Here, in case you're wondering, is the way you get from Southwest Virginia to the village of Jomsom, in the Himalayan Mountains of Nepal:

You board an airplane to Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.

You spend 5¹₂ hours in Chicago, waiting for your flight to New Delhi, while eating all the salad and American-style pizza you can find, knowing it will be your last chance for weeks.

The flight to India takes 15 hours. Once you land at Indira Ghandi International Airport, you must stay there, twiddling your thumbs, for 18 hours, because you never applied for an Indian visa. From New Delhi, it's a 90-minute flight over the Himalayas to Katmandu.

From Katmandu, you will fly to Pokhara, assuming the airplanes aren't all grounded by low-hanging clouds. From Pokhara, you can take a twin-engine turboprop through breathtaking valleys between 19,000-foot Himalayan peaks, to land at last on the bumpy airstrip at Jomsom, along the ancient Kali-Gandaki River. Unless, of course, the planes aren't flying because of the weather, which happens often.

In that case you will have to walk through pouring rain, over soggy fields teeming with leeches.

It takes at least four days.

Such is the daunting itinerary facing Blacksburg artist Jane Vance and a small group of like-minded pilgrims, most of them from Roanoke and Blacksburg, who are scheduled to embark Friday on a history-making journey to western Nepal.

Their mission: to deliver Vance's 7-foot portrait of Nepalese healer and holy man Tsampa Ngawang (pronounced som-puh nah-wong) to Ngawang himself, in the village where he lives.

It is a trek both difficult and whimsical, made for dreamers with strong stomachs and sturdy legs. And it has won the blessing of the Dalai Lama.

The arrival of the painting in Jomsom will be celebrated with a weeklong festival, to include elaborate dances, colorful costumes and chanted prayers.

Assuming, that is, Vance and company ever make it.

Story of a friendship

Vance is no stranger to the forbidding landscape of south-central Asia. She has journeyed to India, and to the mountains of Nepal, several times.

Vance, a Blacksburg teacher's aide and Eastern-influenced artist whose work has been championed by modern art critic Suzi Gablik, first went to India 22 years ago at the invitation of a friend.

It stunned her. "There is nothing like South Asia to dissolve your preconceptions," Vance discovered. "There's something about that place, the infinite patience. I hadn't seen it anywhere else."

It was on a subsequent trip to Nepal in 1995 that the seeds of this month's trip were planted. In Kathmandu, Vance met an American photographer, Thomas Kelly, who was impressed by the Eastern quality of Vance's art. Kelly introduced her to Ngawang, a Buddhist holy man, or lama.

Despite the lama's initial reserve -- "He was very formal," Vance recalled -- they soon became friends.

Vance and a Blacksburg pal, fifth-grade schoolteacher Jenna Swann, returned to Nepal to visit Ngawang in 2001. On that trip, Vance and Swann accompanied Ngawang on a 22-day hike across the mountains, encountering a life-threatening blizzard along the way. They also stayed for a week at the village they are returning to this month, which is Ngawang's hometown.

The lama returned their visit in 2001, traveling to Blacksburg in August to visit Vance and spend a semester lecturing on Himalayan culture at Virginia Tech.

In Blacksburg, the holy man encountered such Western-world marvels as tractors, lawn mowers and power log splitters, and sampled American apples, which he said were big and beautiful but had little taste.

It was during his visit that Vance began her painting. Part portrait, part written biography, with portions written in Tibetan by Ngawang himself, the painting ultimately delighted the lama, who returned to Blacksburg to bless it in a 45-minute ceremony in 2005.

So why did Vance decide to hand-deliver the painting to Ngawang in Nepal?

The answer is rooted in the country's culture, she said, which calls for gifts to be delivered from the giver's own hand.

She also knew the painting would be perceived in Nepal as an honor to the entire village of Jomsom, and not just to Ngawang. So, she decided, she must take it there.

Still, Vance knew such East-West interactions in the western Nepal mountains were extremely rare. To be safe, Vance and Swann, who planned to go again, decided to consult the head monk in the region for advice.

That would be Tenzin Gyatso, the Dalai Lama, winner of the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize.

"He wrote back and said, 'You go, girl,' " Vance recalled.

Actually, joint secretary Chhime Chhoekyapa, responding on behalf of the Dalai Lama, sent back a three-paragraph letter last summer, saying the journey would help bring greater awareness of the "rich cultural heritage" of people living in the mountains of Nepal.

The letter concluded: "His Holiness sends His prayers and good wishes for the success of your project."

Not Paris

Photographs show Jomsom as a bleak, brown, rocky moonscape with a gravel runway and a string of buildings with square fronts made of weathered brown boards. Vance describes the architecture of some of them as "Wild West."

She and Swann have warned the rest of the delegation to expect erratic electricity and phone service, no television and frigid nights huddled under blankets made of yak wool. "Your shower choices are cold and colder," Swann said.

And then there are the leeches. "There's no way you can escape," Vance said. "You'll bleed. But at the end of the day, you'll be fine."

Or, as she cautioned group members in a recent e-mail: "We are not going to Paris."

So why go?

"Who would not want to go see another culture in another part of the world?" asked Reba Hoffman, an eighth-grade science teacher in Blacksburg who plans to make the trip.

Others include Roanoke Valley minister Diane Scribner Clevenger; Roanoke videographer Tom Landon; West Virginia white water rafting guide Jason Swann, who is Jenna Swann's brother; and Radford University graduate and photographer Sherrie Austin.

Jenna Swann's video footage of her and Vance's last trip, "Into Nepal: A Journey Through the Kathmandu Valley," won a National Educational Telecommunication Association award for Best Documentary for 2003. She will work with Landon to document this trip as well.

Hoffman, a mother of two young children whose most exotic trip to date was a vacation to Belize, remembered the reaction of her husband, Carl, when she first told him Vance had invited her on the trip:

"He said, 'How can you not go?' " She agreed.

Landon (who is married to Roanoke Times reporter Beth Macy) is anticipating "a life-changing event." Clevenger, who is senior minister of Unity of Roanoke Valley, said she heard about the trip from Landon.

"My heart just leapt," said Scribner Clevenger, a veteran hiker who has walked the famed pilgrimage trail to Santiago de Compostella over the mountains of northern Spain. "It is an unlimited opportunity for us to open doors to each other's cultures, thoughts and how we carry God in the world.

"What a wonderful opportunity for East and West to meet, and to do it in an honoring way."

For more information on the journey to Nepal, visit www.agiftforthevillage.com.

For a trip blog, visit agiftforthevillage.blogspot.com

Staff writer Pamela Podger contributed to this report.