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Namaste Nepal

November 25th, 2009
posted by Ryan Rowe

Been a busy trip so far! Olivia joined me on my last of three days in Kathmandu and then yesterday morning, we flew to Pokhara with Buddha Air on a twin-prop airplane! Pokhara is a Nepali town nestled at the foothills of the Annapurna Range of the Himalayas. Unfortuately her trip was a short one - Olivia left this afternoon and will rejoin me in Kerala (India) a week from now.

Meanwhile I am still in Pokara and will head south on my way to India tomorrow. The itinerary described in my last post has changed a bit. Due to limited time I’ve had to cancel my planned visits to Chennai and Hyderabad. Instead I’m going to spend more time in southern Nepal and northeastern India with the objective of educating myself a bit about Buddhism and Hindusim.

A trip yesterday to the World Peace Pagoda with Olivia (it is an enormous Buddhist shrine at the top of a mountain outside the town of Pokhara) has inspired me to visit as many of the four major sites on the Buddhist pilgrim route as I can (namely Lumbini, Kushinagar, Sarnath and Bodgaya). By way of background - Lumbini was the Buddha’s birthplace, Bodhgaya was where the Buddha achieved enlightenment, Sarnath was where the Buddha delivered his first sermon and Kushinagar was where the Buddha died. While I have always been curious to learn more about Buddhism (Matt Petchsy - this is your fault!) my encounters with Buddhist lore and religious sites here in Nepal have now brought that desire to the fore.

I should be able to visit these places with relative ease over the next 4-5 days as I travel from here to Varanasi and then on to Kolkata.

As you may know by now, my first visit to Nepal did not include plans for a trekking trip to the Himalayas. But after five days here, I have decided that this is something I’d love to come back for in the near future. Olivia has a preference for Everest Base Camp (EBC) so this is on the to-do list! She has shown me new appreciation for mountain scenery. :) The trekking season is best in October/November but there may be alternate times we can go, as I know the father of a friend of mine trekked to EBC at a different time of the year (Mike do you know the details?). Small fact bite - Nepal has eight of the world’s ten highest mountains! It also extremely small and is sandwiched between giants India and China, landlocked with no access to the sea. The precipitous terrain precludes agriculture from being a major economic activity and also makes it difficult to develop efficient and effective telecommunications and transport infrastructure. Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world - average income per person is US$470 (it’s artifically high due to the large number of Nepali migrant workers working in Middle Eastern countries).

As the country develops economically, people have migrated to the cities in search of work of course. Kathmandu has not escaped the environmental effects of this growth - pollution here is atrocious. Many local people (and some tourists) walk the streets wearing face masks to block out particulate matter in the air. You will be sneezing black by midday if you know what I mean and your eyes will water during taxi rides through streets choked with traffic! The city is known to have one of the worst levels of air pollution in Asia. Am trying to think of why this city would have higher than normal levels of industrial / automobile pollution - any ideas? Part of it is probably the thousands of diesel-burning motorcycles zipping around the city (public menaces)! Another thought I had was that perhaps the problem is exacerbated by the mountainous terrain surrounding the city (it traps the air - this is the case in Mexico City for example) but I’m not sure. Interested to look this up…

If there is one thing I will never forget about Nepal - it is the prevalence of middlemen in every commercial transaction! This is most likely to occur when booking tickets for tourist excursions but applies to almost anything else you can think of. Your hotelier will offer to arrange anything and everything you want to do in the city, from taxis, to meals, to entertainment, to laundry service. No one does anything for free in this country - there is always a commission to be made - so go straight to the source if you can!

One of the notable excursions from Katmandu was a day trip to Bhaktapur, about 16km away, but what a world of difference. The tranquil town is well-known for its traditional style of architecture and way of life. The city’s inhabitants are largely Newari - the dominant ethnicity in Nepal. It is a city meant for walking, with its narrow streets and lanes, cobbled with stone. I spent about 45 minutes hanging out at the corner of one such intersection watching mostly townsfolk go about their activities. This ranged from two old men playing chess, to local women gathering buckets of water at the public tap. :)

The town’s buildings tend to be no more than three or four stories high and most are made of wood or brick of a burnt peach colour. Imagine a city where every building is permanently cast in the setting sunlight! Of each building, the lowest level is usually a storefront or a workshop which opens directly on to the street (no sidewalk) and you are free to walk in and inspect their wares.

I poked my head into one such workshop and was invited in by a young fellow who looked to be in his early 20s and was kneeling forward over a pot filled with hot coals. He explained that he and his brothers were busy preparing molds that would be used to cast brass artefacts for export to Germany. His family has been doing so for least three generations and they were the only such tradespeople in town. I did not ask whether he or his brothers had finished their school before joining the profession) (the youngest brother - about 10 - was there at the time). He taught me a bit about his work, and the various steps in the process from raw material to finished goods. Funnily enough, having spent time observing their work and noting that they were the first step in the supply chain - I figured I did not (or should not for fear of offending them) need to negotiate/bargain. In hindsight i almost cetain that I paid nearly double what the ‘fair price’ was. But then that brings to mind, what is a ‘fair price’ for something it took them 15 days to manufacture with their bare hands. :) This was the highlight of my trip to Bhaktapur.

I also befriended a local fellow named Arjun, who holds two jobs - as a bartender and a waiter - in the tourist area of the city. He offered to show me around one afternoon and take me to a local Buddhist temple. On the way to our destination, we stopped at his home. He invited me and as per local custom, I took my shoes and socks off. He lived in a single room with a mattress on the floor. He shares a bathroom with a couple of other people who live in what could be called a converted apartment. His prize possessions range from a DVD player to a poster of a gorgeus young Bollywood actress in a skimpy bikini. He has a library of books on cocktail-making, and his ’savings’ are in the form of assorted banknotes inserted between the pages. There was a large 20L plastic bottle of water sitting in the corner. Before we left the house he put tonic in his hair and put on some deodorant. And he offered me some too. :p

So - he has a steady income, access to fresh water, a working toilet and electricity, and he has clothes on his back. He even bought me lunch that day (for 90 rupees - about US$1.50). Would you call him poor? What is poverty, really? Is it someone who cannot afford to buy what we in the Western World deem to be important or is it someone who cannot afford to buy what they consider necessary to live comfortably? This whole idea of the ‘poor’ being defined by one dollar a day seems flawed to me… There are millions who live off of subsistence farming, they may own a small plot of land and have food on the table but if they don’t earn an income, would we call them poor? Any thoughts?

The internet cafe is closing now but I suppose a good way to end this post would be to explain its title. Namaste is a Hindu greeting and means both ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’. What you are actually saying is ‘I salute the god within you’. As I leave Pokhara and head down to India it seems like a good way to sign off… more stories on Nepal when I can

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