Kathmandu

Kathmandu. I don't know where to begin, other than to say I've never been to a capital city without a street light. Yes, in the entire downtown area I have failed to see one. Imagine Tehran, but with narrow streets and many more motorcycles zipping around. And no sidewalks, so people walking on the sides of the road. Amazingly they are quite "good" drivers because they utilize the horn and aggressive driving skills to finnagle their way cross town. There are all sorts of sounds and smells as well that I never thought to encounter in such a big city. The rooster wakes us up in the morning, and the dogs are plentiful. In addition, a lovely aroma is released when they dig up the dirt streets to unplug the sewage system, essentially "repaving" the dirt road with a darker, more intense smelling type of dirt;) Pardon my French, but that's a very sh**y job. no pun intended.

The tallest building in town is, I believe, only about 5 stories tall. Ali and I climbed up to the monkey temple (named bc of the monkeys that wander around it, stealing food;) a few days ago, which sits on a lovely hill so it has amazing views of Kathmandu Valley. In all directions, as far as the eye can see, there are buildings. They say about 2-3 million people live there, but I would venture perhaps more. Apparently Nepal has more citizens than Australia, with a population of about 26 million. Quite a lot for such a small country. Many people live in rural areas and support themselves off the land. Hiking in the foothills was amazing as we got to see all the terraced hills where they grow many types of vegetation including corn, carrots, potatoes, herbs, rice and more. Viewing the open air meat butchers though has turned me into a vegetarian, at least here. I don't see how the driving cars and flies and open sewage system can add healthfully to the protein;) Houses in the countryside are simple, but better built than in Tanzania....probably due to the heavy rains during the monsoon season. They are mostly out of brick and wood, although poorer people simply have metal siding. They even have electricity way out in the boonies, and I had a hotter shower in the farthest town of our trek than in Kathmadu itself! Although this could be due to the electricity shortages they are experiencing. Ali's Nepali "family" attributed it to the Maoist insurgents in the government who have recently taken more power, however we met a few university grad students yesterday who vehemently denied this and said it was simply due to the lack of rain. I suspect this was due to the fact that they were wary of openly discussing politics (we were in a small local joint, where we ate samosas, tibetan bread, some chick pea soup, and a sweet desert for a whopping $1!) or else they supported the Maoists. Anyhoo, there is suspicion that they are selling electricity to India, as they have never had such sever electricity shortages before until the Maoists took power. Apparently Nepal has huge potential for generating electricity from the water, however they have insufficient means to capture it and the Indians were willing to help if they could get 80% of the power generated...not a fair deal by any means. They are supposedly looking for aid to help them develop better means to obtain the energy. Anyhoo, enough politics.

On our hike we went to Machupuchchre, or Fish Tail mountain, in the Annapurna Mountains of the Himalayas. It was magnificent. We got to see the sunrise from Poon Hill with great views of the range, and then hiked "through" the clouds! Ali unfortunately got a little altitude sickness as we hiked up 4000 feet in one day-the suggested safe range is 1-2000 feet! Luckily she got some gatorade and food in her and got better shortly. Cooking on the trek was tasty, although much I suspect was due to the huge amount of calories we were burning. They made most of the food with ketchup...need I say more. Arman, you would have loved it;) The people are very tolerant religion wise....Buddist, Hindus and Muslims get along sans problem and they seem to be a fairly religious group of people. Temples everywhere, (with lots of people praying) and Buddist prayer flags flying throughout the country. A cool thing we saw on the trek was a corn mill powered by a little creek. It was pretty cool to see how it worked and eventually I'll post the picture.

Yesterday we headed out to Baktapur, an historic town with lots of beautiful old buildings. They are famous for their curd (yogurt) and make a very delicious sweet yogurt. The buildings had amazing wood carving in them...very detailed and beautiful. We also saw them making pots...the "wheel" was literally a wheel....a big fat tire wheel that and old man spun fast with a stick before he proceeded to throw the pots. He managed to produce amazing pots in that one spinning of the wheel. I've never been so impressed, especially knowing just how difficult it is to actually make a pot on an electric wheel! It was a whole family affair as the men pounded the clay, the women dried the pots in the sun and attended to the details. It was really cool to see.

So after 10 days in Nepal, I've managed to learn a meager amount of Nepali. I learned a very important phrase though from our guide Chhining- beware of cat is "biralu hernu." He was so scared of them, it was quite funny. Whenever we passed by one he would put a good 10 feet between himself and the cat. Namaste is the greeting, malaicuchilai is nice to meet you, tapaicostohonuncha is how are you, peribedhonla is by, dhanevat is thank you, boklagyo is are you hungry, dherai mitucha is very delicious, dherai ramrocha is very beautiful, garmi is warm, jado is cold, and titcha is ok. A very cool sounding language and hard to separate the words as they put them all together when they speak. Apparently they can understand Hindi and only differ in the pronounciation of the words. They can watch Hindi movies/music/tv with no problems.

Anyhoo, we're off to Delhi today. All in all, Nepal will be missed although I can't quite say that for Kathmandu;) The countryside is absolutely gorgeous though and the people super friendly and helpful. It's the only place I've been to where the locals make sure you don't get ripped off when riding in a microbus. They actually harangue the ticket guy until he gives you your proper change back!