Nepali Haircut

I got my hair cut yesterday.  I think that makes 7 countries where I've gotten one, 8 if you count the emergency beard removal in Guatemala.

There is a barbershop in between the veggie market and one of the convenience-y stores that has stacks of eggs and bags of potato chips hanging on long strings.  It was of course empty when we got there, but the vigilant barber soon showed up with his burning eyes and scruffy white coat.

His haircutting was speedy and precise while feeling chaotic and rushed.  The scissors never stopped snipping, usually in a rhythm of three, the first in the hair, the last in the air, and the second wherever it needed to be.

Then he got out the straight razor and I tried to monitor my attention and reactions for racism.  Did I feel more reassured when he changed the blade than I would have in America?  Did I pay extra attention to the authenticity of opening the packaging?  Would you find that justifiable?  Do I?

He tidied up the edges with expert strokes, which made me understand why barbers were the surgeons in the Middle Ages.  Those guys know how to use a blade.  Then it was aftershave powder with one of those little brushes, followed by a ferocious pinch at the nape of my neck that felt almost punitive...what did I ever do to you, Barberji?

Then he started beating on my head, karate chops before fists that made my vision bounce epically while I tried to hold my neck firm.

Once my vision calmed down he apparently forgave me and we made up with a brusque but enthusiastic massage, sweeping his hands up and over my noggin, down the sides, then around my ears in a precise and practiced pattern that felt like a very confused form of reiki.

He put one hand above and behind my ear on the left side of my head and the other reached around under my chin on the right, and then tried to kill me by breaking my neck.  Like Antonio Banderas in that one bar brawl scene in Desperado.  Luckily my manly sinews were too much for him, and he stopped just past the point where my uppermost vertebrae crunched like a car accident.  He tried again on the other side while I focused on not flexing a muscle, trying hard to avoid thinking about the damage we might inadvertently cause.  The second time, on the other side, he went a small amount further before the skeletal implosions began, though a millimeter feels like serious business at that point.

My neck didn't hurt beforehand, but after I swear afterwards I could turn my head like a damn barn owl.

Leaving the barbershop to pick up some okra for tonight's curry and cookies (digestives of course) for tomorrow morning's tea, I felt that I got more smiles than normal; I think the locals approved of my local barbershop participation.  And of course found my delirious smile highly entertaining.

An average day in Bhaktapur

6:00 AM the little pink travel clock goes off, K or I snaking an arm out from under the mosquito net to turn it off or poke at it for a snooze.

As I said in my birthday blog, there are only a few solar water heaters on roofs around town, and there isn't one on our roof, so my morning shower is night-chilled cold water, mouth clamped shut to avoid swallowing any.  It is still not entirely comfortable to start, but once begun I enjoy it, and I really do feel warmer, fresher, and more ready for the day afterwards.

My travel towel is irredeemably stinky so I air dry, brushing my teeth with the water since by now our stomachs are pretty used to the bacteria, and we are able to take more liberties than tourism would otherwise have allowed.  The bathroom is an open space, the shower head above the toilet, the sink to the side, so everyone has bathroom flip-flops since the floor is nearly always wet.

7:00 Morning tea time with our hosts, Saroj Sir and his wife Anita Ma'am.  Saroj is a teacher at Kalika Higher Secondary School, and is our English-speaking liaison in the area, though Anita understands more than she at first admitted, which she gave away with her infectious laughter at our jokes, stories, and stumbling learning curve of Nepali culture.  The tea is black, loaded with sugar, and there are always biscuits on the plate.

K and I sit at the table, trying to add to our day's lesson plans and talking to Saroj and Anita until around the
8:30 morning meal of dal bhat.  Dal is a lentil soup, served in a small dish, which is poured over the heap of white rice (the bhat).  There is usually also some achar (I'm guessing on the spelling) which is a pickled spicy salsa, a little dab'll do ya.  Then a side dish of curry veggies, usually potato mixed with a green gourd, bean, or local unknown.

You then smishsmash these all together and eat.  Using only your hand.  Right hand.  The fingernails on our right hands are noticeably yellower than on the left after a month of dal bhat.  You scoop up a bite in your hand, manipulate it down to the last couple joints of the fingers, insert the thumb underneath this loose ball, bring the hand to the mouth and scrape it in, using the thumb as a lever/elevator.  Licking fingers (even plate) is accepted and even encouraged.  A good burp shows appreciation for the food and is polite.  I have not yet managed this, I am sorry to say.

