ROAD BLOG AHEAD

Wednesday Night 29 March 06
Bouddha, Kathmandu, Nepal

Eclipse!

The city is shimmering tonight with light and noise. I have never before lived in a place where a solar eclipse was such a significant event that everything, even the public utilities, bends around it and all activity is focused on calling back the sun in rituals as old as humankind. Looking out from my high vantage point on the top floor, I can see the flicker of thousands of butter lamps that have been lit in the holy places. Boddhgaya Stupa is surrounded by them and the rooftop shrines of the monasteries are similarly illuminated. Other places acknowledge the modern age with strings of yellow lights run up from the high places. They symbolize humankind holding ground, holding hope for the re-emergence of the life-giving sun from the maw of the dragon which has consumed it.

The entire city, not just our local district, went without power beginning at three p.m. in order that the entire city could have light at six-thirty when the eclipse reached it’s peak. Sundown. That’s the time when everyone in this town… well, all the Buddhists anyway and many of the other sects, stop and go down to the Stupa and walk around it saying mantra, doing ritual, lighting lamps. Everyone tries to do it a few times a week at least. Today was a sacred day anyway, one of those thought to amplify all good deeds and good karmic actions one hundred thousand times. So, by five-thirty the streets of Bouddha were nearly deserted and the plaza around the Stupa was jammed with devotees and practitioners of all ilk. Just as the sun sank so that the spire of the Stupa was pointing directly at it, the eclipse began. Not a total eclipse, just a bite that made a crescent of our local star, just enough to dim the light. Shortly after, the electrical power was restored and has stayed on all over, even though the usual schedule would have selective blackouts in various districts. Not tonight though. The electrical commission understands the importance of customs and rituals and the power of belief and adapts their modern utility to the traditional practice of keeping lights burning through the night after an eclipse. This is Nepal, not New York or Chicago or even Rome. The sun and the elements are important here, are our daily companions in a way that much of the world has forgotten.

In the street below our house, the Nepali tribesfolk who live in the tin-roofed shacks and the grass thatched lean-tos have finally just now finished hours of singing and shining lights. The children sang loudly and with enthusiasm over and over again songs which they clearly know by heart. Mostly it seemed that the street party was happening for the kids, the younger ones. They were excited to be out and about in the dark with their little blue and red and yellow LED lights waving back and forth as they sang and capered. The noise and hubbub went on until the time of the monkeys, when the dogs all over the perimeter of town begin to call each other to say the invasion has begun. Even they seem wilder than usual tonight!

Thursday Morning

The lights stayed lit brightly through the night and there was much coming and going, singing and chanting throughout. Almost no motor noise though, the incessant taxis and babas and other odd conveyances were still. A few times in the wee hours, people led flocks of sheep and goats down the road past the house. We couldn’t tell from whence they came or where they were going. Periodically the sound of a drum or a deep, thrumming horn emerged from the direction of one of the monasteries on the hills. Perhaps the custom is not to sleep. Certainly there was enough noise and clatter to keep everyone awake and once or twice came a pounding on the big metal gate at the front of the house, booming and echoing like dry thunder.

The first traces of dawn were greeting with bells ringing everywhere around the city. Small bells, handheld, not the great clanging church bells that are common in the West. The ceremonial drilbus are small, but made to resonate well and long. Combined with more horns, their music was joyous and welcoming as the sun re-emerged at last. There’s still an odd hush in the air, a kind of psychic pause as everyone regroups before going on about business as usual. Although I guess that last night’s activities may well have *been* “business as usual” in Kathmandu!

9 p.m. Tuesday night.

The day got better. We just got back in from a nice excursion around our neighborhood. First I checked out the internet place while Lena explored a new tea stall nearby. The internet place is excellent – fast and pretty clean and comfy. I didn’t get a chance to try Skype – next time. It’s one drawback was that the place was closed up and stuffy, but many places here are – they close it up tight to keep out the dust from the road. However it’s only a 10 minute walk on a good road from here so I will be going there again.

Afterwards, we walked a few more blocks (down a bad road) to a place Lama Kunzang had shown Lena on Sunday afternoon. There is an extremely large monastery where a handful of western monks and nuns study. Attached to it is a modern guest house with a lovely garden and fountain. In the garden is a vegetarian café with the good brewed coffee by the pot. So we went there and had coffee and a plate of some of the best vegetable pakora I’ve ever eaten, ran into a friend from California, enjoyed the early evening breeze and relaxed. Nice spot if you want to be comfortable and not overly expensive for what they offer (which includes things like apple pie and chocolate cake!) When it got dark, we wandered back up to the main road and into a place Lena had spotted earlier.

Technically it was calling itself a Sherpa “restaurant”. What that actually means is that the people’s kitchen opens onto the street and, if anyone wants food, they’ll make one of several standard dishes for them. We had chowchow (noodles fried with green onions) and Sherpa momos (spicy). As we were eating, some of their friends came in and they brought out mugs. I nudged Lena and asked “Is that what I think it is?” She looked and said in delight “TUNGPA!” So she asked if we could have some too. They were amazed and delighted to find Injies who recognized the stuff and were happy to share (for a small price since they are a restaurant after all, but really small…) and we sat and traded stories and talked about home. Their family is from one of the towns on the lower elevations of Mt. Everest. Yeah, lower elevations, only about 12,000 feet LOL!

We spent the evening getting pleasantly tipsy with the Sherpas on homemade tungpa, something I’ve heard of, but never seen before since it’s a homebrew that doesn’t exist in the west. What it is is red millet that is fermented with a special kind of yeast for a few weeks. It’s then ladeled into huge cups or mugs, hot water is poured over it and, five minutes later, you drink it through a straw that is fashioned to filter out the millet and let only the milky liquid through. The stuff packs quite a punch and you can keep adding hot water to the mix for quite some time. Lena and I shared one mug and were leaning on each other to get home through the dark streets of Bouddha. Of course neither of us drinks much or often so we’re lightweights, but even the Sherpa family was pretty happy after a couple of refills of the hot water LOL! The two of us strolled arm in arm, very cheerfully, back to the house. We’re not drunk, just relaxed and mellow and cheerful. And the walk home underneath the Nepali sky with the kids and the dogs and even the cows wandering around, dodging bicycles in the dark and giggling like two kids well… THAT is the kind of thing I came here for, the camaraderie, the discovery of something new to me, the ability to share that and rejoice in it. It will get better!

Tuesday 28 March 2006
Kathmandu, Nepal

I’ve been having a hard time these past few days, finding it difficult to write anything at all about what’s been going on and what I’m expecting for the immediate future. Some of that is a result of the trouble I’m having walking on this foot with the injured tendon. A few days ago it was starting to feel better and then I walked back and forth to the stupa plus around a bunch with Lena and Lama Kunzang. By the time I got home from that I was practically in tears it hurt so much all over again. It’s hard to do anything at all around here without walking a good distance on really uneven, rocky ground. I can sit in the house and let the foot mend slowly or I can go out and push it and then be laid up for a few days. I’d like to be able to keep up with Lena, but she sprints and goes back and forth very quickly and my attempts fail miserably. So there’s a lot of frustration and self-judgement about my limited mobility. I know that being pissed at myself doesn’t help the situation any, but that’s what arises over and over again.

Yesterday I did manage to walk down to the newish internet place. It’s still a goodly hike to get there and coming home requires climbing a fair hill and then going up the 4 flights of stairs to our quarters. I did it carrying my laptop, peripherals and a bunch of groceries so I can’t be in such bad shape. Only, by last evening, my feet and legs had cramped up something awful and my Achilles tendon feels like it’s on fire. This is the frustrating part. Lena and I went out for a bit in the evening, just around this neighborhood and it wasn’t too bad (though the 4 flights of stairs still leaves me gasping.) The power was out during suppertimes, so we decided to walk a few blocks down and have some of the buffalo kebabs from a local hole in the wall. They speak absolutely no English there so it’s all point and hold up fingers. We took a picture of the “grill” which is made out of old biscuit tins out on the sidewalk. The kebabs are fiercely spicy, hot enough to make me sweat. Then we wandered home with the rest of the neighbors through the dark streets using a flashlight.

This morning Lena went out to check something she’d spotted with Lama Kunzang and came back to tell me that there appears to be yet another new internet place opened up that’s about the same distance as the other closest one except down the big road which is well-paved and level. She went in and, though again they spoke no English, she was able, through pantomime and her few Nepali words, to ask if we could connect the laptop. If the guy understood her correctly, the answer was “yes.” It’s near to the place she was looking for – an outdoor garden café that serves real brewed coffee at decent prices. So we’re going out later to check it out and see.

I know that a certain amount of adjustment is needed to a new place, particularly one where both the language and the customs are strange to me. I find myself feeling excessively dependent on Lena as the only person around with whom I can hold an in-depth conversation. Add that to my more limited mobility and, yeah, there’s a lot of adjustments and figuring out where I belong in the scheme of things. Since we’ll be here for a couple of months, it’s a different situation than it was in Paris or Mumbai or Majnu ka tilla. In those places I knew I would be moving on in a week or so and didn’t try to get adjusted so much. And there were more people to talk to and the possibility, a few times, of at least using Skype to call home. Here I am really isolated and feeling it. I have internet, but so far, no voice contact. There’s a lot of moments when I’m lonely and adrift, waiting for something to catch my attention or interest. Those are the times when I wonder what the heck I’m doing here in Nepal. Moment when I find myself looking strongly forward to autumn and spending some time in the U.S. again seeing my daughter and then being in Vancouver “at home” awhile. The idea of being around my own people again sounds positively exotic.

