We got back from our trek! One of the villages we stayed in had a hotel called the Mona Lisa. One of my favorite places was Muktinath. We saw a blue fire, trickling water and nuns chanting all in one place. It is called the agni (fire) temple. It is also called the elements temple because earth, fire, water and mind are all together. There were many prayer flags, almost as many as the monkey temple. Jane hung prayer flags for her brother-in-law Neal and her former student Morgan. Jenna hung prayer flags for her aunt Ree, Kelsey, Kendall and Wilson and another strand for Cindy and Tyler.
We stayed in Kagbeni at Pema's house. She gave me her horse Sakpa to ride on the trek. He was the best horse I have ever ridden, aka, the only horse I have ever ridden! But every stumble and trip he did, I still loved him. Pema also gave me a Tibetan dress called a chuba that belonged to her oldest daughter, who is also 8. Her name is Tcheten. Her middle daughter is Nima she is 6 and her youngest is Sela Lillian she is 1 or 2.
In Jomsom we stayed at the Dancing Yak. I worked there! I washed dishes while squatting on the side of the sink with Laxmi. I cooked and served food, and cleaned. It was very very fun.
I miss Dad. And I LOVE BABY MONKEYS!
Ella
Saturday, July 24, 2010
About the porters, from Mary
We had the best group of porters anyone could have. Along with Narayan, our guide, seven total. Seven is a lucky number, and a lucky number it was. Tek, our runner, always ran ahead to make sure we had rooms to sleep in at night. He was fun, and was always willing to lend a hand. Monoj was sweet and was always walking with someone and waiting if one of us was held back. Menesh was kind and always helpful. Roshan was a bit quiet at first, but warmed up quickly and was joking around. Lexman, who gave Ella the Nepali name Kangi, meaning younger, or smaller, was fun and always had an arm around Ella. Binaya was quiet, but also loved playing around with Ella. last, but not least, is our guide, Narayan, who loved joking around and was always checking to make sure we were ok, if the food was ok, and was always saying, "little bit up, little bit down...", which wasn't always the case. We had a race once, against Narayan and I, on the way to Jomsom from Kagbeni, and I beat him. Lexman called out, "Mary's won the Jomsom race, Mary's won the Jomsom race!!" It was sweet. Narayan had his back-pack on though. I think we should race again, without the pack. We also liked to arm wrestle. He beat me both times we played(I'll beat him next trime though!!!).They loved playing Barrel of Monkeys, and always wanted us to pull it out after dinner, or anytime we were resting. One night in Chele, after dinner, they brought out baked snikers. At first we thought it was a joke, but to our surprise, there it was, right in front of us, snikers rolled up in bread and baked like a crossaint. It was great!! After that when Narayan asked us if we needed anything else after dinner, Ella and I would say, "Can we have baked snikers?" It was fun. In Kagbeni, one night we served them their food!! They had always served us our food, and there we were, serving them!! We all had a good laugh out of it (Great idea Jenna-la!!). That same night, they sang us the trekking song. They all have beautiful voices. On our last night with them in Jomsom, Jenna, Jane, Ashleigh, Mom, Ella and I laid out little gifts for them and their children (If they had children), and when we called them up to see their gifts, it a treat to see the looks on their faces. They were so happy. Narayan has a little girl, and a newborn son, born on the night we were in Jomsom. Tek has a little girl, Lexman has a two little boys, not to mention he also has a twin brother, and Manesh has a little girl. The next morning, while we were getting ready to fly out of Jomsom, the time came to say good-bye. It was hard and heart-breaking to see everyone who we had been so close to for so long leave the airport slowly. Narayan and Lexman flew with us, but didn't fly with us to Kathmandu. We miss them all and hope in the future, when we come back, we get to have them again.
Friday, July 23, 2010
July 24, from Jane
Good Morning from Kathmandu. Please don't worry: after this post, the other team members' voices should chime in. Last night we conferred about which of us would like to write about what parts of our experience. Ella and Mary were the first to pipe up. But I'll let them (and Jenna and Reba and Ashleigh) say what they have decided as their topics.
What I chose to write about is our return to The Cave of the Snow Leopard.
Three years ago, in 2007, our Gift for the Village team became (as we explain in our documentary) the third group of climbers to reach this recently rediscovered cave, which is chiseled out of a sheer 16,000-foot cliff. The back wall of the cave is entirely covered with fresco, a thousand years old. In our documentary, we theorize about who may have painted these excellent panels, and our conclusions hint at a tremendously unexpected story about the cave's artist.
As a flightless gnat would labor with a sense of inadequacy and even deformity to climb and descend skyscraper after skyscraper, so we struggled. This ascent, or series of ascents, was the most difficult of many intense climbs, although I am not speaking exclusively about technical difficulties like elevation or angle.
Here, you do not proceed with pride, and pride is a hard backpack to leave behind. There should be no frivolity on this walk. This climb is a pilgrimage, because the cave frescoes which have watched a thousand winter blizzards swirl past are painted prayers, homages and thanks to a series of the artist's teachers. This place is a cave which honors the idea of relationship, teaching, guru wisdom, and humility.
Be quiet here. See the beautiful landscape on the way to the Cave, of course, but turn your mind toward what you do not see. Do not poeticize your lovely heartbeat or your flights of gratitude here. Do not marvel about your skin tingling or your smile broadening to fit the enormous landscape. Be quiet. Stop seeing yourself.
Tsampa has taught me this much.
To reach the Cave, you must walk for hours past Lo Monthang, which is itself described as the Holy Grail of remote places.
You must enter a tiny village and find the Keeper of the Key, a local man whose ancient, wrapped rag contains the Key to the Cliff Door. He must walk with you past the Valley of the White Rocks, where, a quarter century ago, a glacial avalanche sent down a shattering of icy river and hundreds of thousands of huge, tumbling, snow-white boulders, some like basketballs, some like elepahants.
This torrent hit Chosar Valley at midnight. Ninety percent of the homes, the animals, and the villagers were never found. The Chosar Valley, with its white boulder tombstones, covers that midnight of agony. The Keeper of the Key, walking with us, was a young child at the time. He lost most people he knew, his village, and its landscape. He told his story to Pema, who translated for us, as we walked through that Valley, the Valley of the White Shadow of Death. I could not help but think of the skeletons beneath us, in archaeopteryx positions, the fossils of a terrible night.
You walk past a sky-burial site, a long flat boulder, a little like an ossified lounge chair, shin-high. The rock would not be noticeable except for the heavy ropes that tie around it, and, since Tsampa showed us last time, for the nearby rock, under which are tucked three rustworn handmade blades belonging to the sky burial priest, and the rag-clothing he wears during the rites he perform.
In Tibet, there is a saying: Everyone should see a sky burial at least once, in order to understand impermanence.
But first, allow me to explain: in Tibetan Buddhism, there are five types of burial, to match the five elements.
Earth burials, in Upper Mustang, are virtually impossible, because there is no earth to dig. The land here is rock, or rock-silt. Water-burial isn't tasteful, because, although a chopped corpse benefits the tiny fish in the rivers here, the body pollutes the water for the villagers downstream.
Cremation, or fire-burial, is a highly respectful form, but costly to the Mustangis. Our friend Pema explained that the wood which is piled all along every Mustang home is not primarily firewood, but "our wealth, and our duty." At death-time, a family needs enough wood to cremate the body. Not having this wood is considered shameful. Upper Mustang is high-desert, and wood is rare; there are no trees to fell--only the bonsai-twisted stubs of tortured juniper or other low-scrub. But this wood is necessary for a cremation, and fire is considered extremely clean. A cremation is an honor.
There are two other kinds of burial in Tibetan Buddhism. One, the rarest, is mind-burial. Mind is the fifth element as Tibetans organize the universe. (In China, the fifth element, or sometimes the sixth, is, instead, iron.) Highly-accomplished practitioners of Buddhist mind and body control can decide consciously to leave their body in order to choose a specific rebirth. Tibetans believe in a space between death and rebirth called The Bardo. In this in-between realm, which is not a holding tank, but more like a wind-tunnel, your consciousness goes careening.
Think of your after-death consciousness as a Kleenex blown forcefully into a completely dark wind-tunnel. You go zooming and twisting and fluttering, upside-down, a parachutist without a familiar body, but with some sense of your own blind being. It is a terrifying disorienting tumble--UNLESS you have trained for it. The meditations that His Holiness the Dalai Lama does, for instance, prepare his unbodied consciousness for this ride. Only, he will be able to steer.
There are Tibetan lamas (teachers, priests) so accomplished and learned that they can not only speak to a dying person's mind as the body dies, to help instruct the mind during the transition into the windy Bardo, but who can find a consciousness even after it has tumbled and taken rebirth, and educate the consciousness about how to prepare for the next death and the next chance to steer into a better next rebirth.
Sky-burial causes rainbows--not big arches--but tiny wisps of rainbow, which jet more like butterflies. The rainbow body of a mind burial may last for days, like evanescent northern lights, but in the daytime. Tibetans point to a place in the distant landscape and say, "Ah! Such and such lama has died. See the rainbow body."
But back to the fourth kind of burial: sky-burial. Sky-burial is the most visceral, and, for my temperament, the burial of choice. A corpse is taken to a long-frequented rock (as in, hundreds of years of use), like the one we stood before on our walk to the Cave of the Snow Leopard. A qualified Buddhist cuts the hard corpse into cubes, and powders them with roasted barley flour. These cubes are scattered out to the lammergiers, the giant condor-like Himalayan vultures. They are called the corpse-eaters, and I have one of their gigantic feathers from this trek. When I am home, I will make a strong painting called The Corpse-Eater's Feather.
These birds know the ritual. The body is cubed and fed to them, and they take flight. Their enormous messy nests are dinosaur confabulations that you sometimes see high on the most inaccessible cliffs. Their fledglings are fed with the power of the corpses that their mothers have gulped, and then the young lammergiers grow their own feathers. The birds fledge, and reincarnated forms festoon the thin air.
The ropes on the rock, Tsampa explained three years ago, are to thwart the lammmergiers' over-eagerness. Yes, they know the ritual, but the birds would just as soon get to the point. These animals are so massive, their talons so tiger-like, that they sometimes pick up entire corpses and lift them up to their cliff-nests. But this frenzy reeks of greed, and the sky-burial wants to show hor forms give to one another, not take for themselves. Thus the ropes: they hold down the impulse to take too much.
Such are the landmarks on the way to the climb to the Cave.
And then, on a frighteningly thin cliff edge, you find, preposterously, suddenly, a door. A door with a lock.
The door is built into nowhere. It is simply a door, in a door frame, upright on the trail itself. There is no building anywhere.
The door divides, seemingly, nothing from nothing.
It can be opened only with the Keeper's Key.
I was told three years ago, after much discussion as I first beheld this cliff-door, that it stands as a kind of compassionate warning. Its meaning? After this point, the trail really becomes difficult.
Our Roanoke friend, Stephanie Koehler, saw a photograph of this door on my bedroom wall, and by now she may have written a blog about it.
I told Stephanie that I am awed by the idea of this social symbol, this physical prompt that what you are about to enter is extremely difficult. What a gift! A door to tell you the truth. There are few enough such doors. Conversations with my friend Suzi Gablik feel like this door. Even being near my children Iris and Emerson, and seeing how they tailor their studies toward the opportunity to help people, feels like this door. Every word and every idea my best friend Jenna shares, how I always see her treat people and think of what other people need, feels like this door. My team, and why we have worked so hard to make this film, feels like this door. I see the two sides separated: where we learn and love--at any cost--and where we have nothing but our own self-interest ahead of us, a ghastly-thin, fearful trail. May the gods always provide such doors. May all sentient beings be allowed the fortune to go beyond them.
The last part of the trail is "improved." This year, there is a thin wire, somewhat staked into the ground, wrapped in a twirl of hairy yak rawhide. You can hold this "rope" to scale down one of the worst vertical descents. Because of this "improvement," you now pay one hundred rupees to continue from this point. Pema slipped here--badly--and would have dropped thousands of feet to her almost certain death. But two porters caught her. And then we reached the Cave.
In three years, the Cave of the Snow Leopard has suffered more damage than in its lonely thousand. In 2007, I did see a set of claw marks from a snow leopard's stretching. Those parallel marks seemed the best signature in the Himalayas.
This time, there were other problems, and Jenna spent much of her time there, explaining how much good work the guide had in his power, to ask people not to rest their hands on the surface of the paintings, and not to carve out indentations to hold sticks of incense. And definitely not to redraw the faded lines of the worn faces. The Cave is not ruined, but many of its subtleties are gone.
Still, I visited with old friends. In 2009, I made an oil painting called The Cave of the Snow Leopard, for which I used our photographs of the frescoes for the background. The King of Lo, and the monastery restorer Luigi Fieni, really liked this painting. It was wonderful to be near the unruined details of some of my favorite panels. And to observe a few new details, a few new secrets.
Photography is no longer allowed in the Cave, which seems a kindness, at this point.
We heard later from Luigi that one visitor in the intervening years has brought her infant to the Cave. But Mary and Ella are the youngest self-propelled kids ever to see The Cave of the Snow Leopard, which looks out onto Tibet, and where, I like to think, snow leopards on the far cliffs had their green eyes trained on us.
Last night, I got an e-mail bearing unbearable news. My old friend Anna Sankei died three days ago of a heart attack, in Lier, Norway. She was waiting for a bus to go to a ceremony where her older daughter, Tina, was to receive a medal for her six months of military service in Afghanistan. Her younger daughter Agnes would have been there too.
I met Anna on our first day of class, freshman year, 1976, at William and Mary. We were the two who were early, waiting for the door to be unlocked. The course was called Contemporary Religious Thought. By the time the professor and the other four students arrived, Anna and I were friends.
She lived in a place where she liked to find ostrich eggs in her garden, which she would bead. One day I could visit her village, she said, across the Rift Valley, in Kenya. I would see many giraffes on my way. I should notice their eyelashes.
That Thanksgiving, Anna spent with me, at my parents' home in North Carolina. She lived with two rather cheerless nuns, back in Virginia, who never knew about my naughty father's gift to Anna, as she took the bus back from Raleigh to Hampton. She carried two huge bottles of Johnston County moonshine, strong enough to unlacquer your living room furniture.
Anna sang "Oh, Shenendoah, I love to hear you, oh, away, you raging river," in the prettiest Kenyan-English I have ever heard. My tears stream to think of that singing. We were eighteen years old then. In two days, I turn 52.
I did go to Anna's Kenyan village. I met her beautiful mother. Anna showed me lions, wild ones in the bush, and she showed me the Mara River hippos. She told me that the Cape Buffalo were the only grouches in Africa. They would charge just out of meanness. I took my baby Iris there when she was four months old. I loved Anna that much.
And Anna brought her daughters to see me, in America, twice. Jenna took Tina white-water rafting. When Agnes was a little girl, she hid in my wood shed, because she didn't want to leave.
This morning, having awakened to a full day in which there is no Anna on this earth, I must braid a bridge to cross this sadness.
I must see a door on a thin cliff-trail, and go through the door.
I must send my mind spinning out to Gil and Dan Harrington, because there is no Morgan on this earth, and to my niece and nephew Maura and Vance, because there is no Neal on this earth, and to my friend Bailey, who rides Emily Jane Hilscher's favorite Virginia Tech horse, Impulse, a swatch of whose mane now flies in Upper Mustang (thank you, Bailey, for helping me honor your friend and her love of horses; Emily died on April 16th in our Virginia Tech massacre).
I must be small. And see the swirls of all the elements diminishing every form as I also diminish.
But: in the brief time I have to see, I must love as hard and as impassively as the snow leopard gazes. Love, in order to find the most remote safe places, past the most daunting doors, in the most treacherous wilds. I must see from Kenya to Norway to Virginia and North Carolina to Kathmandu, and see from now to yesterday and now to tomorrow.
All we have are these doors and these bridges. This good vision, this astonishing view, our brief gardens. "Safe" means only a place where what we do reincarnates, finds some other form; where, amazingly enough, what has been beautiful is not altogether lost.
My love to Tina and Agnes. Your mother was a strong and beautiful woman. She loved you both so incredibly much. She was brave enough to be unselfish, and to act with kindness toward whomever happened into her life, whatever the impact, whatever the seeming impracticality of the broad reach of her heart. I will always carry your mother, wherever I go. I will never forget Anna Sankei. Farewell, beautiful friend. May we find one another again. Jane
What I chose to write about is our return to The Cave of the Snow Leopard.
Three years ago, in 2007, our Gift for the Village team became (as we explain in our documentary) the third group of climbers to reach this recently rediscovered cave, which is chiseled out of a sheer 16,000-foot cliff. The back wall of the cave is entirely covered with fresco, a thousand years old. In our documentary, we theorize about who may have painted these excellent panels, and our conclusions hint at a tremendously unexpected story about the cave's artist.
As a flightless gnat would labor with a sense of inadequacy and even deformity to climb and descend skyscraper after skyscraper, so we struggled. This ascent, or series of ascents, was the most difficult of many intense climbs, although I am not speaking exclusively about technical difficulties like elevation or angle.
Here, you do not proceed with pride, and pride is a hard backpack to leave behind. There should be no frivolity on this walk. This climb is a pilgrimage, because the cave frescoes which have watched a thousand winter blizzards swirl past are painted prayers, homages and thanks to a series of the artist's teachers. This place is a cave which honors the idea of relationship, teaching, guru wisdom, and humility.
Be quiet here. See the beautiful landscape on the way to the Cave, of course, but turn your mind toward what you do not see. Do not poeticize your lovely heartbeat or your flights of gratitude here. Do not marvel about your skin tingling or your smile broadening to fit the enormous landscape. Be quiet. Stop seeing yourself.
Tsampa has taught me this much.
To reach the Cave, you must walk for hours past Lo Monthang, which is itself described as the Holy Grail of remote places.
You must enter a tiny village and find the Keeper of the Key, a local man whose ancient, wrapped rag contains the Key to the Cliff Door. He must walk with you past the Valley of the White Rocks, where, a quarter century ago, a glacial avalanche sent down a shattering of icy river and hundreds of thousands of huge, tumbling, snow-white boulders, some like basketballs, some like elepahants.
This torrent hit Chosar Valley at midnight. Ninety percent of the homes, the animals, and the villagers were never found. The Chosar Valley, with its white boulder tombstones, covers that midnight of agony. The Keeper of the Key, walking with us, was a young child at the time. He lost most people he knew, his village, and its landscape. He told his story to Pema, who translated for us, as we walked through that Valley, the Valley of the White Shadow of Death. I could not help but think of the skeletons beneath us, in archaeopteryx positions, the fossils of a terrible night.
You walk past a sky-burial site, a long flat boulder, a little like an ossified lounge chair, shin-high. The rock would not be noticeable except for the heavy ropes that tie around it, and, since Tsampa showed us last time, for the nearby rock, under which are tucked three rustworn handmade blades belonging to the sky burial priest, and the rag-clothing he wears during the rites he perform.
