Integration

October 7, 2011

One of the cultural differences between Nepal and the US that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately is about the level of integration in our lives. I notice a difference primarily in two areas, first, the extent to which different aspects of our personalities and life are integrated, and second, the extent to which individual lives are integrated with others around them.

First, some observations on integration within an individual: In the US, I feel like we take pride in the ability to compartmentalize our lives. We have the self we bring to work, the self we take out with friends, the self we bring home to mom, etc. While these are all obviously facets of the same person, it is striking what a different experience you can have with a person depending on the situation in which you interact with them and what personality characteristics they (consciously or subconsciously) present. On top of this, our days are intentionally segregated into work time or family time or relaxing time. Even if you try to mix them by brining work home or kids to work, in my experience this is difficult because each expects your full attention.

In Nepal, this kind of compartmentalization within a life just doesn’t seem as prevalent. I think the lack of personality segregation is largely related to the way social structures are set up. It’s hard to present a different person to friends and family when you live with your parents (or your husband’s parents) until they die and they pick who you’ll marry. And socializing in Nepal is not segregated the way we make a children’s table at family celebrations. In every village I’ve visited, everyone comes to the same place to socialize, regardless of age. Teenagers fly kites and chase cows right along with the little kids in front of the adults tending to their shops or cooking or washing. There seems to be less of a bubble around an individual and more of a bubble around a community. In addition, there is not such a defined split between work time/family time/relaxing time. You work when there is work to be done (in the case of tourism and agriculture) or when there is electricity (in the case of office jobs). Work comes home regularly and people leave the office randomly in the middle of the day (or unapologetically answer the phone in the middle of a meeting). It just seems to be accepted that things come up, work schedules are across the board very flexible, and it is understood that you are never 100% dedicated to a single task, because family is the clear priority and part of your mind is always on them. For Nepalis, the point of working is to provide for your family, so there is really no distinction between work time and family time. Going to the office is providing for your family just like spending time with your kids is providing for your family.

There are parts of this approach that are very appealing to me and parts that drive me absolutely nuts. I like the integrated personality bit. As I’ve grown up, I’ve been proud of my ability to cultivate different aspects of my personality. Yet they mostly still feel like distinct personalities within one body, and I think this may have been by design. It’s kind of like changing Barbie’s outfit—I can be ski bunny Elena, adventure Elena, academic Elena, domestic Elena, etc. I’ve had a number of people comment on the way my personalities kind of snap into place, most obviously when I’m trying to solve something and I go into business Elena mode. I think I would like to figure out how to better integrate all the different sides of me into one uniquely and honestly Elena Elena. I’m not quite sure how to go about this, but I’ll be working on it.

The part that drives me absolutely insane is the fluidity between work time, family time and relaxing time. On any given day, I have no idea if I will be working or not. Even if my boss had planned for us to work on a project on a given day, that may or may not happen depending on a variety of factors including but not limited to: the weather, the traffic, his family, the electricity, random Hindu holidays, the contracting process for new projects (no fax/bike courier here, you have to meet in person to sign and stamp contracts, and since the education buildings can take about 2 hours to reach from our office, this kills the day), etc, etc, etc. It’s difficult for me because I can’t really ever plan anything. I kind of just have to wait and see what happens that day, and then if by about 11 it looks as if work will not happen I can go do something. The consequence is that I am running out of cool places to go in the 6-hour window I typically have. I would much prefer to have hard working weeks/days and then predictable time off. A good thing for me to keep in mind as I continue to think about my long-term career plans.

The second big difference in the way Nepali and American lives are integrated is the extent to which we are dependent on others. I’ve commented before on how big an adjustment it has been for my host family to have an independent 23 year-old living with them. In fact just yesterday Radhakrisna was briefly talking to my mom on Skype and she was thanking him for looking after me and he told her, “Oh no no, I have learned she can take care of herself. She is like the whole of the family all by herself.” I don’t think this was intended as a complement, since lately he’s been trying to teach me what the role of the different family members is and why I cannot continue without a husband. But anyways, the difference is not just in family life but in work too.

