pictures. One is this magnificent Golden Buddha statue and the other is this, this dome, this also beautiful dome structure, which, which is the near to me that neither of those two ways. Okay, all right. All right. Well, I guess we'll just get you to another spot at some point. But anyway, it doesn't matter. It's all kind of the same kind of, in a way. I mean, and we had a guy who was there who is whose family goes back hundreds of years, as part of like the founding kind of 15:57 people in this in Katmandu Valley so he spoke from such a rich, personal and an intellectual knowledge of the place and really shared 16:07 both inside his family because his family had dedicated a statue to the Buddha, which included five different Buddha's representing five different aspects of, of the Buddha. And, you know, so my clients got to hear and got to experience just right from the jump, a different sort of intimacy into the spiritual space that is in the poll, you know, if you want to check it out, I mean, if you're, you know, and frankly, you know, going tracking is great. But I really wanted to give people kind of a just a different 16:42 experience, which was, so that was our first day, that was day one. And then after that we then took off in Toyota Land Cruisers, and the reason for this was practical and that this time of year because it's the rainy season, the ability to fly into the mountains is less certain. And I did not want to have people stuck in Katmandu during the beginning of the track, which would ruin everything. So but I also wanted to give people a better opportunity to acclimatized, which they could by driving in and we'd also spend more time at lower elevations where we'd have more opportunities to find mushrooms. What is the the elevation of Katmandu? And what was the highest? I'm not sure exactly. I think it's a well, we went we went up to 17,000 feet in fact, we went above that's very high. 17:31 Yeah, it's pretty high. It's pretty high. 17:35 But that's at Everest base camp, but that's after climate tising and nobody got altitude sick. We have really good out climatization program and I and I kept up with the basic thing to really help a prophylaxis for altitude is ibuprofen. And well, good hydration with electrolytes. And nobody. I mean, nobody took Diamox under my recommendation, which I think causes other problems. So we everybody did great. I mean, it's so weird. All everybody did great. I, I've been going to tell your I mushroom festival. I don't know if you've ever gone but you know, it's about like 9000 feet elevation. And I haven't gotten out, you know, nothing, no, nothing. But last year, I got it a little bit. I had headaches and everything. And I was like what is happening? I feel strange. And it's it's I've been going for almost 10 years. And the first year I got altitude sickness and it was, you know, I don't know. I'm glad that nobody got it. Snowflakes finos. Pretty high up. Yeah. No, it's great. It's great. It's great. So you're on these Land Cruisers. Going back to the story. So anyway, so we're there for our first day was very exciting. First of all, we stopped at 1030 To drink cold beer, which I had kept in, you know, with great quantities to make sure everybody had plenty of beer in their trucks. I think that seems priorities. I can't imagine going on a road trip without 19:01 cold beer. Right? I mean, that seemed like a no brainer. Everybody was quite pleased to see that. At some point. Someone said, Well, it's got to be afternoon somewhere. Right? Right. We clink bottles and ice fact called called veers and started finding mushrooms, we did run into a couple of obstacles, landslide stopped us at one place and we had to wait for the road to get cleared. And we got through that. And then we found that there was a river crossing that it also gotten a little washed out. So we waited for them to fix that and then we plowed across this river. So that was a little exciting. And actually I think tended to bring our group together, you know, little adversity, a little a little something like that brought people together. And 19:49 then the next day we started we got up the road as far as we could, until the road this was impassable and then we stopped and started our track. So that's how it all began. Now 20:00 As we started finding mushrooms almost immediately, almost immediately, as soon as we started walking around you see things you were talking about I, it was at Pine bilete that you were talking about before. Oh, yeah. A birch bully birch, Billy was was, was there one variety of mushroom that you found? The most that was just abundant everywhere was there just amazing biodiversity of all, I'm sure you've traveled around a lot. And 156 different species of mushrooms that we could identify, and some that we could not identify some that some that were barely described in the literature. 