A few things about Turkey…

For those of you still reading, I am back to traveling after a 3-week break in Madison for some intense physical therapy. The PT went very well and they were able to deduce that my back and neck problems are due to two things: 1) Thorasic Syndrome, which means that my muscles and blood vessles are a little too close to each other, so when my muscles get too tight and inflamed, they cut off my circulation, and 2) I broke my collarbone in softball in 8th grade and it apparently healed a little off, so now, 10 years later, my pec muscles get overly strained at times and cause the chest pains that I sometimes experience. I am not totally back to normal, it will take months of PT to be healed once and for all, but I am reassured that I do not need surgery and there is hope for eventual recovery. So for now…Turkey.

 

Karl and I were only ın Turkey for about 10 days, but I thınk there are a few notable thıngs that we have learned along the way about thıs country:

1. They have more letters than anyone else (or so ıt seems when tryıng to use a keyboard). Many decades ago ıt was decıded that the Turkısh alphabet should be ‘modernızed’ and so they scrapped the old alphabet and ınstead, ıt seems, grabbed every letter from every other language that they could fınd. Thıs not only ıncludes the varıous ‘extra’ letters ın German, but also S’s and C’s wıth lıttle taıls and i’s wıth dots and i’s wıthout dots (whıch are at the normal place on the keyboard and therefore all that I use).

2. The people, ıncludıng the men, are very very nıce. Before comıng here I heard that Turkısh men, raısed ın a very patrıarchıcal socıety, can be quıte obnoxıous to Western women. Perhaps ıt ıs because Karl ıs almost constantly at my sıde, but nonetheless I have experıenced quıte the opposıte. Wıth the exceptıon of men who are tryıng to convınce tourısts to eat ın theır restaurant, ın whıch case they are obnoxıous to men and women alıke, almost every Turkısh man that I have encountered has been nothıng but very respectful, helpful, and nıce. Furthermore, ın reactıon to Karl and I as tourısts, once we left Istanbul we were treated lıke royalty. In Cappadocıa we stayed at a hostel where we were not only pıcked up from the bus statıon, but also drıven back, even though we had not asked or paıd for thıs servıce, by a man who kept repeatıng ‘Hostel feels lıke home! Hostel feels lıke home!’. In Pamukkale the man who owned our hostel fıgured out all of our transportatıon to the next town, free of charge, assurıng us that we were on our holıday and so we shouldn’t have to worry about these thıngs, we should ınstead swım ın the pool (whıch we dıd).

3. The country, at least the western portıon, ıs provıng to be kınd of lıke a mınıture Unıted States (though we haven’t found Wısconsın quıte yet). In Cappadocıa we toured a landscape covered wıth gıant sandstone rock formatıons that early Chrıstıans used to carve entıre cıtıes out of durıng persecutıon…ıt sounded so old and hıstorıc, yet looked very much lıke the Badlands of South Dakota. Sımılarıly, ın Pamukkale we spent the day wanderıng around ‘travertınes’, stunnıng whıte calcıum terraces fılled wıth sparklıng blue water that surrounded a portıon of the town, and felt as though we could possıbly be near the hot sprıngs of Colorado. And fınally, for the past two days, we have been ın Selcuk, whıch ıs where many Kıwıs and Australıans have made theır home over the past decade, and ıs a very modern, hıp town wıth constant beautıful weather- kınd of lıke a Muslım Calıfornıa, we have decıded. Except, of course, for the ruıns of Ephasus that lıe on the outskırts of town, whıch brıngs me to my fınal poınt for now….

4. Turkey ıs OLD. We have spent most of our tıme here wanderıng around ın the hot sun lookıng at rocks. I lıke rocks more than the average person, hence the Geography major, but stıll, after a whıle ıt can get monotonous, especıally when you are constantly battlıng tour buses full of pushy elderly people or Japanese women who don’t realıze that just because they move theır bodıes to get past you, theır umbrella does not follow and you end up gettıng poked ın the eye by multıple umbrellas each day. The thıng that seems to always pull me back ınto beıng awestruck and thrılled wıth where I am was remındıng myself that the ruıns that we are seeıng, the cave room that we are sleepıng ın, the entıre cıty of Ephesus that we are walkıng through, were all created hundreds of years before anythıng that we wıll fınd ın the Unıted States.

And that makes thıs trıp well worth ıt.

