stealing! part 2: nepal

Again, I'm taking stuff from Alex and Sarah's blogs that I don't want to forget. As reference, here and here are my entries on Nepal. Extra thanks for Sarah and Alex for being such entertaining documentarians. I just want to make sure my friends enjoy these entries as much as I have.
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Alex: From the Delhi Hustle to Relaxed Nepal
Woke up at 3:30AM to catch a 6:30AM flight to Nepal. The Delhi airport was hectic, and we really doubted we were going to catch our plane with all the crap that we had to go through to get checked in and through security. As a funny side note, the characteristic of Indian drivers to act like they know where you want to go and then drive around and ask directions was not absent at the airport. The shuttle that took us to our plane stopped and asked which plane was going to Nepal to some people on the runway.

The flight was only 2 hours and the Nepal airport left a great first impression on us. It was really laid back, uniquely decorated, and easy for us to get through customs and get our luggage. We got a free visa because we were only staying three nights, and the customs officers were genuinely patient and friendly. The first unsmiling face was the man at the money-exchange who stood behind a sign that said "We Value Your Smile." Note: Don't get money changed at the airport because they take commission and give a bad rate. Second note: 500 and 1000 Indian rupee bills are "illegal" in Nepal, so don't do what we did and bring these expecting to exchange them.

Our cab driver hooked us up with a Hotel we really liked (despite our distrust that he only cared about commission), and we got a double with a balcony overlooking the city. There is a school right outside our window where we can see about 5 floors of classes being held, hear kids singing, and distract some of them from paying attention. Other sounds of the city also pleasantly make it to our balcony including birds and mystical eastern music. We spent the first day wandering around the main market for tourists, where one can find any kind of Tibetan art, religious tools, fabrics, musical instruments, and outdoor sporting equipment. Kathmandu has a really neat feel that is much less industrial and filthy than most cities we've seen in India. The shopping area is much more oriented for foot-traffic, and there are endless small shops, restaurants and hotels.

In most Indian cities, there's a Café Coffee Day on every corner, as well as McDonald's, Sony, Adidas, and all kinds of chain stores. The pizza we had for lunch was also the closest to American-style food we have had for a month, and it tasted GOOD! We're now in the process of seeing if there's a way to extend our trip in Nepal.

Last Morning in Nepal

Though we were exhausted, we barely slept last night. Probably because we were sad to be leaving Nepal today. We watched the beginning of "Be Kind, Rewind" and half of "Into the Wild" on our rented DVD player. We had breakfast on the balcony again, which consisted of delicious fruit pancakes (mango and banana mixed into the batter), fried eggs, fried potatoes, and coffee. I cut another fresh mango up with my pocketknife for dessert. After casually packing up our things while the school kids outside did their morning games and chanted the Nepali pledge (we think), we went out around 10 to get some last-minute shopping done and exchange some of the crappy DVDs we bought for better ones. We had bought DVDs from a shop close to our hotel, called "Roadhouse," for 150 rs (about $2.50) each, and found that the ones that were still in theaters, like the new Indiana Jones movie were recorded in a theater. The older movies were real DVDs, but a little bit scratched. The nice shop owner let us exchange whatever we wanted. I bought a prayer wheel, and a few things that were more difficult to find in India, then met back up at the Hotel to check out. I hastled with the desk a little bit to give us a better exchange rate for our Indian rupees and a free ride to the airport. Leaving Nepal was not quite as relaxed as comming, and there was a 1356 nepali rupee charge to leave. We were frisked and had our baggage scanned 3 different times (even once on the runway just before boarding our airplane). I forgot to put my mango-peeling pocketknife in my checked bag, and the security was very glad to keep it for themselves :( . The flight was only 40 minutes to Varanasi.

Sarah: India Power, No Sleep No Shower
We left nepal with sad faces yesterday and are now in Varanasi. It's really hard to sum up several days in one blog. We went trecking (hardcore hiking?) outside of Kathmandu and I got a wicked sunburn-which is shockingly turning into a tan. weird. it's that himalayan sun. Of course it was totally beautiful etc. , and we were totally wiped out by the end. The next day was a whirlwind tour of Kathandu. The first stupa we visited was pretty amazing. We got lost in a Hindu cremation site full of scary monkeys with the crazy eye. Then we had dinner outside of the biggest stupa in the world with a guy from washington state. One of our friends met him in delhi. He's going to school in nepal, and gave us the tour of the campus/monastary. I'm seriously thinking about sumer school there next year. It's really cheap.

