Through the Looking-Glass #11

Published January 5, 2007 in the Telluride Watch

Living in the San Juans, it is easy to become unimpressed with other mountains. Nestled in the box canyon at the San Miguel headwaters, Telluriders sleep at almost 9,000 feet and wake up surrounded by some of the tallest mountains in the Lower 48. It’s no wonder we’re high-altitude arrogant. At Kyanjin Gompa in Langtang National Park in North Central Nepal, Kate and I were sleeping at 12,800 feet and waking up surrounded by some of the tallest mountains in the world. It’s not just the thin air that took my breath away.

After climbing to the top of Kyanjin Ri at 15,659 feet, Kate and I spend one more night in Kyanjin Gompa before beginning our trek back down the mountains. We set out after a breakfast of strangely salty oatmeal and made it back to Langtang Village in time for lunch. The sun is high in the sky, as are our spirits. We’ve just planned our route to reach Gosaikund Lake for the November full moon. We’ll be there in three days, we figure, as we make our way down the trail, back through the field of menacing-looking yaks. We have lunch in Langtang, where I have meat for the first time on our trek. The Tamang people that inhabit most of the region we have been trekking in are Buddhists and do not butcher animals. If someone of another caste is in the area and butchers an animal, however, they’ll happily eat it up. Kate opts out of the sheep meat, and instead visits the Langtang Village Dairy, where she feasts on a tomato and cheese sandwich on a baguette, proclaiming Langtang cheese far superior to the Kyanjin Gompa cheese I had been eating the previous few days. While we tour the cheese factory, we meet two Japanese women also looking for an alternative to dal bhat.

After lunch, the trail down to Lama Hotel increases in grade, and we begin pounding down stone step after stone step, bracing ourselves with newly acquired walking sticks. A sharp pain creeps up in the outside of my knee, so I begin to slow down and take more breaks. We reach Rimche, our destination, at dusk and I happily put my pack down for the night. Without the extra weight, the pain eases out of my knee and I sleep well.

The next morning, walking down the staircase to breakfast, however, the pain reappears, and I let Kate know that I’ll be moving slowly again today. Ever the affable traveling companion, Kate assures me that we’ll get there when we get there. By lunchtime, though, I am in tears. Our guide has taken my pack by now, but with each step still comes a shot up the outside of my leg.

The reality that we will not be able to continue to Gosaikund begins to set in. “Liz, I don’t see you continuing to walk like this,” Kate tells me, and makes the decision for us to return to our origination point of Syaphru Besi. This decision is at odds with our guide’s interests, though. If we cut the trek short, he will earn less money, so he tries to get me to press on. Kate insists that it’s not possible, and I see an immediate shift in our guide’s demeanor. I ask him how long it will take us to reach Landslide, where we’ve decided we will stay the night. “For you, it will take three hours. For other people, it takes only 45 minutes.” He no longer walks alongside us, but gains at least a 30-minute lead, reaching Landslide and having tea long before we get there. He no longer refers to me as his little sister.

The final day of our trek is a slow one. We descend in altitude, and it is again hot in the sun. We peel layers off as we cross the final suspension bridge across the Langtang River and return to Syaphru Besi. The Buddha Lodge, where we were one of only two parties staying the week before, is now bustling with activity. An expedition of Japanese climbers has arrived after scaling Yala Peak, and by 4 PM, the dining room tables are already littered with whiskey bottles. We see the women from the cheese factory in Langtang, and they invite us to join them in their celebration. Before long, the whole lodge is laughing together, jokes being translated from Japanese to Nepali to English. By the end of the night, I have invitations to stay with three different families in Southern Japan and these new friends have mastered the pronunciation of my name.

We awake the next morning to the sound the bus horn, serving as an alarm clock for the whole village. The Japanese have gone ahead of us in a private bus, while Kate and I once again journey by local bus. Despite the early morning cold, Kate and I perch atop the roof of the bus for our journey home. I will stop again in Gerkhutar, and Kate and our guide will continue on to Kathmandu. After passing through the worst of the landslide-strewn road, we stop in Dhunche for tea and bus maintenance. The next stop is two hours later in Kalikasthan, where we will show the area Maoists our receipts for their tax that we paid on our way up. The Japanese bus has been stopped there for some time, and our friends wait idly by on the side of the road. When our bus goes by, they see us on the roof and begin waving madly, snapping pictures of the crazy American girls on the roof of the bus.

One more hour and I disembark in Gerkhutar. I toss my pack down from the roof first, and climb down after it. The bus continues on in a cloud of fine red dust, and I begin walking back up to the Pandeys’ home. When I reach the house, I set my bags down in the rear breezeway and step into the kitchen, where one of the Bhaujus (sisters-in-law) is preparing tea for a neighbor who has stopped by.

“Namaste,” I say.

“Arko pahuna ayechha,” the neighbor says. “I see another guest has come.”

Bhauju looks at me and smiles, squeezing my hand. “Pahuna haina. Yo hamro chhori ho.” This is not a guest. This is our daughter.

I am home.

Through the Looking-Glass #10

Published December 19, 2006 in the Telluride Watch

After spending one month in a modern Kathmandu where young hipsters meet over coffee, bloggers have gained celebrity status and Land Rover ads top the front page of an English-language weekly, it is easy to forget that life outside the capital city remains impoverished. Electric lines are few and far between, telephones are at least a three- or four-day walk away and health posts remain poorly stocked. Kathmandu has always been an island of prosperity, and in the past ten years an island of peace too, within a country of poverty, turmoil and barebones existence.

When I realize I have forgotten this reality, I become embarrassed.

Kate and I are beginning our trek from the Syaphru Bensi trailhead into Langtang National Park in North Central Nepal. We will follow the Langtang River for three days to reach Kyanjin Gompa at 12,800 feet. As we make our way through the lower villages along the trail, we see small gardens of fresh greens, carrots and onions next to the lodges that will serve them up to trekkers in the evenings. Kate is wearing a chobundi-chholo top in a traditional fabric design that leaves the Nepali women we pass in giggles and the Nepali men calling out to her flirtatiously, “Eh Kanchi!”

We end our first day by collapsing onto thin mattresses at Lama Hotel in the similarly-named village. After hurried hot showers out of plastic buckets and a quick wash of a day’s worth of clothes, Kate and I crowd the wood stove in the dining room waiting for our dal bhat to be prepared. A day on a trekking route always ends up this way, in the dining room, warming by the fire, singing songs. I watched a documentary about finding the roots of a Tamang folk song, “Bhedako Oon Jasto,” in this region before we came on the trek, and I was as enchanted by the tune as the filmmaker Narayan Wagle. I press the lodge owners at Lama Hotel about the lyrics, but they don’t know it. Instead, we sing the song that every visitor to Nepal has learned, “Resam Phi Ri Ri,” the silk thread that flitters in the wind.

On the second day of our trek we continue following the Langtang River up to Langtang Village itself at 12,000 feet. Almost to the village, we have to venture into a field of yaks, which has Kate terrified. She tells me stories of being nearly chased off a trail by a yak in the Everest region five years ago, picks up a rock and hides behind me. I tell her she’s being ridiculous, but I pick up my own rock and stay on the other side of the low stone walls that divide the trail.