 

-Luthien

119 Speed Bumps to Gulu

 

Bus ride from Kampala to Gulu: 7 hours (300 kilometers)

Speed bumps on the road to Gulu: 119

Live chickens tied to the outside of the mini-bus that passed us: over 50

Live chickens on our bus, purchased through the window: 5

Bananas consumed today: 6

Times I’ve been asked if I’m Christian: 9

Marriage proposals: 3

Times Ugandan children have asked me, “how are you?”: about equivalent to the potholes in Uganda (infinite ∞)

 

Anne and I have just returned from four days in Gulu, the main city in northern Uganda.  Since 1986, an insurgent group called the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has been fighting a war to take over the government, allegedly to establish a religious state based on the Ten Commandments.  The leader of the LRA, Joseph Kony, is most certainly insane (he claims to be possessed by the Holy Spirit), and the tactics he employed the most brutal and egregious human rights violations one can imagine: kidnapping children to use as child soldiers and sex slaves, cutting off villager’s noses, lips, ears, and limbs (people would be asked: would you like a long-sleeve shirt, a short-sleeve shirt, or a vest? and then lose their arms to the corresponding length), burning people live in their homes, forcing children to kill their families, and even worse things we were told about that I can’t bring myself to write here.  Well over 60,000 children were kidnapped during the insurgency (that’s the conservative estimate and no one really knows for sure) and countless more people killed.  The LRA also have effectively destroyed the entire infrastructure of the north - roads, schools, hospitals, homesteads all gone.  For 22 years, the Acholi people of northern Uganda have lived in fear of the LRA - it is the longest running war in Africa. 

 

In 1996, the government moved all of the rural people of the north, 1.6 million people, into massive IDP camps (Internally Displaced Persons), so they could better fight the LRA in the countryside.  The conditions in the camps were overcrowded and very basic, with food shortages since people could no longer farm (or indeed do much of anything for their livelihoods), many sanitation and health problems from such close living conditions, as well as rising rates of alcoholism, AIDs and suicide.  Some people in the north have lived in camps so long that it is the only life they have known. 

 

In 2006, a ceasefire was declared and conditions have begun to improve as aid organizations have moved into the region and people have slowly begun to return home.  In the past year, the larger IDP camps have been broken up into about 200 smaller resettlement camps grouping people together near their former homesteads so they can farm during the day and return to the group safety of the camp at night.  Still, these camps provide very poor living conditions, with most lacking safe water and other vital services.

 

Anne and I were in Gulu to visit an organization called Aid Africa, which mainly works with people in three of these resettlement camps providing much-needed access to medical care, building high-efficiency wood stoves, helping to secure safe water sources, and providing orange trees for homesteads.  We spent two days going “into the field” with the five Ugandan staff members to see their projects and meet people in the camps they work with: Owo, Rwotobilo, and Monroc.  The experience was incredibly intense and moving.  Villagers and the Aid Africa staff told us much of what I wrote above, but to hear it first-hand from the people who lived through the war in the place where much of the violence took place brought me to tears.  Everyone we met had been hurt in some way by the LRA. 

 

But I was also amazed, not only by what these people had survived, but by how they have begun to rebuild their lives, laughing and smiling still.  We were greeted by countless giggling, waving children and invited to see the homes of villagers in the camps.  Life is still an incredible struggle here, but after so many years of conflict, the people we met want peace and to move on with their lives, even if it means granting amnesty to the perpetrators.  It is an amazing juxtaposition - the extreme inhumanity of the LRA (which I don’t think I will ever truly be able to comprehend - why and how could people do this to other people?) and the incredible resilience and spirit of the survivors we met. 

 

-Julie 

South Africa Impressions

South Africa is incredibly complex.  Or course every country is, but here so much is communicated in English that it is much easier to learn about the history and social structure than it was in other places we’ve recently been.  Perhaps what strikes me the most about being in South Africa is how visible everything is.  Here you can see extreme wealth and extreme poverty at each other’s doorsteps.  Mansions in upper Cape Town and shacks in the townships.  Laborers in the countryside in the Western Cape, for example, earn an average of 50 rand a day (approximately six USD) for eight hours of hard labor. Meanwhile, a decent meal at a restaurant in Cape Town costs at least 50 rand.  The gaps are so large it is not hard to believe that crime is such a big issue (though to be sure most South Africans would never turn to crime and deplore it).  I rather like this quote from the book Disgrace by South African author J.M. Coetzee.  In it, the main character and his daughter were just robbed:

“A risk to own anything: a car, a pair of shoes, a packet of cigarettes.  Not enough to go around, not enough cars, shoes, cigarettes. Too many people, too few things. What there is must go into circulation, so that everyone can have a chance to be happy for a day.  That is the theory: hold to the theory and to the comforts of theory.  Not human evil, just a vast circulatory sytem, to whose workings pity and terror are irrelevant.  That is how one must see life in this country; in its schematic aspect. Otherwise one could go mad.” 