It is absolutely delicious food.  I expect to have trouble and reluctance returning to the Dictatorship of Silverware Oppression practiced in the west.

We went out to dinner on my birthday in a nice place downtown, and I would choose the food Anita (or our first host-mother Hema) prepares 10 times out of 10.

After this meal Nepali's don't eat again until around 8-9:30 PM, taking only a small snack lunch at 1:00, so the portions are massive.  Anita returns as many times as we allow, additional scoops of each component headed for our plates.  The ratio is very important, since you cannot leave anything on your plate (deeply offensive) and if you have too much dal then it gets too liquid.  Several times I have asked for a tiny bit more rice, to soak up the dal, which has arrived with a full round of achar, curry, and more dal.  It is a delicious stretch to finish every time.

K and I teach at two schools, three days each at one before trading places (there are six workdays in Nepal, Sunday is their Monday, and they have no summer vacation, just one week between grades).  We live at Kalika, and Himalayan is a 20 minute walk across town (and through a couple rice paddies).

If you read my pre-Nepal info blog you may remember that we were expecting a different school from Himalayan and a host family (we live in a room in a building next to the school).  Both of these were changed at some point, which is utterly in character with Nepal, where things tend to change ten minutes after they were supposed to start, and you usually find out about an hour later.

Planning does not appear to be a common practice; when we showed up (already twice postponed at our hosts' request by two days then four hours) there was still no bed in our room.  I helped disassemble and relocate one, surreptitiously squishing silverfish the size of housepets when no one was looking, feeling likely a princess for even noticing them.  Luckily the giant spiders were all dried husks.

9:45 Assembly at the schools.  The children line up in rows by class.  A teacher takes them through a series of drills, "cover up" means to reach up and put your hands on the person's shoulders in front of you, then sides and straight up.  They bow tiny heads, fold small hands, and close deep brown eyes for prayer, chanted in unison, and then (at Himalayan only) sing the Nepali national anthem, which I expect to be able to mimic with reasonable accuracy soon.

As they head up to the classrooms the teacher inspects their socks, hair, ties, etc for inadequate cleanliness or ironing (all the schools here have their own uniforms, two per week, changing on Wednesday).  The Principal Ma'am at Himalayan appears to be highly intuitive, grabbing kids seemingly at random and holding them back for infractions I can only guess at.

10:00 classes begin.  Two 40 minute classes back to back, 5 minute break, two more classes.

12:45 Tiffin Break for 30 minutes.  "Tiffin" is apparently an old English word for the small boxes that kids bring their snacks to school in, and the name has come to refer to the break.  The kitchen at Himalayan offers teachers a small snack, variable contents but reliably spicy beyond my western palate's easy comprehension.

On the first day I ate some soup, and was well into the resulting heavy sweating when the principal brought all the other teachers in to meet me, one by one.  I had brought some little cakes to share with the teachers (since it was my birthday) but instead of leaving them on a counter, I was portioning them out to shy teachers, who politely didn't look at my dripping face.  They seem to be shy/intimidated by us, and the principal urges them to speak with us, hoping we will improve their English, which is...of various levels.  It was another of those delightfully awkward experiences that I am so skilled at finding.

After Tiffin is a mirror image of the morning, two 40 minute classes, 5 minute break, then two more before school ends at 4:00.  There are 8 classes a day, of which we teach 5 at Kalika and 6 at Himalayan.

These class times are misleading to a western sense of scheduling.  That soup I ate the first day was given to me at 1:14, and Tiffin ends at 1:15.  Students tend to show up to the classroom 10-15 minutes after class "begins" and when I show up to a room on time I invariably have to wait outside for another 5+ minutes until the previous teacher leaves.

4:00 Students line up again for a short prayer, maybe an announcement or message, then dismissal.  At Himalayan I am instructed to follow the kids out to the main street to protect them, although the schedule there now has our two "leisure" periods as the last two, so I usually leave early (and for example type this blog).

4:30ish the kids have mostly left the school, and when we are both back at Kalika we have our second tea with Saroj and Anita.  Then we run any errands we may have, tell each other about how the various classes went and plan our next day's lesson plans together since we share most classes (K has 3rd to 8th at Himalayan, while I have 5th to 10th, we both have 4th to 8th at Kalika).