The Nepalese economy functions through a system of intermediaries. There are lots of things here that you just cannot do for yourself, rather you hire someone who hires someone who does what you need do. At my office, instead of mailing a survey to a school to fill out, we hire someone to take a plane to the district with the surveys, then we hire another group of people to take the surveys to the school to fill them out, then the first person flies the surveys back where another set of employees transcribes the results. And all of this travel has to be arranged by a travel agent because the airlines do not take reservations directly. To some extent, subcontracting like this happens in the US, but here you could not do it all yourself. If you tried to book a hotel directly, they would charge you probably double what you would pay through a travel agent, even including the agent’s fees. And when the doorhandle came off my door, and I asked where I could by a screw to fix it, my host family looked at me like I was crazy. The next day they hired two people to come over with a screwdriver and this little bag of assorted screws and fix the door. Insane. I guess this a good full employment plan. If it takes five people to do a task I would do myself in the US, that’s five more employed Nepalis, but it strikes me as horribly inefficient.

There are a lot of consequences of this system, and the one I’ve found most interesting is how much you have to rely on other people. For a girl who prefers to do everything myself, this has been quite an adjustment. In the US, I certainly have people I can rely on in a pinch. I have an autoshop I trust and family to swoop in when I get in over my head, but on a day-to-day level I’m pretty autonomous. The primary take away I got from all the group projects teachers assigned throughout the years was that it’s faster to do things myself. And I don’t think is an uncommon approach. In the US, we’re pretty focused on either independence or on finding that one special person to support you. In Nepal, it just doesn’t work like that. You are not supposed to get everything from one person/place or do everything yourself. There is no Target, I have to go to four different corner shops to get all my cleaning supplies. Each member of the family plays some role in its support; it is not a one or two person island. And the same goes for businesses.

Here, I have to take a leap of faith and trust in random strangers to accomplish whatever it is I am trying to do. I’ve had to accept that things may not be done my way or exactly and they were planned… and that this is not the end of the world. While I am looking forward to the return of some level of consistency and quality assurance when I return to the US, I think this change has been good for me. And maybe, just maybe, I can maintain a chunk of my newfound faith in other people when I get home.
 

Dashimi

October 10, 2011

Tomorrow is the last day of the biggest Hindu festival in Nepal, Dasain. It’s a 15-day festival celebrating the victory of the goodess Durga over evil demons. In addition to some key activities on specific days, the Dasain period is when everyone goes home to their families and nothing in Kathmandu functions. It is this holiday that gave me the week off for my Chitwan/Lumbini/Bardia adventure and I knew one of the days I would be in Bardia (October 6) I would be stuck at the hotel with the other guests because the 10^th day is the main day when really nothing functions. A part of me still thought I’d be able to at least get food at the hotel, I mean come on, ski instructors work Christmas right? Aren’t there some nice Buddhists that could come feed me? But nope, everything was shut down. Luckily, my jungle safari guide from the previous day, Bardeep, took a liking to me and invited me to come home with him for the day’s festivities.

First, bit about the family: Bardeep’s mother lives about 16 km from Bardia in a traditional Tharu village made up of rice paddies and mud huts. When I first read about the mud huts in my Lonely Planet, I pictured the huts you see in photos of Africa, like maybe a one room small building with a grass roof. But in reality, saying that something is a mud hut is akin to saying the neighborhood has a lot of brick houses. Really all you know is the building material, but the actual structure can vary a lot. There were a lot of one-room tiny mud huts with straw roofs, but there were also some gigantic and really sophisticated multilevel structures. In some places I though the houses looked nicer than some Denver neighborhoods. Bardeep's family has a two-story mud hut housing 7 people (the mother, her older son, his wife, their 2-year old, plus Bardeep's sister and her 5 year-old son (her husband is working in India) and the family’s father (though I did not meet him because he was out in the paddies all day)). Bardeep left home at age 7 to start working at the resorts and he’s lived in resorts since then. He feels very lucky because when he was 17, he was able to learn how to be a guide and has been doing that for the last six years while also trying to finish school. Bardeep tried to explain to me that his mother’s house was not so nice, that it was very old (his father built it a long time ago, apparently) and he wanted to earn enough money and build her a new one before he got married. Bardeep’s older brother does not work at all; he was a professional futbol player until last year when he broke his leg. So the only income coming into the whole nine person family is Bardeep’s income, the sister’s husband’s remittances from India and a very small profit margin from the rice paddys, though they mostly just feed the family.