20:37 Some that were there's a description, but no photograph that we think we found. And we're leave it we have about four or five right now that we're going to be doing some genetic analysis to further figure out whether we in fact, have found a new species. So I think we felt found a lot as to the quantities of each particular one. I can't really speak to that exactly. 21:00 But we had no problem finding mushrooms on every given day. And in lots of different kinds of places. And unexciting mushrooms. I mean, it was very look. I mean, 21:12 there are levels of excitement about this whole subject that I know you understand intuitively. But it is a wonderful thing was a wonderful thing for me, as somebody put this together to put people into this special space into the high Himalayas. And to then have these guys then apply. They're much better mushrooms than I have to find cool stuff, we did find a puff ball above 5000 meters, which everybody was quite surprised about. That's pretty high up if you can imagine higher than any place in Europe. You know, no trees, just some scrubby little plants. And there was this nice buff ball. So that was cool. Nice. End. 21:51 What was the weirdest fungi that you found? Besides the puffer? 21:57 Okay, I think I almost have to punt on that one. Because 22:02 the weirdest ones, of course, would be the ones no one knew what they were right, you know, right. And you said there was about five? Right? I think they're about five or maybe even more, I mean, there could be could be considerably more once we really start to sort this out. Because what people thought and we were putting names on them with those names or names that were familiar, right to the viewer, right? Not necessarily what might in fact, be going on. So that part of it really will have to wait. That's the other thing that I found really exciting that I was really proud of that I could put people with enough understanding of this into this environment that had not been well researched, and turn them loose. And, you know, they did what they are really good at doing. They found things. They examine things. And now we can study them more closely. I think that's just a great, a great thing to be able to do. I'm quite proud that I was able to put that together. Yeah, but no, I mean, even apart from mushrooms, just being out in beautiful nature and just being around a good group of people and just, you know, being off your phone or computer screen it just being out there even just that in and of itself is super healing, really good time. But then you throw mushrooms into it, and people that are just like unbelievably passionate about it. And some cold beers, you know, you're in for a good time. And so, all day you're looking for mushrooms, and I'm guessing it at night. Are you setting up camp at different places? Yeah. I want to step back for one second, to answer your question more fully. One thing I wanted, you and others to understand is what is truly remarkable about Nepal. Because you have this huge altitude gradient, it goes from, you know, 2000 feet to 29,000 feet in the space of perhaps 150 to a band of 150 to 200 kilometers. You have this wild biodiversity because you have so many different niches that ordinarily, you know, you'd spread out over Canada, you know, and they're, you know, think about that, or any any other place Colorado where you have a much more gradual rise, but here you have this really dramatic 24:18 unusual event all caused when the Indian 24:23 tectonic plate, raced across the Pacific and crashed under Eurasia and then drove up the Himalayas you know, which is still happening. So I advise people if they want to climb Mount Everest do it soon because it's rising by you know, half an inch a year. So get get there now before it gets really out of out of your range. But, but seriously, you get this wonderful biodiversity. So in any given day, as you're hiking through different microclimates, and different pockets here and there. You're seeing not only mushrooms, but lots of other incredible flowers and plants and interesting things and orchids and stuff like that. That 25:00 that are just remarkable to look at. So I kind of want to just to put that little footnote in there about the biodiversity of Nepal in general, you know. 25:08 And also, as long as I'm going this path, it also reflects, and I haven't really demonstrated this or read it anywhere. There is there are 123 different identified language groups in Nepal. It's a relatively small country. And so if you think about what would need to be in place to create your own language, isolation, time, culture, whatever. So I think there's a, I think there's a corresponding relationship between the diversity and the kinds of people that occupy Nepal and its biodiversity. I never have read this anywhere to prove this theory of mine. But it seems it's it's interesting to me that you have because we met people who were speaking a language that nobody in my group understood, they were some sub sub group. 