Up on the roof

For my return to Kathmandu I opted to rent a room with my friend Chris, who was on my original trip to Nepal ten years ago. He has been back numerous times since then, and is now a fulbright scholar here for the next year. We're staying in Bouddha, a largely Tibetan refugee settlement on the outskirts of Kathmandu and we have the top floor, half of which is rooftop, which makes for a really relaxing space. You can also see this stupa (Bouddhanath) from our rooftop:


My first full day back from Bhutan I started getting stomach troubles. My stomach ached really badly, and I don't even know how many times I had to run to the bathroom. It wasn't as bad as I've had it, but worse than I'm willing to tolerate. So in the afternoon I went to find a medicine store. I eventually found one, (they are fairly common and you don't need prescriptions like in the us) but what I didn't notice was that this one was an Ayurveda medicine shop. The woman felt various parts of my palms, had me press them together as in prayer and held them for a while, and then promptly put some white cream on my fingers and told me to quickly rub it into my belly, 30 times. Following this, she gave me two mystery liquids and when I asked what they were, she would only said, "Ayurveda." For all I know it was Imodium AD in liquid form. She told me to come back to check in later that evening and for 100 rupees (about $1.33, which I felt like she was overcharging me) I was off. I resolved to give it a couple of hours and then find some real medicine, but sure enough, it totally cured my stomach problems! I was pleasantly impressed.

The big bummer was that before my stomach got better a snake charmer was doing his thing on the street below. I kid you not, it was straight out of Indiana Jones (the old ones, not that new crap). He had two king cobras and had them both dancing for him. The funny thing was how many people just walked by him like it was nothing special. I didn't have the energy to go up and down the stairs, so I just watched below.

Yesterday was a holy-day called Nag Pachami. My friend Chris is studying Nags, which are serpentine creatures that protect water and land. They also control the rain, and this festival is timed to be partway into the monsoon. This year the monsoon has been really crappy, so the Nag Pachami festival was especially important. We traveled to the south side of town, where one of the two lakes in the valley exists (the whole valley used to be a huge lake), and is the home of some Nagas. We got to participate in the celebrations and had a great day watching kids swim in the lake and people perform religious dances and ceremonies. And sure enough, this morning, the rains came out in full force! A couple more photos:



That second photo is of a singing duel between two men and two women. They are fairly common out here, and are a blast to watch, very similar to dance-offs in the US.

The day after tomorrow I head to India (Which I'm having a hard time believing, it certainly won't be ten years before I return again). I've heard that there isn't much of an internet connection there, so my posts might get sparse, but I will do my best to keep you all informed. Till next time!

Bhutan part II

What a week! It seems like there is too much to write about regarding Bhutan, I don't quite know where to begin. Perhaps I will give just a couple of quick glimpses into my time there.

My guide, Goenpo, and I got along quite well. He was a monk for seven years before having to leave the monastery to support his mother, and because of this he knew quite a bit about Bhutan and Buddhism. I was quite lucky to have him, as I saw several other guides learning from him during the trip. If anyone is thinking about going, I highly recommend traveling with him and Bhutan Heritage Tours. One of the reasons why we had such a good time was because he loved to tell jokes, so we spent hours each day going back and forth. Lots of laughs.

I went on four hikes while we were there. Bhutan has lots of beautiful forest, and hiking is really great because most hikes consist of going up to a monastery and then coming back down. The last one was to the famous Taktshang Goemba which translates to Tiger's Nest. It is perhaps the best known monastery in Bhutan, as Guru Rimpoche, who brought Buddhism to Bhutan spent three months there in a cave meditating. His consort transformed herself into a tiger to protect him during this period, which is how the place got its name. The monastery was built in the 17^th century and has experienced several fires, the most recent was in 1998. But it has since been rebuilt and has some fantastic alters to both Buddha and Guru Rimpoche. While there Goenpo and I were invited for tea with the head monk's brother, a rare honor. Also on our way back down a troop of Gray Languor monkeys passed directly overhead in the trees and I got to catch a glimpse of some Dholes, a species of wild dogs. Here are a couple of photos from the hike:

Also while in Bhutan I actually got to meet with the Prime Minister! I'm not entirely sure why he deigned to meet with me (I think it might have something to do with the fact that he is a PSU alumna), but it was definitely a life long memory. His office is, naturally, HUGE, and there were was one guy who wrote notes furiously while he and I chatted. Two or three others hung by the door to run for stuff like tea. We mostly chatted about Penn State, which he has fond memories of. I also told him about the purpose of my trip and what I was hoping to do, and he offered to write a letter of support for me, which I think will help greatly in my efforts to obtain an invitation to study there next year.

