These are a few of my favorite things

TRAINS

One of my favorite moments of the entire Mumbai trip was the day we got on our first train. We were extremely punctual, and decided to wait for our train for an hour under the shade at one end of the platform. When the train finally rolled in, we grabbed our bags and walked alongside the train trying to find our car, labeled S-3. Unfortunately, we had camped out around S-14, so we had a bit of a walk.

We had each just been given a fresh liter of cold water to take on the train with us, and we were dragging our bags and our bottles along. We had just passed the car labeled S-5, when the train started moving. It started rolling slowly at first, but then we realized it was speeding up...a lot. From there it was everyone for herself.

I started to run to the first door I could find. I hopped onto the train pretty easily, but my suitcase and my arm were still hanging out the door. I didn't have enough strength to pull my luggage (and I'd even managed to pack light - quite a feat for me) into the train, so I had to jump off and try again...as the train began to speed up. I had to break into a full on run and in the process chucked my water bottle over my shoulder and to the ground. I held my bag up into the doorway of the train and hoped someone would pull it in if I yelled, "Take. Bag. Take. Bag" loud enough. But nope...some lady sitting in the hallway just stared at me. 

Thank god an angel of a man told someone to take my bag in Hindi (key!) and literally pushed me on to the train.

The next step was to make sure everyone else had made it! Yep! More water bottles were lost in the boarding process, which we started to feel desperately at about hour two of the trip, but all in all, it was quite exciting - I'd always wanted to run for a train before :) 

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KULFI 

My Gujurati friend living in Mumbai met me after a long day of touring NGOs in Bbay, and took me with his girlfriend to see the city. We saw the Queen's Necklace all lit up and beautiful and then retreated to the car and Kulfi Center when it started to rain. I had soooooo much kulfi, and it was so delish, and I wanted to go back the next day, and I still dream about it. My fav flav was def malai. 

They are coming...

So more on Mumbai travels soon, but for now. 

The newest NINJA ZOMBIES trailer was just released. Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t97T1LZTSrY&feature=channel_video_title

From KTM to Delhi

A quick word: Took a seven hour ride in a sumo (basically a jeep) to Hetauda in the south of Nepal. Then another three hour sumo ride across the Nepal to India border.Very easy already to see how girls can be trafficked from Nepal to India. They don't stop you if you look Nepali because Nepal and India have an open border - you don't need to get a VISA to go back and forth from one country to another. Our driver wouldn't even stop despite half the people in the jeep yelling at him because he thought we were all Nepali, so we had to take a rickshaw back to the border and get my passport stamped - oh, and the VISA worked - yay! Oh, then we hopped into a sumo for another hour or so from the border to a train station in India.

India is beautiful. I don't know what I expected, but it's gorgeous. A friend just left to motorbike from KTM down through India. I thought he was crazy, but now I see the appeal. I got to experience maybe the next best, which was the train! I was dreading it a little...okay, a lot! As everyone I talked to, asked incredulously why I wasn't flying. We aren't flying because the INGO funding our trip wants to keep its costs down, understandably. However, the train was AWESOME. We took over a little section of the car (as per our reservations, which no one else apparently had), and had plenty of room. The heat wasn't even a problem as long as you come to terms with just being sweaty 24/7 (but KTM summers already prepared me for that), because they had fans going the whole time and the windows open as we cruised through the countryside. Oh, and the greatest thing is that it was really clean...as any place would be if you just throw all the waste (including human waste) right out of the train as it goes.

India is made up of a ton of farmland. Again, I probably should have known this, but I didn't really expect it. It seemed to me a mix between the flat American Midwest mixed with the lifestyle and farming techniques (with a bit better technology perhaps) of the farmers on the hillsides of Nepal. And seeing the farms brought a whole new understanding of Vandana Shiva's Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply. Read it if you haven't!

Well, that wasn't as quick as I'd anticipated, but now we are in Delhi for the day to meet with a few NGOs and go shopping with a former HimRights employee who just started working for an Indian NGO here.