25:59 My best friend, Sherpa guide, Suriname was get gotten married during the trek and wow, his wife is from a different people. And he cannot understand his father law and vice versa. And I said, Well, that's probably a good Yeah, probably. So you can just last night, and hopefully, you know, 26:19 that's super cool and go anyway, but but I want to, yeah, I'm actually writing a book right now. And it's due July 25. And part of this book is like, I'm highlighting 75 different mushrooms. And it's such a cool experience, because I get to dive deep on each mushroom. And it gets to learn about all the different stories and kind of ethno mycology all around the world of, you know, various cultures of what kind of myths and stories they have all these different mushrooms that it's really cool to hear. And I bet there's just amazing, just rich stories about these local mushroom varieties and, you know, various myths that they have around them. Have you heard of any cool stories that come to mind that that you want to share? I'm sure there's so many are undiscovered? I don't I specifically don't I'm sorry. I do know that. For example, the the lichen that everybody refers to as old man's beard grows all over the place is used in a ritualistic way. But I didn't really get into what all of its aspects were there for future Interesting. Yeah, I I asked the question, you know, are there psilocybin containing mushrooms up in the high Himalayas? And has there ever been any reports of, of any use as a hallucinogen? And my PhD mycologist from Nepal said he had never heard of it. And I and I talked about it with the Sherpas, who have lived there for hundreds and hundreds of years. And they had never used mushrooms in this regard. So 27:56 you know, we did find a Salafi mushroom. At some point. It hasn't been carefully analyzed to know what's going on with it. But it's interesting, I think, if if there, I don't know, I just don't know whether people missed it, or maybe we don't know about it. And it's there to be discovered. But those are questions that are great questions that hopefully we'll try to answer. Yeah. Because we're gonna be doing this again. We're doing this we're getting ready to start signing people up for neck amazing. What, what was the hardest part of this trip? Besides COVID? Kind of knocking it back for so long? And you know, I don't know if someone missed their flight or got a parasite or Britt Barnard was throwing fistfights with everyone or I don't know. Yeah. What was what was the hardest part for for this trip? 28:48 You know, I, I have to say this directly. There were no hard parts of this trip. Everything went through. Everybody got along great. Yes, there was a little bit of you know, traveler's diarrhea, that's going to happen but didn't really slow anybody down. 29:05 That happens when you travel on a developing quarterly ever but 29:10 everybody had their stuff together. We had no problems getting everybody up and going every morning, we had yoga stretching things to get everybody kind of moving and percolating along. 29:23 I, I will say this, of course, the days were sometimes long and we're at elevation, so you have to go slow. But the way they hike in the fall, and the way to hike in high elevations is just go slow. 29:36 So that you can breeze to a mastermind. That's no problem at all. No. Well, that's also true, but you're right. But it's amazing. If you just start if you're going up a steep slope, and you just take small steps, you can just keep going, you know, and a half an hour later, you go oh my god, look how high I am. You know, and we kind of instilled that process with people that gave people a didn't 30:00 feel panicky about running out of breath because they could manage it. And, 30:06 and, and so, you know, it's was really, I did do feel very blessed that everybody got along so great. It was so much esprit de corps. There's so much 30:18 relationships between the Sherpa community and our our guides our porters that night, I saw everybody like playing poker with Nepali money throwing it around, you know, it's just fun. Again, drinking beer as we would do. And, you know, just to see everybody having just this super great time was so much fun, cool. I was sad. I was sort of sad. I was sad to see I wanted to get back home. I'd been away for almost a month, but I was sad to see the truck end because it was just nice to be with these people. Yeah, I hope you got some good pictures. And you know, you obviously have memories for life. And as everybody else. 30:56 I'm sure it's hard to pick but was there a highlight moment maybe, you know, 31:03 crazy sunset one night or something that was just the highlight of the trip, a 31:08 couple of things happened that were I think quite interesting one because we were traveling at the quote unquote, offseason, we did not have at least initially the spectacular blue, blue Himalayan skies with soaring peaks and glaciers, you know, shining in the sun. 31:25 Every once in a while we'd see a mountain sort of poking out of the clouds, and we go, Oh my God, what's that, you know, and then it would disappear. So there was this kind of hide and