8:30ish evening meal of dal bhat, same as morning, just as delicious.  We don't usually linger afterwards because the culture dictates that someone always has to be available to serve, and Anita usually doesn't eat until we go home.  (When we were staying with our host family in Kathmandu we, as guests, were served first, given a headstart, then the grandmother, as elder, was served.  Once we had all finished the son was served, and once he had finished and we had all left the table, the mother would eat.  The father was sick/absent the whole time we were in that home, so I am not sure when he eats, but I believe it would be between Elder and Child.  Sometimes Saroj eats after we start, and sometimes we don't see him eat at all.  When he does, he manages an awesome Nepali quantity of rice.)
 
We get ready for bed and fall asleep around 10:30, re-stringing the mosquito net and pushing open the windows.  When we are lucky the sound of the monsoon rainfall drowns out the piercing whine of the incredibly persistent mosquitoes who will hover around our net all night long.  Other critters come and go at various times, our favorite being the small lizards, who we revere as protectors, optimistically hoping they will eat some of the mosquitoes, although the second night we watched a rather embarrassing chase where a spider seemed to effortlessly evade the little guy.

The reason why someone has to be available to serve food at all times during dinner is owing to the cultural rules regarding cleanliness.  The left hand is always considered jutho, or impure, since there is no toilet paper here.  Some toilets have a little bucket, and most have a spray nozzle.  You put water in your left hand, and clean yourself.

Us westerners at first usually find this fairly challenging/shocking, but it quickly became apparent to me that it is a superior method to toilet paper.

Of course you wash well with soap and water afterwards, but the left hand is still considered impure.  This is why you walk around the temples (and stupas) clockwise only.  You reach up to spin the prayer wheels, and must use only your right hand, the left should not face the temple.  Handling communal dishes, water bottles etc with your left hand makes them jutho.  Serving from a dish with your own utensil makes it jutho.  Once you have begun to eat food on your plate it is jutho and cannot be shared, except dry food like crackers.  A husband may give jutho food from his plate only to his wife, but cannot accept any from hers.

If food is made jutho, it is inedible (to others) and is dumped out.

Since food is eaten with your right hand, that hand is generally covered in dal, and is considered more impure than the left at that point, so you drink from your glass of water with your left while eating.  We drink boiled water, which is often still warm and seems to have an incredible cleansing effect, rushing through our bodies with unbelievable speed and irresistible urgency.

The most profane part of the body for Nepalis is the feet.  You must never touch anyone (or anything) else with your feet, or step over a person, object, food, or anything involved in worship.  This is sometimes difficult since every house has a small spot in front where offerings are made, so walking down the street involves watching carefully where you step, which is hazardous given that traffic obeys no rules, only tendencies, and during the monsoon season the puddles will last about four months, and sometimes reach epic proportions as muddy quagmires.

The only cultural aspect I have felt challenged by was the late meal then going right to bed.  K still struggles to observe the gender roles with unattached interest.

We are incredibly happy to be here; it is a singular opportunity to encounter a place at a level profoundly deeper than simple tourism.  It is also far more challenging and uncomfortable.  I find myself longing for a stint of "normal" travel, but expect I will crave this type of intimate interaction more frequently from now on.  I think I may be addicted.

And I'm going to miss the dal bhat.

I turned 31 in Bhaktapur, Nepal yesterday.

I turned 31 in Bhaktapur, Nepal yesterday.  This makes a different country every birthday for the last four years.  The blessings are too many to count.

I am at peace with the gradual increase of casualness in one's birthdays as age increases.  Gone are the frantic pool parties that defined my childhood summers, and I'm okay with that.

I woke up yesterday morning 6:00 AM under the mosquito net in our room in Nepal, aspiring to gratitude for the pure exuberant fantasticosity of that statement, as every day.  And it being my birthday added an extra layer of smile.

K is arguably the most skilled person I know at making someone feel celebrated and special, and her "happy birthday" wishes and CD gift of the mantras we heard at Swayambhunath (Buddhist stupa on the hill above Kathmandu) were already gifts enough.  No more required, but more to come.

Before my cold shower (there are a few solar water heaters around here, but not many, and not on our roof) I was reminded of the reality of reality by a not-infrequent visitor on our wall, this time one of the flat spiders who move faster than an animal with legs that long really should be able to move.  I had my deodorant wrapped in a piece of paper, ready to squish it, but declined its death in homage to my Buddhist/Hindu nature.  Instead I opted to try and herd it out the door by tapping the wall next to it.