Day three, we realize, is Halloween. We leave Langtang Village by about 9 am, a late start by Nepali standards, but we are assured an easy day by the lodge owners and our guide. They weren’t lying, we only have another 800 feet to climb, but I remain haunted by the high-altitude nightmares I had the night before and am tired from the fitful sleep. We need no excuse to walk slowly at this altitude, as there is really no other way to go. We reach Kyanjin Gompa in time for lunch. Kate rests for a moment while I wash my clothes in a field of yak dung. We then take a round of the village, visiting the dairy established by the Swiss in the 1950s. I am psyched to buy some yak cheese, but Kate remains unimpressed. We walk back to the Yak Hotel discussing what we might do to celebrate Halloween and wishing for some other Americans to spend the evening with.

It is as though the universe has heard our call. We round the corner back at our lodge and see three people standing outside in the courtyard. “Hey, are you Americans?” I call down. “Absolutely,” replies the guy. “Happy Halloween,” Kate and I shout down, and we walk down the stone steps to make introductions. As it could only happen, one of the three, Germaine Bartlett-Graff, grew up in Telluride. She is accompanied by her childhood friend Ariel and a New Yorker named Marc they met the day before. We decide to celebrate Halloween by drinking the local specialty tongba, a hot millet beer, and snicker momos.

I explain to the lodge owner that today is a special American holiday, but I have forgotten the roots of the pagan celebration and tell him instead that it is a time for American children to eat candy and for American adults to throw a party. He is game, and opens up a bottle of the most vile Chinese whiskey I have ever tasted. By this time, another 10 or so villagers have crowded into the dining room, and they begin celebrating our holiday along with us. Marc’s guide Chhiring picks up a stringed Nepali instrument and I ask the locals to sing the song I’ve been wanting to hear.

The chorus of voices, accompanied by this Nepali guitar, emit a twang that my ears accept after a moment of hesitation. I jot down the lyrics to the song, and soon I join in:

Aakashbata ke udi aayo?

Bhendako oon jasto, bhendako oon jasto …

Yo maayaa photo mai kichi leunlaa,

Purniko jun jasto, layeko sun jasto.

Out of the sky, what has come flying in?

Like the wool of the sheep, like the wool of the sheep.

Can I take a photograph of my love?

Like the light of the full moon, like the gold she is wearing.

The group continues singing for an hour or so, and one by one, we Americans peel off to our rooms, leaving the Nepalis by the fire with their Chinese whiskey until the wee hours. When we come down to the dining room the next morning at 7, the lodge owner remains hidden under a blanket in the corner. The group of Americans chuckle with one another. “Only in Nepal would they outdo us with our own holiday celebration,” Marc says. Only in Nepal.

Through the Looking-Glass #9

Published December 5, 2006 in the Telluride Watch

I don’t need an alarm clock in the village. Before even the rooster crows, I hear the women of the house moving around, one milking the water buffalo, one making morning tea, one feeding her crying child.

Kate and I have spent only one night in Gerkhutar, and now we move on to begin our trek into the Nepali Himals. The road to Syaphru Bensi, from where we will begin trekking, conveniently passes near Gerkhutar; we only need to walk 20 minutes to meet the fork in the unpaved road that heads north. We thought ahead and booked our tickets from Kathmandu, although we would be meeting the bus in transit. Our hosts, the Pandey brothers, had an even better idea. They made arrangements with a restaurant owner in Dunge, where the bus stops for an early lunch about 30 minutes ahead of the Gerkhutar fork, to call the their house when the bus left Dunge. According to this plan, we could leave the house after the phone call came and still meet the bus with time to spare.

I spent the morning at the water tap behind the house with the Saili Bhauju (middle sister-in-law) while she and her niece washed the week’s dirty clothes. At 9 AM we moved into the kitchen for our morning meal of dal bhat, and sat on the front porch to wait for the call to come from Dunge. Conversation continued to focus on rural development in Nepal, and the efforts Ram Chandra Pandey has undertaken with other men in the village to help neighbors in more isolated areas. Saili Bhauju’s daughter sits on my lap and plays with my watch. Kate asks what time it is.

“Ram Hari Dai?” I ask. “Why don’t you think the restaurant owner has called from Dunge yet? Do you think the bus is late?”

“I’m not sure,” he replies, and he asks his younger brother to call the restaurant owner to find out.

One minute later, Ram Chandra rushes down the stairs and says, “Jaum! Let’s go! The bus has already left from Dunge!”

The stillness of the village has been shattered and the ten or so people sitting on the porch spring into action. Kate and I, along with our guide Shiva, grab our packs and start towards the front gate. The Pandey brothers mount their motorcycles and go ahead of us to head off the bus at the fork. The children begin waving goodbye and the Bhaujus begin their simultaneous obligatory and heartfelt requests of us to come visit again, but next time stay longer!

In 15 minutes, Kate, Shiva and I reach the fork in the road and Ram Hari tells us the bus had already started on the road to Syaphru Bensi. I climb on Ram Hari’s motorcycle, and Kate on Ram Chandra’s. Ram Hari has already sent one friend ahead to reach the bus first, and has sent another one back to Gerkhutar to retrieve a motorcycle to transport Shiva.

At 25 mph, across an unpaved rock- and dust-filled road, I am on a high-speed bus chase in Central Nepal. With a full trekking pack on my back and my daypack slung over my left shoulder, my right hand is desperately gripping the back of the motorcycle seat behind me. I am futilely holding a bandana to my mouth and nose to keep the dust out, but with every vehicle that passes us, I feel more grit in my teeth, more dirt in my eyes.

We continue on, and I wonder how long Ram Hari’s Honda Hero motorcycle is going to be able to withstand the combined 400 or so pounds of cargo over this roughshod road. Some potholes can’t be avoided, and the motorcycle bottoms out a handful of times. We still can’t see the bus in front of us. Every three minutes, I ask Ram Hari if we’ll catch up to the bus. At first he says, of course, of course. After four or five times, he begins to say he doesn’t know. Ram Hari slows the motorcycle down to ask another driver coming in our direction where he saw the bus going to Syaphru Bensi. “Oh, it’s just ahead, just ahead,” the man says. Ram Chandra and Kate, about 50 pounds lighter, overtake us and zoom on at a lightning speed of 30 mph.

The road rounds a bend and we start to see the telltale red dust hanging in the air. Just ahead, the bus to Syaphru Bensi has stopped in the shade and Ram Chandra is speaking heatedly with the driver. I will find out later that the bus driver had been told to stop at the Gerkhutar fork, but that our seats had already been sold to others, so they saw no point in waiting for us. For now, though, Ram Hari has pulled out his camera and asked the bus driver to take a picture of our group. Kate and I thank the Pandey brothers, and begin to climb to the top of the bus.

“What? You won’t sit inside?” the conductor asks incredulously.