seek with these. And I had been there before. So I kind of knew what was behind the screen. But it left everybody both 31:42 wanting to see it. And then when it finally did happen, you know, after a few days, we did have a nice day, a nice morning, and you could see this stuff, it made it even 31:52 more special, you know, when something was kind of hidden for a while, kind of like a burlesque I mean, in a way in a kind of a classic. If that's been okay, it's really, you know, of, you know, hiding the, and then you get to see oh my god, you know, it's so spectacular. So we had that experience. But I will also say that I think for me, one of the very important and high points were the our visit to this very special monastery in at the village of 10 Bucha a 32:21 very historic place a world where United Nations World Heritage Site, because our Sherpa guides at all been monks there for many years, we got to have a special experience with the head Lama who was praying when we got there at an afternoon service and we got to sit quietly. 32:42 We had what's called a puja ceremony, where he blesses everybody and puts the one of those scarves around your necks and and, and I know that just it was very meaningful for me, I think was meaningful for all of us to experience that in a quiet place and a beautiful historic place. 33:01 So that was, you know, again, 33:06 what happens if I mean, look, I make it a point of really trying to give people a different sort of intimate experience of Nepal, the best that I can, not only did we'd have that opportunity, but at the end of the track. When we ended up in our village of our Sherpa guides, it was the beginning of a festival called Doom G which is a celebration of the saint that flew over the Himalayas and started this kind of community of, of Sherpas that live in this high altitude area. So we got to experience that which was extraordinarily interesting and beautiful. And we then all went to my friend's home where his mother had prepared this banquet for all of us. So we were no longer in any kind of restaurant or place, we were in somebody's home, with their family and their kids running around and serving us lots of food. And we're drinking this great fermented syrup of beer called Chang and people getting kind of high. And it's having a wonderful time. I mean, you know, so, again, 34:07 that doesn't 34:09 go on a lot of tracks in Nepal, you're never gonna get an invite. Not only is it not only about the machine, but you're not going to get invited into people's homes, you know, you're not going to be able to look in and hang out in the kitchen. The kitchen, as you probably know, is the soul of every house. And it's true everywhere. I think, I believe that. And if you can just hang out in the kitchen with people and watch them Cook and Talk and 20 It's all about it's it's huge. It's intimate. It's intimate. It's, it's sharing in the most proof. I mean, because food is love. We all know that. You know, and when somebody goes to the big effort of making just a wonderful meal for everybody, and you could just see it. 34:49 That was a cool, cool moment in my life. Yeah, I actually just came back from Peru and had a similar moment of very hard to get there and you 35:00 You know, it's treacherous gotta push the, you know, the Tuk Tuks in all these muddy roads and all this stuff. But, you know, the place we're staying at was, you know, someone that I've been friends with for almost 10 years now. And this is land in the jungle, and he had his, you know, his kids and grandkids and, you know, it's just all day of hanging out with him and his family around in the kitchen and, and coming around food and, and, you know, looking out the window and seeing water buffalo and the chickens running around and all the little grandkids, you know, playing, you know, outside and it was just like, Yeah, this is what else you need really, like, you just good good people good location, and eating good food and just being around each other. And, you know, it's like, what we try to complicate life, but, you know, it's really the simple things that are, that are the most magical, and you know, that you can't really put it into words of what it is, is just, you know, at that, at that moment is being human being as simplest as you can and enjoying, really, that those are the most important things I look at a lot of you know, quote unquote, elderly people, you know, sitting in a rocking chair in their garden, and it's like, yeah, you got it all figured out. 36:20 There's so many people running around with their heads chopped off and buying the next new shiny thing. And it's like, no, just sit in your garden or kitchen with your loved ones. And, and that's it. That's life, really. So thanks, thanks for helping create that and create these experiences where people can, can tap back into that, you know, in this crazy world, we, I've, I've forgotten it over these years and have to constantly remind myself like, of the simple important things of life. And so to create an experience where people can, you know, drop their phones or their laptops for a second and for 18 days, and really just connect back to the land and connect to good people and go, good cold beer and good food and just yeah, that's, that's what it's all about. 