Occasionally something interesting comes right under my nose without having to walk any distance. Last night, for example. Now, long about sundown, as people were coming home from work, I noticed a long splash of something dark red at the intersection of our road and the smaller one that goes uphill just across the way. By the colour and the wetness, I honestly couldn’t determine, from up on our balcony, if it was blood or some sort of paint or pigment. Neither, apparently, could anyone else as many people stopped and looked at it, poked it with sticks, poked it with their fingers, wiped it on something and, very carefully, stepped or drove around it. Then, in the wee hours of the morning, maybe 1 a.m (which around here means everyone’s been sleeping for a long time) we were awakened by the sound of voices and a most eerie drum beat in the street below.

Some kind of ritual going on there. A couple of people, the big, strange-sounding drum beat growing more and more wild, some muttered incantations or prayers, a small light… It lasted for maybe 5 minutes and you could feel the entire neighborhood stir, check, go back to bed. It wasn’t Tibetan. One of the Nepali tribes, of which there are many locally – this spot is sacred to all of them. When dawn came and we awoke, most of the red stuff had been washed away, just enough remained to show it had been there. At the crossroads were leaf platters with food offerings and some sort of small mud sculpture. People skirted around it. Even the stray dogs skirted it at first and then, when they got bolder, people chased them away. No clue if it was *because* of the red stuff (a purification maybe if blood had been spilled?) or if the red stuff was a precursor to the ritual. Maybe eventually we’ll find someone to ask.

Saturday Night 25 March 2006
Boddha, Kathmandu, Nepal

I’m here in Nepal, a lifelong dream of mine and, quite frankly, I’m bored! Granted my boredom is due in most part to being sidelined by my foot and unable to traipse around and poke my nose into interesting corners and situations the way Lena is doing to keep herself amused. There is plenty to do and to see in Kathmandu, particularly if you are a practicing Buddhist, enjoy fine arts and crafts, like to watch people or eat unusual foods. If you’re a mountainclimber, so much the better. I mean, after all, this is the home of Mt. Everest and Anapurna and the other justifiably famous peaks. They’re right here, waiting to be climbed.

At this season it’s hazy so that most of the time I can only catch glimpses of the great snow mountains looming to the North. They look like shadowy clouds in cloud colours except they don’t move, just drift in and out of focus in the distance. Between faint overcast, air pollution (Kathmandu is notorious for its smog) and the dry dust that lifts high into the air, vision is surprisingly limited. Yes, there are mountains all around us, except for the bit of pass to the Southeast that makes the bowl of the Kathmandu Valley accessible. But the ones I can see easily are not snow-capped right now in early summer; these are the little guys nearby. Still they are impressive and the sense of being surrounded by peaks is awe-inspiring. I keep trying to take photos, but they turn out vague and ghostly.

I’m not a mountaineer, though I used to enjoy cliff climbing when I was younger and had two good knees. I love the mountains and I tend to function pretty well at altitude (I’m surprised that I had absolutely no adjustment when we came here.) The motorcycle accident that wrecked my knees pretty well ruined the probability of my ever getting up Everest, just as it quashed my daydreams of someday running the Bay to Breakers marathon. I’m okay with that. I guess. Not that I wouldn’t change it if I could – possibly the only decisions in my life that I’m pretty sure I would change if given the opportunity were the ones that led up to me hitting a retaining wall in May of 1987. Almost 20 years later I have a real good picture of the limitations imposed by that one event and its consequences.

This is the longest I’ve had to use a cane for walking since right after the accident all those years ago. There have been a few periods of days or weeks when I’ve been achy or walked too much and had to resort to a stick or other prop, but right now I have to use it to be sure of my footing on the broken, uneven streets and steep stairs I’ve encountered since leaving the U.S. Even in Paris I found a cane useful on the cobblestones. It’s annoying and I keep worrying about losing the damned thing, though so far I haven’t (nobody steals canes so, if you forget it in a restaurant, it’s there when you go back for it.) I’d say that 99% of the time I don’t need it. It’s that 100th step, the one where a stone turns under your foot or the knee tries to buckle going downhill, that I’m glad for it. Makes me feel a bit decrepit, but I notice that, around here a lot of folks use canes that might not bother on even city pavement. It’s also good for threatening obstreperous small boys and possible pickpockets LOL! I have noticed that I’m the only foreigner using a stick, all the rest I’ve seen are local people. I guess most folks who have enough mobility problems that they need a cane just don’t tend to make it all the way to Kathmandu!

I’m looking forward to having this heel tendon problem resolve so I can do all the things I want to do. Lena is a terrific walker and is back and forth and around town several times daily, exploring by wandering, getting lost, wandering some more and eventually finding her way home. I miss not being able to join her on these excursions (though I have a much better sense of direction than she does and might not get lost quite so often.) At present, about a kilometer a day is about what I can comfortably manage without the heel screaming at me all night long – and that distance presupposes a rest somewhere halfway. It does mean that I’ve explored many little holes in the wall where one can stop for a cup of tea or coffee. Lena is working with acupuncture and the few Chinese herbs we brought with us and manages to keep the pain level under control that way. A couple of days of rest really helped a lot, but as soon as I walked a distance today, it flared up. I can’t see spending a week in bed at this point, though I expect that would do some good.

It’s surprising how much difference the new clothes have made in the way people around here relate to me. Going out dressed in Tibetan clothes, even somewhat modified to my taste ones, I am garnering far fewer stares and whispers. Lena said this would happen, but I really am shocked! Just a skirt and a shirt in a certain cut, a certain colour, worn with a white shawl and my hair pinned up in a knot and suddenly everyone got cordial, even respectful, without being overly curious. Suddenly I fit a certain archetype and they knew what to make of me – or at least thought they did, which is good enough for strangers on the street. I guess in a society where one’s station in life is strongly signaled by specific clothing, hair style and accessories, this is normal. It answers the question “What the hell ARE you?” at a glance. It’s okay to BE whatever that is, but without context there is confusion. Okay, so now they look and see the external signals that identify me, my role and my lineage. It matters less then that I’m a westerner. Maybe it doesn’t matter at all, because I’m identifiable, a known quantity. I find it really interesting. Wondering how it will unfold over time – will it affect my identity? Will my identity affect how I wear the uniform? Will it really make even more difference if I dye my hair back to brown? I guess time will tell.

I did manage to find a good internet place today that’s at a reasonable distance from the house. I can hitch up my laptop to their network for 20 rupees and hour and work with my programs and settings. Whoo hoo! When their network isn’t busy, that is, when the place was mostly empty, I had really good speeds, good enough to use Skype for a phone call. So I called Silva, just to hear the sound of her voice. Damn I miss her! The shop filled up right then and we lost our bandwidth so I could hear her but she couldn’t hear most of my replies. Still, it was so good to have contact! Now that I know it’s possible, I’ll work on finding the times where the shop is quiet that coincide with good times to phone back to the U.S. We’re over 13 hours ahead of the West Coast so I pretty much have to figure on phoning in the morning to reach people there in the evening (of the previous day.)

Boredom is not something that happens to often in my life. I guess I should relax and enoy it after the craziness of the past year or so. We did come here to rest and recuperate after all. It’s not like there’s nothing at all to do. I have scads of e-books on my computer. I’ve started knitting a pair of gloves in a really lovely fine red wool. I’ll be glad of those come winter and glove knitting is detailed and fiddley enough to occupy my attention awhile. I could be studying languages or even refining my databases for the work I do for the Tibetan refugees. I can wander down the street to the tea shop on the corner and watch the pretty girls in their bright colours go by on their way to and from lives that are quite different than my own. I can go shopping for beautiful cloth to be made into clothes, spending hours looking at bolts of fabric, lost in the patterns and textures. I can wander down an alley and watch silversmiths hammering out finely tooled offering bowls and butter lamps or carvers turning jade teacups from transluscent green stone. There is no need to be bored unless I choose it. So I guess I don’t mind this boredom so much after all, it’s really much more that the pace is slower than I’m used to, the pressures and stresses less. Maybe I need to learn to stop for a bit and just relax, just rest.

Happy camper here. Lena took me down to this brand spankin’ new internet shop that’s closer to our house than any other yet (still a ways, but not very) and they are fine with me hooking my laptop up to their network. It’s a nice place, reasonable people, quiet enough and good equipment. I should be able to use Skype when there’s not a zillion people in here. The bandwidth was fantastic when I first came in and was the only one. Now it’s full so it’s a bit slower, but still not too awful. Hooray! Connectivity!

Arghhh! My fibromyalgia is flaring today. It hasn’t bothered me at all since we left California. In fact I’d pretty much forgotten about it, mostly dealing with the problem with my left foot with everything else feeling okay. Today, however, I woke up and went oh oh! Because every joint and muscle in my body is aching, my insides hurt and I feel that particular combination of lethargy and exhaustion that comes with a flare up. This I sure don’t need here! Lena did do an acupuncture treatment of a particular pattern that almost always helps and it DID reduce some of the achiness, so hopefully this won’t take root but will pass quickly and I’ll be fine by tomorrow. On the good side, my foot feels much better overall.