Celebration basics: The 10^th day of Dasain is Dashimi, a day when the elders bestow blessings on the younger members of the family for the year. Each family in Nepal sacrifices a goat a couple days earlier. Then, each older person blesses the younger people with three things: a tika, jamara (yellow grass), and a small amount of money. The tika is a mixture of rice, yogurt and red coloring supposed to represent the blood of the family as well as the sacrificed goat and it gets put on your forehead. The jamara is a symbol of the godessess’ conquest and is put behind your ear (or in a girl’s pony tail). I have no idea what the money is for. I kept trying to ask Bardeep about the significance of things happening that day, but he just kept telling me that Dasain was the time of the year when Nepalis waste all their money cooking extravagant meals. He also said that because so many people do not work here, they need festivals to keep themselves busy. In addition, younger members of the family receive a new set of clothes on Dashimi. For some poor families, this is the only time of year they receive new clothes. For richer families (like my host family in Kathmandu), Dasain is the time to buy all new things for the year. This year, Bardeep’s mom gave him his wedding suit as his clothing, though he has no immediate plans to get married. Ha, talk about a not at all subtle hint! After we had all received our tikas, we ate a big lunch then headed off to “relatives house.”

Tika from Bardeep's Mom

The Celebration Continues: When Bardeep said we were walking 30 minutes to his relatives house, I thought he meant like one relative. Instead, we spend the entire rest of the day going to every single one of his relatives’ houses. The younger members of the family have to receive blessings from every elder. Luckily, Bardeep’s family has a monopoly on a particular corner of the village. So we would walk though some paddies, then boom we’d be at another family member’s house. I have absolutely no idea how everyone was related but there was a lot of tika and a lot of food. By the end of the day I had red rice falling into my eyes and could not eat another bite. I think I had seven lunches. English was less common in the village than Kathmandu (understandably) so most of the day I had no idea what was going on, but it was a really cool experience. Everyone was so welcoming and did not seem at all surprised by the presence of this random American girl. Lots of people wanted to take a picture with me (one woman joked that it would be a “black and white picture”). His little cousins also gained a special place in my heart, because instead of the usual chorus of “Hello, how are you?” or “Hello, what is you name?” I hear yelled over and over again at me throughout most of Nepal, his cousins picked “You are very beautiful.” Luckily, I know how to say “And you also” in Nepali. J

Tika from an uncle

And Continues: Since families are now more dispersed across Nepal, it has evolved that you get the last five days of Dasain to receive a tika from every elder in your family instead of having to make it everywhere on Dashimi. A smart move I think, because families here are gigantic. When I returned back to Kathmandu on the 8^th, it was time for tikas from my host family, and every night since then extended family members have been here for dinner and tikas. Radhakrisna said that there are more than 100 members in his family. Geez. Dasain is almost now over now, tomorrow’s big highlight is that kids gamble with the money they got on Dashimi, but have no fear, the next festival (Diwali, but it’s called Tihar here) is just 15 days away…

Bardia National Park

Welp, the jungle and I are not soul mates. Bardia is like a huge tourist-free version of Chitwan. There are no tourists because it is really hard to get to and because it is in the heartland of the recently ended Maoist conflict. I had a set program through a resort there, and the first day was a full day-long jungle trek. I was the only guest who had that program that day, so I got a private safari. I have to say, walking through a National Park famous for tigers, sloth bears, crocodiles and rhinos with nothing but a small Nepali man with a stick to protect you is a very humbling experience. It turns out, I should have been a lot less worried about the animals I came to see and a lot more worried about allergies and leeches. I am allergic to absolutely everything in the jungle and apparently am the biggest leech magnet in the world. I’m glad leeches aren’t dangerous, but having my entire pant leg and both socks soaked in blood was too much for me. It was not such a fun day, though in some way it’s nice to know that not every single place in Nepal is a candidate for most amazing place in the country. And I am proud of myself for not bursting into tears in the middle of the jungle as I so badly wanted to after attack of the leeches round three (not to mention four, five and six).

Most of the day spent in this position: hiding in the bushes by the river.

But they had baby elephants! I like baby elephants!

Financial Guiding Principles

October 1, 2011

You know those days that are otherwise unremarkable but are great thinking days? The bus ride to Chitwan was possibly the greatest thinking time I’ve ever had. I share just a bit of it here, since this is a topic I have discussed regularly with friends and family over the years.