In Tibet, there is a saying: Everyone should see a sky burial at least once, in order to understand impermanence.
But first, allow me to explain: in Tibetan Buddhism, there are five types of burial, to match the five elements.
Earth burials, in Upper Mustang, are virtually impossible, because there is no earth to dig. The land here is rock, or rock-silt. Water-burial isn't tasteful, because, although a chopped corpse benefits the tiny fish in the rivers here, the body pollutes the water for the villagers downstream.
Cremation, or fire-burial, is a highly respectful form, but costly to the Mustangis. Our friend Pema explained that the wood which is piled all along every Mustang home is not primarily firewood, but "our wealth, and our duty." At death-time, a family needs enough wood to cremate the body. Not having this wood is considered shameful. Upper Mustang is high-desert, and wood is rare; there are no trees to fell--only the bonsai-twisted stubs of tortured juniper or other low-scrub. But this wood is necessary for a cremation, and fire is considered extremely clean. A cremation is an honor.
There are two other kinds of burial in Tibetan Buddhism. One, the rarest, is mind-burial. Mind is the fifth element as Tibetans organize the universe. (In China, the fifth element, or sometimes the sixth, is, instead, iron.) Highly-accomplished practitioners of Buddhist mind and body control can decide consciously to leave their body in order to choose a specific rebirth. Tibetans believe in a space between death and rebirth called The Bardo. In this in-between realm, which is not a holding tank, but more like a wind-tunnel, your consciousness goes careening.
Think of your after-death consciousness as a Kleenex blown forcefully into a completely dark wind-tunnel. You go zooming and twisting and fluttering, upside-down, a parachutist without a familiar body, but with some sense of your own blind being. It is a terrifying disorienting tumble--UNLESS you have trained for it. The meditations that His Holiness the Dalai Lama does, for instance, prepare his unbodied consciousness for this ride. Only, he will be able to steer.
There are Tibetan lamas (teachers, priests) so accomplished and learned that they can not only speak to a dying person's mind as the body dies, to help instruct the mind during the transition into the windy Bardo, but who can find a consciousness even after it has tumbled and taken rebirth, and educate the consciousness about how to prepare for the next death and the next chance to steer into a better next rebirth.
Sky-burial causes rainbows--not big arches--but tiny wisps of rainbow, which jet more like butterflies. The rainbow body of a mind burial may last for days, like evanescent northern lights, but in the daytime. Tibetans point to a place in the distant landscape and say, "Ah! Such and such lama has died. See the rainbow body."
But back to the fourth kind of burial: sky-burial. Sky-burial is the most visceral, and, for my temperament, the burial of choice. A corpse is taken to a long-frequented rock (as in, hundreds of years of use), like the one we stood before on our walk to the Cave of the Snow Leopard. A qualified Buddhist cuts the hard corpse into cubes, and powders them with roasted barley flour. These cubes are scattered out to the lammergiers, the giant condor-like Himalayan vultures. They are called the corpse-eaters, and I have one of their gigantic feathers from this trek. When I am home, I will make a strong painting called The Corpse-Eater's Feather.
These birds know the ritual. The body is cubed and fed to them, and they take flight. Their enormous messy nests are dinosaur confabulations that you sometimes see high on the most inaccessible cliffs. Their fledglings are fed with the power of the corpses that their mothers have gulped, and then the young lammergiers grow their own feathers. The birds fledge, and reincarnated forms festoon the thin air.
The ropes on the rock, Tsampa explained three years ago, are to thwart the lammmergiers' over-eagerness. Yes, they know the ritual, but the birds would just as soon get to the point. These animals are so massive, their talons so tiger-like, that they sometimes pick up entire corpses and lift them up to their cliff-nests. But this frenzy reeks of greed, and the sky-burial wants to show hor forms give to one another, not take for themselves. Thus the ropes: they hold down the impulse to take too much.
Such are the landmarks on the way to the climb to the Cave.
And then, on a frighteningly thin cliff edge, you find, preposterously, suddenly, a door. A door with a lock.
The door is built into nowhere. It is simply a door, in a door frame, upright on the trail itself. There is no building anywhere.
The door divides, seemingly, nothing from nothing.
It can be opened only with the Keeper's Key.
I was told three years ago, after much discussion as I first beheld this cliff-door, that it stands as a kind of compassionate warning. Its meaning? After this point, the trail really becomes difficult.
Our Roanoke friend, Stephanie Koehler, saw a photograph of this door on my bedroom wall, and by now she may have written a blog about it.
I told Stephanie that I am awed by the idea of this social symbol, this physical prompt that what you are about to enter is extremely difficult. What a gift! A door to tell you the truth. There are few enough such doors. Conversations with my friend Suzi Gablik feel like this door. Even being near my children Iris and Emerson, and seeing how they tailor their studies toward the opportunity to help people, feels like this door. Every word and every idea my best friend Jenna shares, how I always see her treat people and think of what other people need, feels like this door. My team, and why we have worked so hard to make this film, feels like this door. I see the two sides separated: where we learn and love--at any cost--and where we have nothing but our own self-interest ahead of us, a ghastly-thin, fearful trail. May the gods always provide such doors. May all sentient beings be allowed the fortune to go beyond them.
The last part of the trail is "improved." This year, there is a thin wire, somewhat staked into the ground, wrapped in a twirl of hairy yak rawhide. You can hold this "rope" to scale down one of the worst vertical descents. Because of this "improvement," you now pay one hundred rupees to continue from this point. Pema slipped here--badly--and would have dropped thousands of feet to her almost certain death. But two porters caught her. And then we reached the Cave.
In three years, the Cave of the Snow Leopard has suffered more damage than in its lonely thousand. In 2007, I did see a set of claw marks from a snow leopard's stretching. Those parallel marks seemed the best signature in the Himalayas.
This time, there were other problems, and Jenna spent much of her time there, explaining how much good work the guide had in his power, to ask people not to rest their hands on the surface of the paintings, and not to carve out indentations to hold sticks of incense. And definitely not to redraw the faded lines of the worn faces. The Cave is not ruined, but many of its subtleties are gone.
Still, I visited with old friends. In 2009, I made an oil painting called The Cave of the Snow Leopard, for which I used our photographs of the frescoes for the background. The King of Lo, and the monastery restorer Luigi Fieni, really liked this painting. It was wonderful to be near the unruined details of some of my favorite panels. And to observe a few new details, a few new secrets.
Photography is no longer allowed in the Cave, which seems a kindness, at this point.
We heard later from Luigi that one visitor in the intervening years has brought her infant to the Cave. But Mary and Ella are the youngest self-propelled kids ever to see The Cave of the Snow Leopard, which looks out onto Tibet, and where, I like to think, snow leopards on the far cliffs had their green eyes trained on us.
Last night, I got an e-mail bearing unbearable news. My old friend Anna Sankei died three days ago of a heart attack, in Lier, Norway. She was waiting for a bus to go to a ceremony where her older daughter, Tina, was to receive a medal for her six months of military service in Afghanistan. Her younger daughter Agnes would have been there too.
I met Anna on our first day of class, freshman year, 1976, at William and Mary. We were the two who were early, waiting for the door to be unlocked. The course was called Contemporary Religious Thought. By the time the professor and the other four students arrived, Anna and I were friends.
She lived in a place where she liked to find ostrich eggs in her garden, which she would bead. One day I could visit her village, she said, across the Rift Valley, in Kenya. I would see many giraffes on my way. I should notice their eyelashes.
That Thanksgiving, Anna spent with me, at my parents' home in North Carolina. She lived with two rather cheerless nuns, back in Virginia, who never knew about my naughty father's gift to Anna, as she took the bus back from Raleigh to Hampton. She carried two huge bottles of Johnston County moonshine, strong enough to unlacquer your living room furniture.
Anna sang "Oh, Shenendoah, I love to hear you, oh, away, you raging river," in the prettiest Kenyan-English I have ever heard. My tears stream to think of that singing. We were eighteen years old then. In two days, I turn 52.
I did go to Anna's Kenyan village. I met her beautiful mother. Anna showed me lions, wild ones in the bush, and she showed me the Mara River hippos. She told me that the Cape Buffalo were the only grouches in Africa. They would charge just out of meanness. I took my baby Iris there when she was four months old. I loved Anna that much.
And Anna brought her daughters to see me, in America, twice. Jenna took Tina white-water rafting. When Agnes was a little girl, she hid in my wood shed, because she didn't want to leave.
This morning, having awakened to a full day in which there is no Anna on this earth, I must braid a bridge to cross this sadness.
I must see a door on a thin cliff-trail, and go through the door.
I must send my mind spinning out to Gil and Dan Harrington, because there is no Morgan on this earth, and to my niece and nephew Maura and Vance, because there is no Neal on this earth, and to my friend Bailey, who rides Emily Jane Hilscher's favorite Virginia Tech horse, Impulse, a swatch of whose mane now flies in Upper Mustang (thank you, Bailey, for helping me honor your friend and her love of horses; Emily died on April 16th in our Virginia Tech massacre).
I must be small. And see the swirls of all the elements diminishing every form as I also diminish.
But: in the brief time I have to see, I must love as hard and as impassively as the snow leopard gazes. Love, in order to find the most remote safe places, past the most daunting doors, in the most treacherous wilds. I must see from Kenya to Norway to Virginia and North Carolina to Kathmandu, and see from now to yesterday and now to tomorrow.
All we have are these doors and these bridges. This good vision, this astonishing view, our brief gardens. "Safe" means only a place where what we do reincarnates, finds some other form; where, amazingly enough, what has been beautiful is not altogether lost.
My love to Tina and Agnes. Your mother was a strong and beautiful woman. She loved you both so incredibly much. She was brave enough to be unselfish, and to act with kindness toward whomever happened into her life, whatever the impact, whatever the seeming impracticality of the broad reach of her heart. I will always carry your mother, wherever I go. I will never forget Anna Sankei. Farewell, beautiful friend. May we find one another again. Jane
July 23, from Jane
Hi Friends, We are back in Kathmandu, safe, sound, amazed. Thanks for the great comments and responses here and on facebook. Thanks for caring where we are.
We woke at 4:30 in our Dancing Yak bedrooms in Tsampa's home, to learn that Narayan, our guide and friend, had gotten a call at 2 a.m. that his second child, a little boy, had been born, in Gurkha, in central Nepal. We knew about his birth before the grandparents: Narayan's parents don't have a phone. It will take some time for a village friend to take the news to them. Narayan has asked me to give his son one American name, to go with his Nepali names. This Gurkha boy will carry the name Emerson.
We had sweet tea, carried our backpacks downstairs, and waited to see if any flights were able to penetrate the woolen clouds that hang so thickly during all of Nepal's monsoon season. Mostly, for days and days, no flights have been able to come in or out of Jomsom's tiny airstrip. But today--flights.
I could not believe our fortune.
We flew, and the flight was one of the most spectacular treats I have ever enjoyed, and not just because I knew we were avoiding the rain, the mud, the uncertainties of moving with our baggage downtrail, through waterfalls and grungy flood-prone river-villages.
We flew over the land before time, close to the tops of dozens of green bulging mountains, over tiger and python jungle. Slivers and nicks of white, as we approached, grew into tremendous waterfalls, dozens of them, and overarching the verdure were the breathtaking granite-faced Annapurna goddesses, the 26,000-foot snow-faced immortals. We flew easily and calmly through dawn-colored clouds and over villages too small to have names.
I remembered the scene near the end of David Lean's beautiful film adaptation of E. M. Forster's great novel, A Passage to India, when Dr. Fielding and Stella stop the car just to stand and look up at the closeness and the enormity of the Kashmiri Himalayas. They can say nothing in response to the magnitude of these things. Only Maurice Jarre's score can speak the emotions of being near the Himalayas. Not being crushed by them seems so improbable, so generous. The mountains feel bigger than concepts which remain theoretical, bigger than the universe, bigger than eternity.
And then we landed in Pokhara, a world aways from western Nepal, and then we got our next flight to Kathmandu, and before noon, we were all seated at Pilgrim's, waiting for our masala dosas and palak paneer and buttered naan and fried rice. We are in culture-warp shock, for the flights to have worked, and to have catapulted us back to Kathmandu so flawlessly. Just days ago we were having audience with a King in a faraway medieval palace.
To celebrate our safe return to Kathmandu, I ordered a dozen peanut sticks from the German Bakery, which will be ready tomorrow. They are not unlike biscotti, not too sweet, not as good as my friends the Passalacquas have made, but pretty damned wonderful, cinnamon and peanut. Which reminds me: Carol Fox, I am scandalized that you want to join the pack of chocolate-carnivores and that you lust in sympathy with my team, for those deep-fried Snickers. (Thanks for the great comment, Carol! We miss you and Joe.)
Tonight maybe we will apportion certain topics for each of our team members to write about, but for now, hot showers, laundry, food choices, the greatest bookstore in Asia--just next door to the Kathmandu Guest House, publicity for our film ("Madame, I have read about your team and your film in our newspapers"), and an upcoming dinner with the American Ambassador, to show him A Gift for the Village.
I am so proud of our team, and of our film. We are really looking forward to our American premiere at The Taubman Museum in Roanoke on September 16th. Please plan to join us that evening. And sometime before that premiere, I have the honor of giving a Lunchbox (midday) Talk at the Taubman Museum. I think I have been given 45 minutes. My Virginia Tech students will smile to think of Ms. Vance trying to condense ANYTHING into that brief slot.
Much love from all of us, back in the crazy city. I love this crazy city. Jane
We woke at 4:30 in our Dancing Yak bedrooms in Tsampa's home, to learn that Narayan, our guide and friend, had gotten a call at 2 a.m. that his second child, a little boy, had been born, in Gurkha, in central Nepal. We knew about his birth before the grandparents: Narayan's parents don't have a phone. It will take some time for a village friend to take the news to them. Narayan has asked me to give his son one American name, to go with his Nepali names. This Gurkha boy will carry the name Emerson.
We had sweet tea, carried our backpacks downstairs, and waited to see if any flights were able to penetrate the woolen clouds that hang so thickly during all of Nepal's monsoon season. Mostly, for days and days, no flights have been able to come in or out of Jomsom's tiny airstrip. But today--flights.
I could not believe our fortune.
We flew, and the flight was one of the most spectacular treats I have ever enjoyed, and not just because I knew we were avoiding the rain, the mud, the uncertainties of moving with our baggage downtrail, through waterfalls and grungy flood-prone river-villages.
We flew over the land before time, close to the tops of dozens of green bulging mountains, over tiger and python jungle. Slivers and nicks of white, as we approached, grew into tremendous waterfalls, dozens of them, and overarching the verdure were the breathtaking granite-faced Annapurna goddesses, the 26,000-foot snow-faced immortals. We flew easily and calmly through dawn-colored clouds and over villages too small to have names.
I remembered the scene near the end of David Lean's beautiful film adaptation of E. M. Forster's great novel, A Passage to India, when Dr. Fielding and Stella stop the car just to stand and look up at the closeness and the enormity of the Kashmiri Himalayas. They can say nothing in response to the magnitude of these things. Only Maurice Jarre's score can speak the emotions of being near the Himalayas. Not being crushed by them seems so improbable, so generous. The mountains feel bigger than concepts which remain theoretical, bigger than the universe, bigger than eternity.
And then we landed in Pokhara, a world aways from western Nepal, and then we got our next flight to Kathmandu, and before noon, we were all seated at Pilgrim's, waiting for our masala dosas and palak paneer and buttered naan and fried rice. We are in culture-warp shock, for the flights to have worked, and to have catapulted us back to Kathmandu so flawlessly. Just days ago we were having audience with a King in a faraway medieval palace.
To celebrate our safe return to Kathmandu, I ordered a dozen peanut sticks from the German Bakery, which will be ready tomorrow. They are not unlike biscotti, not too sweet, not as good as my friends the Passalacquas have made, but pretty damned wonderful, cinnamon and peanut. Which reminds me: Carol Fox, I am scandalized that you want to join the pack of chocolate-carnivores and that you lust in sympathy with my team, for those deep-fried Snickers. (Thanks for the great comment, Carol! We miss you and Joe.)
Tonight maybe we will apportion certain topics for each of our team members to write about, but for now, hot showers, laundry, food choices, the greatest bookstore in Asia--just next door to the Kathmandu Guest House, publicity for our film ("Madame, I have read about your team and your film in our newspapers"), and an upcoming dinner with the American Ambassador, to show him A Gift for the Village.
I am so proud of our team, and of our film. We are really looking forward to our American premiere at The Taubman Museum in Roanoke on September 16th. Please plan to join us that evening. And sometime before that premiere, I have the honor of giving a Lunchbox (midday) Talk at the Taubman Museum. I think I have been given 45 minutes. My Virginia Tech students will smile to think of Ms. Vance trying to condense ANYTHING into that brief slot.
Much love from all of us, back in the crazy city. I love this crazy city. Jane
Thursday, July 22, 2010
from Jane on June 22, in Jomsom
E-mail is a snowflake in an updraft here: it exists, but may quickly disappear toward some faraway infinity. Still, we hope so much that you who are following us, my Tech students, our families, our friends, know that your support (and comments) matter so much to us. At The Dancing Yak Hotel, we have arranged gift piles for our porters and our guide, Narayan. After dinner, we will present these amazing young men with their presents and tips, to thank them for taking us through the roughest territory in our collective experience.
I want to say again that 8-year-old Ella and 12-year-old Mary Hoffman, Reba's girls, were absolute champions on this adventure. Mary now carries the nickname Jenna Junior as an honorific, because she walked nine-hour days at extreme altitudes on rocky, treacherous slopes and cliff edges with NO problem, and Ella is now an accomplished equestrian, having ridden Pema's noble horse Sakpa through most of Upper Mustang (though on the wildest cliffs, Ella walked--without any complaint).
Reba is so happy that the girls are thriving, loving the great people here, and gorging on dhal bhatt meals--rice and lentils and curried vegetables. On the last night in Upper Mustang, Narayan, our lead guide, brought in fried Snicker bars, coated in oily hot dough. As the only team member who would rather eat cardboard than chocolate, I had a view of my team as chocolate-carnivores, absolutely POUNCING on this dessert--and I am NOT just talking about Mary and Ella.
Cross your fingers and squeeze your amulets that the plane flies tomorrow morning, and that it flies safely. It really will be a small miracle if we are able to fly on schedule. The monsoon clouds look like Michelangelo's torsos. Muscular and unprepared to be easily bypassed.
Anyway, we can't wait to share our stories. Out the window, there are teams of pack mules ringing their neck-bells as they head down Main Street. There is also a very occasional motorcycle, weird with its huge noise. Jason and Sherrie will remember the roasted peanut rooftop restaurant down the street--Jenna and I had those hot peanuts as a treat today.