Love/Hate

I think I already am developing a love/hate relationship with India. 

I went to the Indian VISA Service Center to get a tourist VISA for my trip to Mumbai this month. They made me fill out a form and told me to return five days later. I showed up on the designated day, and they didn't want to issue me a VISA because they couldn't find a blank page on my passport (because the one blank page was stamped by the Indian immigration officer when I literally walked from the Delhi airport international terminal to the domestic terminal). I was about to poo in my pants because I was so upset...but I convinced them to do it on the last page of the passport which already had text printed on it...and I got one! 

So now, I'm thinking, I have a VISA what can they do...oh right, they just not let me into the country. Darn. Well, we'll see how it goes. I leave tomorrow at the crack of dawn to drive to the border to Nepal and hop on an un-airconditioned train car to Mumbai via Delhi. Awesome.

Trekking Photos: Mountain Views

Finally some photos!
More to come too if I get time before my travels to Mumbai.

A typical trekking trail on the way to Everest Base Camp. I literally ran this trail (when it was flat and downhill) on the last day from Namche to Lukla. (When it was uphill, I crawled.)

Namche Bazaar. Nestled into the mountainside.

Namche Bazaar: The Thamel equivalent of the Everest region.
Everything is either flown in and/or trekked here, but they have everything.

You can even get your pentys laundered.

A trail above Namche on the way deeper into the Himalayans.

EVEREST! it's the one right in the center that is partially obstructed by clouds :) But we saw it! It's funny, but it's not really the most impressive mountain to look at.

Tengboche Monastery - where my mom and stepdad got married.

The view from Tengboche

My favorite mountain on the right:  Aama Dablam

An early morning climb with my incredible Norwegian trekking companions and our fearless guide, Babu.

The highest we got (we didn't go all the way to basecamp) was Dingboche at about 4300m. You can see how the landscape changes - barren and flat - at just about 4000m. There were even patches of what reminded of the Alaskan tundra. 

A very photogenic yak.

I think this is my favorite photo from the trek: prayer flags and sunrise in the mountains.

 

One of my favorite mountains...of course I don't know what it's called.

A Shameless Call for Followers

I greatly greatly appreciate my five friendly followers :), but just in case anyone is reading this blog, and would like to publicly follow it, the author would be very appreciative. So appreciative that she would send you a postcard from the country she resides in at the time that you join as a follower (she will also send postcards to the current fab five if they so desire).

Also, for those who have been long time fans, look forward to real life photos in the not too distant.

Buddhist Musings

I have been working my way (slowly) through Thich Naht Hahn's The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching. I got through quite a bit trekking, which was lovely, but have still not finished it.

One passage struck me in particular:

"At the base of our views are our perceptions (samjna)...The Buddha advised us not to be fooled by what we perceive. He told Subhuti, "Where there is perception, there is deception." The Buddha also taught on many occassions that most of our perceptions are erroneous and that most of our suffering comes from wrong perceptions. We have to ask ourselves again and again, "Am I sure?" Until we see clearly, our wrong perceptions will prevent us from having Right View.

To perceive means to perceive something. We believe that the object of our perception is outside of the subject, but that is not correct. When we perceive the moon, the moon is us. When we smile to our friend, our friend is also us, because she is the object of our perception...Perception means the coming into existence of the perceiver and the perceived...It is impossible to have a subject without an object. It is impossible to remove one and retain the other.

The source of our perception, our way of seeing, lies in our store consciousness. If ten people look at a cloud, there will be ten different perceptions of it. Whether it is perceived as a dog, a hammer, or a coat depends on our mind - our sadness, our memories, our anger. Our perceptions carry with them all the errors of subjectivity. Then we praise, blame, condemn, or complain depending on our perceptions...Whether we are happy or we suffer depends largely on our perceptions. It is important to look deeply at our perceptions and know their source.

