Hello Friends!
Life in Kathmandu continues to be an endless source of surprises, lessons, and challenges. I am getting accustomed to life in the Nepali university system and I I attended a large Rotaract Conference in a town in eastern Nepal where . The 23rd of February was the celebration of Shiva Ratri (the night of Lord Shiva) when hundreds of thousands of devout Hindus from all over Nepal and India visit Nepal's largest Hindu Temple, Pashupatinath. Most recently I took an unexpected hike to the top of a small mountain where I stayed the night with some hermit-like Hindu holy men and three young students of Buddhist meditation.
Safal and I took an afternoon trip to the nearby town of Kirtipur. It is the equivalent of a college town in the U.S., but there are some distinct differences. The town is home to the students of Tribhuvan University, Nepal's largest and only public institution of higher education. The students are from all over Nepal and many of them come from very rural areas. As we walked around the campus, every wall and open patch of concrete was spray painted with Maoist-Communist emblems and political slogans. Safal told me that classes are often disrupted by political unrest and demonstrations and that it is very difficult to get a good education at this school. Nonetheless, it is the only option for most Nepalis. In order to pass a class, a student must pay the professor for extra tutoring outside of class and s/he must purchase special booklets with test questions at an unofficial univeristy bookstore. Fortunately, Kathmandu University is much more organized and legitimate. However, my classes are often subject to last minute cancellation by the professors and just yesterday I learned that all of my classes would be cancelled for the entire week! Now I am making a plan to travel around some of the town in the Kathmandu Valley.
On the 20th of February I took an hour long flight to the town of Biratnagar in order to attend a Rotary Conference. Good fortune or fate placed me in a seat next to a young guy who was going to the same conference! Without him I probably never would have made it to the conference, which was in a town to the north called Dharan Gopal. Due to some political unrest and strikes, the roads were closed to all motorized vehicles, so we hired a couple of Rickshaw drivers to pedal for over an hour to the next town where we could catch a bus. The conference was organized by the Rotaract organization, which is related to Rotary International, but the members of not Rotarians. They are young people ranging in age from 18-30 years old and most of them are wealthy and well-educated. Much of the conference focused on global warming and I was invited to give a 45 minute speech on my scholarship, US culture, and the relationship between my country and Nepal. I tried to offer an alternative perspective to the prevailing understanding of development and explained that the world cannot sustain such rapid growth and industrialization. We must look for simpler, more sustainable models and we are much more likely to find those models in the rural villages of the global East than in the developed cities of the West. The audience of 150 young Nepalis responded with applause, but I got the impression that my call of simplicity fell on deaf ears. In Latin America I saw a similar phenomenon: people get an image of what a "good life" looks like and this idea so often comes from Western popular culture (movies, music videos, magazines, etc.). Most will agree that a simpler life is a nice idea, but very few people in the world seem to be willing to try to live in such a way. I am trying.
I saw some men who seem to be living starkly simple lives during Shiva Ratri. Saddhus are men who have given up their homes and families in order to wander around the country with nothing but a small pot in which to cook their rice and maybe a small bag with a few possessions. I tend to over-romanticize this life, but it really does appeal to me. I am told that many of the Saddhus are just lazy men who couldn't handle the pressures of work and family life and so they just sit at temples and wait for donations from Hindu devotees. However, there are many honest Saddhus who are seeking a more authentic life away from the rat-race of the city. The Saddhus were lined up all over the Pashupatinath temple, some with dread-locks that could be measured with a yardstick and most selling handfuls of marijuana for a few cents. On this day only the government legalizes the sale and consumption of marijuana and its scent was hanging heavily all around the temples. The main streets around the temples were closed and they filled with hundreds of thousands of people, all lining up to visit this ancient, holy historical site.
A few days later my class was unexpectedly cancelled so I decided to take a hike in Shivapuri National Park, north of Kathmandu. I had no destination in mind, but I heard that the park is home to a couple of Buddhist monasteries. I walked for a couple of hours, uphill through beautiful, dense, green jungle before I reached the first of the monasteries, Nagigumba. After sitting for awhile, enjoying my lunch and the amazing view of the Kathmandu valley, I met three guys about my age who were hiking to the top of the mountain in order to stay the night with some Saddhus who had a hut there. They invited me to go along and finally I decided that I might as well. We walked for a few more hours and I learned about their lives in the Dharmashringa Vipassana Center. They volunteer at the center and they have each completed a handful of 10-day courses. They offered some interesting conversation and good, peaceful company on the way to visit the Saddhus. When we finally arrived at the top, we were greeted by two, thin old men with big beards and long dread-locks. The were very welcoming and, though my Nepali is still very basic, we communicated the most important messages through smiles and laughter. They cooked a huge meal of rice and curried vegetables before we all slept in a pile of blankets in their hut made of clay.
On the afternoon that I returned from Shivapuri, I met a young Australian traveler who had been traveling around Southeast Asia for the past 5 months. We became fast friends and spent the next week exploring that Kathmandu valley together. We danced to the music of Kutumba (the band whose music is produced by my landlord and who practices on the first floor of my building) at Momomania. At his delicious little festival we celebrated one of Nepal's most delicious foods. The momo is like a small Chinese dumpling, filled with anything from vegetables to meat to fruit to a sweet paste of milk and nuts. We also went to a Nepali movie theatre for the first time to see Slumdog Millionaire. If you haven't seen it, I recommed it.
Thanks again for reading. I hope to have some more adventures this week and I'll try to post them with some new photos very soon.