We look forward to having more leisure to write in Kathmandu. Hope all of you are well. Jane
I want to say again that 8-year-old Ella and 12-year-old Mary Hoffman, Reba's girls, were absolute champions on this adventure. Mary now carries the nickname Jenna Junior as an honorific, because she walked nine-hour days at extreme altitudes on rocky, treacherous slopes and cliff edges with NO problem, and Ella is now an accomplished equestrian, having ridden Pema's noble horse Sakpa through most of Upper Mustang (though on the wildest cliffs, Ella walked--without any complaint).
Reba is so happy that the girls are thriving, loving the great people here, and gorging on dhal bhatt meals--rice and lentils and curried vegetables. On the last night in Upper Mustang, Narayan, our lead guide, brought in fried Snicker bars, coated in oily hot dough. As the only team member who would rather eat cardboard than chocolate, I had a view of my team as chocolate-carnivores, absolutely POUNCING on this dessert--and I am NOT just talking about Mary and Ella.
Cross your fingers and squeeze your amulets that the plane flies tomorrow morning, and that it flies safely. It really will be a small miracle if we are able to fly on schedule. The monsoon clouds look like Michelangelo's torsos. Muscular and unprepared to be easily bypassed.
Anyway, we can't wait to share our stories. Out the window, there are teams of pack mules ringing their neck-bells as they head down Main Street. There is also a very occasional motorcycle, weird with its huge noise. Jason and Sherrie will remember the roasted peanut rooftop restaurant down the street--Jenna and I had those hot peanuts as a treat today.
We look forward to having more leisure to write in Kathmandu. Hope all of you are well. Jane
from Jenna
Hi Friends and Family.
We have made it to the gateway of the Annapurna. Tomorrow we either fly to KYM or we wait one more day then we walk out. Today is cloudy and there was little chance that the 6:30 Am flight would go, but just now-- 12:56 it took off. Wish us luck.
There is so much to tell,but since my computer is SLOW and missing a few important keys, I will save the stories for KTM.
A few notes: What fun to travel as a group of 7 women (and girls)!! our friend Pema joined us for the trip to Lo as well. Unfortunately Tsampa could not. Mary and Ella are at home here. It is fun to watch them!!!
Jason, Sherrie, Tom, Debra, Eric, and Joey we miss you!! Pema says she loves you all and misses you-- Sunil Sarita and Tsampa also asked about you all. Debra the honey made it. Tsampa was thrilled. You have a beautiful Bhatt piece on the way, and tell Joey I am working really hard on his wish list, esp the ball tree. Jason thanks to you my pack was no problem in Lo (but I do have some GREAT blisters on my feet)! We did make it to the cave again--- more about that later.
MORE SOON!!! j
We have made it to the gateway of the Annapurna. Tomorrow we either fly to KYM or we wait one more day then we walk out. Today is cloudy and there was little chance that the 6:30 Am flight would go, but just now-- 12:56 it took off. Wish us luck.
There is so much to tell,but since my computer is SLOW and missing a few important keys, I will save the stories for KTM.
A few notes: What fun to travel as a group of 7 women (and girls)!! our friend Pema joined us for the trip to Lo as well. Unfortunately Tsampa could not. Mary and Ella are at home here. It is fun to watch them!!!
Jason, Sherrie, Tom, Debra, Eric, and Joey we miss you!! Pema says she loves you all and misses you-- Sunil Sarita and Tsampa also asked about you all. Debra the honey made it. Tsampa was thrilled. You have a beautiful Bhatt piece on the way, and tell Joey I am working really hard on his wish list, esp the ball tree. Jason thanks to you my pack was no problem in Lo (but I do have some GREAT blisters on my feet)! We did make it to the cave again--- more about that later.
MORE SOON!!! j
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
July 21, from Jane
Hello Friends and Family, We are all well--and Mary and Ella are strong and perfect. We have just ten minutes ago shuffled back into Kagbeni after ten successful and amazing days and 155 miles into Upper Mustang, where the King of Lo as well as the Prince and Princess loved A Gift for the Village and where indeed our film showed on the left outside wall of the Royal Palace. We have many stories to tell, but I have to go drink tea and soup. Every one of us is completely fine, amazed by our experiences, and rich in our hearts. Pema of the Red House made the entie trek with us, even up into the Cave of the Snow Leopard. Tomorrow we walk back to Jomsom, and then the next day, the 23rd, we attempt to fly to Pokhara and on to Kathmandu. Otherwise if the winds and clouds are playing havoc then we begin the descent by trail eventually to Pokhara, and somehow or other back to Kathmandu. On the 31st of July we have been invited to the Ambassador's home to show our film. By then, pray, we will have bathed. So so so so la! Victory to the gods! Jane
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
July 8th, from Jane
Hello Friends and especially our BMS friends in exile, I may be 13,000 miles from home, but let me say first that I am so sad that our School Board has taken the decision to move the Middle School to Old Christiansburg High School.
We have made it to Jomsom in the Annapurnas. Our flight happened yesterday, solving many frightening problems.
This morning, Pema Dhoka Thakuri from a village three hours up the Kali Gandaki came to the Dancing Yak because word had traveled upvalley last night that we had arrived. She is the Tibetan friend who came to stay with us in Blacksburg two years ago. It is so amazing to see her!
And Tsampa was standing at the edge of the tarmac to greet us, and so was Cy and Karma, Tampa's wife, and Lhakpa Dolma, Tsampa's daughter. It feels GREAT to be here!
Yesterday we were ushered into our new rooms--built on the back side of the hotel--with our OWN bathrooms! An we were given a basket of Tsampa's orchard's fresh apricots which ALL of us can't stop eating. Ella says they are the best things she has ever eaten. And pretty soon, we were hiking--across the iron bridge, up to Dhumpa Lake and monastery, where the air is full of dakinis, the locals say--sky-dancing female spirits who can intervene in the lives of people, and who are present but not visible.
We are in high country now, with snow-capped mountains all around us.
And last night we showed the film to Tsampa! And to his family, and to friends. The Dancing Yak was the theatre. What an uproarious great hour! I think we will have a reshow tonight. Everyone was thrilled, and it was anarchy in the audience, laughing and being amazed and yelling out approval and joy. Jenna videoed. WOW.
The thang-ka I painted in 2001 is hanging up and looks completely at home. We have made it to the first position of the Dancing Yak menu, where the hotel lists its specialties and services, for example, having a Tibetan doctor on call, or being able to help a tourist rent a trekking pony. But the first listing: Amchi thang-ka of Holy Man Tsampa Ngawang lineage portrait hangs here.
It is thrilling to have made it here, and thrilling for Emerson to be back in the really high mountains with me, and wonderful to see Ashleigh and Mary and Ella drop their jaws at the land and the vistas and the sheer age of the buildings here--and great to see Reba walking with her completely free fossil- and bone-hunting daughters--and as always, a privilege to be with Jenna.
Tsampa looks as young as ever-- Emerson says he looks exactly the same as the last time he saw him.
We are full of apricots, popcorn, dhal batt, greens, AND summer worm/winter grass liquor, a rare Tibetan herbal (well, for a vegetarian, the summer worm part is disturbing!) concoction to celebrate the film and to give us long life.
Our love to everyone. E-mail is expensive and unpredictable, but the trek to Lo is on schedule, and our friends are here with us. Emerson will be leaving with Cy tomorrow to head downtrail on foot--should be a spectacular adventure--and it looks like we are on target to show A Gift for the Village both in Kagbeni at the Red House and to Raja Jigme, the King of Lo Monthang. Love, Jane
We have made it to Jomsom in the Annapurnas. Our flight happened yesterday, solving many frightening problems.
This morning, Pema Dhoka Thakuri from a village three hours up the Kali Gandaki came to the Dancing Yak because word had traveled upvalley last night that we had arrived. She is the Tibetan friend who came to stay with us in Blacksburg two years ago. It is so amazing to see her!
And Tsampa was standing at the edge of the tarmac to greet us, and so was Cy and Karma, Tampa's wife, and Lhakpa Dolma, Tsampa's daughter. It feels GREAT to be here!
Yesterday we were ushered into our new rooms--built on the back side of the hotel--with our OWN bathrooms! An we were given a basket of Tsampa's orchard's fresh apricots which ALL of us can't stop eating. Ella says they are the best things she has ever eaten. And pretty soon, we were hiking--across the iron bridge, up to Dhumpa Lake and monastery, where the air is full of dakinis, the locals say--sky-dancing female spirits who can intervene in the lives of people, and who are present but not visible.
We are in high country now, with snow-capped mountains all around us.
And last night we showed the film to Tsampa! And to his family, and to friends. The Dancing Yak was the theatre. What an uproarious great hour! I think we will have a reshow tonight. Everyone was thrilled, and it was anarchy in the audience, laughing and being amazed and yelling out approval and joy. Jenna videoed. WOW.
The thang-ka I painted in 2001 is hanging up and looks completely at home. We have made it to the first position of the Dancing Yak menu, where the hotel lists its specialties and services, for example, having a Tibetan doctor on call, or being able to help a tourist rent a trekking pony. But the first listing: Amchi thang-ka of Holy Man Tsampa Ngawang lineage portrait hangs here.
It is thrilling to have made it here, and thrilling for Emerson to be back in the really high mountains with me, and wonderful to see Ashleigh and Mary and Ella drop their jaws at the land and the vistas and the sheer age of the buildings here--and great to see Reba walking with her completely free fossil- and bone-hunting daughters--and as always, a privilege to be with Jenna.
Tsampa looks as young as ever-- Emerson says he looks exactly the same as the last time he saw him.
We are full of apricots, popcorn, dhal batt, greens, AND summer worm/winter grass liquor, a rare Tibetan herbal (well, for a vegetarian, the summer worm part is disturbing!) concoction to celebrate the film and to give us long life.
Our love to everyone. E-mail is expensive and unpredictable, but the trek to Lo is on schedule, and our friends are here with us. Emerson will be leaving with Cy tomorrow to head downtrail on foot--should be a spectacular adventure--and it looks like we are on target to show A Gift for the Village both in Kagbeni at the Red House and to Raja Jigme, the King of Lo Monthang. Love, Jane
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
a few side notes from Jenna
ON BIKING: did i mention that i had to ask which side on the road to ride on and several times during our ride in town I could not figure out why cars and motorcycles were heading straight for me? In Nepal, I am pretty sure there is a law saying that anytime you are driving a car or riding a bike or motorcycle you should beep your horn or ring your bell as much as possible. I have to say that Ashleigh was much better with the bell ringing than me-- I was so busy dragging my feet to stop the bike on down hills and trying to figure out why everyone else was on the wrong side of the road to worry about the darn bell. Thanks Ashleigh-- your bell ringing saved us a few times!
ON FLYING TO JOMSOM: I have to say that i was really nervous about the flight. We were looking out the airport window at a cloud covered sky and a light rain and the lady told me "Jomsom weather very bad mam, very difficult for plane land" After waiting 5 1/2 hours we were led onto the tarmac. tHE RAIN HAD STOPPED AND THERE WERE HINTS OF BLUE SKY, BUT NOT MUCH, (oops caps) We were told that the pilot would take us up and see if he could land. It wasn't until I saw the female co-pilot look out of the cockpit and smile at Mary and Ella that I started feeling okay about the attempt. Then as were were just about to take off the pilot looked over his shoulder, surveyed the FULL flight of 16 passengers, smiled and turned back around. It was if he was saying, I see you, I see who you are, and I will take care of you. The flight is no more than 20 minutes. Today, after 20 minutes, we had circled about five times, dropping and ascending to dodge clouds-- mind you our pilot was flying by sight! no instruments helping with navigation, only altimeters and a few other gadgets....
ON HIKING: that last two days, despite the oppressive heat we have done two amazing treks to the mountain tops around Pokhara. Ella joined us for the trek to the World Peace Pagoda and Mary trekked to the top of Sarangkot Mtn. today. It feels good to be getting our legs ready for the long trekking days ahead. Our walks took us up steep rock stair cases, threw villages and rice fields, past men herding water buffalo in for the evening and women carrying massive baskets of corn or rocks, or buckets of water on their heads. It never ceases to amaze me where women have set up their tables or blankets full of goods-- we climbed up a steep rock ledge to find women up there waiting for us. As we trek threw villages, we are greeted in one of a few ways..."Namaste-- which country?" or "Hallo-- what your name?" "Come, just a look, no cost to look."
ON BLOGGIN: As I was nearing the end of this blog, my computer started beeping, as if the timer to an explosive was counting down-- I tried to post, no luck, I tried to copy and save, no luck, so I called over the attendant who simply nodded his head back and forth side to side and ran his fingers a few keys on the keyboard and the beeping stopped and the computer seemed to unlock. HUM????? I hope this is the last blog for a while. If it is, it means we have flown. Keep your fingers crossed for a clear sky and safe journey. Also, as i am typing there are 3 laughing geckos in sight of me. We see them everywhere and they really do laugh. There was one right above Mary's head as we ate dinner the other night.
I'm going to post now before a gecko drops down on my keyboard and the beeping starts again!
ON FLYING TO JOMSOM: I have to say that i was really nervous about the flight. We were looking out the airport window at a cloud covered sky and a light rain and the lady told me "Jomsom weather very bad mam, very difficult for plane land" After waiting 5 1/2 hours we were led onto the tarmac. tHE RAIN HAD STOPPED AND THERE WERE HINTS OF BLUE SKY, BUT NOT MUCH, (oops caps) We were told that the pilot would take us up and see if he could land. It wasn't until I saw the female co-pilot look out of the cockpit and smile at Mary and Ella that I started feeling okay about the attempt. Then as were were just about to take off the pilot looked over his shoulder, surveyed the FULL flight of 16 passengers, smiled and turned back around. It was if he was saying, I see you, I see who you are, and I will take care of you. The flight is no more than 20 minutes. Today, after 20 minutes, we had circled about five times, dropping and ascending to dodge clouds-- mind you our pilot was flying by sight! no instruments helping with navigation, only altimeters and a few other gadgets....
ON HIKING: that last two days, despite the oppressive heat we have done two amazing treks to the mountain tops around Pokhara. Ella joined us for the trek to the World Peace Pagoda and Mary trekked to the top of Sarangkot Mtn. today. It feels good to be getting our legs ready for the long trekking days ahead. Our walks took us up steep rock stair cases, threw villages and rice fields, past men herding water buffalo in for the evening and women carrying massive baskets of corn or rocks, or buckets of water on their heads. It never ceases to amaze me where women have set up their tables or blankets full of goods-- we climbed up a steep rock ledge to find women up there waiting for us. As we trek threw villages, we are greeted in one of a few ways..."Namaste-- which country?" or "Hallo-- what your name?" "Come, just a look, no cost to look."
ON BLOGGIN: As I was nearing the end of this blog, my computer started beeping, as if the timer to an explosive was counting down-- I tried to post, no luck, I tried to copy and save, no luck, so I called over the attendant who simply nodded his head back and forth side to side and ran his fingers a few keys on the keyboard and the beeping stopped and the computer seemed to unlock. HUM????? I hope this is the last blog for a while. If it is, it means we have flown. Keep your fingers crossed for a clear sky and safe journey. Also, as i am typing there are 3 laughing geckos in sight of me. We see them everywhere and they really do laugh. There was one right above Mary's head as we ate dinner the other night.
I'm going to post now before a gecko drops down on my keyboard and the beeping starts again!
July 6, evening, from Jane
Hi Friends, My eyes are drooping but I wanted to wish Blacksburg Middle School no amputation and no dislocation.
On our unexpected day in Pokhara, Jenna and Mary and Ashleigh and I walked up to Sarangkot, the big hill between Machupuchchare and Phewa Lake. From this hill, hang-gliders take off. We walked in fields and along the one switchback-looped road, past mahogany and neem forests and stone walls covered in ferns and wild crown-of-thorn. This was a really vertical walk, and I for one was as drenched from the exertion as if I had jumped in a swimming pool.
At the top, we met a little girl named Pushpanjali, thin and beautiful-eyed, but extremely forward physically, touching our necklaces, and wanting us to sit near her. I wondered if she might be a child who at Blacksburg Middle School would be one of my special kids, and I guess so: her older sister gestured to Pushpanjali and said (to our sadness), "No mind," shaking her head. Maybe not, but we would have taken this little girl with us so quickly, if we could have spoken to her easily, and if there weren't a Great Wall of regulations to barricade such a bond. She was cheerful and lithe, and happy. She seemed bright, but eccentric, possibly repetitive, or plaintive, in her affection. So far, where is the flaw?
On the drive downhill (because we decided to take a car down, to avoid the time of evening when black cobras cross the road), let's just be glad that our raft guide was in the front seat. Our driver seemed at one point distracted by a vision in the faraway distance,, and our car began to drift toward the cliff. Jenna TOOK that steering wheel and turned it, and the driver was good-natured about the correction. Go Jenna! May your raft guiding always extend to other service fields, like saving your friends from a car-flight over a Nepali precipice.
So again we try to fly tomorrow. Looking in the direction of Mustang is like looking into a mix of octopus ink and milk. I can't imagine the break in the clouds that we will need, but then again, not much of what we are doing is easy for me to imagine, even when I am seeing and being here. Like watching the silk Amchi shirt-artist: a blur and whir of stitchery keeps turning into adventures which keep turning into gifts which keep turning into friendships and then back into celebrations. Sounds as if I am drunk, but in fact I am too tired to lift a beer.
Goodnight, Pushpanjali. You may never remember us in your life, but we will never forget you. Tiny wisp of a mountain girl, walking near the stars, looking down on Phewa Lake from such a height that you could believe your own mind is nothing but clear light and empty endless sky-space. May all your dreams be as fresh as cloud and as light as mist. May flowers be bright every season of your life. May your unchecked sweetness and enthusiasm heal a thousand sadnesses in your village.
We miss our friends and family. Iris, you are always in my heart. Love, Jane
On our unexpected day in Pokhara, Jenna and Mary and Ashleigh and I walked up to Sarangkot, the big hill between Machupuchchare and Phewa Lake. From this hill, hang-gliders take off. We walked in fields and along the one switchback-looped road, past mahogany and neem forests and stone walls covered in ferns and wild crown-of-thorn. This was a really vertical walk, and I for one was as drenched from the exertion as if I had jumped in a swimming pool.
At the top, we met a little girl named Pushpanjali, thin and beautiful-eyed, but extremely forward physically, touching our necklaces, and wanting us to sit near her. I wondered if she might be a child who at Blacksburg Middle School would be one of my special kids, and I guess so: her older sister gestured to Pushpanjali and said (to our sadness), "No mind," shaking her head. Maybe not, but we would have taken this little girl with us so quickly, if we could have spoken to her easily, and if there weren't a Great Wall of regulations to barricade such a bond. She was cheerful and lithe, and happy. She seemed bright, but eccentric, possibly repetitive, or plaintive, in her affection. So far, where is the flaw?
