From Kathmandu... Tsampa meets Mr. Bhatt

Dear Friends, Again from Kathmandu, this time on a keyboard which loves to create spaces (yesterday's did not) but which refuses to do capitals, and which can recognize Arabic and Chinese and Korean much more easily than English--just to remind you that when we write from Kathmandu, nothing comes easily but surprise. The recalcitrance of the various keyboards goes some way to proving reincarnation, I think, since I can't otherwise explain why the station where I am sitting tonight really wants me to know languages other than the one I know.

Today, we met Tsampa in Kathmandu, who had made that long and seriously arduous journey with us down from Jomsom. Even he said that he had a terrible blister and a cramped leg and sheer exhaustion: this, from the super-human who probably holds the world's record for human time in getting down the trail in previous excursions. His beautiful daughter Lakpa Dolma said today that her mother (Karma) was "too much scared" for us as we went down the trail, since all the newspapers here are full of death tolls rising in the more southern parts of Nepal. We heard today that there has been a solid week of standing water nearly four feet deep in much of southern Nepal, much like what you saw in parts of Vietname, Joe and Carol, where the rice paddies are highly organized, like a Piet Mondrian work, but all in tints of chartreuse: this agricultural quilt is gone, under mud and debris, and even the rice shoots have drowned. I think of baby goats, water buffalo infants, all hapless, all drowned. And the sheer expanse of water, broken only by poor thatched roofs, all the laborers and farmers hapless and without a hope of recovery. Not unlike New Orleans a very brief time ago, where tonight I hope both of my amazing children, who know more than their years about recovery and hope, know that their far-away mom is thinking of them.

Tsampa today met and really spoke at length to another dear, dear long-time friend of ours, Mr. Rehman Bhatt, and to his wonderful brother-in-law Yusef, who own the Lhasa Gift House, where every Tibetan who comes with a priceless heirloom gau (prayer box) or dzi stone comes to get an unquestionably fair and compassionate price--and where Richard Gere shops for his coral also. Ask Reba and Diane (and Tom too--less a shopper, but a great observer, always) what THEY thought of Mr. Bhatt, if Jenna and I seem too much like completely prejudiced advocates of this fine man.

Anyway, it was a great meeting of amazing people--Mr. Bhatt, to my mind, the world's most honest and brilliant Tibetan stone merchant, and Tsampa Ngawang, who happens to be Nepal's most accomplished amchi and renaissance man. This happy confuence and mutual appreciation is not always the case. Georgia O'Keeffe, for instance, and Frida Kahlo, met briefly--and turned their noses up at one another, when for me--these years later--they are the Southern and the Northern Hemisphere's two toughest and smartest artist-girls from the Americas, who could have traded pistols and ridden into the sunset together much better than those ultimately self-destructive and panicky girls, Thelma and Louise.

It was beautiful to see Mr. Bhatt, who is a Tibetan Muslim, and Tsampa, who is the lineage holder of many rare and sacred old Buddhist traditions, look at each other with nothing but joy and a kind of immediate love and trust. It was beautiful to see Mr. Bhatt congratulating Tsampa for the amazing and huge festival that the village of Jomsom held to honor our project, our friendship, and our gift for the village. How lovely it is to see people who care about what will last a long time, rather than only about, as our Tibetan friend in New Delhi, India, taught Jenna and me to say seven years ago, "short fun."

More soon. Much love to Khadija, Suzi, Reba, Garland, Suzan, Barbara, and Jessica, and all of our friends who keep making us all feel like there is a home on the other side of the world for us, even if we are as far away as we can be, just at the moment. Love, Jane