Speaking of which, it is looking like I will be able to live in Bhutan for a while to conduct research. Nothing is definite, of course, but I will (hopefully) be collaborating with the Royal Society for the Protection of Nature, a conservation-oriented NGO. It is the ideal group for the type of research that I'm hoping to do. Oh, at the end of the meeting with the Prime Minister, he gave me a couple of gifts, including a book, a baseball cap, and a coin commemorating the coronation of the fifth king which happened last fall. It will definitely become a family heirloom.

The last thing to note was the solar eclipse (of my heart). I think some of you heard about it in the US, it was the longest solar eclipse for the next 100+ years. Before I came out I actually shifted around my travel dates so that I would be in Bhutan for it. The eclipse started at 6:58am, so Goenpo and I drove up to Chelela pass where about 20 other folks (half tourists, half Bhutanese people) had also gathered to watch. Unfortunately it's the monsoon season and while we were above one layer of clouds, another was still higher up. It seemed like we wouldn't see anything. The eclipse reached its peak at 7:58, and quite suddenly everything got really dark, not completely, but moreso than I would have thought. Some of the local folks shouted at the Sun to come back, and luckily, the clouds started to break up, so we could see the eclipse! After about 2 minutes, the light came back again quite quickly and for the next hour we were able to watch the sun creep out from behind the moon's shadow with these special glasses that some guy from NASA brought. Yet another life-long memory.

There are numerous other small stories to tell, but they're best told over a cold beer or hot tea.

Another one for the nature lovers

So this one is actually from Pune, but I think its pretty cool. Sorry for the shaky camera-work, I had to zoom in quite a bit.



Yeah, those are giant bats. It was really hot that day, and they had to flap their wings to stay cool. I imagine they were quite tired.

More on Bhutan soon!

Bhutan trip

I don't think I mentioned in my last post, but I'm now in Bhutan, which should partially explain the delay in posting. Bhutan is the keystone of my trip, as it marks both the halfway point and has the highest significance on my future. I'm hoping to conduct research here as part of my PhD studies, and Bhutan is well-known in academia for being difficult to obtain permission to conduct research.

So I have spent much of my time in meetings and trying to contact people in the government, NGOs and the university system to try to figure out a way to collaborate on a project. Things are generally look pretty positive, although nothing is certain, even after I leave I think nothing will be certain, so please don't forget to cross your fingers for me when you go to sleep at night.

But my time here has been really great. Bhutan is a world apart from India and Nepal. I feel odd saying that, but in the past 50 years, Bhutan has developed by leaps and bounds, somehow preserving their natural environment in the process. This is what I'm hoping to study, the reasons why Bhutan has faired so well, and hopefully will continue to do so.

As some of you know, Tantric Buddhism is the dominant religion here, and the division between the sexes is far lower than nearby areas. In fact, I was taught the first day I got here about the “kurta namaste.” Some of you know what Namaste is, it is a greeting made by pressing the hands together in front of your face like you're praying. Kurta means feet or legs, so you can imagine what a kurta namaste is (and if you can't, drop me an e-mail. I'd be happy to go into further detail.

Bhutan has a fascinating approach to tourism, which they term “low quantity, high quality” it means that I have to pay wicked high prices and in exchange my meals and lodging are taken care of, as well as transportation and a guide. Since I'm traveling alone that means that I not only have my own driver, but my own guide as well. My driver doesn't speak English, so our interactions are limited to Nepali. The guide speaks English quite well and is really knowledgeable about his country (or he is a great bullshitter). He loves jokes, so he and I have been trading them in between our other tasks. The driver also likes to share jokes, and they are all quite lewd.

But this has really been a work trip, so no really good stories yet. Sunday we're going on a hike, which I'm really excited about. And on Wednesday morning there is supposed to be a total solar eclipse, the longest one for the next 150 years. Cross the rest of your fingers that it won't be cloudy that morning!

Motorcycle Journey (with apologies to my Mother)

The last thing that my Mom said to me before I left was “Promise me that you won't go riding any motorcycles.” And I did. At the time, I wasn't really expecting to be riding motorcycles so my intentions were pure (mostly).

Upon arrival to India however my class assistant, Rasika, drove a mo-ped around town, which actually is a great way to get around, cheaper than rickshaw's and taxis and more mobile in heavy traffic which is the norm in urban India.