I’d hoped to go down to the stupa and try to hook up my laptop to the internet again today, but I don’t have it to walk the couple of kilometers back and forth on the rocky dirt road. If I’m lucky, I’ll feel up to dragging my sorry ass down four steep flights of stairs and down the hill to the tea shop later this afternoon for a cuppa. Actually, it’s not going down there that seems daunting, it’s getting back up here again LOL! I’d just gotten to the point where climbing the stairs doesn’t kill me. In fact, it’s probably good for me.

Lena went off to explore downtown Kathmandu this morning, trying to figure out the buses from here in Bouddha to the Thamel which is the center of activity in town. One thing she’s going to try to do there is pick up a local street map so we can better orient ourselves relative to other things. The only map we have is totally vague and inadequate and few of the roads have street signs that we can read, all of them being in Nepali. We discovered that this house DOES have a street address, we just can’t read the script. Eventually we’ll find someone who can read enough Nepali to translate it for us so we can tell cab drivers where to go. Right now we’re stuck with telling them that the house is on Rumpatti Road at the intersection of Tathagat Marg. Unfortunately, Tathagat Marg is a small, obscure street that drivers don’t really know so we end up driving up and down Rumpatti until we spot familiar landmarks.

It’s become obvious that our Tibetans here really have never bothered much to orient themselves. Most of them anyway and particularly people like Dolkar who is fairly recently out of the depths of Kham. There are probably more people walking down the street in front of the house on any given afternoon than there were people in the entire village where most of them were born. They are overwhelmed by urban life and stick to their safe little enclave of familiar shops, temples and houses that look as much like home as possible and seldom venture any farther. A few of them are curious enough to have done some exploring or to be willing to explore. Yeshe Tso is one of them and has been a pretty good source so far. She wanted to go into the city with Lena, but she has all day commitments at the monastery she’s connected to until sometime next week, so that will have to wait. But she has the independence and curiousity that make a lot of difference in how well one adapts. Going around the neighborhood with her, it becomes clear that she knows everyone and where everything is and can be found, unlike Dolkar who sticks to her few favorite places that have the things she routinely needs for her household. In a way, Dolkar is much more typical, particularly of the married women in the Tibetan community of Bouddha. They’ve simply brought the same routines and the same esthetic to a new place and transplanted it there. That’s not bad, but it does limit these women to the known boundaries. It also means that Lena and I are mostly on our own when trying to find anything that isn’t a commonplace part of Tibetan life and culture.

Friday Evening…

Lena came back from town with loot! A small metal milk pitcher so that we can have our coffee or tea without making a mess adds to the china mugs from yesterday to significantly improve our quality of life LOL! There were also several packets of spices which I’ve been wanting for days. Now that we have what passes for a kitchen of our own (albeit without an oven or hot water, but…) it will be fun to cook again, something we really haven’t done in over a year. But the Tibetans don’t use much in the way of spices, mostly turmeric and occasionally garlic. Then they dose everything with hot sauce. So she came back with a packet of wonderful Nepali curry powder, one of dried red chilies, one of turmeric (of course) one of what smells like a tarragon relative that is used to season lentils. Feels like riches! So I made curried water buffalo with mustard greens for supper and it was terrific! I always like it when something I’ve never done before turns out well.

She also brought my new skirt and shirt from the tailors. Two different tailors actually as one does shirts and one traditional Tibetan chuba skirts. Both turned out gorgeous! The skirt is amazingly perfect in its fit – the kind of clean lines and exact proportion that you can only get from something tailored exactly to your measurements. The shirt, of handspun raw silk in a natural colour, is also perfect. This one took more doing as we wanted something to our special design that modified more traditional Tibetan shirts in a way that would flatter me and be long enough on my 6’1” frame. Totally elegant! And she bought herself a lovely shirt in a traditional Nepal style that opens on one shoulder and sort of wraps. The fabric is a natural linen colour in a linen/cotton handspun blend. She paid just over $4 US for it and can pick up another tailored to my measurements for around $6 next week (being this tall is turning out to be expensive here LOL, everything requires extra fabric to get enough length.) The shirt is absolutely perfect for her, but it’s one that I think will also look good on me as well. This is fun!

The lights went off at 9 p.m., so I’m writing in the dark. At least this time we expected it. Turns out that there IS a schedule for the rotating power outages, it’s just that Kado and Dolkar have never discovered this. Lena got this coming weeks’ schedule so we can plan around it. It changes if there’s significant rain, otherwise we can predict. Some things really surprise me, like there being a schedule but no one here knowing about it. It just never occurred to anyone so they never asked.

Hopefully tomorrow morning I’ll be able to walk down to the internet shop and send stuff off. I’m going through e-mail withdrawal, but I really needed to rest my bad foot for a couple of days so I’ve been mostly staying in and not trying to walk any distance. There are apparently some really good places in downtown Kathmandu that Lena has discovered on her explorations. The trick is going to be getting to them. It probably means a taxi ride, upping the cost of this. Lena discovered that it is extremely unlikely that I’ll be able to ride the local buses. She tried one today and, at 5’5” had to take her hat off and hunch over to be able to sit. Her guess is that, at my height, I’ll never make it, particularly because there are so many people crammed in that you can’t just lean sideways to compensate. It’s a shame as the buses are only 10 rupees from here to town whereas a cab will cost over 100 rupees each way. By US standards that’s pretty cheap (under $3 round trip) but we really are trying to spend as little as we can to make our savings last. So I probably won’t do the taxi into town thing every day, maybe once a week. The rest of the time, I’ll work offline and then try to get to a local place to send every few days. We really are in the boonies out here. Apparently it’s a lot easier in town, but that’s not where we’re living. The up side here is free lodging in a nice space with a support system to help out, so I guess it all evens out somewhere! We are thinking though that we might take a hotel room in downtown Kathmandu for a week while we really get to know the city. Rooms with a bath are $3-4 US a day and meals in the cheap restaurants are under $1 so it wouldn’t be outrageous and we could be close in for a bit while we explore. I really like that idea a lot! Bouddha is interesting and the stupa is phenomenal, but it will be more fun to be in the heart of things for awhile.

It’s almost ten p.m. as I write this and the dogs and the monkeys are at it again as usual. Like most poor and/or rural places, Nepal’s cities are loaded with stray dogs, many of them mangy and emaciated. There are also the dogs kept as pets and as guard dogs for the bigger houses. Dogs are everywhere underfoot, asleep in the dust, scavenging behind tea shops. Nepal also has wild monkeys. Actually, wild isn’t quite the word for it since they have adapted to much the same niche as pigeons or rats in other urban places. Mostly they spend the days up in the jungle areas but, after dark, they come down into the edges of the city to scavenge the garbage left over at the end of the day. This puts them in direct competition with the dogs. Most nights there is a war of some degree between monkeys and dogs with a great deal of barking and screeching. It’s hard to tell from the sound just which team wins in the end. I know I wouldn’t want to be on the opposing side of *either* pack!

Thursday 23 March 2006
Kathmandu, Nepal

I wrote another really long rant which I may or may not post, I’ll decide next time I get to an internet spot that let’s me upload what I’ve written or connect my own laptop to the network.

In that regard, I expected better in Kathmandu as everyone said that it was so technology friendly that surely I would find the latest connections, including wi fi. Then I get here and find the same tired old “internet cafes” which are not cafes at all but a room with a bank of networked computers for rent by the hour. Some of them are tiny or airless or loud with pop music. Some are up three steep flights of stairs or have ancient equipment. The best so far was the one on the second floor facing Bodhgaya Stupa that had air and sunlight and a spot with an RJ45 cable and even a coca cola vending machine! It’s drawbacks were that you couldn’t use any sort of audio communications because it takes too much bandwidth and brings the rest of the system to a halt.

Lena, bless her heart, went on a scouting mission while I was at that place trying to catch up. She found a place where the guy knew what we needed and was willing to work with it. For 40 rupees an hour (the going rate is 30, 40 is about 60 cents US) he’ll give us a private room with a network hookup and all the bandwidth we can eat. That is, as much bandwidth and speed as is available in Kathmandu at present. He also solved the wi fi mystery. Turns out that the Nepali government banned wi fi this past year because the Maoist rebels were using the internet to put out their propaganda and the government, typical of governments everywhere) in it’s infinite wisdom (not) decided that banning wireless access would prevent them from having access. Of course this is not the case as wi fi signals are extremely limited in range anyway and won’t provide access where none already exists, such as deep in the jungle. However, until someone upstairs figures this out, it’s no wi fi for Kathmandu and I’m stuck with wired locations. Fortunately my laptop will do this just fine.

I’m hearing over and over again that the best way to get reliable internet access wherever I am in India will be to do it using a cell phone with a telecommunications hookup. By our standards, cell phone rates are dirt cheap there, apparently subsidized by a government that realized it was cheaper to provide cell phone service than to try to rewire the country for the 21st century. A number of the tech savvy Indians and Tibetans I’ve talked to say that cell phone internet is my best bet. Don’t know how fast that will be though and I won’t be able to check until I’m actually there. No point getting a cell phone here in Nepal, we won’t be here long enough to justify it. Plus rates here are really high. So I’ll make do and hope that soon I’ll be able to call people at home without spending an arm and a leg.