We tell him, of course not, the view is better from up top, and besides, Kate says, “Wouldn’t you rather die on top of a metal box than inside a metal box?” The conductor doesn’t understand this, so we smile and climb up. The top of the bus is lined with steel grates, and the front half is filled with luggage covered by a tarp. Five or six boys sit on a metal box facing the front end of the bus, and they yell at us to come forward and sit with them. “Didi! Agadi aununa!” Kate and I nest ourselves among the backpacks just behind the boys and grip the steel rods tightly as the bus begins to accelerate. To our left is the Trishuli River, which we will follow for the next four hours on our way to Syaphru Bensi. The sky is clear and the sun is high. The air is clean and the mood is light. We all laugh, for the fun and to mask our fear. It has been four years since I have traveled on top of a bus on these rough Nepali roads. It has been too long.

Through the Looking-Glass #8

Published November 28, 2006 in the Telluride Watch

Time remains at a standstill in Gerkhutar village, a three-hour bus ride and 40-minute walk west of Kathmandu. I think of the film Pathar Panchaali, the first of Bengali filmmaker Satayjit Ray’s renowned Apu Trilogy. Ray takes the viewer to a Bengali village and focuses on a leaf rustling ever softly in the breeze, while a stream gurgles softly in the background. A Apu’s older sister Durga sits in soft focus on a swing in the background, singing a song to herself. Ray holds this scene for what seems like a good three or four minutes, expertly conveying the slowness of life in an Indian village.

In Gerkhutar I am living that slowness. The afternoon I arrive in this village I spend some time talking with the brothers of the house, sharing news of friends I first visited Gerkhutar with five years ago. After 20 minutes of catching up, I look at my watch to see that it is still only early afternoon. Ram Chandra Pandey suggests taking a walk around the village, and we head down the path that runs between the Pandey’s buffalo stables and their neighbors’. The path continues through fields of millet to the village’s school where Ram Chandra is a teacher and around a Kali temple that appears to be growing out of the side of a pipal tree. Behind the school and temple is a local shop where the men of the village congregate to drink tea and discuss politics. I notice Maoist slogans on every wall. “Maobadiko mukti morcha jindabad!” Long live the Maoist movement! Ram Chandra is not a Maoist; he is of Brahmin lineage and his family owns plenty of land, a mill, a cow, three bulls and two water buffalo. But in Nuwakot District, where Gerkhutar lies, and to the north, the Maoists are active, in virtual control of more remote villages.

We pause to have a cup of tea with a few of Ram Chandra’s friends before we continue on to the Gerkhu Khola, a stream that runs through the small valley, and where families are cutting and threshing their rice harvest. We watch some teenage boys and their grandfathers bundling the rice stalks to prepare for threshing. They have laid down a few large tarps sewn together and placed a flat rock in the center. In turns, they pick up bundles of rice, lift them over their heads and bring them crashing down on the rock to let the kernels of rice loose. Four people stand in a circle around the rock, lifting their arms up and bringing them banging down in a round sequence. After three or four times, a bundle is tossed to the side, and another one picked up. I fight the long shadows of the afternoon sun and take photographs of them at work, hoping to press the action of rice kernels bouncing off the stone into the black and white emulsion inside my camera. I’ll know later if I am successful.

Our group of Ram Chandra, the German Tom, my Telluride friend Kate and our trekking guide Shiva continues walking up the valley, and 15 minutes later we meet the same group that was threshing rice before at another patch of their land. This time, I am told, I must do the work myself and not just watch and take pictures. In good humor, I tie a bandanna around my head, leave my camera with Kate and pick up a bundle of rice. They do not know that I have done this before, with friends near Kathmandu, and are surprised when I expertly twist the bundle of rice each time before bringing it down on the rock again. Soon Tom the German and Kate have joined me, and this time it is the Nepalis who are resting, watching us at work. We carry on for 20 minutes or so, working the muscles in our arms, backs and legs. “In your country it is all done by machine, isn’t it?” they ask. I honestly don’t know how rice is threshed in America, but I presume it must be done by machine, for who could afford that labor? “Yes, it is all done by machine in America.”

By now the afternoon sun has sunk behind the western ridge and we begin walking back to Ram Chandra’s house. On the way, we pass by another stream with a water-powered mill perched atop it. A fine dust flutters out through the cracks of the roughshod wooden walls, and a tall, thin man walks out, also covered in this dust. This is a pani gatna, a mill to grind corn that is powered by the rush of the stream. A large, flat round stone is turned by a turbine below, while a small piece of wood bounces off the vessel holding dried corn kernels, causing three or four pieces to slide out at a time.

This simple technology is ingenious. No polluting source of energy, no electricity to worry about being turned on or off, no firewood from the forests cut down, and no manpower needed, aside from the owner who watches the mill himself. Families bring their sacks of corn, millet, rice, and barley and place them in a queue, returning when their grain has been converted to flour. Tom the German tells Ram Chandra that when he sees this simple technology, he becomes angry at the patronizing view of undeveloped countries like Nepal that is prevalent in the west. “This is simply genius,” Tom the German keeps insisting, even as we reach Ram Chandra’s house.

Back at the house, the youngest sister-in-law is preparing dinner, this cooked over a wood stove. She grinds the achar by hand on a large flat stone, adding a green herb related to cilantro to ginger, garlic, salt, red pepper and fire-roasted tomatoes. This is a small condiment to the main meal of rice, vegetables and lentil soup that we eat off of brass plates. As is customary, Bhauju insists on serving us seconds, although it seems impossible to consume that much rice on one occasion. After dinner and a heated discussion on the corruption of development agencies in Nepal (the money stays in Kathmandu, we all agree, never reaching the villages where it is needed most), we go to bed. By nine o’clock, the village is quiet again, and the house soon sleeps, too.

Through the Looking-Glass #7

Published November 14, 2006 in the Telluride Watch

I love Kathmandu. I have spent hours and days and weeks and years learning its every curve, every blemish, every sharp edge and every soft corner – which gullies to duck into to avoid congested intersections, which soda shop the locals are loyal to and for what reasons, which neighborhoods offer hidden nooks of surprised silence. Those nooks of silence, however, have disappeared loudly and the city offers more chaos than I remember. And there is more that I have forgotten – that the screeching brakes and blaring horns will unsuspectingly seep under my skin, the thick miasma of dust and swampy black bus exhaust will fill my pores and the leering eyes of men on the street will make me want to disappear.

The effects emerge slowly, gradually building in magnitude. First, I ask for exact change from taxi drivers, down to the unnecessary last rupee. Then I start seeing through waiters at restaurants, speaking in clipped Nepali when the food takes too long to come. Finally, when Prayag, the technician at Ganesh Photo Lab who taught me everything I know about using a darkroom, has forgotten a small request I made of him and I belabor the point for a good five minutes, I know the city has gotten to me and I need to get away. With my friend Kate, I hire a guide and we’re off to the mountains, with a brief layover in a village named Gerkhutar, a stone’s throw from the banks of the Trisuli River just west of Kathmandu.