The legacy of colonial oppression and apartheid lives on as well, along with the categories it created: white (Afrikaans vs English), black, coloured, Indian, etc.  So much is determined which group you belong to: opportunity for education and jobs, where you can live, and the preconceptions people will form about you.  It is certainly impossible for the government to reverse 400 years of history in just the 14 they’ve had since apartheid ended, but also remarkable how little has changed for so many people. 

Coming from the US, I would be wrong to look at these issues as unique to South Africa.  It is just that nothing is hidden here as it seems to be at home.  For better or worse, we seem much smoother at glossing over such issues with politically correct language, and in hiding poverty and racial isseus away from site as best we can (both hidden away in our country and hidden even further away in the countries from which we send and receive goods or choose to occupy).  Having everything so open here certainly makes you think a lot, and at least for me, makes me far more thoughtful about my privelage, my actions and their consequences. 

And while I began with the negatives, there is also so much that is good and beautiful here.  So many of the people we’ve met have been hopeful about the future.  We visited Robben Island over the weekend, the island off of Cape Town where many opponents of apartheid were held (including Nelson Mandela).  Tours are given by former political prisoners who remarkably have come back to the island to share their stories and to heal.  Eight former prisoners currently live on the island, along with three of their former guards.  Our first guide had just returned to the island after several years away, and was full of emotion.  At one point he just started singing the national anthem of South Africa, which was quite moving knowing how much it meant to him and also when other people on the bus joined in.  At the end of his portion of the tour, he turned to the subject of truth and reconciliation - how could former political prisoners forgive their torturers and oppressors?  How did South Africans come together to forgive and reconcile gross wrongs after apartheid ended rather than turning to blame, revenge, or civil war?  He said this: ”It wasn’t about me.  It was for the good of the country’s future.  It was for the people, and it was for humanity.”  And that, I think, is pretty incredible. 

 -Julie

36 Hours in Doha

Beyond a layover at the airport in Doha, Qatar, the Middle East wasn’t a region we planned to officially visit on this trip. That changed a bit though when we arrived at the Bangkok airport last Thursday to find that our flight from Doha to Cape Town had been canceled and rescheduled for a day later. After flying to Doha and waiting out the requisite bureaucratic confusion (go to that counter, talk to this person, nope that person, and then head back to the original counter until someone finally figures out what has happened), we were finally shuttled off to our complimentary accommodations at the Moevenpick Tower and Suites, a shiny new chrome and blue Swiss hotel tower in the midst of central Doha. The hotel itself was a bit ridiculous.  As an example, there was a phone next to the bed, another at the desk, and even one next to the toilet, and there were blue mood lights under all the furniture, but it did have the softest, most comfortable beds of the trip, so I was satisfied with that alone.

With one full day to wander Doha, Anne and I decided to leave the luxury beds and wander out of our tower. Upon leaving the gold and leopard-print themed lobby, we realized that central Doha is really odd. Odd first of all because the entire area was under construction. We later found out that there are over 100 high-rise buildings currently being built there and only a few that were finished. Odd also because in between all of these skyscrapers was nothing. No smaller buildings, no street-side stands, no shops on the first floor of the high-rises, and no people on the streets. Just newly built roads, a few sidewalks and landscaped gardens, and towering skeletons of buildings. Depending on your school of thought, it was an urban planner’s dream or nightmare. I would opt for the latter opinion, while the Urban Planning and Development Authority of Doha (who have their own nice skyscraper going up) might disagree.

I don’t know the history of this section of Doha, but as it seemed like prime land right by the water, I would venture to guess that in a city this old something else used occupy this wide swath of land. I also don’t know a lot about the demographics of the population, but it seemed that the buildings were all being constructed with migrant labor from various parts of Asia and Africa, and it is likely that these workers are afforded few rights much as those in the UAE. I also had no good way to answer these questions as any printed information about Doha we received came from the government, so if anyone does please do leave your comments.

But to return to our wanderings: Anne and I eventually ran into a European couple strolling down the street and asked them for recommendations on where to go. They suggested a nearby park and were also surprised to find that we hadn’t yet made it to the city center. “What’s the city center?” we asked. They pointed to a giant complex not too far away, and told us that it was inside there - it was a mall. “It’s quite nice. Even has a skating rink and a bowling ally,” they said as we parted ways.