37:11 Yeah, well, look, I I agree with you. 100%. I think the simple thing sometimes leave you with the most poignant memories, and I'd like to think that all of every day, we had opportunities for that kind of thing. 37:25 Opportunity opportunities, just to share a Clif Bar with the porters and to watch them all smile and be appreciative of that, and 37:34 opportunities to wander through the markets of Katmandu, and and, you know, see, and I got to visit people that I hadn't seen in three years, that I just people that I informally met through these little interactions. 37:50 And again, I think our my clients really had the opportunity to experience in Nepal in a way that isn't the standard way, because we drove in, because we spent time at lower elevations because we hiked through villages and made a point of stopping and, and really using Mushrooms, mushrooms just are, in my opinion, and no disrespect to all my great psychological friends. But look, it's a, it's a place where you can, you can use it as a journey. You know, I mean, we talked a lot about, for example, the book, The snow leopard by Peter Matheson about his search for blue sheep and the snow leopard. But it was really more about his own spiritual journey. And everybody has to live inside their own head, everywhere you go, you're always going to be bounded by your own head and how you experience something. 38:39 And again, if you can open that up to other people, to other cultures. 38:44 And that's a great thing. I know, in one, there was a family that went on this track. And I know talking to them that I heard that they felt that this had kind of shifted their family trajectory in a way that they felt closer to one another, which, which I could really understand. And I was really, 39:01 so pleased to see that happening. What a wonderful thing for them. 39:06 You know, every family has its stuff and everybody needs a little course correction, everyone. Absolutely. Yeah. And a lot of times, it's what you least expect. You know, it's always it's always good to get those spontaneous course corrections. And you know, it's easy to 39:25 it's easy to white knuckle life and feel like this is exactly where I'm going in my trajectory. And it's it's great when you get those spontaneous kind of redirects and not redirect that route that you didn't think you would go on happens to be the best one. And you know, kind of like the little things. It's like, the things that you least expect are actually the most powerful. Have you seen the Netflix documentary? It just came out? It's a new David Attenborough one. I think it's called 39:59 the year 40:00 Earth changed, I think 40:03 it's really, really good because they really depict kind of before and after COVID and the effects of, of kind of the natural environment and how humans not producing so much pollution and not traveling as much and whatever, how that changes the natural world and you know, streams clearing up and air pollution. But there's a scene in India, where the smog clears. And for the first time in decades, the people in this village are able to see the the Somalian range. And third, like, wow, I didn't know it was right there. You know, I've lived my whole life here. And I've never actually seen the Himalayas. And there they are, you know. And there's, it was this really beautiful moment of everyone like getting on their roofs and just being blown away that they can finally see it. And it was this this kind of 40:59 unifying moment of, you know, being able to witness something that was behind that smog or those clouds of what you're talking about before. Yeah. 41:08 Yeah, yeah. So hopefully it stays. I know, it's, you know, people are bustling, hustling and bustling now and smog is picking back up. But yeah, yeah. Yeah. 41:20 No, I think, look, I think that we all start off on any kind of track, or any sort of hike with an idea that, you know, like, for many years of, for me, it was getting to the summit someplace. Now, I'm, I feel like I missed what was that, you know, down at my feet, there's a book that I read when I was over there called, you know, look down, not up. And we also, were making a documentary film with Oh, nice, by the way, and cool. And so I'm looking for, 41:49 I thought, I thought that might make a good name for it. 41:55 But I was thinking maybe, like, looked down and look up because we had both the Himalayas and the mushroom. So you could kind of do both. 42:03 But that book is about how they really in Nepal, it's through this one guy really pioneered putting all this very important land aside for national parks for Chitwan National Park, where there are rhinoceroses, and tigers, and, you know, things like that, that that need to be preserved, had no idea. And I noticed in the village that we ended up in 42:30 screening, yeah, in the village, we ended up in a year before a snow leopard had been hunting one of these, you know, antelope type creatures or tar that lives on the cliffs, and both of them fell to their deaths, incredibly, and so there was this gorgeous Snow Leopard, dead, but still, you know, had been hunting right above this village. And people in the village have seen them, they're coming back a little bit so that they're not quite as it's not like, something you would not see in a lifetime. So, you know, we did get to see also some pretty interesting mammals while we were there, when we were out there. 