It started to pour (early monsoon) and of course there was no power. I think they do organized power outages every day. We ran and splashed through giant puddles of nastiness in the dark to a hole in the wall for some chang. chang is a milky white alchohalic substance that is fermented in a rag and then squeezed out into questionable looking buckets stored on the floor. We sat at our table with one single candle for light while our server juggled his crying baby and our cups of chang. It was actually not that bad. If you didn't think about the rag it came out of. I offered to hold his very unhappy little girl while he made some kind of concoction on the stove. She was the cutest thing ever.

Nepal

After that first day of shopping, we decided to get out of the city, so we set up a outdoor trek with a man named Rambo. Yes.

So, it wasn't as rough-and-tumble a hike as you'd expect from a man named Rambo. In fact, Rambo didn't go with us, Suresh (rhymes with letch, it certainly does) did. It was an arduous walk, especially for those of us, ahem, who for instance haven’t exercised for months. We went from Sandhu to Nagarkot, where, so say some sources, we could have seen a speck on the horizon if it were a really clear day, and that speck would have been Everest. Not a big loss—the view was otherwise spectacular. The hike was bracing, and the air got cooler as we went, which was a blessing. We stopped for a Pepsi halfway there, at this crazy shack in the middle of nowhere that had Pepsis (every Nowhere in India similarly has at least Coke, Pepsi and Limeca). I apparently left my camera bag there, and it was picked up by our guide, who as a joke pretended not to have it. But luckily he really did and I didn’t have to go back. No words to describe the relief! He was an oddly jokey guy.

That evening we went to a restaurant called New Orleans, which is apparently a chain. The food was wonderful! We haven’t had bad food this whole time, and lately, it’s even been not making us sick. This place even reminded me of a French Quarter courtyard a little bit, tucked in the middle of the Thamel part of Kathmandu. Who would have guessed? We had veg. jambalaya (we’re all vegetarians, another great facet of our group dynamic), a few other things, and then decided to rent a DVD player. We were able to from the hotel, and we watched a heavily pirated DVD of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Long-Ass Name. It was such poor quality, we decided to return it the next day, and instead I got all 7 seasons of Sex and the City.

I like this show OK, but I mostly got it because I’m a girl and all girls are supposed to have and to like it. But as he was showing a few random spots of the DVD to prove to me it wasn’t a horrific pirating job, he stopped on a few choice conversations and I thought “It’s like they’re talking about ME!” So now I’m glad I have them to watch again.

The next day we went on a driving tour with Hera, my favorite driver/guide. He didn’t speak great English, but he seemed honest and genuinely helpful, which was more common in Nepal than in India, but still not the norm in the tourist industry, where white people just become giant money signs to most. He took us to a few stupa (shriney places with bits of the Buddha and other Buddhist junk buried up in there). It’s hard to describe them (obviously, for me at least; see previous parenthetical notation), but the first one we went to we loved. It was covered in prayer flags, and we wanted solemnly to circle the entire stupa and spin every prayer wheel, but Hera wanted to make sure we didn’t miss any of the side-project shrines along the pathway. All of these places, even the holiest shrines, are littered with people selling, selling, selling. Which seems a little out of place, but whatever. It’s not like it’s surprising.

We then went to a place where there are supposedly burnings (cremations), but they weren’t doing them that day, so we paid about $5 as, in Sarah’s words, a donation to renovate the place. It wasn’t in great shape, and there really wasn’t much to do but see the stone (done), get lost (very done), go accidentally into the Hindu-only section which looked way more interesting (yup), and be terrified of the monkeys. We were in fact scared of some of the monkeys that were blocking our path at one point, but they scattered as we came up, and in fact, one stayed behind to open the door the rest of the way, cautiously making eye contact as it did so, until it was all the way open, and the monkey went away. It was so polite! So the monkeys are OK, even though we saw them steal a bunch of junk from people. It was all in good fun!

Then we went to the largest stupa in the world, where supposedly a speck of the Buddha himself (though Sarah thinks this is true of all stupa, so it bears more research) is said to remain. It was so big, even we got sick of spinning the prayer wheels in the amazing throng of people circling clockwise. Finally we got out of it and had some chai masala, as we waited for Josh, a boy that Mari had met in Delhi, originally from Washington state, now studying Buddhism. His yearly expenses, including tuition, come to about $10,000 (just an interesting side note for those of you interested in studying in Nepal).

He turned out to be really nice. We ate at a nice rooftop restaurant near the stupa (Three Sisters restaurant), until it started raining, and we went for some chang (chung), the local Nepali rice beer. It’s white and tastes almost like a wine. But also, almost like a wet rag, as this is how it is made: you soak the rice, and then squeeze it out of the wet rag in a bucket, from which is it also served. Naturally, when one hears “wet rag” one pictures the dingiest, most threadbare and ancient rag they’ve ever seen in their lifetime. So there was a little getting over that, but in the end, we all liked the chang pretty well, and it was of course cheap. The rain precluded a visit back to Pashupati, and the full moon concert/celebration.