Well this was even more shocking than the landscape, so Anne and I turned around and headed towards the mall. From the outside, it reminded me much of a mall in the US, except that there were lots and lots of people milling about outside, quite a contrast to the empty streets around. Once inside, our senses were assaulted. Sure enough, there on the mall map was printed: City Center - Doha. We walked past an artificial pond and waterfall, where people were posing for pictures on the pond’s bridge, and headed up some stairs to the center of the city center, where we found the promised ice rink crowded with kids.

In reality, the mall was probably not much different or more garish than any other I’d been in before in terms of it’s construction. What made it fascinating though were the stores and the people. Imagine the site of a shop selling anitque Qatari furniture next to another selling Levis. Or a shop selling al-daraa and al-battoulah - the traditional long black dress and face covering that many Qatari women wear, next to a store selling American basketball jerseys. And then complete that picture by imagining the halls of this mall crowded with city residents, many of whom wear traditional Qatari and Saudi clothing. Perhaps this is what worries Islamic extremists? Myself, I was a bit overwhelmed as Doha had utterly defied any preconceived notions I might have had.  After coming upon a display of life-sized dinosaur animatronics, crowded with parents photographing their kids, we decided that we were just about ready to move on . . .

-Julie

Same Same but Different

I thought for a long time what to write about Thailand, and the theme that kept coming into my mind is the phrase “same same but different,” a rather ubiquitous Thinglish phrase. Anne, Lou, and I debated it, but we couldn’t quite decide what the phrase is supposed to mean. For me though, it expresses the baffling mix of traditional Thai culture, modernity, and western influence that we tended to find everywhere we went. Such as the freshly paved highway four-lane outside of Chiang Mai, filled with a mix of new cars and rickety tuk-tuks, street-side stores selling mini Buddhist shrines people can erect outside their their homes, and “king bling” signs, flags and billboards all around. It was like being on a highway at home, except for the not-so-subtle differences such as those I mentioned . . .

(Note/Tangent: Thai’s absolutely love King Bhumipol, who has been king since 1946. He has no official power, but since he is so revered when he does choose to get involved in politics or other affairs, his opinion is generally followed. The official king color is yellow and on Monday’s (the day the king was born) many, many people choose to wear yellow shirts or entire yellow outfits in his honor. In fact, we learned that there is a king color for every day of the week, with pink, the color he wore when he last left the hospital on a Tuesday, being the next most popular. There are pictures of the king everywhere in Thailand, even giant ones on the sides of skyscrapers. They even have “long live the king” bracelets that look just like Lance Armstrong’s “livestrong” bracelets).

Or take the Black Canyon Coffee shop we frequented on hot days (it had air conditioning), a Thai chain whose menus had descriptions like: “Mocha Glacier Frappe: refreshing frozen and smooth blended Mocha coffee topped with creamy coffee ice cream will remind you of the cold glacier in the ocean! Authentic!”" Here I do tend to wonder if the description in Thai comes out a bit better, but the point being that this coffee shop seemed like one I’d find in the US in so many ways, particularly in terms of its decor, yet things like the menu’s enjoyable descriptions or the overly kind, attentive, and numerous staff members reminded me that I was still in Thailand.

There are so many more examples to throw in, such as the site of a monk in traditional dress filming and photographing his fellow monks visiting a temple, religious figurines at a historic temple dressed in leopard print garb, a Ronald McDonald statue doing the traditional “wai” Thai greeting, that the playboy bunny seems to be popular in ways that seemed absurd to us, or the bewildering Bangkok landscape of ancient Buddhist temples mingling with towering condominiums. Entire books, university courses, and conferences have been held to try to determine just what globablization and modernization mean for countries like Thailand, and my observations are perhaps more amusing than deeply meaningful, so I certainly won’t try to decide in this blog entry what I think it all means. From the standpoint of a visitor, the quickly changing landscape of Thailand was fascinating to observe, and comforting to find that even amidst what may seem the same as the US, there are many differences, small and large, that show that Thailand’s journey towards whatever modernization might be is quite unique.

And one final moment of happiness we found in Thailand to share:

While taking the night train back from Chiang Mai to Bangkok, we stopped in a small village. A new group of passengers boarded the train, including a mother with three young boys who were sitting across from Luthien and I. The mother held one of her sons in her arms, who was perhaps three or four years old. She first had him shake hands with me and then had him greet me with the phrase he shyly repeated after she said it: “I love you.” The little boy repeated this several times for me and then proceeded to greet Luthien in the same way, “I love you.” While all of this was happening, it seemed that the entire extended family of the mother and her sons was standing outside our train window to see them off. There was a group of at least ten Thai people crowded around waving and smiling and watching. As the mother turned her attention to her relatives out the window, the oldest boy, of about seven or eight, paced around our seats muttering absentmindedly under his breath the phrase, “I love you farang, I love you farang.” (farang = foreigner in Thai). The whole moment was enough to keep us smiling all the way until Bangkok.