Now that I had broken my promise to my mom, I decided that I might as well get the most of it. After several days of nagging, Rasika finally allowed me to drive the mo-ped on a quiet street at night. It was really easy actually, since the gears were automatic all you had to do was accelerate and brake. I then made up my mind to rent a motorcycle in Kathmandu for a short trip.

After an internet search and a little asking around, I located a store that rents motorcycles to tourists. My security deposit was my passport, and the cost was about $7 a day (petrol not included). The guy showed me the basics of the bike (I should note that I hadn't driven a geared bike since high school, so maybe 14 years...). It became evident to the renter that I didn't really know how to ride a bike, and I could see his nervousness as I wobbly drove around the intersection. But their policy is that I have to pay for any damages, so after reminding me to shift out of first gear as I picked up speed, he let me be on my way.

Now, his shop was located in old Kathmandu. Which means the streets are barely wide enough for one car and are mostly filled with pedestrians. This was probably a good way to start as my first hour of driving never got above 10 kilometers per hour. Finally I made my way out of that area to a main street, however here there was a traffic jam. The custom for motorcyclists out here in traffic jams is they weave their way through the cars until they mass together near the front like a biker gang. After another hour or so, I cleared that hurdle and was finally on my way.

I had decided to travel to Bhaktapur a beautiful city still within the valley that has done an excellent job balancing tourism and tradition. After my initial obstacles, I got there rather quickly (albeit with a layer of dust caked on my face). And found a hotel room next to this temple:



So I dropped off my overnight bag and headed to Nagakot, which is a traditional weekend retreat on the rim of the valley. It was stunning, a quiet single lane road marked with the occasional passerby that made its way through rice paddies and forests. The air up there was strikingly clean compared to the valley, and had it not been the monsoon, I could have seen Mt. Everest.

The next day I was going to head back to Kathmandu when I heard rumors that the road had been closed down. Nepal is full of rumors, but this one turned out to be true. Apparently the night before two groups of students (one of which was on motorcycles) got into a fight on the road. The local people thought that they were kidnappers and lynched them, killing two. So the next day they closed the road down. I went to investigate and was stopped by a police barricade. I tried to argue that I was a tourist, which sometimes works, but not this time. He did point me in the direction of a backroad that I could take.

Apparently I wasn't the only one who heard about this backroad, and I happened upon another traffic jam, this time on a rural road. To make my way through it, I had to do some off-roading on my motorcycle, which was more fun than I ought to admit. Even on this road, there was signs of protests of traffic, lines of burnt ash across the street that must have served as a road block. A number of people were still quite upset about it, but I kept my bike moving and made my way back to the city.

I got back without a scratch. The only problem was a pretty good sunburn on the top of my hands and wrists, but that is already fading. In all it was a lifelong memory, and I might just have to do it again once I get back from Bhutan (that is, if my mom doesn't yell at me too much...).

Here are a couple of photos from the trip:

Buying Dinner

You'll have to indulge me again with a preface, as I need to explain a bit about food here. My family (similar to many Nepalis) eat two main meals a day. One in the morning anywhere from 9 to eleven and then again in the evening, usually pretty late. The standard meal is rice (Bhat) or flat bread (Roti), lentil soup (Dal), curry (Tarkari), and some sort of pickled vegetable for spice (Achar). Since I'm guest and male, I get to eat first, and my servings are always far more than I would normally eat in the U.S. This is especially troublesome in the morning as I normally don't like to eat much until noonish. The standard conversation goes something like this:

Mom: Here you go. Eat slowly. It doesn't taste good, does it? I didn't taste it, I'm fasting today (I kid you not, she "fasts" about three days in a week, which doesn't mean she can't eat, she just can't eat certain foods, like salt or sugar or garlic or rice. It changes.)

Me: Oh ho! This is a lot of food! It's delicious. You have given me so much. In the morning my stomach is small and I cannot eat much.

Mom: (noticing that I'm maybe halfway done with the Dal, places another spoonful on my plate) Here, you have to eat more. (And then, after I allow only one more spoonful:) The food tastes bad.

Me: No. No. The food is delicious (and it almost always is). I just can't eat that much in the morning.

Mom: Fine. Fine. Eat Slowly. Its not very good though. Here, let me give you more Dal.

And so on.

So last night I got home around seven and discovered that the kitchen and another room in the house had just gotten painted (they are in the process of building their house). Mom explains that they (she and the servant girl) have been moving stuff all day and their really tired. A rare moment of thoughtfulness comes to me, and I offer that we could all go to a restaurant for dinner. Mom smiles warmly at the idea. "Everyone?" she asks (this should have made me pause). "Sure." I reply.