We set out for the bus park early on Friday morning. We walk still-deserted streets from Naya Bazaar to Balaju on the northwest side of the city. Milk trucks deliver 14-rupee plastic bags of milk to shopkeepers just opening their shutters, and health-conscious middle-aged Nepalis make their rounds of the city on morning walks, men in warm-up suits and women in thick cotton kurta surwhals. We come across a few cows sauntering along the path and Nepalis stop to offer brief worship by touching the cow’s forehead and then their own; the cow, as an incarnation of the goddess Laxmi, is sacred in Nepal. Kate and I are quiet on the walk. We’d been up late the night before packing, and the 5:30 AM alarm has still left us groggy. Our friend Ripu who will see us off at the bus station jabbers incessantly. Kate and I exchange glances and she rolls her eyes. Later she will tell me of her intense distaste for exuberance like Ripu’s before 8 AM, or whenever she’s had an appropriate amount of caffeine. This morning both criteria remain unmet.

By the time we round the base of Swayambhunath Hill and near the bus park, city life is in full swing. Vegetable hawkers crowd the sidewalk, as do vendors selling cheap Chinese bandanas, backpacks and shoes. I haggle over the price of a kilo of apples with a Terai fruitseller. When he refuses to drop below 40 rupees for his Chinese apples, I move to the next one down the line, who happily gives me a kilo of Kashmiri apples for 35 rupees. Kate and I stand off to the side of the road waiting for our bus to arrive, and I look up to see my friend Pasang heading in our direction. She is returning from the campus where she teaches English literature every morning from 6:00 to 7:30 AM, and stops to chat for a few moments before she heads back into town to her office job with a Nepali NGO.

Our bus arrives and we climb on, stowing our backpacks on the massive transmission box to the left of the driver. I had made a point to get seats in the front of the bus, hoping my long legs would fit more comfortably on this local bus. They do, but I’ve learned the price Kate and I will be paying for the leg room. Our seats are directly behind the driver on the right side of the bus, and he lays on his horn every 30 seconds or so to alert drivers in front of him to let him pass, or to alert oncoming drivers while rounding a bend. Three hours of this screeching, we both say to each other. “Can’t wait to get to the village,” I add.

And so we’re on our way. I have taken the necessary avomin to prevent motion sickness, and it leaves me not wanting to talk to anyone, an unfortunate condition to be in when everyone on the bus wants to talk to the foreigner who speaks “such clear Nepali.” The old woman to my left will only be on the bus half-way to Trisuli, she tells me, grasping onto my elbow when the bus rounds a particularly hairpinned turn. The man in the seat behind me leans over my armrest to ask me where I work, where I learned Nepali, whether I’m married. Typical conversation, really. He begins asking more personal questions, where I stay in Kathmandu, what my mobile phone number is. I ask him why he needs to know that, and he persists. “I don’t have a phone,” I lie. Usually this kind of excuse is seen for what it is: an untruth and a clear message of not wanting to give information, but without insulting someone by coming out directly and saying that. Again, he persists. “And what about when your friends want to reach you? How do they do that?” I don’t answer him, and he gets off the bus after a few more minutes.

Our next stop is Paintis Mil, at the 35-km mark from Kathmandu. This spot is famous for radishes, and when we all climb aboard the bus again after a short tea break, many passengers are now cradling bunches of long white radishes with their greens still attached. Only 20 or so kilometers more to go from here, and with most of the hairpin turns behind us, we’re almost to Trisuli. When we reach the main bazaar and get off the bus, I realize that although the Pandey family of Gerkhutar knows we are arriving on the 7:45 bus from Kathmandu, we didn’t actually discuss where we would meet. It has been five years since I’ve stayed with this family, and I can’t instantly recall the faces of either of the brothers who might be coming to meet us. I walk up and down the 300-meter length of the bazaar a few times hoping someone will recognize me and take us up to their village. When this doesn’t happen, we decide to walk up the road to Gerkhutar.

I don’t remember the walk being very long, but once we start up the hill east of Trishuli in the full mid-day sun with our packs on our backs, I realize I was wrong. After 30 minutes walking, I smile sheepishly to Kate and say my memory may have been mistaken. And just as I say that, I hear a motorcycle puttering up behind us, and Rami Hari Pandey comes to a stop. We greet each other in a flurry of namastes, and he explains that when he came out of a meeting, a friend told him he had seen us walking up to the village, so he knew to catch up with us on the road. I hop on the back of Ram Hari’s motorcycle for the rest of the way up to his house while Kate and our guide Shiva sit in the shade and wait for Ram Hari’s friends to come retrieve them.

The flurry of namastes continues at Ram Hari’s house when I greet the family I hadn’t seen for five years. I reacquaint myself with the six children of the joint-family home, remembering which children belong to each of the three brothers of the house. Kate and Shiva arrive and we sit in the quiet of their front porch, joined by the youngest brother Ram Chandra and a German fellow named Tom who is volunteering at a local school.

Time slows down, coming to a virtual stop. A girl walks two buffalo down the road in front of the Pandey home, their tails swishing away at flies. A breeze rustles the flowers growing in the front yard and the conversation dies down for a moment. It is quiet in Gerkhutar and there is no dust or bus exhaust clogging my lungs. Rather than feeling the incredible sense of urgency that is Kathmandu, I find myself noticing every breath I take and my ears willingly opening themselves up to take in the sounds around me. Ram Hari’s eldest daughter Pooja comes onto the porch offering freshly-picked papaya from their land. I exhale and taste the sweetness of the fruit.

Through the Looking-Glass #6

Published November 7, 2006 in the Telluride Watch

Many Westerners have become enchanted with Nepal since it opened its borders some 50 years ago. Before I first traveled here in 1998, friends talked of having ‘fallen in love with’ Nepal. I didn’t quite grasp the concept of falling in love with a country, until I fell in love myself.

Nepal is a poor country, ranked 200^th of 233 countries in terms of GDP per capita, with an unemployment rate of 42 percent. The roads in Kathmandu are pock-marked and littered with trash; the roads leading out of Kathmandu are worse, and many people die every year when buses fall of precarious cliffs. Cities are dusty and polluted, and drinking the tap water can bring on intestinal distress that can last for days. Politicians are believed to be corrupt and bureaucrats nearly impossible to deal with. So why is it that we love Nepal?

The Himalayas are a huge draw, especially for us Telluriders used to the jagged peaks of the San Juans. Even from Kathmandu, the Himalayas shine majestic on clear mornings. When you travel close enough to touch them, their grandeur renders people speechless. Many travelers also came to Nepal on their search for the mythical Shangri-La, especially in the 1970s, lured in by the free-flowing hashish and mystical Hindu holy men inhabiting the temples. Others than are drawn here to give something back to the world by volunteering for various social causes in a country where the need for such help appears endless.

But much like in Telluride, where we came for the skiing and stayed for the summers, in Nepal it is something else entirely that keeps drawing us back. It is the people – ever smiling, ever hospitable, ever willing to share with someone they’ve known only a moment. That’s what makes us fall in love Nepal and keep coming back again and again. Nepalis are a fun-loving people, able to overlook daily hardship to share a joke, a dance or a song with friends. This is especially prevalent during the Tihar festival.