We have an idea of happiness. We believe that only certain conditions will make us happy. But it is often our very idea of happiness that prevents us from being happy. We have to look deeply into our perceptions in order to become free of them. Then, what has been a perception becomes an insight...This is neither perception nor non-perception. It is a clear vision, seeing things are they are."

Buggies Redux

Sooooooooo time for round two of bug updates.

Last night I was at a favorite bar in the area at the weekly young ex-pat gathering, and a cockroach ran straight over my hand and behind the seat. Sorta freaked me out.

However, I have become more and more tolerant of the bugs that inevitably come with the heat of summers in Nepal.

For instance, yesterday I spread my newly cleaned sheet on my bed and saw a dead, dried bug of some kind crushed up on it and didn't freak out.

I have also noticed a bug or two hanging out in the prayer flags hanging on my window and several spiders  and ants crawling around the walls, including the BIGGEST spider I have ever seen (not tarantula size, but still very large) near my dresser without screaming (too loud :)).

Street Smarts

A terrifying thing happened about a while ago in my neighborhood. After a night out in the touristy area of Kathmandu, Thamel, two of my friends - a very tall Aussie man and a rather tall (remember everyone is tall to me) German woman decided to skip the taxi cost and walk home down a main street called Lazimpat Road.

After a few minutes, a gang of about three motorbikes drove up and out of no where threw what they they were several large concrete stones at them, hitting the man in the shoulder and jaw and the woman in the calf. It turns out, as my girl friend's husband explained, that it is a common occurrence for perpetrators to attack male and female couples by throwing a stone aiming at the guy's head, so they can knock him out and rape the woman.

Like I said, terrifying.

However, they both handled it amazingly well, and have spread the word (as I hope I am doing now) to everyone to be safe not sorry and take a taxi at night.

Disclaimer for those back in the States that might worry: Please don't. I live in a super safe neighborhood, and am very careful about walking places in groups or taking taxis at night. Also KTM is generally a very very safe place, especially considering that it is truly the big cit-ay of Nepal.

Moment of the Mundane

I saw a sign outside the an internet cafe in my area that offered 'internet suffering' on its menu of services.

Unintentionally appropriate.

Snippets from My Day in the City

MORNING COFFEE
If you put broken cinnamon sticks in coffee, it tastes soooooo good.

AFTERNOON PURCHASES

I bought jeggings! They are the weirdest piece of clothing I have ever owned, but they are oh so comfortable and stretchy.

CLASS SMACKS ME IN THE FACE

I was coming back from dance class with a friend in a tuk tuk (a little biofuel-run public truck/bus that seats about eight to ten people). We were stopped at an intersection, and I looked out the window to see a super cute Nepali boy sitting in a large SUV on his mom's lap. He looked at me and I smiled and waved at him. He started to smile back and then, literally, turned up his nose and turned away. He was definitely like five years old. It would have been comical except that it was such an ugly thing to witness.

CITY SMELLS
Generally Kathmandu smells like urine, poo, sewage, and incense, especially in the summer. However, there is a huge flowering plant between my house and the main street, Lazimpat Road. At the end of the day, once they have been heated by the afternoon sun, the flowers release a lovely smell at beginning of the unpaved road leading to our house. I always look forward to it in the evenings.

Back in KTM

Everest was incredible.

Immense thank yous to my friend Surya Shrestha and Babu Gurung of Asian Journeys (www.nepalmountaintrek.com) for letting me join their Everest trek with one and a half day's notice, and leading an amazing trip.

And a huge thank you to Jwalant Gurung of Grand Asian Journeys (grandasianjourneys.com) for lending me the equipment necessary to make my way through the foothills of the Himalayas.

And, lastly, to my lovely travel companions from Norway.

HIGHLIGHTS

VIEWS
The views were incredible. We didn't actually go all the way to Base Camp, or even Kala Pattar (known for its 360 degree view of the mountains), but the views from Dingboche were astounding. Pictures to follow :)

GENERAL TREKKING CONDITIONS
The trekking was good - perfect weather, the end of the season meant that the amount of trekkers was tapering, so we got most of the lodges and trails to ourselves.