Since graduating from college, I’ve developed a strained relationship with my finances. I fluctuate wildly and irrationally between feeling financially secure and feeling like I’m about to go broke. This issue has been aggravated in Nepal by how openly people talk about money. I get asked frequently how much I make and how much my parents support me and how much things cost me. And particularly this splurge trip of jungle safaris has stirred up some internal conflict. I figured since I am all the way around the world and have the chance to ride the elephants, I should do it right. And even after paying for my trip in full, I was still way under budget for the first five weeks of this trip. Yet for some reason, the day before I left, I panicked about this “extravagant” expenditure. I was still freaked out when I got on the bus, but eventually I realized that the trip was already paid for, so it was a moot point and perhaps I should channel my thinking to figuring out why money freaks me out so easily. And so followed a tremendously productive few hours of thinking.

I think that finances freak me out because it is an area in which I feel very susceptible to judgment. And I think this susceptibility stems from me wanting to feel like I spend and save appropriately/normally and not having any concept of what that looks like. So when I graduated, I bought all these young adult finance books and found the “spend x% of your income on this category” stuff completely useless because it had no grounding in my financial context. In retrospect, I think it must be really hard to write a book about budgeting because how we mange our money and what we spend money on are such immensely personal decisions. At the base, expenditures are kind of the external manifestations of our values—we spend money on things we care about and not on things we don’t. So maybe, when I feel judged about my expenditures, it is actually a part of me feeling like my values are being questioned (even though that is never how it is intended). And then I get all worked up because maybe I do spend too much on things that don’t matter. But wait, my finances are my finances and why do I care what others think and how it compares to the “norm”? AH-HA! Unlike many areas in my life, to this point I have not had a firm understanding of my approach to finances, so I am easily swayed by the opinions of others. I’ve made budgets, of course, but I have never stepped back and examined the assumptions behind those budgets.

This was such an epiphany for me and I spent the next bit of time writing myself a set of financial guiding principles. The goal was to explicitly decide on a set of criteria for me to judge my financial decisions. Theoretically, then I would be able to distinguish overly extravagant purchases from ones that are just fine and panic only when appropriate. I found the exercise so incredibly worthwhile that I thought I would share the process here. The questions I focused on contemplating were:

(1)  What are my financial “golden rules” that should never be broken?

(2)  What amount is a comfortable safety net to always have in the bank?

(3)  Under what circumstances am I willing to take on dept?

(4)  What kind of ongoing financial support would I accept/do I expect from my parents? (I guess the flip of this for parents would be, “What do I expect to provide to my adult children?” And maybe as we get older it shifts into, “What do I need to provide for my aging parents?”)

(5)  What are my priority spending areas? What things are important to me and worth financial expenditures (at whatever level is appropriate for my current financial situation)?

(6)  What are low priority spending areas?

(7)  For “rainy days” (literally or figuratively, whenever you have a really bad day), how much would I be willing to spend on a short-term fix? (Almost definitely depends on how regularly you have bad days.)

After I thought thoroughly about these items, I felt so much better about my splurge trip. Given my financial situation and my financial priorities, it was absolutely appropriate. I’m going to go back and revise my guiding principles periodically, and certainly whenever I have a change of financial situation. And of course there will always be times when an exception needs to be made. But in the end, I made this agreement with myself:

My financial life is mine alone. I will gauge my financial decisions on these guiding principles and not on the opinions of others. I shall work hard to never judge the financial decisions of others because their guiding principles differ from mine.

A few days later, I was reading the Dhammapada (the scripture for Hinayana Buddhists, I'll do some more writing on this later) and my favorite section of that is actually very similar to the agreement I wrote for myself, though it's about morals rather than finances. An excerpt:

First once must establish one's own high moral principles... Let one mold himself in accordance with the precepts he teaches... One should not neglect one's one moral good for the sake of another's... Let each one embrace his own truth and devote himself to its fulfillment.  

 

Lumbini

October 3, 2011

“A Symbol of Unity in Diversity: the Foundation of World Peace”

Lumbini’s tag line captures almost perfectly what makes Lumbini such a special place. Lumbini is another World Heritage Site, the birthplace of Buddha. It’s a huge preservation area that houses three sections: (1) The Maya Devi Temple, (2) The Buddhist Monasteries and (3) The World Peace Pagoda. In the middle of the preservation area is a long reflecting pool that would put the one in DC to shame. At one end is the Pagoda and at the other end is the Temple and all along the sides are the Buddhist Monestaries. I have a few thoughts about each place that I’d like to share:

(1)  The Maya Devi Temple marks the exact site of the birth of Buddha. In addition, the area houses the Ashokan Pillar commemorating the spot from the Indian government and the Sacred Pond and Sacred Garden, around which lots of folks were meditating.