After a few up and down circuits it made a frantic dash for the door before reversing course, reaching the edge of the wall and flying off, straight down into our things.  My 8 legged friend had reminded me that just because it was one's birthday doesn't mean the world dances to your tune, all things falling into place (as of course they do every day).  I smiled and took my cold shower, which are still not easy to begin, but are by now enjoyable once I'm in.

Every morning we have tea with Saroj and Anita, our hosts at Kalika Higher Secondary School, before eating dal bhat at 9:00.  This morning they shared the birthday ritual of Sagun (no idea of spelling) which includes the gift of a hard boiled egg fried in curry spices, with cucumber and home-grown radishes (the giant white kind, not the little red guys).  They lit the Ganesh oil lamp (think Aladdin) which they daubed with the ritual red paste and an offering of the veggies placed on top for the god.

Then they blessed me with a kata, the white scarf one presents to honored guests and sometimes hosts, red flower received and placed on one's head, and tika, the red dollop of rice and coloring in the center of the forehead that one receives on special occasions or as a sign of welcoming.  I felt more blessed and welcomed and included and honored than I could hope for.

Feeling at peace and in love with the world I began walking to school.  K and I alternate schools, each teaching three days at either Kalika or Himalayan English Secondary School before switching.  (I'll post an everyday schedule and details...one of these days.)

There are no other foreigners (beyond India, Bhutan, China, and maybe Bangladesh) in our area, and at first we were continually stared at on our travels around town.  We have been here long enough that the locals seem to have gotten used to us, at least in our specific neighborhood, though they still bring their children out to greet us (especially K who they still stare at with something that looks like awe) as we pass their homes.  Tiny voices shout out "hi!", "bye-bye!", or "namaste!" and shy smiles erupt at our responses.

It was my first day at Himalayan, which began with a surprise request by the principal for me to address the entire school during their morning assembly, a couple hundred little faces peaking at me from their evenly spaced rows.

We teach six classes a day there, and my introduction to each class began with recitals of the Happy Birthday song that varied from bold and shouted (10 year olds) to shy and blushing (17 year olds).  K had advised them of my birthday, and small right hands delivered birthday cards and gifts, left hands reached across to hold the right elbow in a sign of respect.  (The left hand is impure, there is no toilet paper here...)

For dinner our absolutely amazing hosts allowed us to take them out (it took some convincing), and we ate in a garden restaurant next to the UNESCO World Heritage Site Durbar Square (palace/temple/monument area) in Bhaktapur, considered by many (including myself) to be the most beautiful of the three competing such squares in the Kathmandu Valley.  Walking there, past ancient temples and palaces, and monuments/shrines uncountable, wearing our traditional local outfits, called "kurtha" and not feeling like dumb tourists doing so, was an experience in itself that left us smiling, dumbstruck.

We feel safe here in Nepal (though we are locked in every night behind two layers of metal bars with padlocks, and there are bars on all the windows) but I would still not normally take my camera out after dark, but with our host escort and four people I did last night.  The yellow street lights at night on the streets and red brick buildings is another manifestation of the maddening beauty here that I can only helplessly observe and enjoy.  I snapped a pair of quick tries towards it, one place, and as a result, just for spice, my birthday ended with us being followed nearly home by shady characters from the shadows, Saroj, our host, putting on his stern teacher's face and walking between us and them.

My own teaching instincts made me want to advise them that following someone is much less sneaky when you shuffle with your left foot the whole time.

They were menacing enough that I moved my memory cards from the camera case into various pockets to minimize loss if they did get my bag, but in the end they gave up and melted away.

Today was a "normal" day, and yet I find myself still overflowing with gratitude.  Maybe it has something to do with the half hundred people who wished me happy birthday on facebook and email.  Doubtful/cynical as I am regarding the internet age and facebook society, that felt good, real good.

I admit that turning 31 was somewhat more perilous-feeling than turning 30 was.  (After all, now I'm IN my 30s.)  But experiencing it in circumstances this amazing, and I mean that on a global level, made it all sacred.

Dal Bhat

I'm not even sure how to spell it, but I eat it for dinner every day.  Starting next week I will eat it for both of my two daily meals.  According to the 2005 guidebook I was reading, 22 million out of 24 million Nepalis eat it twice a day for their food.