On the drive downhill (because we decided to take a car down, to avoid the time of evening when black cobras cross the road), let's just be glad that our raft guide was in the front seat. Our driver seemed at one point distracted by a vision in the faraway distance,, and our car began to drift toward the cliff. Jenna TOOK that steering wheel and turned it, and the driver was good-natured about the correction. Go Jenna! May your raft guiding always extend to other service fields, like saving your friends from a car-flight over a Nepali precipice.
So again we try to fly tomorrow. Looking in the direction of Mustang is like looking into a mix of octopus ink and milk. I can't imagine the break in the clouds that we will need, but then again, not much of what we are doing is easy for me to imagine, even when I am seeing and being here. Like watching the silk Amchi shirt-artist: a blur and whir of stitchery keeps turning into adventures which keep turning into gifts which keep turning into friendships and then back into celebrations. Sounds as if I am drunk, but in fact I am too tired to lift a beer.
Goodnight, Pushpanjali. You may never remember us in your life, but we will never forget you. Tiny wisp of a mountain girl, walking near the stars, looking down on Phewa Lake from such a height that you could believe your own mind is nothing but clear light and empty endless sky-space. May all your dreams be as fresh as cloud and as light as mist. May flowers be bright every season of your life. May your unchecked sweetness and enthusiasm heal a thousand sadnesses in your village.
We miss our friends and family. Iris, you are always in my heart. Love, Jane
From Jane, July 6th
Hello Friends, We are NOT in Jomsom, but instead still in Pokhara.
The skies this morning were heavy with low clouds, and although we were at the little airport by 5:30 a.m., we had to wait until about 11 a.m. to hear that the first four flights to Jomsom were all totally canceled but that Agni Air WAS going to try the fifth and final flight of the day. So our team of seven and a sprinkling of locals (sixteen, counting crew) boarded the tiny twin-engine, with some trepidation and some hope.
And although we came face to face with the mighty Goddess Annapurna (over 26,000 feet, her stone face), and although we circled and circled among the thick clouds, our landing was not to be. Jenna gave thumbs up to the pilots in their open cockpit when they announced there was no entering Jomsom today. We appreciated the attempt AND our crew's reluctance. Flying into Jomsom--as our documentary shows--is not cake. You have to commit to a ravine, descend along the river, arc hard in a bowl, and stop before the runway turns into a mountain face. Today, the ravine was a cauldron of cloud, and, as Nepali pilots like to say, our clouds have rocks in them.
So we came close.
Fortunately we are already booked for attempting the second flight tomorrow morning (Usually if you miss a flight, you are pushed to lowly stand-by position, stressful for us since we are a group of seven, and don't want to split up). But the Agni representatives were excellent, and stored three of our heaviest bags at the airport, making tomorrow morning's attempt a little less burdensome.
Still, our position is not easy. Each day we can't fly, the roads--sorry, the "roads"--to Jomsom are more waterlogged and possibly blocked by mudslide or rock-avalanche. Each night in Pokhara is another $30 per person for an air-conditioned room--an expense we weren't counting on, ideally. A jeep is devilishly expensive, as quoted here in Pokhara, and so we have our friend Mingma in Kathmandu trying to get us a better deal on a good jeep. May I add that having a shop owner connect a phone here to our friend Mingma in Kathmandu is itself a trip.
If we DO opt to be driven, we will do so ONLY in a good jeep, not on public transport. Jenna and I have seen the roads, and a public "bus" on those "roads" is outside my definition of reasonable. We have considered a heliocopter, but we doubt we can afford the option.
Anyway, we spent a decompression lunch upstairs at a familiar restaurant and navigated everyone's response to the mild trauma of circling but not being able to land in Jomsom.
Most disappointed was Mary, partly because her ears ached a little fom the flight and partly because she so much wanted to land in our next place and get that much closer to snow leopards.
Mingma informed us, upon my asking the dire question of whether any of our Upper Mustang fees would be refundable, if we can not get to Kagbeni at the appointed time to start the trek to Lo, that no, unfortunately, our contract is signed and the fees are paid for the special permissions given by various government ministers for us to enter the Forbidden Kingdom. Those are big bucks to have flutter out of our grasp. And big hopes to lose from our grasp.
So wish us well, getting to Mustang. My young cousin Cy is there (he took the local bus, but, for the life of me, I can't feel great about that choice for my team), who informed Emerson last night by crackly phone that there may not be a working projector in Jomsom, and therefore we may not be able to show the documentary where the festival was held, which is a shame. But in the walled fortress-city of Lo, there IS a generator, a projector, and a King expecting us and the documentary.
All we have to do to show A Gift for the Village there is, first, to solve the puzzle of how to outwit the monsoon sky and its wrath upon the roads, and, second, to walk 155 miles. As our friends here often say: Is problem? No problem.
But outside the ring of obstacles I have described, what an amazing event in Pokhara yesterday! I met a young man, Udhav Shrestha, 23, and his handsome father, Krishna. There was something about Udhav. I wish I knew how to recollect exactly what made me sense that he was an artist. All he did is name some prices on t-shirts. But there was something...
I can honestly say that until I SAW Udhav I had not had the idea, but something in his expression...
I said, "I have a project I want to suggest. It may be impossible, and you can simply say no. I can not imagine you wlll say yes, but there is something in your face, something in your smile, which causes me to ask."
So I showed him a photograph of the Amchi Painting.
I told him about our project, our documentary, about Tsampa Ngawang and my long support of Tibet, and I read him the Dalai Lama's letter endorsing A Gift for the Village. Udhav listened.
I said, "I wonder if you could, with silk thread, reproduce this Amchi painting--in silk--on a black t-shirt. I know it is complicated. It is possibly impossible."
Udhav smiled and shook his head, as if in disbelief, and then introduced me to his father, who had been listening, and who said, "I think you are very lucky. If you had asked any other person in all of Pokhara, not one other person would even try. I don't tell you this as a selling point. But to do what you ask requires more than tailoring skills. As it happens, yes. We are father and son, and yes, we can do this work. We are the only two within sight of Phewa Lake who can sew like artists. How did you know to ask?"
Hopefully, Tom Landon can link our site to Krishna and Udhav's business, Shrestha Embroidery Shop, where you can see the kind of artistry these men have, although I can not imagine that ANY custom design on their site can compare to the Amchi shirt I am currently wearing. Their site is: www.embroiderynepal.weebly.com. As soon as we can, we will send a jpeg of the Amchi shirt, so you can see for yourselves.
Unbelievable. Quite a feeling, to have your large Tibetan lineage painting sewn into a silken t-shirt design, before your eyes, with son and father bent over the hoop, and the son reminding the father how to shape the grimace of the snow lions' faces, and the father working all the necessary colors into the peacock feathers (each, smaller than a cumin seed).
I think we will take a walk today. Just to stretch our legs and work out the kinks from the disappointment of not being able to land in Jomsom. Not yet.
Love to all of our family and friends, Jane
The skies this morning were heavy with low clouds, and although we were at the little airport by 5:30 a.m., we had to wait until about 11 a.m. to hear that the first four flights to Jomsom were all totally canceled but that Agni Air WAS going to try the fifth and final flight of the day. So our team of seven and a sprinkling of locals (sixteen, counting crew) boarded the tiny twin-engine, with some trepidation and some hope.
And although we came face to face with the mighty Goddess Annapurna (over 26,000 feet, her stone face), and although we circled and circled among the thick clouds, our landing was not to be. Jenna gave thumbs up to the pilots in their open cockpit when they announced there was no entering Jomsom today. We appreciated the attempt AND our crew's reluctance. Flying into Jomsom--as our documentary shows--is not cake. You have to commit to a ravine, descend along the river, arc hard in a bowl, and stop before the runway turns into a mountain face. Today, the ravine was a cauldron of cloud, and, as Nepali pilots like to say, our clouds have rocks in them.
So we came close.
Fortunately we are already booked for attempting the second flight tomorrow morning (Usually if you miss a flight, you are pushed to lowly stand-by position, stressful for us since we are a group of seven, and don't want to split up). But the Agni representatives were excellent, and stored three of our heaviest bags at the airport, making tomorrow morning's attempt a little less burdensome.
Still, our position is not easy. Each day we can't fly, the roads--sorry, the "roads"--to Jomsom are more waterlogged and possibly blocked by mudslide or rock-avalanche. Each night in Pokhara is another $30 per person for an air-conditioned room--an expense we weren't counting on, ideally. A jeep is devilishly expensive, as quoted here in Pokhara, and so we have our friend Mingma in Kathmandu trying to get us a better deal on a good jeep. May I add that having a shop owner connect a phone here to our friend Mingma in Kathmandu is itself a trip.
If we DO opt to be driven, we will do so ONLY in a good jeep, not on public transport. Jenna and I have seen the roads, and a public "bus" on those "roads" is outside my definition of reasonable. We have considered a heliocopter, but we doubt we can afford the option.
Anyway, we spent a decompression lunch upstairs at a familiar restaurant and navigated everyone's response to the mild trauma of circling but not being able to land in Jomsom.
Most disappointed was Mary, partly because her ears ached a little fom the flight and partly because she so much wanted to land in our next place and get that much closer to snow leopards.
Mingma informed us, upon my asking the dire question of whether any of our Upper Mustang fees would be refundable, if we can not get to Kagbeni at the appointed time to start the trek to Lo, that no, unfortunately, our contract is signed and the fees are paid for the special permissions given by various government ministers for us to enter the Forbidden Kingdom. Those are big bucks to have flutter out of our grasp. And big hopes to lose from our grasp.
So wish us well, getting to Mustang. My young cousin Cy is there (he took the local bus, but, for the life of me, I can't feel great about that choice for my team), who informed Emerson last night by crackly phone that there may not be a working projector in Jomsom, and therefore we may not be able to show the documentary where the festival was held, which is a shame. But in the walled fortress-city of Lo, there IS a generator, a projector, and a King expecting us and the documentary.
All we have to do to show A Gift for the Village there is, first, to solve the puzzle of how to outwit the monsoon sky and its wrath upon the roads, and, second, to walk 155 miles. As our friends here often say: Is problem? No problem.
But outside the ring of obstacles I have described, what an amazing event in Pokhara yesterday! I met a young man, Udhav Shrestha, 23, and his handsome father, Krishna. There was something about Udhav. I wish I knew how to recollect exactly what made me sense that he was an artist. All he did is name some prices on t-shirts. But there was something...
I can honestly say that until I SAW Udhav I had not had the idea, but something in his expression...
I said, "I have a project I want to suggest. It may be impossible, and you can simply say no. I can not imagine you wlll say yes, but there is something in your face, something in your smile, which causes me to ask."
So I showed him a photograph of the Amchi Painting.
I told him about our project, our documentary, about Tsampa Ngawang and my long support of Tibet, and I read him the Dalai Lama's letter endorsing A Gift for the Village. Udhav listened.
I said, "I wonder if you could, with silk thread, reproduce this Amchi painting--in silk--on a black t-shirt. I know it is complicated. It is possibly impossible."
Udhav smiled and shook his head, as if in disbelief, and then introduced me to his father, who had been listening, and who said, "I think you are very lucky. If you had asked any other person in all of Pokhara, not one other person would even try. I don't tell you this as a selling point. But to do what you ask requires more than tailoring skills. As it happens, yes. We are father and son, and yes, we can do this work. We are the only two within sight of Phewa Lake who can sew like artists. How did you know to ask?"
Hopefully, Tom Landon can link our site to Krishna and Udhav's business, Shrestha Embroidery Shop, where you can see the kind of artistry these men have, although I can not imagine that ANY custom design on their site can compare to the Amchi shirt I am currently wearing. Their site is: www.embroiderynepal.weebly.com. As soon as we can, we will send a jpeg of the Amchi shirt, so you can see for yourselves.
Unbelievable. Quite a feeling, to have your large Tibetan lineage painting sewn into a silken t-shirt design, before your eyes, with son and father bent over the hoop, and the son reminding the father how to shape the grimace of the snow lions' faces, and the father working all the necessary colors into the peacock feathers (each, smaller than a cumin seed).
I think we will take a walk today. Just to stretch our legs and work out the kinks from the disappointment of not being able to land in Jomsom. Not yet.
Love to all of our family and friends, Jane
Monday, July 5, 2010
From Mary
Wow! Pokhara is Hot! At least 100 degrees when the sun is at it's peak. I hope it's not that hot in Blacksburg. After being in Pokhara for a few days, a mountain trek is welcomed. Jane and I are getting ready to go see a shirt she's having made by a silk tailor-artist, of her painting. Hopefully it'll be good, But it might be horrible. We went to Devi's Falls the first full day we were here. There was a waterfall (Of course,)and a double rainbow in a area off to the side. There was also a wishing well with Ganesh on a isolated perch, the edges going off into a shallow well. Of all of us who tried, Emerson managed to get a rupee coin on the island and have his wish granted. As we were leaving, I saw a really beautiful brass Snow Leopard, but the woman priced too high. As everyone else was browsing other stores, Emerson goes back and buys the Snow Leopard for me. That almost put me in tears. I then saw a necklace with a pheonix and a dragon around a marble and Jane gave me 100 rupees to get it. That was very nice also. Then, when we were at the Tibetan Refugee camp, we went in and saw the woman who were making the rugs, and one pats her bench for me and Ella to get up. She even showed us how. Then Mom got a huge Wind Horse, Ella got a small square Snow Lion, and I got a medium-sized Black dragon. This morning, we got up early to go out on the Lake, which I kept calling a river. On the way there, we got caught in between a dog fight. The bad thing was, the fight followed us. So as Jane was getting ready to get Emerson, I tried to join up with the rest of the group, but was cut off several times. I finally got through though. When we got out on the lake, We paddled over to a temple on the island. There were many pigeons, but in the water over a certain point, was a huge school of fish. When we looked through the polarized lenses, it was so much clearer. On the way back, There were a couple bottles out on the lake, Ashley, Ella , Mom, and I (Our boat), We went to go get them. It turned out they were buoys. Then we went to a German bakery, 2 hours before lunch. Lunch for Ella and I was a plate of French Fries. Mom didn't come because of her ear-splitting headache. Don't Worry Mom, I've been there before. So, now we are going for the T-shirt. Hope it's good!
Mary
Mary
a quick post from Reba
Holy cow. I just read through the rest of the team's posts. It seems that I am traveling with a team of gifted writers, my oldest daughter included. I am grateful I will have a wonderful travel journal with these blogs when I get home.
This morning we got up and out at 6 am to get breakfast and get on the lake before the sun got too hot. As we walk up the street from our hotel there is the occasional shop owner opening up to start the day, but mostly everything is closed....even breakfast places, much to Ella's chagrin.
We were joined by a large dog wearing a collar. A healthy-looking male who trotted along with us, weaving in and out of the 6 of us. Emerson had not joined us yet. It wasn't long before another couple of dogs, who seemed scrappy and steet-wise, joined the parade. One was a cute female dog who seemed sweet. Jane and Jenna have warned us not to touch any dogs, and the girls remember this now. But we talk to them and they wag their tails and trot along......then more dogs peel off from their intended paths to hook up with the women and dog entourage. Yeah, you can see it coming, can't you?
First came a few warning growls and positioning of bodies between the female and the other males. Jane told us to stop and let the dogs go on ahead of us, or we were about to be in the midst of a dog fight. We stopped. So did the dogs. We walked faster. So did the dogs. We crossed to the other side of the street....and here came the dogs. They seemed intent on hanging with us, even with the distraction of rivals in the mix. We even stepped up into the outside section of a restaurant (it wasn't yet open) and several of the dogs even followed us there, continuing to snarl and growl at each other.
Finally, the dogs lost interest as we got further up the street. We learned that no one serves breakfast in Pokhara before 7 am. We decide to head back to find Emerson, by now it is 7 and we knew we could find somewhere to eat. We choose a nice outside table by the lake and order black filter coffee (not Nescafe) and scrambled eggs. Jenna and Ashley order banana porridge and Jane ordered an indian breakfast. She's all spicy, all the time!
Three of the dogs find us again. They came right up on into the restaurant, wagging and waiting on a handout. We resisted the temptation to feed them, but our young waiter who was so polite looked at Jenna and said, "Your dogs, Madame"? Jenna sweetly told him no (her face revealed, "Sure, I brought them with me from America!") and he ran them out, and they were not patient enough to wait for us to leave.
We finished our breakfast, discussing our all-time favorite films then our plans for the day, which included renting boats to paddle to the little island of shrines in the middle of the lake.
I'm not sure what kind of internet, if any, is in Jomsom and beyond. If possible, we will post again. If not, the next time you hear from us will be when we return from our trek.
We miss everyone back home, and love you even more.
R
This morning we got up and out at 6 am to get breakfast and get on the lake before the sun got too hot. As we walk up the street from our hotel there is the occasional shop owner opening up to start the day, but mostly everything is closed....even breakfast places, much to Ella's chagrin.
We were joined by a large dog wearing a collar. A healthy-looking male who trotted along with us, weaving in and out of the 6 of us. Emerson had not joined us yet. It wasn't long before another couple of dogs, who seemed scrappy and steet-wise, joined the parade. One was a cute female dog who seemed sweet. Jane and Jenna have warned us not to touch any dogs, and the girls remember this now. But we talk to them and they wag their tails and trot along......then more dogs peel off from their intended paths to hook up with the women and dog entourage. Yeah, you can see it coming, can't you?
First came a few warning growls and positioning of bodies between the female and the other males. Jane told us to stop and let the dogs go on ahead of us, or we were about to be in the midst of a dog fight. We stopped. So did the dogs. We walked faster. So did the dogs. We crossed to the other side of the street....and here came the dogs. They seemed intent on hanging with us, even with the distraction of rivals in the mix. We even stepped up into the outside section of a restaurant (it wasn't yet open) and several of the dogs even followed us there, continuing to snarl and growl at each other.
Finally, the dogs lost interest as we got further up the street. We learned that no one serves breakfast in Pokhara before 7 am. We decide to head back to find Emerson, by now it is 7 and we knew we could find somewhere to eat. We choose a nice outside table by the lake and order black filter coffee (not Nescafe) and scrambled eggs. Jenna and Ashley order banana porridge and Jane ordered an indian breakfast. She's all spicy, all the time!
Three of the dogs find us again. They came right up on into the restaurant, wagging and waiting on a handout. We resisted the temptation to feed them, but our young waiter who was so polite looked at Jenna and said, "Your dogs, Madame"? Jenna sweetly told him no (her face revealed, "Sure, I brought them with me from America!") and he ran them out, and they were not patient enough to wait for us to leave.
We finished our breakfast, discussing our all-time favorite films then our plans for the day, which included renting boats to paddle to the little island of shrines in the middle of the lake.
I'm not sure what kind of internet, if any, is in Jomsom and beyond. If possible, we will post again. If not, the next time you hear from us will be when we return from our trek.
We miss everyone back home, and love you even more.
R
now i feel grounded here...