Yeshe Tso, the nun from downstairs, just came up to say that she and her family are making momo tonight and will bring some for supper around 8:30. Momo are the Tibetan steamed dumplings and are really, really good! So that’s something to look forward to. She’s a really neat lady; both Lena and I like her a lot. It’s a bit frustrating for both of us not to have even more language together than we do, but we communicate pretty well on practical things. She’s just a very social, very communicative person and has a lot to say so, when it’s just the two of us, we’re somewhat limited to my basic Khamkye Tibetan. I can understand her pretty well, but when she gets talking fast I lose track. However she’d like to learn some English and I want to build up my Tibetan. I expect that, if we’re here for some time, we can learn a lot hanging out together! Apparently my Tibetan is comprehensible to her even if I mangle the verb tenses, so we have a good starting place.

I have a little more trouble understanding Dolkar, the caretaker’s wife. She tends to speak rather softly so I miss some of it entirely. Even Lena has this problem with her. But since we really are doing practical stuff rather than abstract concepts with her, it’s usually clear from context. Yeshe Tso is becoming a friend whereas with Dolkar I suspect it will remain a cordial working relationship. She’s somewhat nervous around us, partly because of our foreignness of course, but also because she was told to make us as happy as possible and she’s not sure how to do that with a couple of Injies. She and Kado, her husband, were hugely relieved when they discovered that we are familiar with and like Tibetan food. Apparently other Western guests of Lama Wangdor haven’t known from tsampa. Dolkar was terrified that we’d be expecting American cooking that she was unfamiliar with or stuff that couldn’t be obtained here.

What appeared to soothe her most was when Lena turned up with the dried water buffalo and yak cheese, both Tibetan delicacies, gloating “Look what I scored in the market today!” And then divvied it up between us, Dolkar’s family and Yeshe’s household. Once they saw that, they relaxed a lot as it meant that she really does know local foodstuffs and will eat them happily. Oh yeah and when we asked for a bag of tsampa and some Tibetan tea, she happily produced a couple of kilos and a nice lump of brick tea for us. Tsampa is the basic foodstuff, a meal or flour made from roasted barley and eaten in many different ways. Really good and very nutritious. The cheese is heavenly, exactly what cheese ought to be in my book. In look and taste it is not unlike a really fine well-aged gouda or gruyere – firm with a sharp bite and nutty flavor.

This isn’t the place for people who like mild meat and bland cheese or who can’t take chilli pepper in everything. While you can get cow’s milk, butter, cheese, it’s pricey and not as common as that from water buffalo. It’s richer, creamier, but there is a faint tang of… I guess water buffalo… under it, you know it came from an animal. I like it, but apparently not everyone does. The butter especially is superlative, not surprising since Tibetans consider butter a basic food and put it on or in everything. Beef is pretty much non-existant here as there is a significant Hindu population that still reveres cows. So, once again it’s water buffalo with the occasional sheep or goat for variety. We’re talking mutton here, not spring lamb, so it’s strongly flavored. Again, Lena and I are a bit odd for Westerners in that we prefer it that way. I happen to think that water buffalo is tastier than beef (it’s called “buff” on all the menus LOL.) The other day we had a Nepali curry with buffalo and it definitely ranks as one of the most delicious dishes I’ve ever tasted! I’ll learn to cook with it I’m sure. This afternoon Dolkar came up with 2 kilos of fresh buff meat in great bloody hunks. No prime rib or sirloin – it’s all just “meat”.

Chicken is also available, though it’s rather dear compared to buff. Some Tibetans have taken to eating chicken but are avoiding it now because they heard about the avian flu and are unclear about whether it can be contracted via the food so best just not to go near it. That reaction is actually very typically Tibetan in my experience! Eggs, however, are readily available and used quite a lot. You know they are fresh because the chickens are underfoot when you buy them. Chickens wander down the sidewalks along with the cows, all of them looking for something to eat. The stray dogs are at the bottom of the pecking order as it were and get whatever the cows and chickens leave behind, which isn’t a whole lot – the dogs are pretty small and skinny, but they can eat what the chickens can’t and go where the cows won’t so it all evens out.

After asking around a bit and looking for ourselves, we’ve discovered why *things* are so expensive here relative to services and local produce. There is no manufacturing in Nepal; virtually everything has to be brought in from outside at considerable effort and expense. Thus, a plastic mug that would go for twenty-five cents in a second-hand store in the states goes for 150 rupees (over $2 US.) This seems in such weird contrast to things that are made here by hand. And distance traveled and means of transport also strongly affects costs. Orange marmalade brought by truck from Bhutan is fairly cheap; peanut butter from the United Arab Emirates is not ridiculous, but more expensive. Processed cheese slices are 300 rupees for 200 grams while the local cheese, made in big wheels with either cow’s or yak’s milk is 300 rupees a kilo and much much nicer!

So imported polyester fabric is relatively expensive but the tailoring for a silk blouse is cheap. The plastic bowl is not so very much less than one made in sterling by a local silversmith or a hand-turned wooden tea bowl. A hand woven Pashmina shawl that fetches over $200 at home can be bargained down to less than $20 even in the high end shops. That is because they are made by local weavers and labor is cheap. Furniture is all wooden – plastic is a pricey import. The most beautiful hand wrought mala counters (prayer bead counters) in sterling silver by a highly skilled craftsman were going for $4 each. Made me want to weep! I’d be sending more things back to people if the shipping charges weren’t so steep. I’m sure, at some point before we leave here, we’ll try to find some light-weight gifts and send a package off to someone in North America who can then distribute things further.

The effect of this is that we will limit the amount of stuff we need to a minimum, particularly because we will be here for so short a time. We bought some extra towels, a couple of china coffee mugs and a few pieces of Tupperware for the kitchen because we really felt those things would improve our quality of life. We’ll make do however with the flowered plastic dishes that the Tibetans have provided and the old, dented cooking pots and leaky tea kettle. It’s not that important in the grand scheme of things that the kettle doesn’t leak. This one isn’t *so* leaky* - you can still boil water for tea, you just can’t leave it filled on the stove top all night or you wake up to a puddle. Having decent coffee cups matters and the soup bowls provided are also china. We don’t need much more than that. Towels matter to me – enough to dry my body and my hair. Fortunately, those are fairly cheap and easy to come by.

If we are to spend money, it will be on things like good clothes that will last awhile or on some very special object. I’m on the lookout for a Tibetan style tea bowl that suits me. The best ones are carved out of a hardwood burl so that they don’t warp. Good ones (Lena has one from years ago) are handed down through families. Your tea bowl is your own and travels with you. I’m willing to pay a reasonable amount for a proper one of a size and depth I’m comfortable with. So far I haven’t found “my” bowl, but I will by and by and it will go back to India with me. The other things I’ll want to get eventually will be a good eating knife in a sheath that’s worn on the belt and a spoon. These things are personal and owned by each individual. If I want to get fancy, a pair of carved chopsticks would also be nice, we’ll see.

I’m glad I brought good shoes with me as comfortable feet become very important in a place where walking is the main form of local transportation. Private cars are unknown except for the very, very wealthy or government officials. Trucks are owned if business warrants it. Otherwise, if you need to get around farther than you can walk or with a lot of stuff, you take a taxi or a tuk tuk, little 3 wheeled motor carts that run up and down the roads everywhere. Most streets are mud and stone and maybe a few bricks. The big roads are mostly paved over, but have patches of bare dirt here and there. “Big” road means wide enough for 2 trucks to pass each other without squashing the pedestrians who walk along the sides. And be careful not to fall in the ditches – they are open sewers. In the heat of the afternoon the stench can be overwhelming in places. Because of this, one is careful of where one puts feet and what is tracked indoors. The young and the poor tend to wear cheap plastic sandals because they – and the feet in them – can be washed off easily enough and they slip off at the door. The crap in the streets makes me better understand the Asian custom of taking off shoes before entering the house. The way this house is set up, we only take them off before entering the bedroom where there is a lovely carpet. The halls and main room floors are made of marble and can be washed and swept. The marble is too hard and cold for going barefoot.

Eventually I’ll pick up a pair of plastic sandals for around the house. My leather sandals are great for walking and are ergonomic and all that, but they don’t slip off easily. I need something that comes off easily in the bedroom but protects my feet in the bathroom and main hall. I also brought leather boots with flat heels and good traction and a pair of slip on shoes from the same specialty company that made my sandals. Good choices all, I’m happy to report. Lena is doing fine with one pair of backless clogs, but I seem to need to change my footwear during the day to keep my feet comfortable. Particularly right now since I’m having tremendous problems with the tendons and the old avulsion fracture of my left heel. This started at the end of last year when my heel got run over by something while I was helping Roni move. It got progressively more painful and then started to resolve just before we were leaving Montara. Except that, to heal, my heel really needs to rest and I haven’t been in a position to stay off my feet since leaving there. It was doing somewhat better in Majnu ka tilla, not aching so much all the time. But once we got here and I had to walk a kilometer minimum to get anywhere and on very unstable and uneven ground, it’s been acting up again to the point where I stayed home today because I couldn’t stand to walk on it. The inflamed tendon burns. It’s both painful when sitting still and very sore to the touch as well. Lena has been doing acupuncture and we’ve been icing it, but it’s still unhappy. I’m really hoping that a few days’ rest will improve matters.