We wait for a half hour for my brother to get back from a friend's house, as he is the eldest son and these sort of decisions are increasingly put on him. Meanwhile, my host sister, who is married and lives in a different home, shows up with her child. Moments later her husband arrives. Word must have gotten out that I was buying. Then the three guys who painted the house earlier in the day showed up again out of nowhere. I was just about to say something about definitions of everyone, but thankfully they had come for some other reason.

When Sanjay arrived, it was decided that instead of us all going to a restaurant, Sanjay and I would walk to one and bring the food back. So we headed out to a restaurant where a friend of his works, and promptly ordered about seven main courses. It took the kitchen about an hour to get this all done (and was likely half of their business that night). On the way back we stopped and bought a liter of pepsi to cap things off.

The meal was like thanksgiving dinner, all sorts of different dishes spread out. There were a couple of moments where they wanted me to eat first, but I think the temptation matched with my insistence that tonight was "western night" melted the traditional order of things and after five minutes of hurried food collection the room was silent. I have to admit that I really wanted to start forcing seconds onto people's plates and deriding the food, but I didn't think the joke would go over well.

At the end though, everyone did say thank-you several times, which was nice. We drank the Pepsi for desert, and I was surprised to see that all the food had been eaten. I realized later that evening that my family had quite possibly never gone to a restaurant as a group before, or potentially had done anything like it. At least when I lived there, that wasn't even a thought. Its that type of privilege that we sometimes forget about in the U.S.

Oh, and the total bill to feed eight people: less than $9.

10 legs in the shower

This morning I shared a shower with this guy:


It was about 3 inches across and bore a strong resemblance to those spiders in Arachnophobia that used to premeditatedly wait in the showers and jump on beautiful women as they shampooed their hair. The water splash was from when he started walking towards where I was hanging my clothes and I had to scare him back to the corner. Later when I showed my brother he scolded me that that one wasn't even that big...

Return to Kathmandu

I should mention as a precursor the this blog entry that in 1999-2000 I participated in a year-long study abroad program in Nepal. It was decidedly one of the most formative years of my life, and yet it has taken me almost ten years to return. During that time, I mostly stayed with a Nepali family. When I made plans to return to Kathmandu this summer, I contacted them and they insisted that I stay at their house, which I was quite happy to do.

Coming back wasn't exactly what I had expect. It'd sort of be like moving back in with your parents after being gone for ten years, except that they speak a language that you barely remember (but thankfully has come back fairly quickly). And they have money issues that they tell you about daily. And they don't knock on the doors before coming in, and if you lock the door, they might have the servant girl climb out on the window ledge to tell you something. And any time you're at the house they want to feed you (which is a sort of a plus). And when you leave the house, then random people want to talk to you. My American need for anonymity and personal space is being smothered by cultural curiosity.

These are all things that the years had softened in my memories of this place. But I have also forgotten so many small aspects of daily life that I love out here. The sense of hospitality, the slow evenings, the pleasure hosts have in making sure their guest is over-full with food, the openness to strangers. In a lot of ways I'm going through the same culture shock I went through 10 years ago. Only now I'm 30. (!)

But Kathmandu has also changed quite a bit in the last ten years. My old house, which used to be on the outskirts of town and in the middle of rice paddies, is now surrounded by houses, and a huge condominium development is being started down the street. Apparently a lot of people from the villages fled to the capital during the Maoist insurrection. I wouldn't be surprised if the population grew by 75% over the past ten years.

A couple days back I went to Thamel, which is the tourist center of Kathmandu. It has also expanded quite a bit, but the characters and shops were mostly the same. There were still guys who whisper “smoke” or “hash” as you pass them and still merchants beckoning you to come inside their small stores. My one creature comfort that I recall fondly of Thamel were the movie restaurants where you could watch a pirated movie for free as long as you had something to eat, but I couldn't find a single one.

My host family hasn't changed much, everyone is a little older and a little fatter (myself included). My sister Karuna is married and has a cute young child of 4 who refuses to respond to any of her commands, despite the fact that his disobedience is always met with physical violence. There is a new servant girl, who is supposedly someone's relative and here to go to school, but I haven't seen her leave the house except on errands. I think I was just told this as American's often have a hard time with that sort of arrangement. My host brother is just finishing up school, and while he was an awkward youth of 12 when I was here last, he has grown up to become a shy young man. His parents' welfare will be his responsibility in a few short years.

So its been an interesting return. I really hope it doesn't take me this long to come back again.