From Jenna
It was strange for the fourth of July to pass with no fireworks....
After our biking adventure yesterday and canoeing on the lake early this morning, I feel more at home. off and on the last week I have thought about my friends running the rapids on the New River and the mtn bike trails I love so much at the pond. the only thing I need to do now to heal my mild homesickness is work in a garden somewhere and eat a BIG salad and some icecream! Jason and Jon, please tell me what foods you are eating from the garden and how the flowers are doing......
To add to Ashleigh's description of the ride, I must fist say that the bikes in Nepal are just like the ponies in the high mountains-- COMPACT!! i was riding the biggest bike they had, and it was still a bit small. in the end, it was probably a good thing because there were no brakes. All i had to do was drag my feet on the down hills. I loved riding between the water-fulled, terraced, rice paddies and watching men, women, children,and water buffalo harvesting, planting and plowing the fields. I am always amazed how well people here use the land and how hard they work. Water from mountain streams is channeled and diverted to the fields, and each field drains water into the terraced field below it until it is returned to a creek or the lake at the bottom. It was 200 rupees to rent the a bike for two hours-- that was the best $2.65 I have spent in a while.
We were up early to get out on the lake before the heat and sun made it unbearable. Jane, Emer and I shared a wooden canoe, and Ashleigh, Reba, Mary and Ella shared one. Fewa Lake runs the length of "Main Street" in Pokhara, it is lined with poinsettia TREES, jungley forests, blooming jasmine and bougainvillea vines. We were hoping to see monkeys playing in the trees, but they must have been taking it easy because of the heat. In the middle of the lake there is an island with many little shrines. We are able to tie our boats up and walk around the island. Surprisingly enough, several women had loaded up their bracelets, necklaces, small statues and purses and set up tables on the island. Because people bring offerings to the shrines there is also a nice pigeon population hanging around hoping for a treat. Reba commented that it felt pretty lucky to roam around the whole island without getting pooped on.
Ella had 5 rupees that I gave her the other day. She was trying to decide what to do with it, and in the end she picked a sweet old Sadhu wearing saffron colored clothes to give it to. It was very sweet watching her walk up to this holy man with her hands in prayer position as she said "Namaste" and placed the rupee note in his hands. Carl, Naomi, and Hugh you would be proud of your girls! today Mary took one of her drawings to a tailor and discussed the idea of turning the design into an embroidered short. She discussed the color, size and even negotiated the price. In the end she decided that she should probably wait till KTM to get the shirt because she did not want to have to carry it on the trek.
Jane's bag was found!!! Our wonderful porter Naryan will bring it when he comes to the mountains. What a relief! It is hard to believe that in this 104 degree weather she could possibly need the fleece tops, capaline underwear and wool socks from that bag, but she will need them when we hit the high mountains.
We leave our hotel at 5am tomorrow-- for a 6 am flight. The 20 minute flight is going to be exciting-- the small twin engine plane will probably transport out team of 7 and maybe 5 other passengers. we will take off, climb and climb and climb over the snowy peaks and then descend into the village of Jomsom. This time the runway will be paved, but the first time Jane and I were here it was a gravel runway. I already know that Tsampa and his wife Karma will be there to greet us with blessing scarves to drape around out necks. I am hopeful that little Laxmi, the street girl Tsampa and his wife took in a few years ago, will be there as well. We all fall in love with her last time. She is between Mary and Ella's ages, and we are looking forward to the girls getting to know each other.
Write us if you have a minute, today will the our last EASY day to read comments until we return to KTM in 3 weeks. J
It was strange for the fourth of July to pass with no fireworks....
After our biking adventure yesterday and canoeing on the lake early this morning, I feel more at home. off and on the last week I have thought about my friends running the rapids on the New River and the mtn bike trails I love so much at the pond. the only thing I need to do now to heal my mild homesickness is work in a garden somewhere and eat a BIG salad and some icecream! Jason and Jon, please tell me what foods you are eating from the garden and how the flowers are doing......
To add to Ashleigh's description of the ride, I must fist say that the bikes in Nepal are just like the ponies in the high mountains-- COMPACT!! i was riding the biggest bike they had, and it was still a bit small. in the end, it was probably a good thing because there were no brakes. All i had to do was drag my feet on the down hills. I loved riding between the water-fulled, terraced, rice paddies and watching men, women, children,and water buffalo harvesting, planting and plowing the fields. I am always amazed how well people here use the land and how hard they work. Water from mountain streams is channeled and diverted to the fields, and each field drains water into the terraced field below it until it is returned to a creek or the lake at the bottom. It was 200 rupees to rent the a bike for two hours-- that was the best $2.65 I have spent in a while.
We were up early to get out on the lake before the heat and sun made it unbearable. Jane, Emer and I shared a wooden canoe, and Ashleigh, Reba, Mary and Ella shared one. Fewa Lake runs the length of "Main Street" in Pokhara, it is lined with poinsettia TREES, jungley forests, blooming jasmine and bougainvillea vines. We were hoping to see monkeys playing in the trees, but they must have been taking it easy because of the heat. In the middle of the lake there is an island with many little shrines. We are able to tie our boats up and walk around the island. Surprisingly enough, several women had loaded up their bracelets, necklaces, small statues and purses and set up tables on the island. Because people bring offerings to the shrines there is also a nice pigeon population hanging around hoping for a treat. Reba commented that it felt pretty lucky to roam around the whole island without getting pooped on.
Ella had 5 rupees that I gave her the other day. She was trying to decide what to do with it, and in the end she picked a sweet old Sadhu wearing saffron colored clothes to give it to. It was very sweet watching her walk up to this holy man with her hands in prayer position as she said "Namaste" and placed the rupee note in his hands. Carl, Naomi, and Hugh you would be proud of your girls! today Mary took one of her drawings to a tailor and discussed the idea of turning the design into an embroidered short. She discussed the color, size and even negotiated the price. In the end she decided that she should probably wait till KTM to get the shirt because she did not want to have to carry it on the trek.
Jane's bag was found!!! Our wonderful porter Naryan will bring it when he comes to the mountains. What a relief! It is hard to believe that in this 104 degree weather she could possibly need the fleece tops, capaline underwear and wool socks from that bag, but she will need them when we hit the high mountains.
We leave our hotel at 5am tomorrow-- for a 6 am flight. The 20 minute flight is going to be exciting-- the small twin engine plane will probably transport out team of 7 and maybe 5 other passengers. we will take off, climb and climb and climb over the snowy peaks and then descend into the village of Jomsom. This time the runway will be paved, but the first time Jane and I were here it was a gravel runway. I already know that Tsampa and his wife Karma will be there to greet us with blessing scarves to drape around out necks. I am hopeful that little Laxmi, the street girl Tsampa and his wife took in a few years ago, will be there as well. We all fall in love with her last time. She is between Mary and Ella's ages, and we are looking forward to the girls getting to know each other.
Write us if you have a minute, today will the our last EASY day to read comments until we return to KTM in 3 weeks. J
Bicycle Adventure in Pokhara
A Joyful Hello from Ashleigh
In her last post, Jenna mentioned being on edge of a bicycle adventure: I am still beaming from the fun. Rather than ride our mountain-bikes (functionally speaking: beach cruisers) up the mountain to the World Peace Stupa, we decided to follow a small road that snakes along the edge of the lake. Asphalt turns to dirt and gravel; city turns to mountain huts and terraced rice fields. My heart soars as we steer our bikes, sans brakes, between slurping mud puddles and sharp rocks. "This feels like running a rapid," I say to Jenna, the expert raft-guide who always chooses the smoothest line. I laugh as I fly over the biggest rocks and dodge the puddles on edge. As my pedaling legs dissolve into my joyful smile, I am reminded of what a country mouse I am. Remember the children's story? I can play the city life for a little while: the electric glow, the exhaust pipe face-powder, the loud sounds of street shops, stereos and car horns. But how I come alive when I fade into green! Village life, knee deep in rice-paddy mud and oxen-drawn plows, holds the alchemical magic that accesses my brightest glow. This is where I recharge.
Jenna and I laugh our way through small roadside stops like the Hungry Feel Guest House and the Benign Cafe. We laugh again at the two young Nepali men who follow us for miles on their motorbike: just smiling and staring at these two crazy women pedaling so freely. "Where did Tom and Lisa Hammet live when they were here?" I ask Jenna. "I hope it was here in the rice fields," says Jenna. "Just what I was thinking," I reply as I nearly swerve off the road, lost in the beauty of green.
We return our bikes after the gorgeous adventure and walk to the hotel dripping mud and sweat. A pot of lemon tea, a shower, reunion with the glowing faces of our team: what a way to live an afternoon.
In her last post, Jenna mentioned being on edge of a bicycle adventure: I am still beaming from the fun. Rather than ride our mountain-bikes (functionally speaking: beach cruisers) up the mountain to the World Peace Stupa, we decided to follow a small road that snakes along the edge of the lake. Asphalt turns to dirt and gravel; city turns to mountain huts and terraced rice fields. My heart soars as we steer our bikes, sans brakes, between slurping mud puddles and sharp rocks. "This feels like running a rapid," I say to Jenna, the expert raft-guide who always chooses the smoothest line. I laugh as I fly over the biggest rocks and dodge the puddles on edge. As my pedaling legs dissolve into my joyful smile, I am reminded of what a country mouse I am. Remember the children's story? I can play the city life for a little while: the electric glow, the exhaust pipe face-powder, the loud sounds of street shops, stereos and car horns. But how I come alive when I fade into green! Village life, knee deep in rice-paddy mud and oxen-drawn plows, holds the alchemical magic that accesses my brightest glow. This is where I recharge.
Jenna and I laugh our way through small roadside stops like the Hungry Feel Guest House and the Benign Cafe. We laugh again at the two young Nepali men who follow us for miles on their motorbike: just smiling and staring at these two crazy women pedaling so freely. "Where did Tom and Lisa Hammet live when they were here?" I ask Jenna. "I hope it was here in the rice fields," says Jenna. "Just what I was thinking," I reply as I nearly swerve off the road, lost in the beauty of green.
We return our bikes after the gorgeous adventure and walk to the hotel dripping mud and sweat. A pot of lemon tea, a shower, reunion with the glowing faces of our team: what a way to live an afternoon.
July 5, from Jane
Apologies to those of you who are following the blog and have had plenty already of Jane-thought, which may have seemed nice and organic in your first few bowls full, but now may have cooled for you, and started to taste pasty, like so much old oatmeal. But I doubt our ability to communicate easily if at all starting hopefully tomorrow, thus the impulse to write while I can.
This morning, though, we had a sinister sky, unbearably low clouds, not right for allowing our hummingbird flight into the high country. I fear that we may not be able to fly tomorrow morning if we have a sky like today's. I am feeling like a bad trip organizer since we COULD have flown yesterday morning. Luckily, Emerson pointed out that my horoscope today encouraged me to "let go quickly of your dumb ideas."
Before attempting to fly up to Jomsom village--hopefully tomorrow morning, though the clouds have me worried--I am thinking about what it is you decide--what gods and which thoughts guide you--when you willingly go into a place of higher risk, or imagine the risks as greater.
I do always remember how the urbane French theorist Roland Barthes died: not in the Himalayas, or along the Amazon, or on an expedition like Shackleton's icy polar imprisonment, but in Paris, I think, as he crossed the street, distracted. He was hit and killed by a laundry truck.
I also always remember what the Tibetan lama Venerable Dudjom Rinpoche said when someone told him the sad news that a dear friend's health had suddenly declined and that the friend would most likely die. "Yes," the Rinpoche smiled, "Of course he will not recover. We are all dying."
There was a time when the inevitability of a Buddhist response like the Rinpoche's made me roll my eyes, seemed merely clever, or troublingly aloof and blithe.
Now I try to steer by a set of prayer flags that I think I see fluttering in front of me, knowing the boat (or tiny airplane) that sails them is always already disintegrating as I glide. The prayers printed on the flags I strain to glimpse announce wishes: may all creatures suffer less; may we all gain wisdom and compassion; may the Buddhas of the five directions prosper, inspiring good intentions, non-violence, right action, and right livelihood. May we, to recontextualize the title of an essay I love by my friend Suzi Gablik, see and be moved by Art and the Big Picture.
A great article by Sushma Joshi (e-mail her at sansarmagazine@gmail.com) impressed me in yesterday's Kathmandu Post, called "Killing our Nagas: Our disembodied society views the rvers as spearate, rather than as part, of the social fabric." The article highlights the noxious and sordid condition of the Kathmandu Valley's rivers and alludes to the Buddhist idea that Nagas, river dieties, are responding to the disrespect that forgetful and selfish humans have shown to their own life-sources.
Joshi sees her own condescending relation to the Buddhist literature she has grown up learning--sees how she has been directed in her education to relegate Buddhism to "inventive and charming" parable. But "Scientists predict water shortages all over the continent [of Asia] in the coming decades. Predictions are dire--millions may be without drinking water. Thirsty times have begun." Like D. H. Lawrence in his Sicilian poem "Snake," Joshi rethinks what really repels her in this world.
Joshi remembers that "Killing snakes was forbidden in Vedic times. Snakes, myths said, were the embodiment of Nagas, serpent guardians of rivers and rains. They carry the elixir of immortality. When Nagas were protected, the monsoons arrived on time."
Immortality and death are not oxymoronic. It is in the turning of the continuous wheel of life, death, and rebirth where immortality resides. After all, the contribution of any human being can be only to nurture and celebrate life before the point of death--to fly or raft with faith and gusto, to do as little harm as possible where you are--and, importantly--to do as much GOOD as you can, while you can.
No choking of rivers allowed. No breaking of spirits or hearts. No desecration. No cynicism. No armchair sarcasm. No apathy. No giving up. Or to put the pith otherwise, as my friend Jenna likes to say (quoting a t-shirt she admired), come to the end of your life in a great slide, like a baseball player giving 100% to reach home base, dirty, sweaty, exhausted, and thinking, "Amazing! What a ride!" Jane
This morning, though, we had a sinister sky, unbearably low clouds, not right for allowing our hummingbird flight into the high country. I fear that we may not be able to fly tomorrow morning if we have a sky like today's. I am feeling like a bad trip organizer since we COULD have flown yesterday morning. Luckily, Emerson pointed out that my horoscope today encouraged me to "let go quickly of your dumb ideas."
Before attempting to fly up to Jomsom village--hopefully tomorrow morning, though the clouds have me worried--I am thinking about what it is you decide--what gods and which thoughts guide you--when you willingly go into a place of higher risk, or imagine the risks as greater.
I do always remember how the urbane French theorist Roland Barthes died: not in the Himalayas, or along the Amazon, or on an expedition like Shackleton's icy polar imprisonment, but in Paris, I think, as he crossed the street, distracted. He was hit and killed by a laundry truck.
I also always remember what the Tibetan lama Venerable Dudjom Rinpoche said when someone told him the sad news that a dear friend's health had suddenly declined and that the friend would most likely die. "Yes," the Rinpoche smiled, "Of course he will not recover. We are all dying."
There was a time when the inevitability of a Buddhist response like the Rinpoche's made me roll my eyes, seemed merely clever, or troublingly aloof and blithe.
Now I try to steer by a set of prayer flags that I think I see fluttering in front of me, knowing the boat (or tiny airplane) that sails them is always already disintegrating as I glide. The prayers printed on the flags I strain to glimpse announce wishes: may all creatures suffer less; may we all gain wisdom and compassion; may the Buddhas of the five directions prosper, inspiring good intentions, non-violence, right action, and right livelihood. May we, to recontextualize the title of an essay I love by my friend Suzi Gablik, see and be moved by Art and the Big Picture.
A great article by Sushma Joshi (e-mail her at sansarmagazine@gmail.com) impressed me in yesterday's Kathmandu Post, called "Killing our Nagas: Our disembodied society views the rvers as spearate, rather than as part, of the social fabric." The article highlights the noxious and sordid condition of the Kathmandu Valley's rivers and alludes to the Buddhist idea that Nagas, river dieties, are responding to the disrespect that forgetful and selfish humans have shown to their own life-sources.
Joshi sees her own condescending relation to the Buddhist literature she has grown up learning--sees how she has been directed in her education to relegate Buddhism to "inventive and charming" parable. But "Scientists predict water shortages all over the continent [of Asia] in the coming decades. Predictions are dire--millions may be without drinking water. Thirsty times have begun." Like D. H. Lawrence in his Sicilian poem "Snake," Joshi rethinks what really repels her in this world.
Joshi remembers that "Killing snakes was forbidden in Vedic times. Snakes, myths said, were the embodiment of Nagas, serpent guardians of rivers and rains. They carry the elixir of immortality. When Nagas were protected, the monsoons arrived on time."
Immortality and death are not oxymoronic. It is in the turning of the continuous wheel of life, death, and rebirth where immortality resides. After all, the contribution of any human being can be only to nurture and celebrate life before the point of death--to fly or raft with faith and gusto, to do as little harm as possible where you are--and, importantly--to do as much GOOD as you can, while you can.