On the third day of the festival, Kathmandu is alive with light. It is the night of Laxmi Puja, and Kathmanduites light candles and butter lamps in every window and doorway in their homes to invite the Goddess Laxmi to bless their homes with prosperity. The legend behind this holiday tells the story of a selfish king who became angry with her daughter and banished her to the forest to live as the wife of a penniless man. One day the king removed his priceless pearl necklace while bathing and a crow picked it up in his beak and flew away with it. The crow flew to the forest and dropped the necklace near the princess’s home. The princess recognized the necklace as her father’s and promised to return it if he met one condition. On the night of the Goddess Laxmi’s annual tour of the kingdom, every house was to sit dark except for the princess’s. The king agreed to the condition and on the night of Laxmi’s visit, every house in the kingdom was dark except for the princess’s small hut in the forest. Laxmi was drawn into the princess’s house by the light and bestowed endless prosperity on the princess and her husband. The king ultimately became poor himself, while the princess reaped the benefits of Laxmi’s charity.

Laxmi Puja is also the night that groups of women visit houses in their neighborhood to play Bhailo, which is similar to the American Halloween tradition of trick-or-treating, but with much more theatrics. In modern-day Kathmandu, non-profit organizations have started playing Bhailo to raise money, and I have joined the Buddhist Child Home, an orphanage in Kathmandu, on their Bhailo tour.

A handful of adults leaves the Buddhist Child Home in the afternoon with 30 young children, some in costume, all clambering to hold the adults’ hands. Santosh and Sonam, boys of about ten years, lead the procession with a banner proclaiming their Bhailo program. The orphanage staff lugs speakers and a sound system along, while a few adults play the madal drum. We make our way to the first house and the group begins by singing a traditional song, and the whole group joins in singing the chorus, “Bhaile Re,” a phrase meant to spread good wishes of prosperity. Then the children take the stage, performing the dances they have been practicing for weeks, all to traditional Nepali folk songs. First Saru and Sapana perform the most traditional Bhailo dance; then Sapana and Sarita are joined by Saroj and Sudip to do a couples’ dance; finally Sanjay, Sabin, Samir and Suman perform a comical men’s dance where they flaunt their strength. The dancing and singing continues for another 30 minutes, and then the homeowner emerges from her home with a bamboo tray stacked with fruits, rice and money. The children sing a thank-you song and we pack up and move on to our next destination.

This pace continues until well into the night, and as the evening wears on, the children become a little more weary. The adults do too, and so at one home, the orphanage chairperson’s husband Rudra puts a different Nepali folk song in the CD player and the adults have their turn at the dance. I am sitting on the ground with the children, and demure when they ask me to come up, just like a good Nepali girl would. It is only after they insist for the third time that I stand up and join the group of dancing men. I let my arms flow to the music, and jump and hop about, doing my best imitation of a Nepali dance. The crowd loves it and I am told later than some neighborhood spectators went to get more people to come watch the kuirini dance like a Nepali.

After visiting a few more homes, the group finally calls it a night at midnight and returns to the orphanage for dinner, where the staff serves up obscene quantities of rice, dal and greens and the exhausted Bhailo participants eat it up quickly before turning in. Throughout dinner, though, the joke-making and laughing continues, among the adults and children. As long as there is food to eat and fun to be had, this group is happy. That is the lesson that Nepalis teach Westerners, and that is what draws us back time and time again. The chance to laugh freely with friends and enjoy a moment for the moment itself, without worrying about worrisome things.

Through the Looking-Glass #5

Published October 31, 2006 in the Telluride Watch

“How do you like Nepal? Is it fun?” the woman selling vegetables on the side of a busy street asked me. I was returning from the bazaar just after dark and had stopped for some fried mutton momos (dumplings) served up on a leaf plate from a street vendor. The woman caught my eye and I offered her a momo. “Of course it’s fun,” I replied. “This time of year, especially, with people running here and there celebrating Tihar.”

Along with a few fruits I recognized (guavas, amlas) she was selling hadgala, a fruit I had never eaten that was alternately described to me as delicious, sweet and astringent. I found it to be none of the above. The woman was also selling makhamali flower garlands, made from a small purple thistle-like flower, that are a necessity for Bhai Tikka on the last day of TIhar.

Bhai TIkka literally means “Brother Tikka,” or “Brother worship” and on that day, sisters invite their brothers into their homes to complete a puja ceremony to pray for their brothers’ long life. In return, brothers give gifts of money and clothes to their sisters. Many legends tell different stories of the advent of Bhai TIkka, and one in particular speaks to the cleverness of a sister matched up against Yamaraj, the god of death.

A young girl, Jamuna, was with her brother, who was ill and near death. When Yamaraj arrived to take the brother away, Jamuna pleaded with him not to take her brother until she had finished the elaborate puja ceremony she was performing to her brother. Yamaraj agreed to wait, and Jamuna performed the puja, which included placing a garland of makhamali flowers around his neck, anointing his head with oil and placing dubo (Bermuda grass) behind his ear. When she was finished with the puja, Yamaraj started to prepare to take the brother away. Jamuna again pleaded with him, asking Yamaraj to wait until the flowers died, the brother’s hair dried and the dubo withered before taking him away. But of course, the makhamali flowers never died, the oil in her brother’s hair never dried and the dubo never withered. When Yamaraj came to find that out, he conceded his loss to the clever Jamuna and her brother was granted a long life.

Now on the occasion of Tihar, sisters still perform an elaborate puja, which includes giving brothers a garland of makhamali flowers, anointing their hair with oil, and placing dubo behind their ears. In the final part of the puja, sisters paint a seven-colored tikka on their brothers’ foreheads, which the brothers then do in return to the sisters. Bhai Tikka and its focus on strong bonds between brothers and sisters plays such an important role in the Tihar festivities, that if women don’t have their own brothers or men don’t have their own sisters, they ask a close friend to stand in to perform the puja, creating a strong bond between those friends.

The vegetable seller asked me if I had any brothers to give tikka to, and I told her that I had no brothers of my own, but that I had a few brothers in Nepal that I would be giving tikka to. One of those brothers is a very close friend, Rajman Bajracharya, who I came to know eight years ago. Three other American friends and I rented rooms in his neighborhood and we all began spending time with him, having tea at his house in the afternoon or visiting the small Newari snack houses to eat bara (lentil pancakes), chiura (beaten rice) and piro aloo (spicy potatoes).

Rajman is the middle brother in a very traditional Newari Brahmin household, where his elder brother paints thangkas and he and his younger brother make silver jewelry. The brothers and their wives, along with Rajman’s mother and unmarried sister lived together in one house, sharing all aspects of household life, from raising the children and cooking meals to performing the many puja ceremonies Newari families must perform in a year.

On Tuesday morning, I awoke at Rajman’s house and went upstairs to the kitchen to help the Bhaujus (sisters-in-law) prepare the elaborate bhoj (feast) the family would be eating after Bhai Tikka was performed. The women sat on straw mats around the kitchen chopping cauliflower, grinding garlic and ginger, and cutting up pieces of a buffalo I had never seen before. The most senior Bhauju manned the stove, first frying mushrooms in a gravy sauce, then boiling meat in a pressure cooker. I stood behind Bhauju watching her spoon in varying amounts of turmeric, ground cumin and salt, making mental notes so I could prepare the same foods myself. I made the choyella, a spicy dish of boiled buffalo. While the youngest Bhauju stood over me, I spooned in ground garlic and ginger, salt, turmeric and cayenne pepper as per her instruction.