One of the other things that I’m having to come to terms with is finding myself in a place where I lack my usual fluency with words. I’m so accustomed to being the one who handles interpersonal business, the one who can talk her way into or out of whatever is necessary. Now, here I am with just enough language to say, “I need a cup of tea with milk and sugar. Thank you. Lena will be back at eight o’clock.” And to understand, “Sorry, there is no tea left. Where has she gone?” Not exactly scintillating conversation. Oh, occasionally an opportunity presents itself to make a joke or tell a story, but still only in the simplest terms, the way a child might do. I don’t worry about clever turns of phrase, I’m just pleased when someone actually laughs at my jokes!

It leaves me with only Lena to talk to in any depth. And Lena, for all her many stellar qualities, for all that I love her utterly and completely, is not an enthusiastic conversationalist. She belongs to the Gary Cooper school of communication. “Yup. Nope. Okay.” She *can* tall well and at length, but is rarely in the mood. The rest of the residents of this huge building speak only Tibetan with one or two of the school teacher on the first floor having a few phrases in English. “Good Morning. Thank you. Twinkle twinkle rittle star…” And so on. A few of the Nepali merchants in the bazaar have enough English to do business but again, it’s not particularly stimulating conversation when you’re discussing the price of eggs or being informed that the box of farina you are considering is past its expiration date. Yesterday we had visitors, a young woman Lena knew as a child when she lived in India 30 years ago and the woman’s husband. Konchok, the husband, speaks a reasonable amount of English, perhaps slightly better than my Tibetan and she understands some but is shy about speaking. So we were able to have a fairly lively conversation by using whatever word in whatever of the two languages everyone managed to understand, switching back and forth at need. They live where we will be living in India and Konchok gave us lots of information about the place and its changes over the years. It felt good to have a genuine, mutual conversation with someone for the first time in awhile.

I guess I’m stretching it a bit. I’ve run into my friend Tim, from California, a couple of times since we’ve been here and we’ve chatted, although one or the other of us has always been on our way somewhere. Mostly we exchange information and pleasantries. This is pretty different from Mexico where there was a rather large ex-pat community (whether we liked some of them or not) and our paths crossed frequently. I used Spanish and English about equally there. Here I really do need my Tibetan more. What surprises me is that I always thought that, having formally studied it, my grasp of Spanish was better than my ability with Tibetan which I’ve just picked up by osmosis and proximity. But I’m finding I’m actually more fluent in Tibetan than I was in Spanish. I have much better grasp of verb tenses and idiom and a larger, more practical vocabulary.

I still envy Lena however, who can switch back and fourth between English, French, Tibetan and Hindi in a single conversation. I’ve heard it. She’s also, at different times, been able to speak Urdu, Farsi, Hebrew, Afghani and Nepali with some skill, but the first four are her main fluencies. She’s frustrated because her Nepali isn’t coming back to her now that we’re here as fast as her Hindi came back in India. Now, I think Hindi may just be an easier language. By the time we’d been there 2 weeks, I had begun to pick up a few Hindi words and phrases myself, but I’m having no luck whatever remembering the Nepali words people tell me. I can’t quite make out the cadence or the patterns of the words which is what I need in order to learn a language. Well, we’ve got awhile here, maybe it’ll sink in eventually.

So not having language with which to speak is driving me to my keyboard more and more. It’s one of the reasons for these insanely long journals that often become blog entries. I guess it’s my way of using the language skills that are so much a part of who I am in this world. I talk, I write, I affect reality with and am affected by words in all there multitudinous configurations. They are my dancing partners and I *need* to dance this dance.

I am living in Asia now. Funny what makes something like that hit home to a person. We’ve been in Kathmandu almost a week now and tonight I finally noticed that there are no forks in this house! There are plenty of spoons, a basket of chopsticks and a few knives (mostly for cooking) but not a single fork. Nor do I expect to have one in this country without going to some trouble to locate one and I don’t plan to bother; I’m adroit enough with chopsticks that my forklessness is pretty irrelevant except as an indicator of cultural difference.

My tummy is somewhat unhappy at the moment, mostly I’m producing an alarming amount of methane. I’m suspecting the water buffalo kebabs we had at a street stall this afternoon – it’s known for doing that if you’re not used to it. It’s not dire so I’m not worried or miserable or anything, but it did cause me to skip supper tonight. Frankly, I expect things like this as I adapt to this new location; I’d be really surprised if I didn’t encounter some digestive surprises during the first few weeks. Kathmandu water is notorious for it’s lifeforms of various sorts. We’re still on bottled or boiled water, but it’s hard to avoid all traces of it if you’re living local rather than in tourist hotels so I’m sure we’ve ingested some of it.

Hey, much of the time I’m just pleased when we have any water at all. This place has its own well. The roof tank is solar heated and, unless everyone tries to take a shower or wash clothes at once, there IS very hot water. But… the pump is electrical. To get water up to the top floor where it can get solar heated and then come on down to us, it requires electrical power. And, these days, the power is off as much as it is on in the district. Erratically and unpredictably so. We’re getting good at working around this and around the highly eccentric plumbing in this house, running between three different bathrooms and a kitchen to use whatever of the water facilities are available at a given moment. Sometimes then the power goes out and you’re stuck in a pitch black corner of the building until your eyes adjust. It get really really dark here when it’s dark! It’s the time when we have no water at all for no discernable reason that I find irritating – when the power is on, the pump appears to be working, the kitchen tap flows but the bathroom is dry. It makes absolutely no sense according to everything I know about plumbing. Which admittedly isn’t a tremendous amount but I am not totally ignorant about such things!

Even more than just generally being in Asia, it’s clear we’re living in a Tibetan enclave where many people are fairly newly out of Tibet and haven’t yet truly acclimated even to Nepal whose culture and customs are not dissimilar to those at home. If you go down into the “neighborhood” that leads to the Stupa, the shops there carry pretty much only those things that are familiar to Tibetans. This makes for a pretty limited stock, especially regarding foodstuffs as Tibetan cuisine is frankly limited. A lot of the variation has to do with the shape of the noodle and whether there is a lot of liquid or not in the dish. Vegetables are seasonal if they are used at all. Seasonings are limited to salt, turmeric, garlic and a kind of pungent peppery dried berry called ehrmung. Then there is tsampa which is a meal or flour made from roasted barley. It’s the staple food along with salted, buttered Tibetan tea.

There is a lack of openness to change among some of the Tibetans that is shocking until you realize that most of them have been ripped unwillingly away from their homes and livelihoods and dropped in a strange land. They have already experienced more drastic change than most people will ever see in their own lifetimes. Now that they are safe in a place where much of their culture is preserved and stabilized, they just want to get back to business as usual and not have to assimilate any further newness. Yesterday, in the plaza near the stupa, I was waiting for Lena to come back and got into a conversation with an older lama who looked to be in his sixties or so. With him was his wife – or one of them anyway – who was probably around forty. So we got talking and he was delighted that an Inji (westerner) could talk Khamkye enough to have a chat with. We’re finding that some of the Tibetans who don’t know English really find Lena and I rather a treat. Unlike the younger folks or long time refugees, they don’t get to interact with Westerners much since even fewer of us speak their language than they speak ours! And my new acquaintance was going on about how he was just too old to learn English, that it was the sort of thing that had to be done when one is young, before the mind fills up with other things. He thought maybe his wife was young enough to learn, but maybe not (mostly he was razzing her there.) This, however, is a good example of what I’m talking about – a feeling among some that they just can’t possibly assimilate anything more in the way of change.

The Nepalis are harder to get a handle on somehow. Possibly because there is no single “Nepali” culture really, it’s basically an overlay of many. You see it most in the different tribal styles and dresses and, after watching these awhile, distinct differences in genotypes also become obvious. There is a lot of Indian influence and the language has many borrowings from Hindi with a bit of different pronunciation. There are equally as many borrowings from the Tibetan in terms of customs and language. The Nepali Sherpa language is almost exactly a form of Tibetan as it was spoken six hundred years ago. The Tibetans are tribal too, very clan oriented and with distinct regional identities. For instance, the Khampa nomads are fierce and fur-clad, living waaay out in the middle of nowhere there is a kind of independence that nothing diminishes. The Amdo people have a lot of crossover with Chinese culture and language and are the only Tibetans to raise and eat pigs. Central Tibetans from Lhassa consider themselves the most “cultured” and have a distinct accent, many formalities and foods found nowhere else in the region. And that’s just a few of the big regional differences.

My height and size set me apart from all the people around here except for the biggest of the Tibetan men and the occasional Punjabi. I’m trying to get accustomed to being stared at wherever I go. It’s hard, especially when people make comments or ask personal questions. There’s no malice intended, only surprise and curiosity, still it’s extremely uncomfortable being the subject of all those stares and whispers. I’ve been in tears a few times, feeling extremely awkward, Gulliver in Lilliput in this place where Lena at a sturdy built 5’5” is considered large for a woman. At 6’1” and carrying as much weight as I do, I’m unusual to the point of freakish. I’ve had people follow me down the street to try to get a look at my face so they could determine what I was (some odd tribe or an Inji.) I get asked if I’m a boy or a girl rather a lot. In many places this would really be a weird question since I’ve got long hair and wear a skirt most of the time. Except that here in this mishmash of cultures, many men wear traditional outfits with skirts and certain guys have long hair. Since I’m outside of many people’s context, they have to ask rather than assume.