DANCE OFF
In Tengboche, a Pakistani trekker that my group met challenged me to a bhangra dance off. It was followed by a cultural show by all the visitors at the lodge and included a Norwegian ballad, traditional Norwegian, Nepali, and Masai dancing, and a touch of Rapper's Delight.

APPROPRIATE AMOUNT OF AMERICA BASHING
I've found during my international travels of the past decade that it is not generally prudent to advertise being from America. I just never really understood the need to deck out in American flag headbands and sew red, white, and blue flag patches on my trekking gear. However, with the election of Obama, and my recent travels to various countries in Africa, I have become, dare I say, proud to be an American...however, I was still subject to an appropriate amount of American bashing from afar in the dining halls of my lodge in Namche Bazaar, which I chose to ignore as I opted for Thich Nhat Hahn's The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching instead. It was an odd juxtaposition for sure.

RECONNECTING
16 years ago, my stepdad and mom got married in the monastery in Tengboche in the Everest Region. I was eight years old at the time - my second trip to Nepal, and the first night we stayed in what was then a small village called Phakding. I started playing with the daughter of the lodge owner, and after an hour or so, we disappeared into the night to deliver milk, drink tea, and sit by the fires of neighbors in the town. Last year, my mom and I visited Phakding again and managed to find the same lodge, even though it had been 15 years, and the area had become quite developed and, thus, unrecognizable. We found the lodge owner, who remembered us :), but her daughter was studying in Kathmandu. I decided to try again this year. I found the lodge and my old friend, Chirring, was playing with her one year old daughter in the middle of the dining room. We had tea, talked, and listened to a mix of Kanye and traditional Nepali songs. I have to admit I didn't even really remember what she had looked like, but as we sat together, her personality began to show itself and I remembered...she had been a few months older, and appropriately bossy for the age gap. She was knowledgable and sure of herself, but also hospitable and welcoming in a matter of fact way.

BAR NIGHT IN NAMCHE
Turns out the oldest bar in Namche Bazaar, at 3440 meters, is called Cafe Danphe's and is run by a Sherpa and Nepali/Tibetan couple. The wife used to live in Woodside, Queens, home to Adhikaar - one my favorite NGOs that works with Nepalis. I used to work for them too co-facitiliating a youth performance arts program. (They are also having their annual fundraiser tomorrow - so check it if you can - www.adhikaar.org.) Cafe Danphe's had some great khukuri rum, a wonderful atmosphere, and delicious and copious amounts of popcorn - definite trail recommendation.

PO-MO ROCK DANCING
I had a free day in Namche, and decided to spend it using up the last of my camera battery filming vignettes of dances on the rocks in the hillside above Namche.  A family who thought I was emotionally disturbed invited me to Khumjung to see the festival with them, but after some uncomfortable touching by the (seemingly drunk) uncle of the family opted to continue my crazy-lady dancing. Videos will be posted shortly on a joint blog with a friend studying dance theater in London.

EVEREST MARATHON
I decided to stay for the Everest Marathon to see the winners cross the finish line. I have had some weird obsession with the marathon since hearing about it a year and a half ago. I ended up staying in Namche until about 11 am to see the first three people cross the finish line (all Nepalis), the first female cross the finish line (the fourth person, and apparently an internationally known runner because she was clearly NOT Nepali), and the winner of the half marathon. If I ever get crazy motivated, I'm putting the Everest half marathon on my bucket list.

TREKKING BY MYSELF
My trekking group had gone ahead so that I could stay in Namche to visit with other friends who were trekking the same route and to see the Everest marathon, so the final day I trekked Namche to Lukla (17 km, the guides said, or 5 hours Nepali time and 7 hours foreigner time) in 5 hours. It was incredible. I literally ran down the first 30 mins to the river, and then sang every Broadway song I ever learned as I booked it to Lukla, clocking in at 5 hours with a 20 minute tea break in Phakding.