After I finished the choyella, I stuck my head out the window to look down at the street where I saw Rajman and five of his neighborhood friends sitting in front of the newsstand. While the women were toiling in the kitchen, Rajman and his friends were hanging out. That is the holiday season in Nepal – women work hard in the kitchen and men play cards. I brought up the inequality with the women in Rajman’s family, but they all just smiled and said, “Tyesti chha.” (“That’s how it is here.”) They had their own fun, too, laughing when I asked questions about the different animal parts sitting on a plate on the floor. “Dherai sodhnu hundaina,” I was told. Best not to ask too many questions. So I relented, not pressing about the pieces of meat that looked suspiciously like intestines and ears.

A few hours later the family was ready for Bhai Tikka. Straw mats lined the perimeter of the kitchen, and mandalas had been drawn in sand in front of where the brothers of the house would sit to be worshipped. They sat in a line according to seniority, first the eldest brother, then Rajman’s brother-in-law, then Rajman and his son, and then his younger brother and his son. Each of the women, including me, took turns showering our brothers with chamel (uncooked rice) and marigold petals, offering dried fish and hard-boiled eggs, and then placing a red tikka on their foreheads. After the puja was finished, we then served the ten-plus-course feast to our brothers, including many meat dishes, mushrooms, cauliflower, spicy achaar, beaten rice and special yogurt from Bhaktapur. We took our turn to eat next, and then the celebration was finished.

I joined Rajman in his living room afterwards and we talked about the new bond we had formed. Eight years before we had been friends and neighbors, and now we had become brother and sister, one of the most cherished relationships in Nepali culture. “It’s a nice feeling today,” Rajman said to me. “We are beginning a new relationship from today, of brother and sister. One of the most important moments of a life, to get a younger sister like you.”

Through the Looking-Glass #4

Published October 24, 2006 in the Telluride Watch

Tihar lagyo. Tihar is happening! Dasain has come and gone, and the tens of thousands of Nepalis that returned to their villages to celebrate that festival have returned to Kathmandu. The crowds have returned and the bazaars are bustling with Nepalis rushing here and there, making necessary purchases before the five-day Tihar festival begins.

The festival’s roots are in placating Yamaraj, the god of the underworld, to stave off death. The crow and the dog are worshipped during the first two days of the festival. Kukhor Puja, as the dog worship is called, is the one day many Nepali dogs are not mistreated in this country where they carry little respect. On the third day, Laxmi, the goddess of wealth, is worshipped to bring prosperity into the home. On the fourth day, Nepalis worship cow dung, considered sacred, while ethnic Newars worship their own bodies. On the final day of the festival, sisters worship brothers in a ceremony known as Bhai Tikka. Tihar is Christmas, Thanksgiving, the Fourth of July and Halloween all wrapped up into one festival, offering fun equal to more than the sum of its parts.

The streets are awash with colors. Residents and vendors along the narrow streets of Kathmandu’s old city have strung multi-colored flags that criss-cross back and forth between buildings. At night, multi-colored strands of lights come on, and the streets glow red, blue, green and yellow. Street vendors crouch on every available square inch of real estate, hawking framed pictures of the goddess Laxmi, brilliant marigold garlands, and prepackaged tikka powders.

A trip through the main bazaars of Ason Tol and Indra Chowk at 5 PM seems ill-advised. Men are returning to their homes from the office, and many women with their daughters are buying necessities for the festival. Pedestrians inch along at a snail’s pace, their progress impeded by street hawkers, while a few brash teenagers barge through the crowds, arms around one another’s shoulders, laughing loudly. These crowds remind me of Calcutta, where walking on the city streets, I found myself swept along with the crowd, no longer an individual in control of her own movement, but a small, albeit taller, part of a larger human mass.

I am swept up in the same way, walking down these narrow gallis. I am also swept up in the festivities, enchanted by the saris that hang from storefronts, banners of embroidered silk shining red, the pure rainbow of fabric bolts that line the shelves inside cramped fabric stores, and the sound of Nepali commerce, buyer and seller sounding agitated as they haggle over a price but smiling to one another when the transaction is completed.

Tihar offers five days of unabashed merry-making and Kathmandu is already abuzz with anticipation. Young children, mostly boys, light firecrackers on the street. The oldest in the group usually handles the delicate work of lighting first a wax match, and then the small firecracker, while the younger boys run away from it, fingers clogging their ears, squealing when the loud bang comes. Women busy themselves in their homes, cleaning meticulously and stockpiling the sugar needed to make sel roti and other Tihar sweets. Men gather in friends’ homes in the evening to play marriage, a complicated card game requiring the players to hold 21 cards in their hand at a time.

I learned to play marriage during the Dasain and Tihar festivals five years ago with the family of my then-boyfriend Sushil. We sat for hours in a circle on the floor, making sets and runs of three cards in our hand, vying to be the first one to see the special joker card and begin racking up points. Sushil’s older sister Sushila was one to watch out for. The cleverest card player in the family, she often went home with my rupees in her pocket. The only interruption to our card playing would be the arrival of food. The circular sel rotis made from hand-ground rice flour, sour achhars that had fermented for months in glass jars in the sun, and spicy potatoes fried with cilantro.

This festival season, I have already spent many afternoons and evenings playing marriage with Sushil and his co-workers, and with staff members of another friend’s trekking company. As with any gambling game, I have learned it is important not to get too arrogant. The first evening I played cards with my friend Ripu, I insisted on playing one point per rupee, while Ripu wanted to play four points per rupee. I went home that night with 50 of Ripu’s rupees in my pocket. The next night, my luck changed. I sat playing until late in the night, continually egged on by wanting to win back the 60 rupees I lost straightaway to Ripu in the first hour. I now stand 100 rupees poorer.

But Tihar is just now beginning! I still have five days to win back that money, and many hours to while away with friends. The mood in the city remains light, even though the peace talks between the Maoists and the Seven Party Alliance are currently stalled. No need to talk politics during a festival. While Nepalis celebrate Tihar to keep death at bay, they’re simultaneously enjoying life’s most fun vices, gambling, sweets and some measure of gluttony.

Through the Looking-Glass #3

Published October 17, 2006 in the Telluride Watch

Autumn marches on in Kathmandu. Where fall brings early snows and cold rains in the San Juans, in the Kathmandu Valley it ushers in afternoon breezes that keep kites high aloft in the sky and blow the mosquitoes away. Nepal’s monsoon ended with a bang right before my arrival here near the end of September. The afternoon I flew in from Bangkok, the sun shone high and the humidity filled my pores. Many people told me I brought the good weather with me; the previous four days had been cold and rainy, with low-hanging clouds in the hills.