Dal Bhat is a pile of white rice, dal (a lentil soup), with a small side (or maybe three) of any of several things, usually veggie curry, sometimes fried potatoes that only resemble fries in shape, stewed leafy greens, a little chicken, or some sort of fibrous shredded something.  You mix the various ingrediants together and eat them.  With your hands.  I haven't touched silverware since beginning the program.

You scoop some of the soupy lentil broth into the rice, pick up a pinch of curry vegetables, mash it all together using your right hand and only your right hand, scoop some up, bring it to your mouth and push it in using your thumb as a lever.

As of now I still very much enjoy it.  Some of my colleagues are not so lucky; those who seem allergic to some ingredient are in for a rough summer.

We wake up around 6:00 AM, and may see or hear the family's morning worship ceremony, or puja.  Their primary deity is Ganesh, his golden figures kept in a small room off the landing at the top of the stairs, outside the kitchen where we eat our breakfast of toast and milk tea.

Our host family has a 5 year old boy, who leaves for school a little before we do, dressed smartly in his uniform with tie.  We walk along a dirt road with puddles already a couple months old which will not dry up until September sometime unless there is a break in the monsoons.  The soil is clay, the puddles silver and splashed by the continuous passage of motorcycle, taxi, and mini-bus tires.

The stret is lined with cement buildings, small shop fronts offering basic groceries, laundry, mechanics, miscellaneous kitchen goods, or small bar/restaurants to drink a soda or cup of tea in.  The people are beginning to stare at us less, a little less each day?  They were initially suprised to see us and more suprised when we greeted them with a correct "namaste!" but by now I guess the word has gone out.

We turn off the road just before the muddy pit enclosed by a stick fence where a group of young men appear to live with the chickens they are raising.  Up the hill and around and then through the swampy rice paddies.  We walk the last stretch along the foot-high berm of soil separating two long ovals.  When we arrived the women were still planting them, colorful skirts hiked up just a bit as the feet sank into the mud, bent over with arms sweeping in a familiar motion as they planted the small green stalks.

We have Nepali language class first thing, where we introduce ourselves and discuss who owns the pen.  Mero naam Tim ho.  Tyo wahaako kalam ho.  Tapaailaai hariyo rang manparccha?

In the afternoon we may learn about the Nepali education system, political system, or history, or take a trip to somewhere in the valley.  K and I had already visited the palace square of monuments and temples, Durbar Square (UNESCO World Heritage site) but this time we volunteered to serve as guides, so I learned much more about the history of an amazing place, while K can tell you about the rituals and life of the Living Goddess, Kumari.  But those are enough for another post, and this sticky keyboard with uncertain connection in a humid room encourages relative brevity.

This moring we had a yoga and meditation session with a guru from Rajistaan which was unlike any yoga experience I have had before, including the "Lion Salute" when he abruptly roared while sticking his tongue all the way out and down across his chin and rolling his eyes up in his head.  The first try felt ridiculous, but the second was already a release.

The last two nights we have walked home after dark.  There are rare streetlights, and the power was completely out last night.  Fireflies blink on and off beside the road.  People living in rough huts or concrete Nepali McMansions go about their lives, the curry and rice smells of their dinners are minor variations of a common theme, as nearly all Nepalis eat the same meal, dal bhat, twice a day.  Beginning next week this will be our diet as well.

Approaching motorbikes show striking silhouettes of walking figures, the women hazed with color from the sweeping folds of their shawls, saris, and kurthas.

The kurtha is the traditional Nepali outfit, versions worn by both men and women, and we are encouraged to wear them in our schools in order to better fit in.  We were measured yesterday for our custom made outfits, the material and tailoring coming to about ten dollars.

We have heard a little info on our schools.  K and I are lucky, and were given the tall challenge.  We will be teaching in the government (public) schools which have larger class sizes.  K and I will be teaching around 5-8 classes, alone, to around 60 students.  We will have one day to observe the classes.

Discipline here is done by beating the students, and raising hands in not a known concept.  In a few days we will find out how conversation classes of 60 children go.

First week in Nepal, Part 3

I don't mean to give the impression that we are less than ecstatic to be here.  Bed bugs aside.

Kathmandu is a throbbing sort of place, beautifully different from anywhere I've been before.  In general though, the country bears a strong resemblance to Guatemala.  I suppose just as affluent cities all resemble each other, poverty and labor-intensive-agriculture-to-survive areas have a commonality.

