Back in the USA

So I have been a blogging delinquent the past month. I returned back to Oregon on July 1 in time to celebrate America's independence.

The culture shock was expected, as it's usually worse coming from East to West than West to East. I still try to walk to the left of people on the street, and I was handing things to people with my right hand for weeks. But other than that, I was ready to be home soaking up the Oregon sun minus the KTM humidity, and eating my fill of organic veggies and berries (as opposed to Carbofest 2011 that was four months of daal bhat - don't get me wrong, I loved it, but 8 kilos later, it was getting a bit out of control).

Now the agenda is to fundraise like mad for The Kumari Project, and return to Nepal in January of 2012 to implement some of the programming we are developing now.

To contribute, please visit: http://www.indiegogo.com/The-Kumari-Project
To learn more about The Kumari Project, visit: www.kumariproject.org

This will be my last post for a while, except I might continue to blog about wonderful eateries and drinkeries (aka bars) in the great northwest as I come across them.

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.