No choking of rivers allowed. No breaking of spirits or hearts. No desecration. No cynicism. No armchair sarcasm. No apathy. No giving up. Or to put the pith otherwise, as my friend Jenna likes to say (quoting a t-shirt she admired), come to the end of your life in a great slide, like a baseball player giving 100% to reach home base, dirty, sweaty, exhausted, and thinking, "Amazing! What a ride!" Jane
Small Wonder
July 5th: Greetings from Ashleigh
While lazing around the hotel in the blistering afternoon heat of this surprising tropical village set in the gaze of some of the highest, snowiest mountains on Earth, I smile at how familiar Pokhara feels to my travel-worn feet. Banana trees
surfing the breeze, electric-chirping cicadas, curiously independent toddlers dancing through the streets: have I been here before? I sit quiet and calm and think to myself: not every day has to be a revelation or a revolution, for that matter. Why is it that we so often place what is new and novel on a pedestal that glares at what is ordinary and similar and strangely familiar? Some of the most extraordinary gems of life hide in the soft shadow of every-day moments. The kind of moments that are easy to live thoughtlessly are full of mica-like gifts just waiting to be recognized by seeing eyes. I laugh at myself for how I have to coach myself through the beauty of a lazy afternoon; how I have to remind myself that the binding glue of a journey does not reveal itself all at once like the light explosion of a festive sparkler; how I am integrating the many teachings of Jane's Creative Process class, of Yoga, of vagabond feet into the present moment: re-weaving theory as practice. And just then, as I am lost in thought and laughing at myself in joyful quiet, Ella and Mary boom onto the seen with grace and invite me to play. Of course! And out of the ordinary afternoon, heavy with tropical laze, booms the firework-wonder of two young girls who remind me of the magic hidden in the walls of the hotel garden. We dance through the green and pink buzz and speak in British accents as if we are tour guides pointing out every movement, every sound, every small wonder hidden in rocks, in trees, in rusty spiral staircases and mountain views: bliss blooms in the crystal-shine of our silly voices. How grateful I feel to learn the world through the eyes of these two sisters, Mary and Ella, whose eyes, like telescopes, find new constellations hidden in the everyday sky. We sing ourselves silly: a round of In The Jungle that lets us try our hand at harmonizing. Such fun: barefoot in the garden; raising our voices in song. Thank you Mary and Ella: for your eyes, for your laughter, for sharing the joy of spirited song. You remind me why I want to spend my life learning from children. -Ashleigh
While lazing around the hotel in the blistering afternoon heat of this surprising tropical village set in the gaze of some of the highest, snowiest mountains on Earth, I smile at how familiar Pokhara feels to my travel-worn feet. Banana trees
surfing the breeze, electric-chirping cicadas, curiously independent toddlers dancing through the streets: have I been here before? I sit quiet and calm and think to myself: not every day has to be a revelation or a revolution, for that matter. Why is it that we so often place what is new and novel on a pedestal that glares at what is ordinary and similar and strangely familiar? Some of the most extraordinary gems of life hide in the soft shadow of every-day moments. The kind of moments that are easy to live thoughtlessly are full of mica-like gifts just waiting to be recognized by seeing eyes. I laugh at myself for how I have to coach myself through the beauty of a lazy afternoon; how I have to remind myself that the binding glue of a journey does not reveal itself all at once like the light explosion of a festive sparkler; how I am integrating the many teachings of Jane's Creative Process class, of Yoga, of vagabond feet into the present moment: re-weaving theory as practice. And just then, as I am lost in thought and laughing at myself in joyful quiet, Ella and Mary boom onto the seen with grace and invite me to play. Of course! And out of the ordinary afternoon, heavy with tropical laze, booms the firework-wonder of two young girls who remind me of the magic hidden in the walls of the hotel garden. We dance through the green and pink buzz and speak in British accents as if we are tour guides pointing out every movement, every sound, every small wonder hidden in rocks, in trees, in rusty spiral staircases and mountain views: bliss blooms in the crystal-shine of our silly voices. How grateful I feel to learn the world through the eyes of these two sisters, Mary and Ella, whose eyes, like telescopes, find new constellations hidden in the everyday sky. We sing ourselves silly: a round of In The Jungle that lets us try our hand at harmonizing. Such fun: barefoot in the garden; raising our voices in song. Thank you Mary and Ella: for your eyes, for your laughter, for sharing the joy of spirited song. You remind me why I want to spend my life learning from children. -Ashleigh
Sunday, July 4, 2010
from Jane, July 4th evening here
A breeze! The internet shop I have chosen is open to the lake, and now that it is dark outside, the air is sweet. It carries frangipani tree-perfume and Nepali filmi music and albino gecko chirps and NO pitchfork heat.
At dinner tonight, under a thatch upstairs restaurant roof, Ella, having split a pineapple pizza with Mary (please put "pizza" in quotation marks), was looking out at the street life, and swaying to Nepali music, more and more vigorously--in her own world--in the literal rhythm of this place. Reba leaned over and said, nodding toward Ella, "Too bad Nepal has shut Ella down."
Mary and Ella get to alternate at lunch and dinner who gets to choose which dish to order for them to share, and they are being good cooperative sisters, only occasionally jealous of who has the camera.
Mary said to me today, as we were walking, "I am so glad I came on this trip, Jane. i feel so privileged. But not in the way of that Kathmandu guy, Aslan."
"Were you suprised at how rough I was with him, Mary?" I asked. She paused. "No. I wasn't surprised. It doesn't surprise me that you would protect me. You thought he wasn't safe. So you became rough." "I did. And it made me shake to speak to someone that way. My hands were shaking. It doesn't feel good to be rough, but I knew it would have felt worse to tolerate him near us. So I don't regret being rough. But it didn't feel good. Do you understand?" "I think so," Mary said. "You aren't naturally rough. Just when you need to keep us safe. But I'm not sure I will ever be able to be rough like you. I hope so, though. It was awesome."
So our friends in Kathmandu have alerted me that I have an early birthday present: they have found my missing backpack, and our guide, Narayan, will be bringing it to Mustang before we meet to head into the Restricted Territory. So I will have a sleeping bag liner and cold-weather gear after all. Amazing! Thanks to Jenna for realizing what I didn't have (MY BACKPACK!) before I did, and kicking into gear to send the alert out in time.
Ashleigh and Emerson, and our already-trekking teammate Mika, young people in their twenties, like all my Creative Process students at Virginia Tech, or like my Blacksburg High School friend Jessica, who is taking care of my gazillion cats when she is not impressing the Coach of the Metropolitan Opera House (GO JESSICA!): Jenna and Reba and I (the elders) are SO proud of you, as we are of Mary and Ella.
What a team. Happy 4th to our friends and family back home--our extended team! Jane, The Rough Elder
At dinner tonight, under a thatch upstairs restaurant roof, Ella, having split a pineapple pizza with Mary (please put "pizza" in quotation marks), was looking out at the street life, and swaying to Nepali music, more and more vigorously--in her own world--in the literal rhythm of this place. Reba leaned over and said, nodding toward Ella, "Too bad Nepal has shut Ella down."
Mary and Ella get to alternate at lunch and dinner who gets to choose which dish to order for them to share, and they are being good cooperative sisters, only occasionally jealous of who has the camera.
Mary said to me today, as we were walking, "I am so glad I came on this trip, Jane. i feel so privileged. But not in the way of that Kathmandu guy, Aslan."
"Were you suprised at how rough I was with him, Mary?" I asked. She paused. "No. I wasn't surprised. It doesn't surprise me that you would protect me. You thought he wasn't safe. So you became rough." "I did. And it made me shake to speak to someone that way. My hands were shaking. It doesn't feel good to be rough, but I knew it would have felt worse to tolerate him near us. So I don't regret being rough. But it didn't feel good. Do you understand?" "I think so," Mary said. "You aren't naturally rough. Just when you need to keep us safe. But I'm not sure I will ever be able to be rough like you. I hope so, though. It was awesome."
So our friends in Kathmandu have alerted me that I have an early birthday present: they have found my missing backpack, and our guide, Narayan, will be bringing it to Mustang before we meet to head into the Restricted Territory. So I will have a sleeping bag liner and cold-weather gear after all. Amazing! Thanks to Jenna for realizing what I didn't have (MY BACKPACK!) before I did, and kicking into gear to send the alert out in time.
Ashleigh and Emerson, and our already-trekking teammate Mika, young people in their twenties, like all my Creative Process students at Virginia Tech, or like my Blacksburg High School friend Jessica, who is taking care of my gazillion cats when she is not impressing the Coach of the Metropolitan Opera House (GO JESSICA!): Jenna and Reba and I (the elders) are SO proud of you, as we are of Mary and Ella.
What a team. Happy 4th to our friends and family back home--our extended team! Jane, The Rough Elder
from Jane on the 4th of July
Fourth of July in tropical Pokhara: the entire region is a lit firework. Sizzle-heat.
I had no idea it WAS the 4th of July today until I was wondering today's date for this post, and now, I think of fireworks in my back yard, with Jenna, and with my friends and my neighbors, the Bowyer family, and Sammy and Izzy Robbins and their family, and Iris and Emerson being the firework masters on the lawn near the apple tree, just outside my painting room.
I love fireworks, and have always tried to afford them. I love what Truman Capote said, that fireworks were his favorite art form. But as we would shoot off sometimes two hours' worth in my back yard, I always felt a little conflicted, enthralled by the fizz of colors, but also sorry for the sleeping birds, who lose their magic at night, and can not fly, either from their fears, or toward their needs.
I will measure this 4th of July in threads instead of sparks.
Today, we visited the Tibetan Refugee Center on the back side of Pokhara, where there is a carpet workshop. I bought two small square carpets of Tibetan wool: a yak for my son (Emerson picked it out--rose, dull magenta, and tan) and a snow lion for my daughter (Iris will love the colors--apricots, sage, and pale blue). Both the yak and the snow lion will live in Charlottesville, in my children's apartments, this fall.
We saw the work-room where the carpets were hand-loomed. It was a Tibetan woman named Dawa (whose name means "moon") who packaged these purchases for me. She liked my necklaces.
In Martin Scorscese's film, Kundun, about the life of the Dalai Lama, I can never forget the scene when His Holiness has had to flee Lhasa and finally manage to reach safety at the Indian border. The handsome young Indian soldier who greets the young Dalai Lama approaches and says, "Excuse me, sir. May I ask: Are you the Lord Buddha?" And when the exhausted Dalai Lama finds the strength to reply, He answers: "I think I am like the moon, reflecting in water. When you see me, you see yourself."
See that film, with Philip Glass' gorgeous musical score, if you haven't. I weep each time I see it. Think of fireworks, fireflies, yaks, snow lions, the moon, the thread, and a free Tibet. Jane
I had no idea it WAS the 4th of July today until I was wondering today's date for this post, and now, I think of fireworks in my back yard, with Jenna, and with my friends and my neighbors, the Bowyer family, and Sammy and Izzy Robbins and their family, and Iris and Emerson being the firework masters on the lawn near the apple tree, just outside my painting room.
I love fireworks, and have always tried to afford them. I love what Truman Capote said, that fireworks were his favorite art form. But as we would shoot off sometimes two hours' worth in my back yard, I always felt a little conflicted, enthralled by the fizz of colors, but also sorry for the sleeping birds, who lose their magic at night, and can not fly, either from their fears, or toward their needs.
I will measure this 4th of July in threads instead of sparks.
Today, we visited the Tibetan Refugee Center on the back side of Pokhara, where there is a carpet workshop. I bought two small square carpets of Tibetan wool: a yak for my son (Emerson picked it out--rose, dull magenta, and tan) and a snow lion for my daughter (Iris will love the colors--apricots, sage, and pale blue). Both the yak and the snow lion will live in Charlottesville, in my children's apartments, this fall.
We saw the work-room where the carpets were hand-loomed. It was a Tibetan woman named Dawa (whose name means "moon") who packaged these purchases for me. She liked my necklaces.
In Martin Scorscese's film, Kundun, about the life of the Dalai Lama, I can never forget the scene when His Holiness has had to flee Lhasa and finally manage to reach safety at the Indian border. The handsome young Indian soldier who greets the young Dalai Lama approaches and says, "Excuse me, sir. May I ask: Are you the Lord Buddha?" And when the exhausted Dalai Lama finds the strength to reply, He answers: "I think I am like the moon, reflecting in water. When you see me, you see yourself."
See that film, with Philip Glass' gorgeous musical score, if you haven't. I weep each time I see it. Think of fireworks, fireflies, yaks, snow lions, the moon, the thread, and a free Tibet. Jane
it's a sauna here
Greetings from Jenna in Pokhara, I was up at 5:30 am hoping to watch the sun rise over some of the largest peaks in the world-- Annapurna I and II, to name a few. Once in a while the clouds broke and revealed the snowy peeks, which seemed so surreal, because the temperature was already in to the 90's on the roof of our hotel.
Now, at 2:30 in the afternoon it is over 100 degrees. Everything seems even more lush and jungle like than I remember-- lots of banana trees and poinsettias trees (though not in bloom). I look forward to canoeing on the lake tomorrow before the heat sets in.
Today we took a jeep up to Devi falls and Tibetan Refugee Camp-- what a great surprise to step off a market street, through a gate and to the edge of a deep water fall (for all of my river friends-- it's not runnable). We saw beautiful double rainbows and amazing rock formations carved from flood waters.
Ashleigh and I just bought a map of lake side Pokhara. We were going to rent two mtn bikes and try our luck riding to a hill top temple called the World Peace Stupa.
I have really enjoyed seeing Nepal with Ella and Mary's eyes. They bring so much to our experience and they are doing so well here-- bargaining on the streets, trying new foods, and asking the best questions. People respond to our group favorably because we are traveling with kids--- way to go Reba. What a gift you have given to us all.
Jane my not post this, but you should know that yesterday as we were about to board our flight-- we discovered that her backpack with all her trekking gear did not make it to our hotel. The last place we had it was when we put it on the plane to Nepal. Jane was so busy making sure we were all okay and that all the bags with gifts for the nunnery had arrived, she never noticed the missing bag--somehow we all missed this one bag. She did not really need anything from the bag in KTM, but as we prepared to leave the city for the trek, she realized it was gone. We have our friends at Gurkha travels trying to track the bag down, and we are hopeful our porter can bring it from KTM when he comes. Keep your fingers crossed!!!!
more later after the bike ride-- wish me luck-- the bike has no shocks, there are not helmets for rent and I don't have my padded biking shorts, not to mention we have NO idea where we are going. Should be an adventure.
Now, at 2:30 in the afternoon it is over 100 degrees. Everything seems even more lush and jungle like than I remember-- lots of banana trees and poinsettias trees (though not in bloom). I look forward to canoeing on the lake tomorrow before the heat sets in.
Today we took a jeep up to Devi falls and Tibetan Refugee Camp-- what a great surprise to step off a market street, through a gate and to the edge of a deep water fall (for all of my river friends-- it's not runnable). We saw beautiful double rainbows and amazing rock formations carved from flood waters.
Ashleigh and I just bought a map of lake side Pokhara. We were going to rent two mtn bikes and try our luck riding to a hill top temple called the World Peace Stupa.
I have really enjoyed seeing Nepal with Ella and Mary's eyes. They bring so much to our experience and they are doing so well here-- bargaining on the streets, trying new foods, and asking the best questions. People respond to our group favorably because we are traveling with kids--- way to go Reba. What a gift you have given to us all.
Jane my not post this, but you should know that yesterday as we were about to board our flight-- we discovered that her backpack with all her trekking gear did not make it to our hotel. The last place we had it was when we put it on the plane to Nepal. Jane was so busy making sure we were all okay and that all the bags with gifts for the nunnery had arrived, she never noticed the missing bag--somehow we all missed this one bag. She did not really need anything from the bag in KTM, but as we prepared to leave the city for the trek, she realized it was gone. We have our friends at Gurkha travels trying to track the bag down, and we are hopeful our porter can bring it from KTM when he comes. Keep your fingers crossed!!!!
more later after the bike ride-- wish me luck-- the bike has no shocks, there are not helmets for rent and I don't have my padded biking shorts, not to mention we have NO idea where we are going. Should be an adventure.
Memories....from Reba
Ahhh, we are in Pokhara....a where it is not an exaggeration to say that you can fry and egg on the sidewalk (just ask Emerson who took a quick barefoot walk in the hotel garden).....where showering is just an interruption to being wet with sweat. It makes me remember the last time we were here, and our whole team was on one floor of the UN-air conditioned Guest house. We were so desperate for a breeze that we opened all of our doors on the hallway and stipped down to undershorts and tops to lay across the beds and nap....or at least that's what I remember doing :)
We haven't taken the boats out yet, but that's our plan for this evening or early in the morning. The spelling on the signs here is keeping us laughing, I remember Sherrie being so good about taking pictures of things like that. Sherrie, Jason and Tom, we DO miss you...very much.
Today we went to the Tibetan Refugee camp where the women spend months hand weaving beautiful wool and silk rugs. We entered a small room where three woman were sitting before huge looms, threading strings through with their fingers. One woman looked and Mary and Ella and patted the bench beside her, and they scrambled up. She showed them how she did it, then she let them try. I got good pictures! It was really sweet and I was proud of how Mary and Ella didn't hesitate to "give it a go." Even more amazing, and what I couldn't figure out, was how in the world the woman figured out when to stop one thread color and begin a new one in the design. We were told that for a large rug, 4 women must work for 4-5 months to complete it.
Ella wants me to tell you that she loves the food in Pokara. So far she has had pizza twice (pineapple and garlic) and spaghetti once. They are both eating like horses, so all is well...
And she still loves baby monkeys!
We haven't taken the boats out yet, but that's our plan for this evening or early in the morning. The spelling on the signs here is keeping us laughing, I remember Sherrie being so good about taking pictures of things like that. Sherrie, Jason and Tom, we DO miss you...very much.
Today we went to the Tibetan Refugee camp where the women spend months hand weaving beautiful wool and silk rugs. We entered a small room where three woman were sitting before huge looms, threading strings through with their fingers. One woman looked and Mary and Ella and patted the bench beside her, and they scrambled up. She showed them how she did it, then she let them try. I got good pictures! It was really sweet and I was proud of how Mary and Ella didn't hesitate to "give it a go." Even more amazing, and what I couldn't figure out, was how in the world the woman figured out when to stop one thread color and begin a new one in the design. We were told that for a large rug, 4 women must work for 4-5 months to complete it.
Ella wants me to tell you that she loves the food in Pokara. So far she has had pizza twice (pineapple and garlic) and spaghetti once. They are both eating like horses, so all is well...
And she still loves baby monkeys!
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Aslan and Aslan: Emerson on July 3rd
Well, this is an interesting experience! I haven't gotten to be a contributor the blog just yet, perhaps because everyone else seems to do such a good job. From mom's diligent chronicling of where we have been and her keen insights into what going there means to the youthful enthusiasm of the Hoffmans (if, in some cases, ie Reba, slightly immature enthusiasm), we seem to really have a good thing going here. Nevertheless, I wanted to share some of my thoughts as the sole male on this expedition.
This morning we left Kathmandu for Pokhara, but before we did, we came face to face one more time with someone who had been frustrating our team leaders and creeping on the young women in our group. This guy was from San Francisco, and had the entire Californian cliche down pat: the bleached blonde hair, the flip flops no matter what the weather, the lazily sexually aggressive surfer energy, and of course the liberalism that expresses itself not as a generous and benevolent desire to help others and build community but as a disturbingly self-centered, drug-addled narcissism. I went to school in California, and fortunately my peers were not really this sort of person, but you saw them, and really pitied them. But the average hypocritical surfer would have nothing on our friend, who incredibly was named (at least he claimed) Aslan. That's right, Aslan. The Lion from The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. C.S. Lewis's representation of Christ. The thing Liam Neeson voices in the movies. His name was Aslan. What incredible irony.
He came stumbling drunk to our breakfast table around seven in the morning, if not earlier, which should tell you something about his personal habits and behavioral patterns. Anyway, a strong charge led by mom and Jenna (with some choice quotes that I will leave for them to relay), he wandered off (or rather, was driven as far away as he could get, which was several yards). The incident wasn't that big of a deal for me, because I was too tired to really pay much attention and because his energy was directed anywhere but me, since I was the only other guy around. But his intrusiveness, and even more so his somewhat pitiful demeanor and obvious lack of wisdom, did get me really thinking. Namely, what a difference between Aslan the spoiled drunk boy playing in a Nepali toy box and Aslan the lion who saves Edmund from his own folly and leads the charge against Jadis, The White Witch. What a tremendous difference, not just of situation (the real world versus the fantastical), but also a difference of character.
