Jane's email about the festival

Hey all... Tom here...
Reba and Diane and I are safely back in Kathmandu, the land of hot showers and toilet paper and towels and clean sheets, but we're already missing the other members of the team we left behind in Jomsom today. Jane sent this email the other day to some of you, but I thought you'd all like to read it.

Hello Our Friends, This is the one and only place that has e-mail service in a
far and wide expanse of wild territory, but it seems to be working. I hope so.
We are all well, all of us, and all of us send you our love. We got the
painting to Jomsom despite the warnings from the first wave of airport people
on Pokhara that the plane simply could not under any circumstances hold the
tube that held the brocaded thang-ka. But when the officials saw the letter
from the Office of the Dalai Lama, the plane grew and the huge tube rode on
board with us in the aisle. And let me just say that yesterday, Jenna's
birthday, was a HUGE festival for A Gift for The Village. We have footage that
is better than anything I have EVER seen in ANY documentary about Tibet, no
exceptions, and I have seen them all. We now have our documentary. We had
hundreds of people in full dress with huge leather strips from their foreheads
to their backs studded with fist-sized chunks of turquoise and then the men
with hats bigger than Santa Claus himself. We had singers, dancers, a member
of parliament, the captain of the Mountain Warfare Royal Nepal Army, the
District and Village chiefs, the hig old lamas who were Tsampa's father's
friends, and horses racing down main street to with riders at a gallop hanging
off to one side trying to pick up prayer scarves from the cobblestone. We had
an amazing gathering in the town community center and then a procession
afterwards to carry the open thang=ka back to the Dancing Yak with Tsampa, the
old high lama from Marpha (nearby) anconet village and me on dressed up horses,
and JOEY riding on another horse beside me regally in the lap of another lama,
and I think I had on eighty prayer scarves that people piles on my neck, and
there were horns and bells and drummers and the whole town. It was amazing,
and we all (yes, even Jane) were wearing chubas--Tsampa bought us all these
Tibetan dresses and aprons--and little Joey was wearing a red silk lama's robe
that Tsampa had made! We all sang and danced into the night with a house
absolutely full of Tibetan women whose chunks of coral and turquoise should
have made them crumple, and we were all SO tired last night that we didn't even
have the energy to say much, except OH MY GOD--IT HAPPENED!!! We had the
festival of festivals, and the painting is home now, and it looks GREAT, and
word is spreading all over Nepal (Tsampa is getting callsfrom Kathmandu,
congratulating him) and the Ministry of Tourism wants to commend him for his
part in this great cultural event. Tom and Jenna and Sherrie worked their
hearts out yesterday to film and photograph. And the rest of us worked hard
too to help be in the right places for the team. We are all doing so well.
Emerson, I got your GREAT e-mail about the cats, and I loved it! Iris, I miss
you and Emeson terribly and hope you are okay. Kagbeni is beautiful with all
the willow trees so green, but the wind in the afternoons is fierce. Tomorrow
we walk UP to Mukhtinath and then stay two nights there. We are thinking of
attempting the Thorung-la from this side--the more difficult side--that's the
high pass (18,000 feet) day after tomorrow. We will all be careful. Reba is
doing GREAT, Carl, and so is Diane, Ken. And Beth, Tom is doing great.
Michele and Larry, your children are doing wonderfully and they and the rest of
us miss all of you! Sarah, Sherrie is not only well, she is going to bring you
the best photographs in the world. Iris and Emerson, I will write as soon as I
can again, but all of you should rest easy since it may be some days or weeks
before we can write again. Our festival was an A+ success! And everything is
fine! I love my kids and I know ou team sends love to everyone from this wild
corner of our world. Jane