·       Buddha’s birthplace was really different than I expected. I guess for some reason I thought it would just be like, a really old Bodhi tree with a plaque or something. But of course, this is a popular religious pilgrimage site, so a few iterations of temples have been build on/around the spot. The Maya Devi Temple is actual the ruins of a temple that was built at least 2,210 years ago! Inside the temple there is a stone on the exact spot of Buddha’s birth and a brick pavilion now protects the temple.

·       I was again deeply moved by the peaceful coexistance and mutual respect between Hindus and Buddists. I definitely did not expect to see Hindus taking tikas at the marker stone of Buddha’s birth. Right now I’m about 400 pages into reading the Bible (I’m on 2 Kings), and it’s such an interesting contrast: So much of the history books of the Bible are about the Isrealites being persuaded to worship Baal or other idols and God punishing them for it. Yet Buddha is a Hindu god, the ninth incarceration of Vishnu. As Buddha, Vishnu convinced the demons to abandon the Vedas (Hindu scripture), and that’s how the gods were ultimately able to defeat the demons. This strange role (helping the gods defeat the demons… but by convincing the demons to renounce Hindu scripture) kind of shows how uneasy the Hindu priests were about the rise of Buddhism at the time, but in modern days, Buddha is worshiped regularly by Nepali Hindus just like the other incarcerations of Vishnu. I guess the ability to make that inclusion is a big difference between polytheism and monotheism.

·       There is a big different between spots with true and deep religious significance and those just dolled up for tourism. I’ve noticed this before, and all my favorite spots are those that are truly religiously significant, but it was really driven home by watching the monks mediating under a tree just across from an everyday family meditating under a tree. The Maya Devi Temple is nothing special to look at, but the place just has such a powerful feeling. 

Variety of religious pilgrims

(1)  The Buddhist Monasteries that line the reflecting pool are divided into the west zone for the Mahayana school and the east zone for the Hinayana school. The difference between the two schools is that Hinayana Buddhists (or “Followers of the Lesser Way”) seek to attain Nirvana for the individual’s sake whereas Mahayana Buddhists (or “Followers of the Bodhisattva”) seek Nirvana for the sake all sentient beings, but a lot of times a monk will move from being a Hinayana Buddhist to a Mahayana Buddhist and there is a lot of overlap between the scriptures for the two. I hired a rickshaw to take me around to all the monasteries because they are quite spread out.

·       I love seeing how many different forms places of spiritual significance can take. I didn’t take many pictures of the monasteries, because there were monks all over the place and I already felt like I was intruding enough, so I will try to describe it. Every country that has an active Buddhist population can build a temple in this area. There are countries you would expect, like China and Thailand, and countries you would not, like France and Austria. And all of the monasteries are so different. The biggest contrast for me was between the Chinese monastery and the Korean monastery (both Mahayana). The Chinese monastery was this ornately decorated building with lots of colors and beautifully painted sculptures (Buddha idols mostly, but others too) and murals and the rectangular building surrounded a grassy courtyard with nice flowers and a little pond. Directly across the pathway is the Korean monastery, a gigantic building made entirely (inside and out) of cement. The only decoration was a small golden Buddha and some hanging lotus flowers. I love that they have such different physical manifestations, yet both serve as spiritual sanctuaries for so many.

(2)  The World Peace Pagoda. Oh my goodness. Seeing this alone was worth the rickshaw hire because I would not have made it all the way there by foot. The World Peace Pagoda is this fabulous white stupa made of $1 million worth of white marble. It is beautiful. I’m sure it helps that it is surrounded by a crane sanctuary and that I was there at sunset. I didn’t want to leave; I just kept walking around the different levels in my clockwise circles. Then I got dizzy. At the base of the stupa is the grave of a Japanese monk killed by anti-Buddhist extremists during the monument’s construction. I found this both sad and shocking. I had never heard of an anti-Buddhist extremist before.

All in all, I thought Lumbini was amazing. It didn’t require a long stay, but it was worth the long trip. 

Parting shot: Sunset over the Sacred Pond

On an Elephant!

Saddling up for bath time!

Elephant riding platform.

The elephants are trained to bush whack on command.

My aunt once sent me a picture of her swimming with her horse.
Here is my swimming on an elephant rebuttal.