I thought about how this difference might relate to our trip in Nepal, trying to decide if my observations and armchair psycho and literary analysis were worth sharing. And I decided, with not a hint of self-regard, that they were. It began with wondering why C.S. Lewis chose to make the most heroic character in The Chronicles of Narnia, the Christ figure, a lion. I think partly it has to do with traditional Christian iconography (Christ being both lamb and lion), and partly it has to do with the lion being the traditional king of the jungle (just ask Simba!). But I think he also meant to convey that a powerful force for good in the world would be "lion hearted". Aslan the lion certainly is lion-hearted. Aslan the deadbeat, not so much. And I think that as important as being lion-hearted is to leading an army or even saving humanity (as Lewis would suggest), it is also important to be lion-hearted if you wish to travel to Nepal, in two ways.
First, in the negative sense. Nepal is really hard. For instance, we are in Pokhara right now, where the temperature was over 100 degrees before the sun rose all the way. It is hot, it is humid, and the air conditioning in the hotels (air conditioning that only comes in particularly luxurious rooms) randomly does or does not work depending it seems on nothing more than the whims of the Olympian gods. It's easy to get sick here, either from making poor food choices, not being hygenic, or (hopefully in my case) just by being unlucky. In Thamel in Kathmandu, people are constantly begging and trying to sell you things, often refusing to take no for an answer. I was asked if I wanted to buy hash about ten times a day. We flew today, and the airports are crowded and chaotic. Nowhere seems to have rules that exist as real enforceable rules; they rather seem to be based on whims, momentary decisions, and other ephemeral, untraceable criteria. Being in Nepal can be uncomfortable, it can be bad for your health, and it can be frustrating.
A person accustomed to the good life would have a meltdown instantly. But even someone who has strength could easily find themselves questioning why they came or how they will ever be able to survive Nepal. But if you are lion-hearted, bold and courageous, you can meet the challenges of the heat, or the diarrhea, with swagger and smiles rather than moans and groans. Many, I think, would wilt in the face of the adversary of Nepal. Or, like our human Aslan, they would stay in the bosom of tourist luxury, drinking until all fears and hardships evaporated in an alcoholic, perhaps hashish as well, induced haze. But a lion-hearted person, like the lion Aslan, would face such hardships as route markers on the path to real reward and embrace them.
But I don't think that being lion-hearted only has to do with bravery and courage, even though that is what we often associate with lions. Certainly the character Aslan is admirable not just because he is courageous, but also because he is wise and merciful. Similarly, facing Nepal and staring down its bizarre, and often comically disturbing, idiosyncrasies is not enough to be lion-hearted. One must truly appreciate its good qualities. Aslan represents Jesus Christ in C.S. Lewis's Christian view of the world, and perhaps it might be good to relate to western audiences that bringing a Christ like presence is a good way to begin to be lion-hearted. That doesn't mean to evangelize, to grab poor Hindu boys off the street and yell at them that they must accept Jesus or face the fiery flames of Hell (a horrible and perverted misreading of a great faith that I actually witnessed my first night in Kathmandu). Far from it. Instead, it means that a visitor to Nepal should have the wisdom, and the compassion, to act as the prophet Abraham (Lincoln, not the Old Testament one), said, "with malice towards none, with charity towards all."
That means understanding that the Buddhist monk who wishes to bless you is as wise and as generous as the best people you know back home. It means understanding that the merchant trying so hard to rip you off does so not because of his own malice, but because of economic desperation. It means that witnessing the ritualistic slaughter of a goat, as I saw at the Hindu temple Dakshin Kahli, is not a barbaric practice of the past but rather a different culture's way of dialogging with the notions of transience and loss. It means recognizing that we bring immense privilege into Nepal by virtue of our American money belts brimming with dollars and rupees, and that we have a responsibility to act kindly towards those we meet, no matter how repugnant they might seem. I think a lion-hearted person would have the wisdom to see that when someone travels abroad, they are ambassadors from their country, and that they should act accordingly.
Nepal is wonderful, insane, difficult, challenging, and rewarding. There was a terrible movie made once called Crazy/Beautiful, but I think the title really captures what Nepal is all about. I hope that our team of people, from Jane my mom who has been to Nepal so many times to Mary and Ella Hoffman, who are seeing outside the United States for the first time, can be like Aslan. That we can be brave in facing hardship and magnanimous and generous in our actions. That we can avoid being like the other Aslan, hiding from our responsibilities and consuming Nepal in a fetishistic attempt to outrun our own demons.
I think our team, our project, those of you following at home, and even our United States of America would do well to have the spirit of the lion Aslan, and to shun those tendencies that turn us into the human Aslan. In so doing, perhaps we can appreciate another place with both strong pride and generous humility.
Maybe Aslan the lion does have a cure for mild fever and diarrhea? If so, I'd DEFINITELY like to be a bit more like him....
This morning we left Kathmandu for Pokhara, but before we did, we came face to face one more time with someone who had been frustrating our team leaders and creeping on the young women in our group. This guy was from San Francisco, and had the entire Californian cliche down pat: the bleached blonde hair, the flip flops no matter what the weather, the lazily sexually aggressive surfer energy, and of course the liberalism that expresses itself not as a generous and benevolent desire to help others and build community but as a disturbingly self-centered, drug-addled narcissism. I went to school in California, and fortunately my peers were not really this sort of person, but you saw them, and really pitied them. But the average hypocritical surfer would have nothing on our friend, who incredibly was named (at least he claimed) Aslan. That's right, Aslan. The Lion from The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. C.S. Lewis's representation of Christ. The thing Liam Neeson voices in the movies. His name was Aslan. What incredible irony.
He came stumbling drunk to our breakfast table around seven in the morning, if not earlier, which should tell you something about his personal habits and behavioral patterns. Anyway, a strong charge led by mom and Jenna (with some choice quotes that I will leave for them to relay), he wandered off (or rather, was driven as far away as he could get, which was several yards). The incident wasn't that big of a deal for me, because I was too tired to really pay much attention and because his energy was directed anywhere but me, since I was the only other guy around. But his intrusiveness, and even more so his somewhat pitiful demeanor and obvious lack of wisdom, did get me really thinking. Namely, what a difference between Aslan the spoiled drunk boy playing in a Nepali toy box and Aslan the lion who saves Edmund from his own folly and leads the charge against Jadis, The White Witch. What a tremendous difference, not just of situation (the real world versus the fantastical), but also a difference of character.
I thought about how this difference might relate to our trip in Nepal, trying to decide if my observations and armchair psycho and literary analysis were worth sharing. And I decided, with not a hint of self-regard, that they were. It began with wondering why C.S. Lewis chose to make the most heroic character in The Chronicles of Narnia, the Christ figure, a lion. I think partly it has to do with traditional Christian iconography (Christ being both lamb and lion), and partly it has to do with the lion being the traditional king of the jungle (just ask Simba!). But I think he also meant to convey that a powerful force for good in the world would be "lion hearted". Aslan the lion certainly is lion-hearted. Aslan the deadbeat, not so much. And I think that as important as being lion-hearted is to leading an army or even saving humanity (as Lewis would suggest), it is also important to be lion-hearted if you wish to travel to Nepal, in two ways.
First, in the negative sense. Nepal is really hard. For instance, we are in Pokhara right now, where the temperature was over 100 degrees before the sun rose all the way. It is hot, it is humid, and the air conditioning in the hotels (air conditioning that only comes in particularly luxurious rooms) randomly does or does not work depending it seems on nothing more than the whims of the Olympian gods. It's easy to get sick here, either from making poor food choices, not being hygenic, or (hopefully in my case) just by being unlucky. In Thamel in Kathmandu, people are constantly begging and trying to sell you things, often refusing to take no for an answer. I was asked if I wanted to buy hash about ten times a day. We flew today, and the airports are crowded and chaotic. Nowhere seems to have rules that exist as real enforceable rules; they rather seem to be based on whims, momentary decisions, and other ephemeral, untraceable criteria. Being in Nepal can be uncomfortable, it can be bad for your health, and it can be frustrating.
A person accustomed to the good life would have a meltdown instantly. But even someone who has strength could easily find themselves questioning why they came or how they will ever be able to survive Nepal. But if you are lion-hearted, bold and courageous, you can meet the challenges of the heat, or the diarrhea, with swagger and smiles rather than moans and groans. Many, I think, would wilt in the face of the adversary of Nepal. Or, like our human Aslan, they would stay in the bosom of tourist luxury, drinking until all fears and hardships evaporated in an alcoholic, perhaps hashish as well, induced haze. But a lion-hearted person, like the lion Aslan, would face such hardships as route markers on the path to real reward and embrace them.
But I don't think that being lion-hearted only has to do with bravery and courage, even though that is what we often associate with lions. Certainly the character Aslan is admirable not just because he is courageous, but also because he is wise and merciful. Similarly, facing Nepal and staring down its bizarre, and often comically disturbing, idiosyncrasies is not enough to be lion-hearted. One must truly appreciate its good qualities. Aslan represents Jesus Christ in C.S. Lewis's Christian view of the world, and perhaps it might be good to relate to western audiences that bringing a Christ like presence is a good way to begin to be lion-hearted. That doesn't mean to evangelize, to grab poor Hindu boys off the street and yell at them that they must accept Jesus or face the fiery flames of Hell (a horrible and perverted misreading of a great faith that I actually witnessed my first night in Kathmandu). Far from it. Instead, it means that a visitor to Nepal should have the wisdom, and the compassion, to act as the prophet Abraham (Lincoln, not the Old Testament one), said, "with malice towards none, with charity towards all."
That means understanding that the Buddhist monk who wishes to bless you is as wise and as generous as the best people you know back home. It means understanding that the merchant trying so hard to rip you off does so not because of his own malice, but because of economic desperation. It means that witnessing the ritualistic slaughter of a goat, as I saw at the Hindu temple Dakshin Kahli, is not a barbaric practice of the past but rather a different culture's way of dialogging with the notions of transience and loss. It means recognizing that we bring immense privilege into Nepal by virtue of our American money belts brimming with dollars and rupees, and that we have a responsibility to act kindly towards those we meet, no matter how repugnant they might seem. I think a lion-hearted person would have the wisdom to see that when someone travels abroad, they are ambassadors from their country, and that they should act accordingly.
Nepal is wonderful, insane, difficult, challenging, and rewarding. There was a terrible movie made once called Crazy/Beautiful, but I think the title really captures what Nepal is all about. I hope that our team of people, from Jane my mom who has been to Nepal so many times to Mary and Ella Hoffman, who are seeing outside the United States for the first time, can be like Aslan. That we can be brave in facing hardship and magnanimous and generous in our actions. That we can avoid being like the other Aslan, hiding from our responsibilities and consuming Nepal in a fetishistic attempt to outrun our own demons.
I think our team, our project, those of you following at home, and even our United States of America would do well to have the spirit of the lion Aslan, and to shun those tendencies that turn us into the human Aslan. In so doing, perhaps we can appreciate another place with both strong pride and generous humility.
Maybe Aslan the lion does have a cure for mild fever and diarrhea? If so, I'd DEFINITELY like to be a bit more like him....
from Jane on July 3rd
Today has been an intense day, partly because we have reached Pokhara, the middle city, but also because my student Mika Maloney split off from the rest of the team.
She went with a friend of ours on a long journey of her own, to reach Besisahar, the starting point for the Annapurna Trek. If you think of a horseshoe with the round curve on top, like an upside-down letter U, Besisahar is at the bottom right point. The entire Annapurna Circuit is about two weeks of long walking, with its climax at the top of the horseshoe, the Thorung-la Pass, at almost 18,000 feet.
Jenna and I crossed the Thorung-la in the winter of 2000, with Tsampa-la, in the first snowstorm of the season. Mika will not face a blizzard, although she could see snow or sleet. If our paths do not intersect, we will miss each other by just a few days and have promised to leave one another notes at certain points along the Circuit. We know her guide, who will accompany her like a loyal brother for the entire Circuit, so we feel comforted. But we already miss her. Last night, everyone at dinner felt that odd anxiety, the trekker's misgiving about parting ways, the feeling of The (Buddhist) Last Supper, where betrayal is not the problem, but only the poignant inevitability of separation.
Mika, we wish you safe safe and gorgeous travels. We will always be your team.
The town of Pokhara is positively sweltering, 104 degrees Fahrenheit when we landed, before the sun was at its peak. Coffee grows here, and bananas. Fortunately, our hotel rooms have air-conditioning, although Reba pointed out that the AC unit, though set in a beautiful wooden-arch window, has an inch of open sky to every side. Carpentry smarpentry.
Fever birds are calling around me, the koila bird you can hear in Richard Attenbourough's film, Gandhi, when Candice Bergen, playing the photographer Margaret Bourke-White, interviews the elderly Gandhiji during his millionth imprisonment by the doomed British Raj. She is asking him about whether non-violence could be used against a leader as ruthless as Hitler. Not without defeats, Gandhi reasons, because non-violence takes a long time, but in the end, there is no weapon stronger than civil disobedience when used with the right intentions.
Pokhara is a city built on the rim of a lake, Phewa Tal. We see the giant famous Machupuchchare looming over it, Fishtail (just Google this famous mountain and you'll see what is on Ashleigh's and Reba's cameras from this morning). Along with Everest and the Jungfrau, Fishtail is the most photographed mountain in the world. It is a steep pyramid, extremely pointy, a classic, sharp, snow-covered white and ageratum Himalayan peak.
Later, if we have not completely dissolved from this constant sauna, we will take long canoes out, and paddle ourselves over close enough to observe the shore of the wild side, where monkeys and tigers live. Peak season to be here is in the Fall, when the skies are clear. In this season, Fishtail plays hide and seek, but we may, if we are lucky, see the moutain reflect in the lake.
Non-violence takes a long time. My friend Suzi Gablik sent me her most recent blog this morning, where I saw a photograph of cola-colored streaks of the Gulf oil-spill veining horribly upon an Alabama beach.
There is not a single old Tibetan artefact in the Pokhara stalls today, only plastic Chinese copies of junky tourist items, hawked by the Tibetan refugees here who have never, in fifty sad years, been able to go home.
There is a moment in the film version of Out of Africa in which Denys Finch-Hatton tempts Karen Blixen to go on safari with him: "There is land there you ought to see," he promotes, "because it won't be there much longer."
In three days we will be on our way to what must be some of the last land where the Buddhas have always curbed what makes people hasten their own demise.
We will not find this pristine wisdom anymore in Lower Mustang, we are told. But I do still expect to find it in the Resricted Territory. I had better tank up there, before something explodes and plumes all over the Annapurnas, something ruinous and toxic, melting the glaciers, sinking the fish, bludgeoning the Buddhas I love. Jane
She went with a friend of ours on a long journey of her own, to reach Besisahar, the starting point for the Annapurna Trek. If you think of a horseshoe with the round curve on top, like an upside-down letter U, Besisahar is at the bottom right point. The entire Annapurna Circuit is about two weeks of long walking, with its climax at the top of the horseshoe, the Thorung-la Pass, at almost 18,000 feet.
Jenna and I crossed the Thorung-la in the winter of 2000, with Tsampa-la, in the first snowstorm of the season. Mika will not face a blizzard, although she could see snow or sleet. If our paths do not intersect, we will miss each other by just a few days and have promised to leave one another notes at certain points along the Circuit. We know her guide, who will accompany her like a loyal brother for the entire Circuit, so we feel comforted. But we already miss her. Last night, everyone at dinner felt that odd anxiety, the trekker's misgiving about parting ways, the feeling of The (Buddhist) Last Supper, where betrayal is not the problem, but only the poignant inevitability of separation.
Mika, we wish you safe safe and gorgeous travels. We will always be your team.
The town of Pokhara is positively sweltering, 104 degrees Fahrenheit when we landed, before the sun was at its peak. Coffee grows here, and bananas. Fortunately, our hotel rooms have air-conditioning, although Reba pointed out that the AC unit, though set in a beautiful wooden-arch window, has an inch of open sky to every side. Carpentry smarpentry.
Fever birds are calling around me, the koila bird you can hear in Richard Attenbourough's film, Gandhi, when Candice Bergen, playing the photographer Margaret Bourke-White, interviews the elderly Gandhiji during his millionth imprisonment by the doomed British Raj. She is asking him about whether non-violence could be used against a leader as ruthless as Hitler. Not without defeats, Gandhi reasons, because non-violence takes a long time, but in the end, there is no weapon stronger than civil disobedience when used with the right intentions.
Pokhara is a city built on the rim of a lake, Phewa Tal. We see the giant famous Machupuchchare looming over it, Fishtail (just Google this famous mountain and you'll see what is on Ashleigh's and Reba's cameras from this morning). Along with Everest and the Jungfrau, Fishtail is the most photographed mountain in the world. It is a steep pyramid, extremely pointy, a classic, sharp, snow-covered white and ageratum Himalayan peak.
Later, if we have not completely dissolved from this constant sauna, we will take long canoes out, and paddle ourselves over close enough to observe the shore of the wild side, where monkeys and tigers live. Peak season to be here is in the Fall, when the skies are clear. In this season, Fishtail plays hide and seek, but we may, if we are lucky, see the moutain reflect in the lake.
Non-violence takes a long time. My friend Suzi Gablik sent me her most recent blog this morning, where I saw a photograph of cola-colored streaks of the Gulf oil-spill veining horribly upon an Alabama beach.
There is not a single old Tibetan artefact in the Pokhara stalls today, only plastic Chinese copies of junky tourist items, hawked by the Tibetan refugees here who have never, in fifty sad years, been able to go home.
There is a moment in the film version of Out of Africa in which Denys Finch-Hatton tempts Karen Blixen to go on safari with him: "There is land there you ought to see," he promotes, "because it won't be there much longer."
In three days we will be on our way to what must be some of the last land where the Buddhas have always curbed what makes people hasten their own demise.
We will not find this pristine wisdom anymore in Lower Mustang, we are told. But I do still expect to find it in the Resricted Territory. I had better tank up there, before something explodes and plumes all over the Annapurnas, something ruinous and toxic, melting the glaciers, sinking the fish, bludgeoning the Buddhas I love. Jane
Friday, July 2, 2010
Ella's post
Nepal is a place that not many 3rd graders will see. It's very different. You have to drink from bottles water and bottled water only! I am very impressed that they have Fanta! Fanta is really common in Nepal! So is Coca-cola, Pepsi, and other USA drinks. The crazy streets are very bumpy but awesome!
My favorite Hindu god is Ganesh because he looks like an elephant.
I liked the monkey temple because it had cute baby monkeys, but I did NOT like the 403 stairs that we had to walk up.
I had a gnat in my hot chocolate this morning (I got it out), and Mom forced me to eat scrambled eggs because I ordered a banana pancake but didn't like it.
Oh yeah, and Emerson and I saved Mary from a mama monkey! See? I DO care about her!
That's all for now
I LOVE BABY MONKEYS!