43:12 And just, 43:14 but again, I'm sort of getting back to this idea that mushrooms are just a vehicle for exploring the world. I mean, you know, we all know this, we all know that you just can't study a mushroom in the in the absence of what tree it's has a micro Raizel relationship with. 43:33 Whether it's a decomposer, an obligate, a symbiotic, you know, all those things that we know about what the substrate is, all that stuff is just, it's this makes it an interesting journey in any way. You want to look at it in any way you want to get at it, it doesn't matter. The other thing that I wanted to capture in this in the movie that we were making was something that I would be interested to hear your thoughts about, like, I find that there is this robust generosity of spirit within the mushroom community. This sense of somebody sees something and they go, Hey, I gotta let me show you this, you know, they, there's like it, the eyes are wide. They're kind of forced it, you know, they and yet, and if you you will, okay, okay, I'll be right there, you know, and then the guys telling you all about it, and see where this forks over the gills don't know. And you see it. And I just love that. What I call generosity of spirit, this sense of wanting to share, wanting to tell you 44:33 want you to know what they know, I just find that. I don't know whether it's unique in the world and not all the time. I'll tell you that there's, there's, you know, that's not universal, unfortunately. But that is definitely a thing that I love. And what brings me 44:50 deeper into the mushroom community. What makes it feel like a family and I've heard this from so many people. It feels like a family and it's it's you know, I 45:00 I've seen people go to these festivals, and if they're not mushroom people, and they're like, What is this? You know, and it is something that, you know, is this universal, just passion that I don't see with a lot of things and, and I actually see it with a lot of biologists, you know, and you know, it's not everybody, but but people that are really into just life, you know, and it is basically lifeforce. I mean, they're tapping into life itself. And if you're studying life, and connecting back to, yeah, we're just a bunch of apes, you know, connecting back to it and forgetting all the systems and structures that kind of bog us down in this in this. You know, this life that that was set up for us if we connect back to the natural world. 45:52 I feel like on a spiritual level, like we're tapping back into spirit, or essence, lifeforce, whatever you want to God, whatever you want to call it, I mean, and you can just feel that I mean, you, you definitely want to share it with other people. Like if you're feeling this connection to the one or however you want to put it into words. I mean, it's truly ineffable. You can't really describe it with words, really. 46:19 I mean, but it Yeah, it's, it is incredible. And it is, it is really interesting. I mean, I love watching, and this is anything I love watching people get passionate. And it doesn't have to even do with biology. Like sometimes I love watching documentaries, or like how to videos online of something that I 46:44 could care less about. And it's not even the subject. It's just watching someone's eyes light up, and hearing the passion in their voice. And it could be like, I saw this video recently on 46:59 on Dungeons and Dragons. I've never played it. I don't know anything about it. 47:05 But like, it was the whole thing of this guy had been playing this Dungeons and Dragons game for 40 years with his group of friends. 40 years straight of playing this game and like, and his whole life was around this game. And now he's got his daughter involved. And like, they're just so excited and passionate about this game. And like, I was watching the video, I was like, this is super cool. Like, I'll never play it. And I know nothing about it. I'll never get into it. But but just watching people get so enthusiastic about something that brings them joy in life, that it's just, yeah, there's something really special to that. 47:47 Well, but I think what I was really focusing on is what is it that people talk about when they talk about mushrooms? You know, I think that's very interesting. I find that to be a very interesting subject. It is. It's, is it sociology, is it? I don't know, what do you want to call it is, but I think as you just commented, there is something, again, not unique. I'm sure theoretical physicists, when they discover a new subatomic particle go nuts, as they should. 