The clouds that hang low in the hills are dangerous. They bring moisture that saturates the ground, causing landslides and ruining poorly-built roads. They also restrict the visibility of the small planes and helicopters that ferry trekkers, aid workers and residents to and from remote areas in Nepal. Every monsoon I have spent in Nepal I have read about at least one aircraft that has crashed into the side of the Himalayas. Four years ago, my dear friend Pasang’s husband was killed when the helicopter he was piloting crashed in the Khumbu region. That helicopter disappeared without a trace, as is not uncommon in that treacherous terrain. This monsoon caused a helicopter crash that in one moment on September 22 killed some of Nepal’s foremost conservationists along with dedicated foreign aid workers and diplomats. The loss is immeasurable.

In total, 24 people died when the helicopter crashed in Ghunsa, in a remote part of Taplejung District in far Eastern Nepal. The group had traveled there to attend and participate in a ceremony marking the handing over of the Kangchenjunga Conservation Area to a local council. This model had been implemented in other parts of the country as well with much success. “[The conservationists that died] proved that nature is best protected through grassroots ecotourism activities, and their projects are being replicated in Nepal and across the world,” said Kunda Dixit in the Nepali Times.

Dr. Chandra Prasad Gurung was among those killed in the crash. He was one of Nepal’s foremost conservationists and had worked for the past eight years as the country representative for World Wildlife Federation Nepal. I attended the first day of a three-day puja ceremony for Dr. Gurung on Friday, which had at least 200 people in attendance. Most people milled about, much like at a wake, sharing memories of those lost. Inside the living room, an altar to Dr. Gurung had been erected, and individuals approached it, draping katas (Tibetan silk scarves) around his photograph and lighting incense.

About 40 people surrounded the ghavri (shaman) leading the ceremony on Dr. Gurung’s front lawn. The Gurungs are an ethnic group from the middle hills of Western Nepal, and according to their funeral tradition a ghavri is invited to perform a puja ceremony and invite the departed soul back to earth. This happens on the first day, and on the second day, the soul is said to inhabit the ghavri’s body. On the third day, the soul is forever released from the bonds of earth. Next to the ghavri were a goat and a chicken to be sacrificed as an offering to invite Dr. Gurung’s soul. Dogs scampered about, seemingly sensing the blood soon to be spilled.

Upstairs in Dr. Gurung’s house, I sat with a few friends, all of whom had worked with Dr. Gurung. “I cannot make sense of his death,” said Tsering Tenpa Lama, also with WWF. “He talked about retiring in five years, and even then, he had so many plans for what he wanted to do next.” Jann, a Dutch man whose partner had worked with Dr. Gurung since the mid-90s, also wondered what lesson was to be learned from the deaths. “It seems you learn that life is precious, and you remember that for a while. But after a short time you again forget until someone else’s death comes.”

The community of Nepalis and foreigners involved in the conservation and development world is tight-knit; many of my Kathmandu friends knew and had worked with those killed in the crash. The main topic of conversation over the past few weeks has been the crash and the disbelief that these people are gone. Although I did not personally know any of those who died, sitting with friends mourning this loss, I was instantly taken back to the many times over the past year that the Telluride community has faced unexpected death.

In 2006, Telluride first lost Glen Harcourt, Bo Willse and Tim Hackett, then quite suddenly, Hoot Brown was gone. Again Jim Stewart and then David Gibson died. In Telluride then as in Kathmandu now, I did not personally know those who died, but to be a member of a close community is, in effect, to know everyone, and I was touched by all of those deaths. In June earlier this year, my friend Paul Green was killed suddenly in a car accident in Tibet, and in an instant I felt the cumulative effect of all of the death my community had experienced until then. It swept over me and preoccupied my thoughts for months to come.

In the wake of my friend Paul’s death, an email he had written just the week before he died was circulated among friends. He was in a remote region of Tibet working on his PhD research surveying the monasteries of a certain lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. “I feel so fortunate I can hardly believe it – to be here and involved in what I am. I actually feel like it is ‘my gompa’ there at Tsechu.” The friend that shared this email, Galen Murton, also wrote, “My grief is alleviated somehow in knowing that Paul was in his favorite place on earth, doing what he loved best.” And what more can you wish for a friend who dies unexpectedly? That they were happy, doing what they loved to do, up to the moment of their death.

The lesson remains the same, as with Telluride’s losses, as with Paul Green, and now as with Nepal’s losses. Death comes unexpectedly; best to be doing what satisfies you most and not settling for anything less. I took that to heart and followed my happiness to get back on the road again, camera in hand and never far from a good friend, a good adventure, a good meal, a good time. I spent this afternoon with a group of Nepali friends, harvesting rice, making lunch, playing cards, sharing memories, sitting on a hillside letting the temperate autumn breeze wash over me. There is nothing I would rather have been doing.

Through the Looking-Glass #2

Published October 10, 2006

Nepal's Dasain festival ended Saturday with the purnima (full moon) of the Nepali month Asoj. The five days leading up the purnima are a host to a countrywide massacre of water buffalo, goats and chickens, offerings to the goddess Durga who is celebrated during Dasain. Any Nepali will tell you that Dasain means meat, meat and more meat, and many did tell me that throughout the week. I was invited to many gatherings throughout Dasain, all featuring absurd quantities of meat -- barbecued meat, fried meat, grilled meat, roasted meat, steamed meat, and the Newari specialty of choyella, boiled water buffalo that is heavily spiced. It's tough to be a vegetarian during Dasain, but even tougher to be a goat, I figure, so I indulge.

At the Dakshin Kali temple south of Kathmandu, devotees began lining up Saturday morning at 4 am to worship the wrathful goddess Kali, an incarnation of Durga. I arrived a bit later than that, but the queue still wrapped around the temple three times and over the bridge and then some, many devotees pulling resistant goats or carrying frightened chickens along with them.

The smells of Nepali temples are at once inviting and revolting. The scent of sandalwood and jasmine incense wafts around the perimeter of the temple, while the smell of singed goat hair rushes out of the butcher's shed, where bodies of goats are lined up outside, severed heads stacked on top. An old woman tries to cut the queue with her dead goat by dropping the sack containing the goat corpse through the open wall. The butchers tell her to go to the end of the line, while she tries to use her age to her advantage. "I am an old woman. Respect someone older than you and clean this goat for me. I cannot wait." The butchers will not relent, and one of them hefts the sack up again, and the woman drags it to the end of the line.

Around the temple courtyard, priests sit cross legged in the shade of their umbrellas putting tikka on devotees' foreheads. One old woman offers tikka from the base of a tree. She first applies a sticky red and then yellow paste to my forehead while reciting a Sanskrit blessing. She then affixes the tikka (uncooked rice mixed with yogurt and red powder) to my forehead, and uses a u-shaped stamp to place a yellow marking below the tikka. It is customary to offer money to a pandit for the blessing and I give her 10 rupees (about 14 cents). She balks and insists on the 50 rupees (70 cents) other foreigners have given her. I've never bargained for a blessing before, and am a bit taken aback. Showing me a hundred-rupee note, she says, "This was for two." I hand her a 20-rupee note, a completely sufficient price for the blessing. "Fine, if that is what you are giving me, then I must take it," she says. Commercialism has reached the temples.

