It’s simple.

Get yourself to JFK Airport in New York City. Board a Qatar Airlines A-350 and fly 11 hours to Doha, the capital of Qatar and site of one of the world’s finest airports. After a couple of hours attempting to avoid  the high-priced shops and restaurants in the terminal, take your seat on another Qatar jet and fly four hours to Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, one of the poorest countries on the planet.

Set your watch nine hours ahead. Yes, for those keeping score, it has taken you a day to arrive at this tiny, landlocked nation. You disembark somewhat heavier as the result of three stupendous meals served in courteous fashion by Qatar’s exemplary staff.

Then, take a Buddha Airlines wing-over-fuselage plane — without uttering a prayer (the Man himself was born in Nepal, but his birthplace was flooded last month, so no tourist visits are currently feasible.) Some 45 minutes later, you arrive at the Chandragadi Airport.  Along the way, you cannot believe your good fortune: there in the distance is the legendary Mt. Everest, rising far above the level of your airplane.

Next: hop in a Range Rover type vehicle driven by a Nepali, who could probably take people up any mountain around given his skills in navigating the pitfalls of a road marked by more potholes than the total in New Jersey. Three hours later, your insides trying to remember what it felt like to be in the same position for more than a few seconds, you arrive in Ilam, the famous tea-growing region of Nepal. Its more illustrious cousin, Darjeeling (50 miles away across the border with India), got hit by the same flood as the Man and is likewise off limits at the moment.

Your hotel is nicely situated in the middle of town. It has a good bed, the strongest door locking mechanism in the world, an erratic Internet system, somewhat sketchy food – great tea though – and, at checkout, accepts only rupees, each of which is worth roughly a penny.

Now, camera at the ready, you take a walk, and at a certain random point veer off the main tourist path, where you erroneously believe you might be mistaken for a dollar sign. Instead, you call on sturdy leg muscles to take you down a hair pin turn/concrete “road” and then off on dirt paths that lead to, among other things, a school. In the space next to an existing classroom, an older lady is busy mixing cement for a presumed expansion.

Then some added fun begins: you have to walk up that steep road to get back to civilization, in this case sitting in on a World Bank presentation involving local business people. The legs strain, sweat pours off your brow and you wonder about the number of beats your heart is being asked to pump. Maybe two-thirds of the way up, the thought of rest and water takes hold of your entire mind and body.

There it is, one of those little shops situated where you wonder how they do enough business to survive. You go to it, with a great show of being desperate for water. The owner returns with a glass full of delightful cool liquid as you ignore the pre-trip warning to not drink water from the tap in Nepal.

How do you turn down such a gracious offer, especially when the proprietor’s t-shirt says what everyone   should want to witness and be part of  ………….. “A World without Strangers.”