We had a terrifying taxi ride home—it started with him hitting a pedestrian, continued with nearly hitting a few cars, and then actually tapping a car, and then ended with zooming through the rainy, narrow streets of Thamel, towards our hotel. I really thought I was going to die, and was very sad, but glad that my last day had been in Kathmandu.

I’m now ready to join the summer program at the Buddhist academy next summer. There are Nepali and Tibetan language courses as well, which also appeal, but I don’t think they’d be as much use as the course on Buddhism. I’ve had so many close-to-spiritual experiences here, I feel this might be my foot in the door of theism (or whatever the opposite of atheism is). Sarah and I both really have our hearts set on it, if finances allow. And I have my heart set on my brother coming with me, too, for the six weeks. He’s never really spent time abroad, and Kathmandu seems like it might be his kind of place. Or at least the Buddhist part of it. I don’t know. I just know I loved it, and I want everyone to be able to love it as much as I do.

Kathmandu, Nepal; day 1

We arrived at Nepal at about 8:30am, Jetairways. We had slept 3 hours after an annoyingly overpriced stay in a falsely advertised hotel, and after a nice dinner and night out with J (now out of the hospital, and into her new digs, which are completely awesome).

The visa process was easy. We didn't even have to pay because we were only staying 3 nights (4 days). However, now that we love it so much, we're trying to figure out how to change our visa so we can stay longer, if we can change our flights, and cancel our train tickets.

Part of our instantaneous love of Nepal may have been comparing the airports of Delhi and Kathmandu. Examples:

India: get in line to check in. They tell you to get in the longer line to check in your luggage. Then you bring your scanned luggage back to the first line, and they check you in, after long, bitchy stares. They give Alex a check in form, but not you or Sarah. You don't notice this until you get to the front of the next line and the person tells you you need that departure form. So you go all the way back to row 7. You get two more bitchy stares, and two forms, grudgingly, which you fill out for five minutes, and wait in line, and take it to the man again. Who tells you it's an older, unusable form. Go to British Airways, where they apparently don't hate you, and get two of the correct forms. Fill them all out again. Go through security, where the man is supremely annoyed with you, as if it was your fault. Wait in line, get your passport checked and stamped. Wait in line, get your carryon stuff scanned and stamped. Find your gate. Start boarding the airplane. Realize that Alex did not get the proper stamp on his carryon, so he has to go through that whole process again. Freak out for five minutes wondering if you're going to miss the flight. Alex comes back. Get on a bus. Sit on the bus and extra five minutes because the plane wasn't ACTUALLY ready. Walk through the rain to the plane. Breathe sigh of relief.

Nepal: Walk into empty airport, Himalayas all around you, morning-gray, fog-moist. Fill out a few small, readily available forms. Get in a line of one person, and then they send you to the even shorter line, for a free visa. When we got ours stamped, Sarah said incredulously, as we were released into the wilderness of the city "That's it??" and the friendly visa-preparer smiled and said "You want more? We can do more if you want."

Anyway, first things, after we kind of argued with our prepaid taxi about where we were going to stay, he finally did talk us into a hotel not in our Lonely Planet, and for once trusting someone didn't turn out to be a mistake. The hotel was wonderful, and a great location, and a good price. In fact, we called him back this evening to thank him, and to ask him to drive us to our trekking adventure tomorrow.

The room is on the fourth floor, and has a balcony overlooking the city and the mountains in the distance. Something is wonderfully pleasant about the city. It's content, and happy, even though the crowding and the dirt and pollution are comparable to India, to which we so favorably compare it.

After naps (I was the only person with a successful one apparently), we walked down the road to the shopping district, which is pretty fantastic. I feel silly, but I mostly got DVDs and a CD (Michael Jackson's number ones. I might also get some Brittney Spears--popstars I like to listen to, but could never bring myself to support their career. Perfect for pirated discs). We walked and walked, and had a huge lunch of two pizzas, after which we resolved to spend less money on food (we had paid about $5 each for two giant pizzas, three coffees, two sodas, a milk shake, and an espresso; we are getting spoilt, but then again we're here all summer). I also got some tigereye earrings.

There are still the "touts" (great LonelyPlanet word for something that needs a word), and the hard sells, but there's something so much less cloying and clinging about everyone here. We had such a nice experience with the first clerk at the DVD store, that again set a nice tone for the rest of the day.

Long day made short, we came home with snacks, with a plan to go on a long walk tomorrow. We'll see a speck on the horizon at the end of it, and that speck will be Mount Everest.

Top of the world to you.