48:19 But at the same time, here we are, we're able to kind of have those same discoveries. Maybe they're not some new subatomic particle, but it could be some new species of mushrooms, or it could just be a new mushroom that you've never ever seen before. Also, that lights up your world, and now you understand it a little bit more. And I think that's a wonderful journey that we were doing in the Himalayas. And 48:45 you know, had a lot of fun doing it. Also, we had, we just had a lot of fun every day, we had a lot of fun. And that's also that's really good Kool Aid. You know, 48:55 it's seems like, 48:58 and correct me if I'm wrong, but I mean, 49:02 you're, it seems like your goal is to really curate an experience, you know, and it seems like your goal isn't fixated on you know, I want to reach the peak, or, you know, I want to discover X amount of mushrooms of whatever it seems like you really want to, you know, hold space for people to connect. And, and that's really cool to hear and I love. 49:31 I love talking to people that are, are that that are truly like, that can curate an experience for and I feel like that is unique for someone who is a space holder, you know, to hold a space where people can connect and have a great time and, you know, be themselves and connect to what they're really passionate about and to be able to do that is really skillful. And I give you a lot of admiration for that. You know, it's 50:00 It's not easy to hold the space like that and have everything go. Well, you know, as humans, I think we like to control and, you know, have things a certain way. But it seems like they're you're able to, to create a space where there was space where people could be themselves and be passionate and be free and be able to connect, not only to mushrooms, but just something deeper. 50:28 So bravo, for the first for the first trek, I think you did a great job. Yeah, no, thank you. No, I think I think we organized it that way people could walk. Not necessarily, you know, they had to kind of stay not miss not together together. But people could break up into little groups. And we weren't, I didn't, I've gone on tracks when people have to kind of walk almost in single file, looking at the backpack in front of you. And it's so unnecessary. And we didn't do it that way. And we had enough Sherpa guides to make sure everybody was safe. I'd said at one point, people were off looking at things and I said, Look, you all have headlamps out, you get home, you get back at 10 o'clock at night, I don't care, you know, just, I'll see you later, you know, take as much time as you need. 51:10 Because I was making the decisions. Like, if I felt in any way that there was a safety issue, I would have done something differently. But as long as I checked off the box, it said you're going to be safe. Take as much time as you need to explore whatever it is you needed to do. So I think people tended to be the sounds a little patronizing, but I think they'd be they behaved as grownups. You know, sometimes you go on these tracks, and you go to a foreign country, but it gets a little child like, you know, tell me what to do. I'm in a country what you know. And that gets, you know, you can figure stuff out for yourself. And I think I was very good about just making sure that everybody knew what they needed to do for the group, but also for themselves. And then after that, 51:55 you could carve out your own experience. So you're already planning next year, you have this documentary? Yes, yes. Yes, you have mushrooms that are potentially new to science that are being 52:10 researched right now what it what is? Yeah, yeah, what would make you the happiest to see unfold? 52:19 I'll tell you very directly with that one of our Sherpa guides was on Mount Everest a few years ago, when he was at Camp three, changing the rope from one, one fixed line to the next. And there's this critical moment when you unhook your carabiner. And then you stand there, and then you put on the next line. And exactly at that moment, a gust of wind blew him off his feet. And He skated down from Camp three to camp two, right? You know, down the Lhotse face, people saw him and knew he was going to die. And he didn't somehow the backpack on his back cushions him. And he ended up with a hand problem, but it was fine. And he was on our track. And I said to him, 52:57 I would love if I could provide you with a opportunity to go on these mushroom tracks. And if you decide you want to climb Mount Everest and guide it great. But if you decide that this is something that you also can do, and and use your backyard as your as a place to show people and to learn. And that would be for me. 53:19 I would feel that that was a great thing. Whether you know, and I think that may happen, you know, because I think this was a huge success. I think other people will want to go 53:29 I will also be at City ride and lost each other there. 