This week I went down to the southern part of Nepal (the Terai) to visit Chitwan National Park. Chitwan, Pokhara and Kathmandu make up the "Tourist Triangle" in Nepal and are most often the only places visitors go. I went to ride the elephants, mostly, and boy was that worth it! I love elephants. They are so goofy. We saw some other animals (rhinos, monkeys, deer ("tiger food")) and some other stuff happened, but the highlight was definitely elephant bath time.

When life hands you a monsoon…

…Change your travel destination.

September 29, 2011

The two phrases I find myself thinking over and over again are: “Wow, this must be the most amazing place in Nepal” and “Woah, that’s the most rain I’ve ever seen.” In the 24 hours before I was supposed to leave for Janakpur, it poured nonstop. Before I knew it, my host family’s best friend (who conveniently lives in Janakpur) was calling to give us a heads up that the city was basically under shin-deep standing water and the road to get there was now in the river. So much for my trip, but luckily I have lots of other places I still want to visit. My travel planning approach for the week became less “where do I want to go most before dad gets here” and more “where is it not raining.” I ended up doing three pretty cool religious pilgrimages, one Buddhist and two Hindu, and I was dry for almost three full days.

(1) Pharping: Another candidate for “most amazing spot in Nepal,” Pharping is a Buddhist pilgrimage destination about 2 hours south of Kathmandu. Its claims to fame are a large Tibetan population, the biggest set of prayer wheels imaginable and a serene hill top meditation spot. In general, I really like places that have Buddhist religious significance because they tend to involve bright colors and big mountains, two of my favorite things. Pharping specifically was cool because when Buddhists come here to meditate, they put the name of the person who they are sending good thoughts to on prayer flags they hang in the trees before meditating. It is thought that then all the compassionate meditation allows you to shoulder some of that person’s suffering. If they are very advanced Buddhists, they instead put “all the sentient beings” on the flags and meditate for the suffering of all living things. I like that idea. Maybe that’s the story behind all prayer flags, but it’s never been explained to me before. The spot made me think of my good friend William, so I sat for a while and sent him good thoughts for successes in mountain climbing and graduate school.

Huge Prayer Wheels. In the afternoon, old
Tibetan men sit in the chairs to spin the wheels.

Mid-way up Pharping

(2) Dakshinkali: If you go straight down into the valley from Pharping, you get to Dakshinkali, a Hindu sacrificial temple for the goddess Kali. At first I was not sure I wanted to go visit this temple—my first introduction to Kali was the chapter in the book Lamb where the children of untouchables are sacrificed to Kali, which completely freaked me out. But since I was in the area, I thought I might as well check it out. Thankfully it was pretty empty when I was there and I only saw two sacrifices. Though Tuesday is technically a sacrifice day, it was the day before Dashin, a 15-day festival during which every Hindu family in Nepal sacrifices a goat, so I think people were saving their animals. Dakshinkali was not all that memorable, though I did unfortunately get splattered with a small amount of rooster blood. Eww.

(3) Manakamana: On the road to Pokhara, about 3.5 hours outside Kathmandu, you pass a cable car going straight up the side of the mountains. The cable car leads to Manakamana, a temple that Hindu newlyweds visit to pray for male babies. This was my first overnight trip outside the city, and was great fun. It’s now officially in Dashin, so the place was packed. At first glace, the cable car could be any gondola at a Western ski area in the summer. But then you look closer, and notice that instead of ski or bike racks, they have goat racks!! Actually there were goats everywhere. Goats on the bus, goats on the roof of the bus, goats on the cable car, goats for sale in the village by the temple, goats at my hotel, and many many many goats in line to be sacrificed. Some goats seemed completely oblivious, but others I think knew what was going on and they were trying their hardest not to get any closer to the temple. Manakamana was cool because it was like the Disney Land of religious sacrifice spots. You pretty much need to stay overnight to get your sacrifice done, so it becomes a big family trip. The village is crawling with young couples and young kids (maybe the soon-to-be big sisters?). At night the village just had a festive feel, and they even have those guys who take your picture then sell it to you in a commemorative frame!

Just your standard Doppelmayr gondola...

Oh look, there's a goat.

Manakamana Temple

Of course it started raining the second I got off the bus in Kathmandu, and apparently it rained all day yesterday. I need to be in Kathmandu tomorrow to change out my books and take a language lesson, so I’m hoping the rain goes away for just a bit until I leave again on Saturday. On the flip side, a rainy day might be good R&R because I'm also sick again. I think it's the combination of all the road dust and too many people in a small vehicle for too many hours, but the prediction I would get sick every time I returned to the city may unfortunately be true.