But I have never seen anything like the dark green mountain slopes, so steep, mist clinging in places.  The upper levels incredibly tend to have thin terraces growing corn, and I cannot imagine the amount of work these people do to farm so.  The lower levels are usually rice paddies, the monsoon season filling them, the women in robes stooped over, mud up to their ankles and wrists, the men following behind oxen and buffalo pulling handmade ploughs.

We enjoyed our time outside the city, and were glad to return to it.  The tourist block, Thamel, has a fantastic array of food options, and we have been feasting on Indian, Thai, Other, and sometimes the Nepali Dal Bhat.  But time is up, so I'll tell you that stuff later.

Be well!

First week in Nepal, Part 1

Well hello.  Alive and well in Kathmandu.  I like the idea of going two months without touching the internet, but here I am, and there you are.  How are you by the way?

Let's see.  It is pretty hot in here, so a quick update.

We arrived last Tuesday, after just over 24 hours of travel.  London Heathrow was its normal bustling place, and my sense of adventure was awakening, which in this case meant I ordered a burrito.  A London airport's take on a burrito was actually fairly decent...though I am not sure why it was soaking in marinara sauce.

Bahrein was kind of a culture shock, as the Middle East always is.  Strutting men with aggressive auras, their women's personality defiantly leaking out of the eye slits in their burrqas.  I have no idea how to spell that, and this computer is not so savvy as to either.

Our flight to Kathmandu was K and I, and a returning UN mission of some sort (our neighbor's English was not quite good enough to explain what), all guys, all cheery.  The decent through the Himalayan clouds was bumpy and exciting and epically beautiful.

It was raining when we landed, and the knowledge that I was feeling a monsoon on my skin left me high.

Customs was pretty painless, and the boss of our program picked us up at the airport, and drove us through town to the hotel we're staying in.

Driving through Kathmandu for the first time.  It tends to leave people looking fairly shellshocked.  Newcomers first getting out of their taxi look a little shaky, their face overly still as they try to pretend it is totally familiar to ride through a vehicular maelstrom like that.  Sometimes there are lanes painted on the ground, which seems kind of cute.  There is no sense of lanes going the same direction, and the border between your side and oncoming traffic is maleable, fluid as shaken up oil on water far from reaching equilibrium.

The Nepali people seem to be very kind, but the approach to driving and movement is pure sub-continent.  Standing in lines has more in common with practice for a defensive lineman in American football than an orderly wait for one's turn.

We spent a couple days in Kathmandu, walking around town, seeing the beautiful temples and palaces, all rimmed with garbage and flies.  The sacred and the profane breath through the same hot air here.  Temples and sacred spaces are scattered through every tiny winding street, people going about their lives alongside stray dogs eating garbage at the foot of crouching monuments with orange-smeared faces of gods.

Kathmandu is one of three distinct cities, which were formerly independent kingdoms.  The others are Patan and Bhaktapur.  We will be staying in Bhaktapur all summer and have not seen it yet, and Patan has been enveloped by Kathmandu's sprawl.  We walked there last week, an hour walk turning into three as we regularly got lost.  There are no street names here, but that's okay because it is all worth seeing.

We seem to be among the few tourists who walk between places, entering "local" neighborhoods, and the people tend to find us fairly interesting, especially the children.

We took refuge on the 17th century temple of Vishnu in Patan's Durbar Square while the monsoon poured incredible amounts of water down around us.  Women in colorful robes sang beside us, and a young couple ran through the rain to huddle on the other side, looking exactly like a Bollywood movie, close but not touching, heated smiles and rain slicked hair.  I waited for the coordinated dance, but it must have been canceled on account of the weather.

The program starts tomorrow, so we wanted to get out of the city and see more of the country.  We took a local bus, which was another cultural experience of accepting the driving style and waiting to see if we would die that day.

We went to Manakamana, where some amiable Austrians built the longest cable car in Asia in 1998.  It goes nearly vertical, covering 2.8 kilometers and ascending 1000 (feet I think...I can't remember the unit, but the view was beautiful coming up to and into the clouds).

There is a temple and small town at the top.  The moderate rain turned heavy and we ducked under the metal roof of the area where worshippers leave their shoes when they enter the temple.  A holy man in bright yellow robes was accepting gifts of bags of rice and applying the orange and red paint to the devotees foreheads.  I am chagrined at not knowing what it all was...the difference between bindhi's and...