53:33 But But I think if you were to sort of say what's if I could do something with this, that would be to just say to these guys, hey, would you like a different choice? Because in a way I find the whole mountaineering thing, and I certainly been part of it. It's still Westerners coming into a developing country and saying to these guys, hey, we'll pay you a little bit of money today, to carry our stuff, to carry all of our loads to go over the risks of the highest mountains in the world to take take the risk. And I think there's something essentially unfair, perhaps even unjust about that. 54:12 That certainly doesn't mean I didn't I think it's a great thing to do. I've done it. I've also done in Alaska. And by the way, in Alaska, they don't have people carrying your own all of your stuff. You have to have it up the mountain. So if you want to climb Denali, you better be prepared to carry all this stuff up with you. But 54:31 so anyway, but that would be my answer to that question. If I were to sort of say, I'd love to see this really develop. I think there's a huge potential not only in the area that we were in, we're planning a trek to the Annapurna Circuit, and we think we'll find different mushrooms there, you know, you just go to like anything else, you go to different time of year you'll find a different mushroom, you know, so we just went for a two week period. 54:53 And there's a whole there's a lot more to this country that has not been explored. So I think there's this 55:00 huge potential for this. 55:03 And for all the other things that we talked about, you know, going during the offseason, it's less crowded. You have different experience totally. 55:13 And you have the whole mushroom thing to keep everybody tuned up tapping on. Well, it's been an absolute pleasure and I love this conversation. Thank you so much. And it gets me eager to get back out there and travel the world. 55:30 Especially in Nepal I've ever been in I would I would love to go where? Definitely. 55:36 Where can people go to learn more? 55:41 Well, on my website, which is international mountain trekking, the website is I www I m T. Indigo, marry Tango dash nepal.com. Awesome. IMT then I will see you next month. And I tell you, right, I don't know when, when we're releasing. No, I'm so excited. I've never I've never been there before. And I'm I'm one of the presenters. So I'm really excited to talk about you're gonna love it. Yeah, it is great. It's a fun time. Oh, yeah. There will. Well Britt Britt has warned me about certain aspects of it sounds like it's coming from a good place. Yeah. If you get a warning from Brett, you got you got it everything. 56:23 And of course, he told me to ask you about your new your, your your challenge. Do you have a golden retriever and she has a little border collie? Yeah. Yeah, she's great. She's been, you know, trying to drop toys in my lap this whole conversation and she's now laying over there, but she's great. Started truffle training. I got a little lazy so she still has a lot more work to go but yeah, she's super cute, most lovable dog ever and 56:55 so what are you putting a truffle inside of a tennis? Yeah, something like that. It's baby steps and we're getting there but yeah, it's a lot of fun at this year. I won't bring her I was going to logistically it won't work out this year. I did last year when she was like 10 weeks old and had her in a little backpack the whole time and she was pissing all over the place and having a blast. She actually loves mushrooms she I didn't train her to seek out mushroom she actually did it herself and she will try this snag a puff ball off the table puffballs or favorite. She'll try to snag up off off the table like like that. 57:37 Yeah, she's a good one. But anyways, thanks for coming on. And thanks, everyone for tuning in and trimming in. Thanks. 57:45 Please everyone, check out our website, mushroom revival.com We have tinctures, capsules, powders gummies a bunch of blog posts that you could learn all about mushrooms and all of our podcasts are there with all links and everything. And yeah, we don't we don't take any donations or anything. So that's a way that you can support the show. Another way is just leaving a review or telling a friend you know spreading that passion as Richard was talking about, you know, of being generous with that excitement about mushrooms, whether it's your your friends, your family, some random person you just met at the street, the person checking you out at the grocery store, share a fun fact about mushrooms and share that that spark in your eye. You know people have had a rough couple of years and you know it's it's the least that you can do is spread passion right now and good, good energy so so keep it up. Sending everyone a big big mushroom hug wherever you are in the world and much love Transcribed by https://otter.ai