The effect of this will surely be to make me even more aware of racism when I’m in the west. I am so much of a minority here in just about every way possible. To some extent this awareness is probably enhanced because I speak the language (one of them anyway) so I understand people’s comments. They feel free to comment about Injies because most of them/us *don’t* know what’s being said. As far as anyone knows, there are only a few dozen Americans or Europeans who are fluent in Khamkye and almost all of them are male. It’s kind of a weird skill to have acquired. Now I’m not saying I personally am fluent – far from it. Lena is. I understand a lot of what’s being said and have enough words to make myself understood even if my grammar is sloppy. The Tibetans I’ve talked to say that I’m actually doing pretty good and my accent is decent. For a tonal language that’s important.

Anyway, I digress. I was talking about racism and being on the receiving end in such an obvious way here. Living in San Francisco for most of my adult life, I am used to a fairly multicultural environment. Kathmandu is another kind of multicultural however. As I said earlier, there are many Nepali tribal groups with their own language, customs and ways of life. There are many many Tibetans as well who live, work and are integral to the culture. And there are Indians, mostly from the North. In addition there is a small but active Chinese community. Our next door neighbor is a Chinese Muslim doctor who practices acupuncture and other holistic techniques. She is well established here and her patient base is both Nepali and Tibetan. So these are the people of this place, types common enough everywhere that I haven’t seen anybody turn and stare in surprise at any of them as they pass. I’m sure there are probably some inter-group dynamics that I’m not aware of, but they are not overt like the reactions to people of obvious European background.

One of the first things that seems to happen when an Inji enters the picture is that prices will tend to double at least. The exception is on those things with price tags already affixed such as most groceries, restaurant meals, hotel rates and such. Anything else, street vendors, cloth merchants, services of various kinds, taxi fares, all of that, we have to haggle fiercely for. There is a very different scale depending on who you are. Taxis are probably the single most obvious area. Everyone uses the taxis – they are everywhere in Asia. When our Tibetan friends come here from the airport they pay 150 rupees (just over $2 US) in fare. The lowest we were able to haggle it was 250. Locally it’s even worse with a short run up to the main street of Boudhha being a 30 rupee ride for the Tibetans and Nepalis and most drivers insisting we pay 100. Often, if we just turn to walk away they’ll come down. Or, when we arrive, we hand them the fare we know it ought to be and they grumble but accept. Once they realize we know what the fare ought to be, it starts getting more reasonable, but we have to prove it every time. You can’t succeed at this if you have a genuine fear of confrontation or haggling as some people I know do. A certain amount of stubbornness and aggression is necessary. It’s annoying to be seen as a “mark” so often. Some of this is being new in a place – until they get to know you and realize you’re not just passing through in a day or so, the vendors, the beggars, the shoeshine boys and all will try to hustle you. After awhile they recognize you, realize that, if you give anything at all, it’s going to be just a rupee or two and they don’t bother, but go on to some other naïve tourist who will hand them 50 rupees cuz that’s the smallest change they have handy. By now I know the body language and hand gestures that cut off the hustle right away.

I’m not accustomed to being so overtly targeted because of what I am. It’s quite a profound experience. Yes, I’ve always been stared at in public as a woman over six feet tall. But in the west people are more discrete and there are more of us big folks per city block to absorb some of the impact. To be then commented on, giggled at, pointed at, even followed down the street AND to get asked for money simply because of how I appear is quite disconcerting!

It’s not the *same* kind of racism that African Americans get in Euro-centric places. I’m not being refused services or assumed to be less intelligent or eager to clean house or any of the idiotic stereotypes that underlie racism in the U.S. But it IS a kind of racism, an automatic assumption about what I have, what I want and what I understand based on external factors. From what I’ve experienced so far, it gets put down with relative easy/willingness once an interaction puts the lie to the assumptions, but they are there and nobody thinks twice about having such presumptions. In the process and context of continually Unlearning institutionalized racism, my experiences in India and Nepal are quite good object lessons from an empirical rather than intellectual perspective.

I’m going to be really interested to get Nyondo’s perspective when she arrives in Asia. In Nepal thus far, I’ve seen only one person who was obviously of African ancestry. Like Nyondo, he wore his hair in long dreadlocks and had a complexion that was neither notably light nor notably dark. I only saw him but didn’t speak with him, but my impression from his dress and body language was that he was an American. What was notable, to me anyway, is that he DIDN’T stand out much in the crowd, that I first spotted him more as a Westerner and then registered his distinguishing ethnicity afterwards. At first he blended into the huge majority here who have brown skin and black hair. It wasn’t until he hopped down from his perch on a wall and started to walk that his body language, his stride, caught my attention as standing out. Even his dreadlocks were less unusual here than (what Tibetans would call) my “fox coloured” hair. Certain sects of Tibetan yogis and nuns let their hair dread, so it’s not that odd a sight. So it may well be that my wife will, for once in our lives, be far less conspicuous than I in a normal crowd. We may have to let her negotiate for taxis!

I’ve written a lot about this and still I feel like I haven’t quite captured the essence of what I was trying to say. That’s really frustrating since the topic of being “different” and how much such things are affected by culture and context are key to my experience thus far. I mean that in both the positive and negative ways. It makes me very aware than, while I don’t at all mind being unique and unusual, I don’t want to be SO unusual that I can’t have a cup of tea in peace at a corner tea wall without attracting stares and comments.

I’ve begun adjusting my style of dress to reflect local styles and also what is practical here and suits me. Because of baggage restrictions, we brought very few things with us to Kathmandu so we’re in the process of having clothes made for us to our specifications. That too has been an unusual, somewhat stressful process as I’ve had more than one local tailor say that he couldn’t make clothes for me because he didn’t know how to adapt for my unusual size. Like, they could add a couple of inches at the hemline okay, but to adjust proportions, not possible. Most tailors here have a few things that they do well and stick to that. You don’t go to the same tailor for a shirt as for a salwar kameez or to a Tibetan for a Nepali dress. Once you have something that works you can take it to someone and say “copy this” in another fabric and make small changes such as a couple inches longer sleeves or a neckline adjustment, but overall, you have to find someone who knows how to do what you want. I found it kind of traumatic to be told I was too unusual for them to sew for.

Dolkar first took me to her Tibetan tailor shop. Her clothes are nicely made, very traditional, but stylish, elegant and well done. After considering a bunch of different possibilities and kibitzing with Lena and Dolkar, I went there hoping to get a particular kind of long wrap skirt that is commonly worn by monks and nuns and male yogis. We had Lena’s lama’s robes as an example, requiring only size/length modifications. So the tailor allowed that, yes he could do that style so we began looking at cloth. Hmmm. Everything was either distinctly for monks and nuns robes or distinctly for “ladies” wear. This isn’t a community of yogis so there isn’t much call for colours and cloths that would be appropriate to a nagpa of my particular lineage. And it’s been obvious that, around here, it’s time to begin dressing appropriately for that. Which means shades in maroons though purples, browns and white, mostly the latter, worn without the bright red shawl of a renunciate (I’m not planning to go celibate.)

Finally we found it. The minute the tailor brought out the piece of fabric, Lena and I knew it was exactly right. A fairly light weight blend of cotton and silk in a colour somewhere between dark chocolate and deep maroon. It was gorgeous. It was also very expensive, relatively speaking (about US $3.50 a metre) and… the catch… there wasn’t quite enough of it to make the kind of skirt I wanted as that style wraps and has a lot of overlapping layers. We talked them down 50 rupees a metre and decided to go with a half chuba, one of the traditional Tibetan skirt styles. There was enough of the fabric for one of those. So that’s in process and should be ready in a few days. The tailor work is about US $2.

Then shirts. This tailor only did the chuba blouses and that wouldn’t work for me in this case as those are designed to be worn under the full chuba that has a jumper top. So we went off to the Tibetan bazaar to find someone who could do a good shirt or two for me. That was another place we ran into trouble as many of the tailors just couldn’t modify things to suit. Finally, I had an impulse and climbed the steep steps up to one guy’s shop and yes, he was different than the others: a Nepali whose passion is for design and innovation and who had a master tailor he works with who also could do new and different things. So we sat down and designed a shirt that had many traditional Tibetan elements but was lacking the high collar (I HATE high collars – they give me a neckache) and had a modified surplice neckline. He could do it and thought it would be nice. So we looked at fabric and, of course, fell in love with the best thing in his shop – a natural coloured bre silk – handspun from broken cocoons (which doesn’t kill the silkworms in the process as other kinds of silk rendering does) and machine woven so it wasn’t as expensive as handwoven bre, but still pricey. Yet it was perfect. At almost $5 US per metre. Well, I bought it and the shirt should be ready today or tomorrow. The tailoring fee for the sewing should be about $3

That, however, will be a dress shirt, the kind of thing one wears to important ceremonies or with guests. I needed some everyday shirts in addition to the plain black t-shirts I brought with me. So we talked to this tailor and he could do the style I wanted in that – which is a modified version of the one usually worn by monks and nuns and is designed for comfort and ease of movement. But he only had the golds thru oranges appropriate for monks and nuns in plain cotton (everyone here is still into polyester for ease of washing, not figuring yet that it is hot and sticky.) We negotiated and he said, oh okay, if you find the fabric elsewhere, I’ll do it, just charge you a slight fee for bringing in fabric from outside. So then we went hunting and, it is really hard to find cotton cloth that wasn’t designed for monks or for prayer flags. It’s not popular and space is limited. But one place, a high end stall, said come back tomorrow, I understand what you want and will bring some cloth from my shop in a different district where tastes are different. So we returned the next afternoon and, yup, exactly what I wanted. In fact, better than anyone of us imagined: this was handspun, handwoven cotton with the sheen and softness of silk and the smooth drape of a really good rayon. He had it in a wheat colour, a pale yellow and a gorgeous light cocoa. The catch was that he was asking 450 rupees a metre! That’s $6.50 US!!! And that was just too much to pay. Eventually he came down to 300 rupees which is still expensive, but less so. I bought the cocoa and, if I like the shirt made from it, I’ll go back and get the wheat colour next week.

