longhaulers

Kathmandu is really quite crazy actually. it’s much busier and more polluted than I expected, but when are one’s preconceptions ever correct? There also seems to be more social ills, such as homelessness, alcoholism, and the most disturbing sight of street children huffing glue in plastic bags.

The old neighborhoods are fascinating though. they contain a mix of ancient looking hindu and buddhist shrines, stupas, statues, etc. at random that are integrated into the daily life of the neighborhood. people use them to sell vegetables on, hang laundry, as well as actively use them for spiritual practice. often buildings are really built up around these areas, which adds to the experience of finding a small stupa in an alley - with a little buddha draped in prayer flags and offerings of candles and rice. This is my first impression, but we’ve done little to explore these areas and the rest of Kathmandu for that matter.

The last 10 days have been spent at Kopan Monastery, just outside of the city where we’ve been in a Tibetan Buddhist philosophy and meditation course. After moving around and experiencing so much, it was great to stay in one place and engage your brain in new ideas. It was really interesting to see a working monastic community. There are ~700 saffron robed monks and nuns at Kopan who spend their days in meditation, teachings, debates, and other practices. From 5:30 in morning to 9 or 10 at night. We adopted this scheduale as well, in addition to half-days of silence. I can’t say that everything ‘clicked’ with me and Buddhist philosophy/religion, but I found it to be an incredibly rewarding time which solidified many of my beliefs and introduced me to new concepts and ways of thinking that i’m still pondering…

We’ve really enjoyed the Tibetan culture and people at Kopan and in such epicenters as Boudhanath stupa, where the evenings and mornings are filled with the scent of juniper incense and Tibetans circumambulating the stupa quietly muttering mantras and spinning prayer wheels. Occasionaly wild and discordant (to western ears?) drums and horns would erupt in a nearby monastery amongst puja prayers. It’s hard to describe this sound if one has never heard it, but it’s amazing and really quite powerful.

The recent uprising in Tibet and heavy-handed crackdown by the Chinese has motivated much of the Tibetan community here. Everyday there are protests in front of the Chinese embassy by monks and lay people and every day the Nepalese police arrerest scores of protesters - often violently. Yesterday we saw a hundred or so arrested monks filing out of police trucks into the police station. It seems like Nepal and India (as the rest of the world) is too afraid to stand up against the increasingly powerful China. The Tibetans are on their own. The writing on the wall in Tibetan neighborhoods says ‘Free Tibet’ and ‘Stop killing Tibetans’. One night we saw a monk with a piece of chalk concealed in his robes scrawl a ‘free tibet’ on a building.

The night before we left Pokhara we saw the craziest thing. It was the Nepali New Year (they are in year 2065) and there was a carnival. Carnivals are crazy atmoshperes to be in anytime, what with the flashing lights, noises, and carni-folk. But one of the features of this carnival was a giant drum-like structure made out of wooden slats. Spectators would stand on the rim  looking inside at these crazy dudes on motorcycles speeding around in circles on the verticle walls of this structure. It was loud, adrenaline pumping, exaugst-choking madness. And the riders would do tricks like sit crosslegged in the lotus position with no hands, blindfolded, etc…it climaxed with two small cars and three motorcycles screaming around this thing, the entire stucture shaking…it was geniunely frightening. It gets worse too, as one of the guys crashed when he was warming up…I imagine he was hurt pretty bad, but not bad enough to stop the show! within 10 minutes there was three motorcycles racing around it…and then the power goes out and there is total blackness. It was nuts! After it was over (riders safely descended somehow in the dark) we just stood there -whiteknucked and jaw-dropped. Someone was burning a big pile of plastic bottles and the smoke settled over the whole carnival, giving it an even more crazy, otherworldly feel. like we were on another planet with flashy lights where everyone breaths plastic air and people risk their lives for a .50cent admission.

There were a few other westerner spectators, and they seemed just as shocked/blown away by this thing as us. But the interesting this was the local people were just kind of ‘ho-hum’ about it. I think it just the fact that locals have a high tolerance for craziness. there are really different concepts of risk between us and them, whereas are exposed to so much more risky, crazy situations in their daily lives. i don’t think an event like this would fly back in the states.

Tomorrow we are going to walk off into the mountains for the next 2 and a half weeks. We’ll be in the Langtang National Park and surrounding areas. We met up with some of our friends from Tasmania, Ben and Abbey, who are going to walk with us for the first half of it. We’re pretty excited to get away from the hustle-bustle, hassle and pollution of the valley….it’s just an 8 hour bus ride away….

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