His eyes were an incredible light blue, and the suspense until I can see what that one picture looked like may drive me crazy all summer.

The plan was to walk out, but the rain went from heavy to biblical, and the 18 kilometer walk down the mountainside quickly became impossible, so we ate the Nepali lunch, Dal Bhat, and took the cable car back down the mountain.

We caught a jitney (mini-bus) to Dumre, from where we would walk 7 kilometers to Bandipur, which we had heard great things about.  Not long into the trip we pulled over, the driver got out and wandered off.  We sat quietly for a bit then people got out and we noticed the line of stopped traffic snaking off around the bend in the distance.

Turns out a waterfall that forms in heavy rain had shut down the road, and we waited for it to clear.  We waited 7 hours, talking to other passengers and seeing the shanty structures the people there live in, before it got dark.  The larger buses were given clearance to go, but the smaller would be washed away.  Most waited in line, but ours returned to a small truckstop town just down the road.  The logistics of moving people and vehicles around in a place like this, where trucks had all elbowed up, double blocking each other in, was another chance to practice calm acceptance.  This was only difficult when we, and a dozen other large vehicles, were stuck on a bridge over a monsoon swollen river...I sat calmly listening for sounds of its collapse, but we were in luck.


The internet connection, and power supply to the city, are both unreliable so I think I'll break this into two.

First week in Nepal, Part 2

Given that the waterfall regularly closes down the road (there are basically only two highways in Nepal, one going NE of Kathmandu, one SE) so we realized that if we managed to cross, then the road was closed again, we could very likely miss the beginning of our program, so decided to return to Kathmandu.

Only a few mini-buses were going there, and the nightime and stuck-in-a-jam rates were exorbitant, plus we had been advised, in person and Lonely Planet, that driving at night here is particularly hazardous, so we decided to try and stay the night there, and return the next day.

Turns out we were not the only ones looking to get a room, and the entire village was booked up.  Legs getting shaky, we went to find some food before taking another shot at finding a ride, and a young guy approached us to say that he and his friends had a room they could share with us.  "We no sleep, we will have fun."

We were somewhat dubious about this, but at least it was off the street, but he soon disappeared and we were back to square one.

The universe and the people in it are amazing though, and we soon met a Nepali gentleman who lives in the UK after serving a career in the British military.  (Check out the history of the Gorkha legion sometime.)  He was returning to his village for the first time in 12 years, bringing his two university-age children along, who had only seen it when they were small.

He had his parents with him as well, and the five of them had a small room with four beds reserved, but he offered to let us share.  They had contracted their own minivan for the trip, and if the roads cleared were going to continue, so we sat until a little after midnight, talking to this family.

They said Grandma didn't speak any English, but I caught her laughing at things I said.  Grandpa curled up and fell asleep, looking perfectly comfortable, even though the "beds" were actually wood tables with a blanket laid on top.

After midnight they heard that the road was open, and departed, leaving K and I living like kings in the room.  We considered looking for others needing a room, but most of the people had departed the town, so we had the Grand Hall to ourselves.  Well, us and the bed bugs.  And mosquitoes and truly impressive variety of stains and phenomena on the blanket, walls, floor, table etc.  The squat toilet in the bathroom brimmed with a liquid stew.

We voted on which bed looked the least filthy, segregated it from the rest, each wadded up a shirt to use as a pillow, K put on her waterproof jacket to try and serve as a further protective layer, and we lay down to see if we would sleep.

We actually did pretty well, given that our original prospective hosts were in the room next door, drinking and gambling, and occasionally coming to peer in the windows of our room at us (the tattered cloths hung in front of the window were not wide enough to cover it, and I felt reassured by the bars cemented into place.)

Remind me to write a letter to the manufacturers of my pants, asking why they anchor the belt loops with metal rivets.  This design clearly did not take into account sleeping on a wood table with a thin bug infested blanket as cushioning.

All in all it was another one of those interesting travel experiences that are part of why I love it.

Discomfort and adjustments are good for a person, but the enduring worry is the bed bugs.

We are moving in with our first of two host families tomorrow, and we do not want to bring extra guests with us.  As far as we could tell we escaped okay, but last night I looked up to find a big juicy bed bug walking up the wall.  I think it was another one on the other wall, but it fell off as I approached...right onto our bags.  We were unable to find it.

The good news is that the little brown turd-looking thing was just lint, so at least there's no rats in there.