So this was many days of shopping and haggling. I found it depressing and exhausting and will be very glad when I have things made that can just be copied without a headache. I had a terrible experience in Delhi with a tailor who made me a salwar kameez out of wonderful cloth but which was fitted horribly, just ended up being huge and shapeless and icky, which is strange for a salwar kameez. Eventually I’ll be in one place long enough and find someone who can re-cut and retailor it to fit properly. I’ve never much liked clothes shopping and this business of having to go from tailor shop to tailor shop here wasn’t fun for me. However, I think I will be happy once I have clothes that are appropriate to my environment. And, while it might be very expensive for Nepal, I’ll still end up paying less than US $80 for a long skirt and three shirts hand tailored to my measurements and made out of the highest quality cloth in town. Hopefully…

On the other hand, the good thing is that the shawls I already have are appropriate. Actually, they came from this region in the first place and were gifts from my teachers – one “formal” meditator’s shawl of heavy raw silk in the traditional colours of maroon and white and one “every day” shawl in natural coloured raw silk, light and soft and well-worn by now as I’ve had it for many years. Everyone here wears shawls, men and women both and they are often used to denote one’s affinity or status, different types and colours having understood meanings. In a way I guess I’m figuring out the appropriate way to go “native” here. I doubt if I’ll ever cease to draw stares on the street, but I’d prefer to minimize them a bit and be less self-conscious.

Oh yeah and I’m contemplating dying my hair darker. It got so sun-bleached in Mexico last year that I enhanced it and it’s now light brown with red and gold highlights. Left to its own without sun or enhancements, it’s chestnut. Might be time to go back to that – or even darker. I find myself envying Lena whose hair is mostly silver now. Of course, there’s nothing she can really do about the bright blue eyes and those attract a lot of stares on their own. It’s just that people have to get a lot closer before they notice her eye colour. Me they can see coming blocks away. Ah well, kvetch kvetch, kevetch, maybe I’d better go see if there’s hot water this morning.

Monday Night, 20 March 2006
Bouddha, Kathmandu, Nepal

If I needed a reminder that I am now living in a Third World country, I got it this evening when the electricity went out just before sunset. Power outages are commonplace around here to the point of being almost daily, but the usual pattern is that the lights go out somewhere around ten p.m. and either come on during the night or by noon the next day. We were issued candles as part of our essential provisioning when we arrived and have been using them. I also brought a good electric hand torch with me, one that is self-powered by winding a hand crank and never needs batteries. I’ve been really glad for that, especially on the four flights of stairs in the pitch black! I keep my computer and my PDA charged when the power is on and have backup batteries for both, so I generally can use my tech even in the dark – as I am now. I do have a solar panel for my laptop, but I left it in storage in Majnu ka tilla as the system is a bit heavy. It wouldn’t have done me that much good anyway – it’s always at night that the power is off and the panel doesn’t have a storage cell, it just charges the laptop.

Today’s blackout was unusual. It occurred just as people were coming home from work and beginning to prepare the evening’s meal. I suspect that actually has something to do with it – everyone arriving at home and flipping switches simultaneously. Apparently that was usual in India a generation ago. Also, Kathmandu Valley has a power shortage at present, even over its chronic one. Electricity is provided by a hydroelectric system and, as in Delhi, the winter rains never arrived this year. Unlike Delhi, there hasn’t been a recent big rainfall so reservoirs supplying the power are quite low. There is some system for rationing the power supplies by district and they are supposed to be rotated, but this area has had one almost daily since we’ve been here.

The lights went out just as I was making myself a late afternoon cup of coffee, having fallen asleep after coming back from the bazaar. Fortunately our stove is propane and not dependent on electricity and my coffeepot is a vacuum press pot that we brought with us. So I made my coffee and took it out on the balcony to enjoy the last of the light out there. Everyone else seemed to have the same idea and the gardens, yards and balconies of nearby had people gathered on them, drinking tea and commenting on things while the children played outdoors. We’re on one of the larger roads (which isn’t saying a whole lot) so many people were on the street, coming home from their day at that hour. I love watching the people and that balcony is perfect for it. So many of the women here, whether Nepali, Indian or Tibetan, wear long, flowing skirts and shawls (though jeans and t-shirts are perfectly acceptable these days and worn by many.) The colours here are not so gaudy as in India, more subtle prints in strong, jewel tones. Tibetan women favour a kind of tailored dress called a chuba, which is actually more of a jumper (in the American rather than British sense) with a blouse underneath. The top is fitted snugly with a surplice wrap neckline that shows off the blouse and the skirt part wraps and is tied in back. It comes down to the ankle. Traditionally there is a woven, striped apron worn with this by married women. These are very elegant, practical garments and are often made of lightweight suiting material – pinstripes are common these days. Black is traditional, but not exclusively, more being what used to be available. The blouses are colourful, often in pretty pastels that pick up the colours in the woman’s striped apron. I’ll get some pictures one of these days.

The Indian Salwar Kameez is quite popular here and you see everyone wearing them – Indian, Nepali, Tibetan and Westerners alike. The fit is just a little looser than the Indians prefer them and the colours not so very gaudy. Like India however, the current fashion is to have the kameez long, down to mid-calf over the pants.They are flattering garments for just about anyone. Worn with the traditional long scarf or a drapey shawl, the women on the streets look very graceful and elegant as they go about their business. Nepali woman also wear a kind of loose dress that reminds me of nothing so much as the Hawaiian muumuu – both in style and color patterns. They seem comfortable for everyday anyway, if not the most becoming garments ever devised.

Most of the men in Nepal seem to favor western dress for everyday wear. Trousers, shirts and t-shirts are the standard. Occasionally some more traditional costume is seen. And, of course, among the Tibetans, most of the men wear traditional clothes, particularly the monks, of whom there are an infinite number in this area. Everywhere you go you see dozens of monks and nuns in the traditional maroon skirts and red shawls with shirts in colours ranging from gold through orange to bright red. It’s a kind of uniform, though there are plenty of variations within the basic style and different cloths, cuts and shades of colour depending on the monastery, the budget and the weather.

All of these and more were visible on the street as the sun went down and dusk began to fall. There are very few street lights in this district and tonight there are none at all, making the going difficult. Every sort of vehicle chugs its way up and down the road from bicycles and motorcycles to taxis and the three-wheeled tuk tusk that function as a kind of public transportation, picking up half a dozen people at a time and, for 5 rupees, depositing them down the road along a set route. The occasional full-sized bus or van crowds all the rest to the very edge of the street along with pedestrians and push carts. The vegetable guys with their carts are singing out, stopping to sell a bunch of cilantro or a head of cabbage to a woman heading home to make supper. There is a kind of vehicle here that I’ve never seen elsewhere. It appears to be the front end of a small tractor or rototiller attached to a large cart. From the sound of them, they are two-stroke engines like a lawn mower. They don’t go fast, but they do chug along steadily. Cornering isn’t their strong suit. From the balcony, I watched one of these Rube Goldberg inventions have a close encounter of the axle kind with a tourist bus. The bus lost and had to back up considerably since the cart really couldn’t maneuver sufficiently to extricate itself from the corner.

Dark fell and the only lights visible came from flickering candles in windows and the orange glow of cooking fires in the shacks down below my window. In the center courtyard of this building, the blackness is profound and deep. I’ve lit a candle; that and the glow of my computer screet cast shadows on the walls. It’s quite silent and very very peaceful.

The erratic electricity is certainly not the only thing that reminds us that we’re not in Kansas anymore. If anything, the handful of creature comforts such as refrigeration are treasured rarities in this place that combines an enthusiasm for the modern with reverence for the distant past and sees nothing incongruous about a blind beggar in an Adidas t-shirt soliciting alms from a young monk listening to an Ipod. Going down the smaller road is an adventure in clambering over piles of bricks, dodging trucks, avoiding the cows (and their dung) and trying not to fall into the open trench sewers alongside the better-paved sections. To keep it all out of the muck that comes with monsoon season, even the shabbiest shops with tarpaper walls are up a couple of high concrete steps, the entire row of shops built on a kind of platform above street level. It’s dry season now, dryer even than normal and, instead of muck, the road is thick with dust. Every step raises the dust until your feet are covered in it. When the wind blows, clouds of golden brown rise up and choke anyone who hasn’t had sense enough to cover their mouths or turn away. The most susceptible often wear face masks to screen themselves. Our clothes, hair and faces are gritty at the end of the day.