While most Nepalis were worshipping the goddess Durga, I paid my respects to the human Durga, a dear friend and social worker Durga Mainali. I came to know Durga in 2002 when along with a group of friends, I began visiting an orphanage that Durga ran. At that time there were about 15 children, from infancy to about 12 years old. They all lived in three rooms in a flat on the busy road outside Bouddhanath Stupa. There was not enough funding to send the children to school, and Durga relied on outside help from friends to play with the kids and teach them simple things.

Durga is a remarkably resourceful woman, and over time she secured the funding to send the children to school, although she and her small staff still struggled to feed the children and provide them with meat and milk, expensive commodities for an organization with a tiny budget. The kids still needed an outlet from their cramped living quarters so we took them on field trips to the zoo, the botanical gardens and other places where they could run around.

The Buddhist Child Home has since moved to a new location in a compound with a courtyard and a decent-sized plot of land for vegetables. The population has more than doubled, and there are now 41 children living there. As I walk through the gate and up the steep driveway, three children run out and grab my hands to pull me inside, screaming, "Liz Miss! Liz Miss!" in their high-octave voices.

I sit down with Durga to discuss the Buddhist Child Home's current situation. Through friends of friends and a volunteer placement service, more foreigners have come to help Durga and the Buddhist Child Home, and one American, Nina Henning, has completed some fundraising stateside to support the home. Locally, there is a group of Nepalis that gives a fixed amount every month to support the food budget, and many people have donated books, school supplies and office equipment. The foreign involvement has effected an unexpected, but not unsurprising consequence: the principal of the school that the children attend is now refusing to provide the scholarships she once did. If there are foreigners involved, she reasoned, the home must have enough money to pay the full school fees.

Three of the older boys come in wheeling a 30-kg sack of rice over the cross-bar of a children's bicycle. One of the house staff follows with another 30-kg sack of rice over his shoulder. The total of about 130 pounds of rice will only feed the children and the house staff two meals -- that night's dinner and the next day's lunch.

Even with the extra help, both of money and extra hands, each day is a struggle for the Buddhist Child Home. Durga is an optimist, though, always smiling and laughing, despite circumstances to the contrary. But every so often her fears show through her smiling facade, and now is one of those times. With tears welling in her eyes, she says the words heard in similar conversations all over Nepal, "Garho chha. Jiban garho chha." (It is difficult. Life is difficult.)

Through the Looking-Glass #1

Published October 3, 2006 in the Telluride Watch

"The Himalayas aren't going anywhere, they're just getting taller," a Telluride friend said to me before I left the Happy Valley for Nepal a few weeks ago. Turns out he was right. As for Kathmandu, the chaotic city I called home for three years, it's just gotten bigger and busier.

Returning to Kathmandu after 3 1/2 years living stateside, I feel like a modern-day Rip Van Winkle. It feels like not a moment has passed, and my 3 1/2 years of life lived in Telluride vanish from my mind as if I never attended a festival, never hiked the Wiebe, never walked down Main Street. The net effect is as though I have awoken from a long sleep to find that nothing has changed, but everyone has a mobile phone.

In 2003, only a few expat friends and a few well-off Nepalis I knew had mobile phones. Today, they are ubiquitous. Even the Indian fruit-sellers on the street chat on their mobile phones between sales. I was looking forward to this trip to escape from the hectic life I used to know to be endemic only to the United States and other developed countries. Now with mobile phones and broadband internet access, Kathmandu is more connected than my own home in Two Rivers, where cell phone reception is tenuous and I still rely on dial-up internet access. Now, as ever, it is up to me to choose the connected lifestyle over the escape I told myself I was seeking. As I write this column on a Nepali friend's laptop and send text messages to friends on a borrowed mobile phone, I now hear myself saying I'll find my escape in the mountains next week...or maybe the week after.

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I arrive in Kathmandu in the middle of Dasain, Nepal's biggest festival, celebrating the triumph of good over evil. Dasain is Nepal's Christmas equivalent, and scores of Kathmanduites run around buying gifts with their Dasain bonuses, usually one month's extra salary. Traditionally, urban residents return to their ancestral villages for the end of the festival to give and receive blessings among their large extended families. For the past four or five years though, due to the Maoist conflict, many people avoided the very real possibility of extortion, imprisonment, torture and death, and remained in Kathmandu for the holiday. This year, with a UN-monitored cease-fire in place, families that have not visited their villages in years are headed home, and a palpable lightness in the air reflects that.

The Maoist conflict has raged for over ten years, and the body count has reached 15,000 in that time. The guerillas, led by Comrade Prachanda and Baburam Bhattarai, waged a people's war throughout the Nepali countryside, demanding the establishment of a republic and the abdication of the king in the only Hindu kingdom in the world. (The Maoists adhere to the philosophy of Mao Tse Tung, but are in no way backed by the Chinese government.) Cease-fires have come and gone over the past ten years, but there is a strong and certain hope among Nepalis that the current one will stick. The US Embassy in Kathmandu is less certain, sending emails to the American population here to be wary of demonstrations leading up to the October 27th expiration of the current cease-fire.

Nepalis have another reason to be more content with the current political situation -- after weeks of demonstrations last April, King Gyanendra abdicated power, ending his 15-month absolute dictatorship. The last elected parliament was reinstated, the Maoists were incorporated into the government and plans for a constitutional assembly and a new round of elections were made. Everything in Nepal takes longer than it would in the West, even more so at the political level, so the country remains in a holding pattern. Even so, the most cynical of my Nepali journalist friends remains optimistic that the country is progressing, and the end of Nepal's violent conflict is truly in sight.

Although it appears to be near its end, the conflict has left permanent scars. Some months back, I read a story in the New York Times recounting some of the stories behind the conflict. One of them was accompanied by the photograph of Devi Sunwar, a beautiful Nepali mother with striking grey eyes, taken by an American friend Tom Kelly. Devi's daughter had been killed by the Army, suspected of being a Maoist. Her daughter's killers had not been prosecuted, and Devi's sorrow screamed from her eyes. At the time, I was so moved by the photograph that I downloaded it onto my computer. Even though I have so many close friends that have been affected by the violence in Nepal, this one photograph became the face of the conflict for me.

The other day I went by the office where I used to work and was surprised to find a woman working there with the same steel eyes. My former colleagues had arranged a Dasain party, and I had arrived just in time. I sat on a bench on the edge of the courtyard, observing the light-hearted banter among the group. The woman with the grey eyes came over to sit next to me and she said I had probably read her story in the newspaper. This was Devi Sunwar.

Tom's wife Carroll Dunham runs a company called Wild Earth, which makes herbal soaps, as an income-generating project for women who have been displaced due to the Maoist conflict. Hearing Devi's story, Carroll brought her into the fold of Wild Earth, and she was now among the staff that makes traditional cold-process handmade soaps for both domestic and foreign markets.

I asked Devi if she was having fun at the Dasain celebration, for I and the rest of the staff certainly were. "Of course parties like this are fun," she said, a smile wavering on her face. "But there is an ache in my heart that will not go away." Devi and her family could not return to their village. Even with the relative calm, there was danger for them at their home, she said. She would spend Dasain in Kathmandu with her two sons and her husband, celebrating the triumph of good over evil, still reeling from the real-life loss of her daughter in a war not as simple as the mythological one being commemorated.