Catching up

Hey guys, sorry I haven't written for a while, we've been super busy and its been hard to get internet. 

Well, were back in London! We met up with Godwin right outside of baggage claim and took the train to Victoria Station. From there we got on the Tube back to the good old Ridgemount Hotel; everything actually went pretty smoothly for once.  We did a little shopping on Oxford Street so we could try and blend in with the London crowd.

 We took another stroll through the British Museum, just covering the highlights. Had some mighty fine fish and chips across the way and hopped on a bus for the War museum.

Now unfortunately we are leaving London, but we’ll be back soon.  We have a 6 hour flight to Qatar and then a 4-hour flight on to Nepal, hopefully they have TV’s!

Well were back in Nepal, for better or worse! It was an interesting flight in, no cows on the runway this time, which was nice. We were met at the airport by some friends and a van sent from the hotel which took us directly to the Tibet Guest House in the heart of Thamel. This would be our home for the next month or so. Watching Godwin’s face as we took our first ride around this interesting city was very entertaining. For someone who has never been in Asia he took it remarkably well.  As we drove by the garbage filled Baghmati River his face remained remarkably calm and only revealed a hint of “oh my goodness what the hell am I doing here”.        

Wow, big day. We’ve only been here a little over 2 days and it already feels like two months. Today we went to ACP (Association of Craft Producers). I always love going there, everyone is so incredibly nice and their products are beautiful. Also the President of ACP a woman named Meera Bhatterai, is one of the smartest people I know. The women who work at ACP have known me since I was 5 months old,  so almost as soon as I walk into the room their all shouting “Babu!” and beckoning me over to sit on their laps.

After a while we left the girls behind and decided to walk back to the hotel instead of taking a taxi, and I’m really glad we did. As much time as I have spent in Nepal it always amazes me how Kathmandu can vary, I love going out of Thamel (the main tourist spot) and walking through the actual city. It is still chaos but it is a different type of chaos. The streets are wider and the shops don’t just sell things for tourists. Instead they sell every day household items. We walked through and discovered a vegetable market, with all the locals bartering over onions and trading gossip. Several friendly goats munched away quietly at garbage in a corner. We walked through Durbar Square where people were selling strings of flowers for Shivaratri and plucked chickens with their necks broken hanging over the stalls.

Godwin and I got several books at a great local bookshop called Pilgrims. The Snow Leopard, Into Thin Air, and Siddhartha have now been added to my list of books to read.

(Who was the genius that decided to put 2 d’s in Wednesday?) Whew what a couple of days, we’ve all been super busy and tomorrow were leaving for the trek, so I’m going to try and get right down to it. Monday was Shivaratri (which means night of Shiva) we met up with Ram and his two son’s, Pradeep and Roshan. We caught a bus heading for Pashpadinath and once we got off we were immediately engulfed by a sea of people. It must have been really interesting for Godwin because he was at least a head taller then most of the people and could see above the crowd. At one point I asked him what was going on up there, he said that along the road in both directions as far as he could see it was packed with people, dogs and cows. Lucky for us we were heading the same way everyone else was.

We must have walked for at least 2 miles, always trying to keep track of each other through the dense crowd. We finally found an entrance that wasn’t jam packed with people and slipped through. We squeezed through a tight walkway with ramshackle huts on each side, and random Sadhus (holy men) passed out everywhere. As we crossed the river the smell of burning flesh filled my nostrils and I forced myself not to gag. As I looked upwind I saw that further along the river where the Ghats where they cremate their dead and then throw the ashes into the river. Between that, the smell of the rubbish filled Baghmati, the smell of hundreds of thousands of people and the smell of 20,000 sadhus getting totally baked it got kind of hard to breathe.

As we were climbing up a hill to get a better look at the festivities people started yelling and running. Not sure quite what was happening, we all looked to each other in confusion, then we all scampered up the walls if nothing else to avoid getting trampled but also to get a better look at what was going on. Unfortunately though we couldn’t see anything through the smoky haze. Later we asked Ram what he thought had happened, he said someone was probably teasing a Sadhu and then got into a fight, after which the police got involved and started hitting everybody in sight.

We finally made it up to the top of a small hill next to the river. From this vantage point we could see the masses of people poring in, and the fires burning the bodies of the dead, the Sadhus lying around surrounded by clouds of smoke and dogs scampering here and there. People dancing in their traditional cloths and some singing songs surrounded by people shouting and crying or sleeping. It was an amazing sight and I wish more people could see it. The beauty of cultures other then their own, and seeing and experiencing thing way it is outside of their own little worlds.

We ended our trip with a lap around a small temple, ringing a bell and got a tika (blessing) from the statue of a lion’s head. Then we walked back through the chaos, said goodbye and parted ways with Ram and his boys, climbed into a taxi and headed off.