There is dust indoors too, even on this upper floor. Every surface is covered with a thin film of it, sometimes made worse by half-hearted attempts to wash it off. All that does is smear it around and give the layer a swirl pattern before it dries again. At this altitude, the air is also quite dry. I have always had problems with my skin being oily. Here that is an asset and simply means that I don’t dessicate as fast as others. I’m actually having to use hand cream for my comfort now, something that was almost unheard of back in the States. The dust raises a haze that can get quite noticeable at times. Yesterday and today, the Himalayas which ring this bowl-shaped valley in which we are living, were indistinct, purple and brown shadows looming in every direction, without any clarity, the vast snow mountains in the distance, just a faint smudge, like fading smoke against the sky. India’s dust and light reflected pinks and golds in the light. Nepal’s colours are quite different, they are shades of bronze and blue, reflecting in tone the reality of a cooler environment.

Nights in Kathmandu Valley are chilly. Once the sun has set, you are glad of a shawl or sweater. Midday can feel quite warm, though that has more to do with the intensity of the sun at this altitude, once in shade you realize that the actual air temperature is quite cool. Then you step out again into the bright light and quickly feel overheated. A hat and sunglasses are a good idea here. The Tibetans who have come to this warmer climate from the higher plateaus have an odd custom of walking around with a folded towel on their heads to shelter them from the sun’s heat. It’s more than a little disconcerting to see a venerable old lama in red robes, walking around the stupa turning a prayer wheel in his hand and saying mantra – with a Bugs Bunny beach towel atop his head! Today in a shop, Lena helped a bunch of Tibetan ama-la’s (grannies) sort through jars and tubes of face creams to find one containing a good sunscreen. They were more impressed that she could read the English language labels on the jars than they were that she was speaking Khamkye like the rest of them LOL!

Between the dust and the sweat generated by a combination of sun and four staircases up to our floor, staying clean becomes important. So we were really chagrined, during the first two days, to find that we had no hot water in either our bathroom or the one across the hall. Between Dolkar and Yeshe Tso we got various explanations of why this might be so and how it might come back – or they could bring us hot water in buckets. I was NOT going to be responsible for people lugging 6 gallon buckets up all those stairs so I could wash my hair! Then Dolkar had a thought and went into the bathroom over near the kitchen and tried the hot water tap there. Lo and behold, THAT one had hot water! All we can figure is that somehow the hot water taps on this side aren’t connected properly to the solar heated gravity tank on the roof. It’s kind of ridiculous (and again, we’re back to that Third World thing again) that we have access to 3 bathrooms and, of those 3, only one has a working shower and only one (the one in our bedroom) has a functional toilet!

Monday, 20 March 2006

Bouddha, Kathmandu, Nepal

We’ve been here almost 3 days as I write this and I’m still feeling quite overwhelmed and unsure exactly what to say about the experience. It’s been a profoundly emotional couple of days as I try to adjust to being in one of the major power points on this planet. Boddhgaya stupa, the reasonfor this town’s existance, is very very old, supposedly built atop another temple from a previous aeon of humankind that predates any records. It’s a pilgrimage point for every Buddhist in this part of Asia and beyond. They come and do kora around it, that is circumnambulate around the stupa (a round building with a temple below and a tower on top) turning the prayer wheels set into the walls as they go and reciting mantra. That’s the simple version. It’s hard to explain the effect and the auspicious karma of doing kora to a non-Buddhist or the power of the stupa and this place to someone who isn’t already familiar with the concept of power points. So much energy and magic has been focused here that the air is charged with it. I sit on my bed and I can see the stupa. That, in itself, is dumbfounding!

Kathmandu is a much bigger city than I had expected. Or than it was when Lena was here, having doubled in size since she lived here 30 years ago. The area where our house is used to be rice paddies all the way to the city boundaries and extend up into the high mountains. There’s a monastery on those mountains that Lena helped build when she was in her 20’s, carrying sacks of concrete up the mountain on her back as there were no vehicles or roads at that time. Apparently, Bouddha used to be just the stupa, some very simple one-story buildings and tin-roofed shacks and then farms and rice paddies, all way out away from the center of town. The tin roofed shacks are still there, still inhabited, but the rice paddies are long gone, replaced with modern, large buildings, shops, hotels and monasteries. Many monasteries as, in the past 10-20 years many many Tibetans have escaped the Chinese occupation, walking over the mountains and been welcomed in Nepal where they have settled and constructed a village and the support structures to replace the ones they left behind.

The house we are in is such a structure. Our friend and teacher, Lama Wangdor Rimpoche, once he had become well-known as a teacher and started to have some resources, built this building as a place to house and care for those of his kin and extended family who were coming out from Tibet. He pretty much financed the escape and resettlement of anyone in his village of birth who wished to come and was able to make it out, housed them for 6 months until they got their feet under them and helped them settle. That is why this place is so big and set up as it is, with many separate rooms and apartments – so that each family could have some space. At once time it was quite full of his family and family’s family. Now many of them are dispersed between Nepal and India, having settled in to their new lives. We are always welcome here for a lot of reasons – friendship of course, but also we contributed a fairly decent sum to its construction years ago and have worked for the past 2 decades to find support monies for many of those same Tibetan refugees who lived here during their transition times. Among those are Kado, the caretaker and his wife Dolkar who are being so good to us and taking care of the cleaning (such as it is, housekeeping is NOT a strong Tibetan trait!) and cooking an evening meal for us. I swear they’d hand feed us and carry us up and down the stairs if we asked them too LOL! We’re hard pressed not to have them obsessing over it and trying too hard.

Lena and I are becoming increasingly fond of Yeshe Tso, the nun who is some kind of niece of Lama Wangdor’s. She and her mother (who is also a nun) and possibly other family members, occupy quarters on the lower floors. Yeshe Tso is smart, funny, curious as hell, eager to learn new things and just all around sharp. She’s sanjor, meaning she’s only been out of far Eastern Tibet for a couple of years, but she knows all sorts of people in this community, picks up on stuff really fast, has excellent Nepali already and is interested in learning English too. I’m guessing she’s in her late thirties, though with some of the nuns it’s hard to tell – they could be anywhere from 25 to 50. Anyway, she’s been available to run around with us and show us around the area and introduce us and we are very much enjoying her company.

Her mom is another interesting character. Ani De Lha Ma (I think the name translates to “Happy Mother Goddess” is in her seventies, half toothless and walked out of Eastern Tibet and into Nepal not too long ago. She laughs a lot and is just so tickled to meet us, to actually have westerners that she can talk to and understand (tho she’s a little unintelligible cuz of the dental situation) and she’s already consulted Lena medically for a stomach problem. So, Lena’s first patient (other than me) in Nepal LOL!

Speaking of which, Lena went looking around here for a source of Chinese medicines/herbs and acupuncture supplies. Ended up talking to the guy who runs a Chinese restaurant in the Tibetan neighborhood we’re sort of in (we’re up the hill) who is a Tibetan but has a Chinese cook and connections in China. So he says there’s not much of a Chinatown in Kathmandu these days. The border is open enough that, when people need supplies and things, they just pop over the border into China and get them there. And, indeed, he’s driving up tomorrow and will pick up what Lena needs. Then, next time we’re here, she’ll spring the extra bucks for a multiple-entry visa for Nepal and get a Chinese visa and go with him to get her own stuff. It’s only a 4 hour jeep ride from Kathmandu. It is so funny to think that, from where we are now, it’s easier to go to China than it would be to go to Portland! One cool think about this is that she can actually get credit for such a trip from the National acupuncture certification board – they are really encouraging about doctors of Chinese medicine coming to Asia and learning, practicing and exploring. Like many professions, Lena’s license requires continuing education credits to re-license every few years. California’s licensing requirements are all about making the most money for the government, but the national accreditation actually seems to be interested in medicine for its own sake!

Monday Afternoon

I went out exploring the neighborhood with Lena this morning and then wandered off by myself while she went to run errands down at the Stupa circle.. Bouddhanath, the district, is heavily, but not exclusively, Tibetan so many of the shops are owned by Tibetan merchants and craftspeople. The rest are Nepali. This turned out to make shopping easier than expected. A surprising number of Nepalis speak some English. It appears to be a required second language of anyone who has attended school (merchant class and above.) So between their English and my ability to speak Tibetan a bit, I can pretty much ask for what I need in one language or another and figure out the costs, etc.

I first checked out the closest Internet shop. It’s not bad, though the keyboard I was seated at was awful (there are better ones tho) and the connection is only marginally better than dial up. It is, however, only about half a kilometer away and costs 20 rupees and hour (at 70 rupees to the US dollar that’s cheap.) I’ll use it for checking e-mail anyway. The guy who runs it says that, within a couple of days, he’ll have a hookup where I can network my laptop into his network and use my own. That would be very cool cuz, if it works, I can use skype (I hope) to make calls and can upload pictures and longer docs to my various blogs.) Phone calls to and from Nepal are prohibitively expensive, so I’m really hoping that the Skype thing will work. In addition to the loved ones I’d like to talk to, I have some clients who want me to do readings for them by phone. I’m hoping to be able to earn at least a partial living while here in this way, but it does mean spending the money to make phone calls and they ain’t cheap! If I can use my Skype account to call the US at about 2 cents a minute, that will help. With the exchange rate, if I can work even one hour a week while I’m here, I can cover the basics of my food, clothing and local transit costs. Long distance travel is another matter, but hopefully there will be enough to cover that.