Love, Ella
Additional note from Reba:
Yesterday, as Mary and I were lying around our room feeling puny, Ella was back to her sassy self. She spent her afternoon playing Uno and journaling with Mika, Ashley and Emerson. They taught her how to cut pictures from the brochures to glue in her pages. She has loved Emerson for a long time, and now she loves Mika and Ashley. Two beautiful, kind and brave young women as role models. What more can a mother want?
My favorite Hindu god is Ganesh because he looks like an elephant.
I liked the monkey temple because it had cute baby monkeys, but I did NOT like the 403 stairs that we had to walk up.
I had a gnat in my hot chocolate this morning (I got it out), and Mom forced me to eat scrambled eggs because I ordered a banana pancake but didn't like it.
Oh yeah, and Emerson and I saved Mary from a mama monkey! See? I DO care about her!
That's all for now
I LOVE BABY MONKEYS!
Love, Ella
Additional note from Reba:
Yesterday, as Mary and I were lying around our room feeling puny, Ella was back to her sassy self. She spent her afternoon playing Uno and journaling with Mika, Ashley and Emerson. They taught her how to cut pictures from the brochures to glue in her pages. She has loved Emerson for a long time, and now she loves Mika and Ashley. Two beautiful, kind and brave young women as role models. What more can a mother want?
3rd try from Jenna
Sorry to be bad about communication. I have tried to post two times and both times I spent over an hour and then lost what I had worked on. Frustration, time, power outages and slow internet have kept me away from the computers. I am fine and doing well. It is hot here, but our guest house garden provides shady spots for rest. We have been going non stop.... the monkey temple, the cremation temple, the potters square, shopping in the markets, dinner with friends and a beautiful day trek to Nagercot-- the mountain top site where we can see Everist and several other giant peeks. Unfortunattely the clouds were so thick that the mountains were hiding. luckly we will see the big mtns when we head out west tomorrow.
I am struck this time by the street kids-- i see a new problem I have not really encountered here before. The young boys spend their days sniffing STRONG glue out of paper bags. They are almost delerious as they wonder the streets. I talked to our friend who is a gem dealer and he told me about picking these kids up off the stoop in fromt of his store and noticing their dry, almost scaley skin and their brittle bones. He told me about all the organizations which collect $ to help these kids, and how it hardly ever makes it to the street kids. Then he told me about an Amreican woman and her organization who does really great work to help. Apparently she feeds them all one good meal a week, some times she pickes them up and takes them to a place where they can get haircuts and sometimes to a place to get a bate. I want to find out more about her and the organization.
Our flight tomorrow morining will take us even further awaty from the city, computers and the chaos of KTM. We will spend a few days in Pokara, the lake city where we will canoe thru terraced lands and trees teeming with monkeys, we will visit a cave, and a tibetan refugee camp-- we can expect jungle temperature there (100 degrees)and we will probably run into monsoon rains. Next we fly to Jomsom where the festival was held and where Tsampa lives. After a few days, we will meet our porters and our favorite guide Naryan, and we will start our trek to Lo. We already have worries about monsoon rains at the end of the trek, so we have a plan B which gives us time to do the extra 4 day walk out of the mtns if our plane can't fly-- this is what we had to do last time and I was actually glad for the extra trek. That part of the trek takes us back thru the low land jungles-- where the rest of the trek is in the high mtns and in view of snowy peaks.
I worry about the changes I will see as we head to the west. I have heard that there are now roads on most of the Annapurna Circut. In 2007, Jomsom village had a tractor, and a car and a few mororcycles now has traffic passing by---Cars and maybe even busses. It used to be that cars were disassembles, flown in and reassembled, and that they were only used in Jomsom and the boardering villages-- rivers flowing down from the mtn tops prevented further travel. Now cars can drive all the way from Beni to the holy site of Muktinath in about 2 days-- when we trekked, it was about an 8 day walk. Luckly, Lo, the remote region we will travel to does not have roads YET, but I suspect we will see more evidence of the roads to come!!!
Today we took bags of clothes to a monistary for nuns-- they were thrilled. We were invited in for a cup of tea, and thanks to Jane we were served YACK BUTTER tea rather than sweet milk chai. She thought it would be funny to request the salty, thick, butter tea so our new comers Ashely and Mika could try it. Though we all had to choke the stuff down, Jane was the only who was served a second cup before she could stop them, so in the end her plan back fired. Jason, Sherrie and Tom, we tosted you with this tea!!!! After tea we were given a tour of the main temple room, the nuns blessed our journey with a singing and paryer, then they beleest Ashley, Mika ande Jane's malas. It was a beautiful monistart right next to the Monkey twemple build over 125 years ago. There are 125 nuns at this monistary and the youngest is 7 years old. It was great to be able to deliver about 17 pairs of shoes, dozens of tooth brushes, clothes, (jeans, shirts, and coats). The nuns will make sure the goods get to the people that need them. We have already been invited back for a vegetarian lunch after our trek. I will make sure to order a POT of Yak butter tea for Jane.
I have not given myself time to edit. I want to post before i lose this... forgive my errors.
I am struck this time by the street kids-- i see a new problem I have not really encountered here before. The young boys spend their days sniffing STRONG glue out of paper bags. They are almost delerious as they wonder the streets. I talked to our friend who is a gem dealer and he told me about picking these kids up off the stoop in fromt of his store and noticing their dry, almost scaley skin and their brittle bones. He told me about all the organizations which collect $ to help these kids, and how it hardly ever makes it to the street kids. Then he told me about an Amreican woman and her organization who does really great work to help. Apparently she feeds them all one good meal a week, some times she pickes them up and takes them to a place where they can get haircuts and sometimes to a place to get a bate. I want to find out more about her and the organization.
Our flight tomorrow morining will take us even further awaty from the city, computers and the chaos of KTM. We will spend a few days in Pokara, the lake city where we will canoe thru terraced lands and trees teeming with monkeys, we will visit a cave, and a tibetan refugee camp-- we can expect jungle temperature there (100 degrees)and we will probably run into monsoon rains. Next we fly to Jomsom where the festival was held and where Tsampa lives. After a few days, we will meet our porters and our favorite guide Naryan, and we will start our trek to Lo. We already have worries about monsoon rains at the end of the trek, so we have a plan B which gives us time to do the extra 4 day walk out of the mtns if our plane can't fly-- this is what we had to do last time and I was actually glad for the extra trek. That part of the trek takes us back thru the low land jungles-- where the rest of the trek is in the high mtns and in view of snowy peaks.
I worry about the changes I will see as we head to the west. I have heard that there are now roads on most of the Annapurna Circut. In 2007, Jomsom village had a tractor, and a car and a few mororcycles now has traffic passing by---Cars and maybe even busses. It used to be that cars were disassembles, flown in and reassembled, and that they were only used in Jomsom and the boardering villages-- rivers flowing down from the mtn tops prevented further travel. Now cars can drive all the way from Beni to the holy site of Muktinath in about 2 days-- when we trekked, it was about an 8 day walk. Luckly, Lo, the remote region we will travel to does not have roads YET, but I suspect we will see more evidence of the roads to come!!!
Today we took bags of clothes to a monistary for nuns-- they were thrilled. We were invited in for a cup of tea, and thanks to Jane we were served YACK BUTTER tea rather than sweet milk chai. She thought it would be funny to request the salty, thick, butter tea so our new comers Ashely and Mika could try it. Though we all had to choke the stuff down, Jane was the only who was served a second cup before she could stop them, so in the end her plan back fired. Jason, Sherrie and Tom, we tosted you with this tea!!!! After tea we were given a tour of the main temple room, the nuns blessed our journey with a singing and paryer, then they beleest Ashley, Mika ande Jane's malas. It was a beautiful monistart right next to the Monkey twemple build over 125 years ago. There are 125 nuns at this monistary and the youngest is 7 years old. It was great to be able to deliver about 17 pairs of shoes, dozens of tooth brushes, clothes, (jeans, shirts, and coats). The nuns will make sure the goods get to the people that need them. We have already been invited back for a vegetarian lunch after our trek. I will make sure to order a POT of Yak butter tea for Jane.
I have not given myself time to edit. I want to post before i lose this... forgive my errors.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
from Jane, July 1
Hello, Friends. Our third showing of A Gift for the Village this evening was a wonderful success, with a sweet group of Nepalis and travelers, including a social worker from Spain and university administrators from Minnesota. Again, the film created great emotion, and brought people to tears. We are so gratified.
We spent the day walking from Pashupatinath to Boudha, from the cremation ghats along the Bagmati River, to one of the two holiest Buddhist stupas in the valley. At Pashupati we saw an incredible ceremony which Jenna filmed: the one-year anniversary remembrance of a beloved Pashupati sadhu's death.
Most incredible was a sadhu (holy man) dressed as Hanuman, the monkey god, with a huge hairy tail-appendage, curled up higher than his head, and his lower face masked with half a coconut hull, painted livid red. The effect was to make him seem as if he were really a monkey, but tall and dancing like a man, and in splendid garish marigold and silver and ruby swaths of ornamented cloth.
Jenna admitted that the costume actually spooked her, because the piercing painted eyes of this Hanuman figure seemed convincingly like a monkey-god's. I felt the same eerieness, and Mika later made the same observation, about the strange intensity of this dancing Hanuman.
Among the gypsy sounds of the sadhus, the manic tinny tambourines and the hoarse thigh-bone horns, and amidst the billowing smoke of the smouldering cremations, I saw the most impressive retinue of committed sadhus I have seen in my 25 years of traveling to south Asia. These men were handsome and elegant, emaciated and languid, classic in their statuesque features, like the Roman art of Praxiteles in the 5th century B.C.; like the Dying Gaul, or later, the Laocoon. Some were dressed in pastels, apricots my grandmother would have selected, and others, in acid lemons and pomegranate crushes of color. Some looked as if their faces had not produced sound for all eternity, and others were sweating, singing metallic plaintive prayers.
At Boudha, the world smells like juniper, and the Tibetan women walking round in their striped aprons look like sturdy satellites to the beautiful hemispheric reliquary, with its blue and golden eyes facing the four directions. I always feel relieved to be near Tibetans, especially when they write me an e-mail:
Date: July 1, 2010 07:49:43 +0000
From: Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama
Dear Jane Lillian Vance,
I have been directed by Mr. Chhime R. Chhoekyapa, Secretary to His
Holiness the Dalai Lama, to response to your letter.
He sends His prayers and good wishes for the success of your
film.
We very much appreciated and congratulated for completing your film
project on Tsampa Ngawang Lama of Mustang, Nepal, which took over 9½
years to complete. We are very much sure that your film will bring about
greater awareness of the rich cultural heritage of the people living in
places like Mustang.
We once again very much appreciated your thoughtful gesture for sending us
NTSC version and PAL format of your documentary film.
With best wishes,
Yours Sincerely,
Tsultrim Dorjee
Administrative Assistant
--
Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama
Thekchen Choeling
P.O. Mcleod Ganj
Dharamsala 176219
HIMACHAL PRADESH
--------------
For now, goodnight from Kathmandu. Everyone on the team sends their love. Jane
We spent the day walking from Pashupatinath to Boudha, from the cremation ghats along the Bagmati River, to one of the two holiest Buddhist stupas in the valley. At Pashupati we saw an incredible ceremony which Jenna filmed: the one-year anniversary remembrance of a beloved Pashupati sadhu's death.
Most incredible was a sadhu (holy man) dressed as Hanuman, the monkey god, with a huge hairy tail-appendage, curled up higher than his head, and his lower face masked with half a coconut hull, painted livid red. The effect was to make him seem as if he were really a monkey, but tall and dancing like a man, and in splendid garish marigold and silver and ruby swaths of ornamented cloth.
Jenna admitted that the costume actually spooked her, because the piercing painted eyes of this Hanuman figure seemed convincingly like a monkey-god's. I felt the same eerieness, and Mika later made the same observation, about the strange intensity of this dancing Hanuman.
Among the gypsy sounds of the sadhus, the manic tinny tambourines and the hoarse thigh-bone horns, and amidst the billowing smoke of the smouldering cremations, I saw the most impressive retinue of committed sadhus I have seen in my 25 years of traveling to south Asia. These men were handsome and elegant, emaciated and languid, classic in their statuesque features, like the Roman art of Praxiteles in the 5th century B.C.; like the Dying Gaul, or later, the Laocoon. Some were dressed in pastels, apricots my grandmother would have selected, and others, in acid lemons and pomegranate crushes of color. Some looked as if their faces had not produced sound for all eternity, and others were sweating, singing metallic plaintive prayers.
At Boudha, the world smells like juniper, and the Tibetan women walking round in their striped aprons look like sturdy satellites to the beautiful hemispheric reliquary, with its blue and golden eyes facing the four directions. I always feel relieved to be near Tibetans, especially when they write me an e-mail:
Date: July 1, 2010 07:49:43 +0000
From: Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama
Dear Jane Lillian Vance,
I have been directed by Mr. Chhime R. Chhoekyapa, Secretary to His
Holiness the Dalai Lama, to response to your letter.
He sends His prayers and good wishes for the success of your
film.
We very much appreciated and congratulated for completing your film
project on Tsampa Ngawang Lama of Mustang, Nepal, which took over 9½
years to complete. We are very much sure that your film will bring about
greater awareness of the rich cultural heritage of the people living in
places like Mustang.
We once again very much appreciated your thoughtful gesture for sending us
NTSC version and PAL format of your documentary film.
With best wishes,
Yours Sincerely,
Tsultrim Dorjee
Administrative Assistant
--
Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama
Thekchen Choeling
P.O. Mcleod Ganj
Dharamsala 176219
HIMACHAL PRADESH
--------------
For now, goodnight from Kathmandu. Everyone on the team sends their love. Jane
from Reba
Thanks, Everyone for your sweet and supportive comments. I'm almost afraid to tell you guys that Mary, Ella and I have been out of commission for a couple of days from a stomach bug. We are all ok now, not to worry. I don't think it was food or water because we all got it but nobody else has so far. I was really worried that being sick here would make them want to come home, but they have been troopers. Jane has this plum concentrate, a very strong, sticky goo that helps with stomach problems. Grudgingly the girls took a couple of doses and are much better now. Ella is completely better, Mary and I are working on it.
It is so fun to watch the girls here. Mary acts so grown up and doesn't hesitate to talk to people or greet them. Ella is finally "Namaste-ing" and smiling at people, whereas at first she would act shy. She always runs up to the desk when we enter the guest house and asks for the key. (A skeleton key on a large wooden key-holder) She also isn't afraid to leave our room and run down to Emerson or Ashley and Mika's room without me or her sister. Yesterday morning when the girls were not feeling well, I went down to get myself some tea at the guest house cafe and the manager asked how we all were. I told him that the girls were not feeling well, and he responded, "Which one? Mary or Ella?" I was surprised that he knew their names, but then again, not. People here seem genuinely happy that we are here.
Dinner at Sunil and Sarita's was just like Jane described...too much. It was so fun taking Mary and Ella there. As we were getting out of the rickshaws, Mary leaped out and her feet came out from under her. She got quite a bump as her head hit the rickshaw. We teased her that she now has a great story to tell about fighting with a rickshaw in Kathmandu! Mom and Dad, Sarita asked about you. Her mother is close to turning 100!
We had a very nice dinner courtesy of the Gurka trekking company at this very old palace I believe of a royal priest. We sat on the floor, were served spicy peanuts, popcorn, momos, potatoes....and those were just appetizers! Then came a Thali (sp?) plate of about 6 traditional Nepali dishes. Very good!
This morning we went to Pashupati, the creamation temple. Mary and Ella saw some very hard things. Not so much the 2 bodies that were burning or the two that were being prepared (wrapped in clothes and draped with marigolds), but rather the poor and disfigured people who sit and beg for a few rupees to eat. We did get to see a celebration for the 1 year anniversary of the death of a Sardu. (I hope I spelled that right, probably not) We also took pictures of a group of Sardus, with and without Emerson, Mika, Mary, and Ella.
We are all having a great time, but we miss everyone back home a whole bunch. Lots of love from Nepal, ya'll.
R
It is so fun to watch the girls here. Mary acts so grown up and doesn't hesitate to talk to people or greet them. Ella is finally "Namaste-ing" and smiling at people, whereas at first she would act shy. She always runs up to the desk when we enter the guest house and asks for the key. (A skeleton key on a large wooden key-holder) She also isn't afraid to leave our room and run down to Emerson or Ashley and Mika's room without me or her sister. Yesterday morning when the girls were not feeling well, I went down to get myself some tea at the guest house cafe and the manager asked how we all were. I told him that the girls were not feeling well, and he responded, "Which one? Mary or Ella?" I was surprised that he knew their names, but then again, not. People here seem genuinely happy that we are here.
Dinner at Sunil and Sarita's was just like Jane described...too much. It was so fun taking Mary and Ella there. As we were getting out of the rickshaws, Mary leaped out and her feet came out from under her. She got quite a bump as her head hit the rickshaw. We teased her that she now has a great story to tell about fighting with a rickshaw in Kathmandu! Mom and Dad, Sarita asked about you. Her mother is close to turning 100!
We had a very nice dinner courtesy of the Gurka trekking company at this very old palace I believe of a royal priest. We sat on the floor, were served spicy peanuts, popcorn, momos, potatoes....and those were just appetizers! Then came a Thali (sp?) plate of about 6 traditional Nepali dishes. Very good!
This morning we went to Pashupati, the creamation temple. Mary and Ella saw some very hard things. Not so much the 2 bodies that were burning or the two that were being prepared (wrapped in clothes and draped with marigolds), but rather the poor and disfigured people who sit and beg for a few rupees to eat. We did get to see a celebration for the 1 year anniversary of the death of a Sardu. (I hope I spelled that right, probably not) We also took pictures of a group of Sardus, with and without Emerson, Mika, Mary, and Ella.
We are all having a great time, but we miss everyone back home a whole bunch. Lots of love from Nepal, ya'll.
R
From Mary
Wow. The Hoffman's have been sick for a while. We're starting to get better....I hope. Today at Pashupati I got 'up close and personal' with a mamma monkey. If Ella hadn't pulled me back, I probably would've been jumped on. Brrrrr. Sends a chill down my spine how close I was. Anyway, Let's head to good news. I finaly got a dragon, thanks to Mom and Jane. It's a big black one. Jane said Black Dragons are guardians in Nepal. Tomorrow is our last day in Kathmandu. I'm feeling a little homesick, but excited for the new adventures to come. I hope no more close monkey encounters though. Also at Pashupati, we saw body's being prepared for burning, and body's being burned, understanding that it's an entirely different culture, but was also very moving. On the 29th, I think, Mingma took us to a very nice hotel with a nice restaurant with pretty good food, (I probably would've enjoyed it more if I wasn't feeling sick,) and amazing dancers. In one dance, the man dancing took a liking to Ashley, which made his girlfriend mad. There were about four or five performances before they finished. I heard last night's show was big success. That makes me happy people care. I miss everyone back home and hope you are all having a nice summer.
Mary
Mary
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