-Julie

Cooking Classes with Krid

Every restaurant in Chiang Mai advertises a Thai cooking class- it’s the biggest craze here, along with massage classes and “non-tourist” treks. What these places don’t advertise, though, is that if you take a cooking class from them, you will be stuck in a kitchen in the middle of the Hot Season, too miserable and sweating to actually learn anything.We decided to find an alternative.Through another set of random connections, we found out about a Thai cooking class that was held on an organic farm about an hour outside of Chiang Mai (www.yousabai.com) and it was just as wonderful as the person described…

We met the owners of the farm, Krid and Yao, at Wat Suan Dok, a temple on the outskirts of Chiang Mai, where they pick up anyone who is interested in the cooking class or just staying on the farm. The sungthaw filled up quickly with a couple from Canada (Alicia and Xaaq), a girl from LA (Noelle), a girl from Sydney (Christina), and the three of us.

When we arrived at the farm, we quickly realized that the farm was not just for cooking classes- if anything that was just something that ended up happening because Yao and Krid were such good cooks. In fact, the farm was a large plot of land that hosted internship programs, many families, and random people who wanted a place to relax and use their hands, whether it was to help build the huts that people lived in or work on the farm.

Our first morning of cooking classes began with making soy milk and tofu- processes that are more simple than I ever thought possible. For the soy milk, we merely ground soy beans, added some water, separated the pieces from the milk, and then boiled the liquid…and suddenly the healthiest soy milk I’d ever tasted (perhaps a little too healthy) was ready to drink. Because they’d already made soy milk that morning, however, we turned our soy milk into tofu- by just adding vinegar to the boiling soy milk, it quickly curdled into a solid enough mixture that we could put it into a cheesecloth bag and squish it with a giant piece of wood and after 15 minutes Poof! It was tofu, just like, if not better, than any tofu I had ever bought from the store.

The remainder of our three days at the farm were pretty similiar- around lunch and dinner time we would go to the “kitchen”, which was basically a long table overlooking the rice paddies and mountains with three stoves set up in a row, and take the peel off of at least 30 cloves of garlic, chop up vegetables that we didn’t even know existed, and then watch Krid cook some interesting Thai dish. The bottom line of this cooking class was that it was SO MUCH FOOD. Krid would demonstrate how to make a dish, we would eat his creation between the three of us, and then we would make our own version of it and also eat that. This would be repeated three or four times for each meal, leaving us stuffed with vegetables and garlic for pretty much the entire day. When we weren’t cooking, we were swimming in a nearby stream or lying around reading, as really those are the only things to do in the afternoon during the Hot season…all in all, a pretty fantastic environment.

Our creations are all exhibited on the Flickr website, as we were careful to document everything that we made by taking pictures because they were all so colorful and as delicious as they looked. By the end, our full menu included:

1) Pad Thai
2) Green Papaya Salad
3) Ginger Mushrooms
4) Fat Rice Noodles with Thick Gravy and Kale
5) Green Curry (with Thai eggplant and long beans)
6) Fried Bananas
7) Red Curry
8 ) Panang Curry
9) Masamann Curry
10) Pumpkin with Coconut Milk

However, really what we learned is that Thai food must include a few key things, and from there you can make anything: soy sauce (to make it salty), palm sugar (to make it sweet), tamarind juice (to make it sour), and garlic (to always have a little spicy).

-Luthien

the hills are alive…..

….with the sound of flute players following you along the Annapurna Circuit trails, beautiful children asking for “sweets?” thanks to travellers past, bells attached to donkeys’ necks as they carry goods up to the mountains to notify local children in the path, birds announcing the coming of spring, and Dipak (Julie and my guide on our Nepal trek) teaching us phrases in Nepali like bistari bistari (slowly slowly), ukalo (uphill), oralo (downhill), dhanyabad (thank you), dherai ramro (very nice), sundar himal (beautiful mountain), and a few journal pages worth of more…..

I guess it is a bit ironic to start this entry with the various sounds Julie and I heard on our peaceful trek, when in reality the Annapurna region provided the most silence we had encountered since New Zealand– I am writing this entry from a nice internet cafe in Chiang Mai, Thailand, just blown away by the lack of noisy traffic– because both India and Nepal constantly bombarded us with horns and salespitches and “rickshaw, madam?” and promises of friendship prices. While the noise added to the intensity of color and culture in those places, I think my back is instantly more relaxed here in Thailand, because I’m not constantly thinking I may be hit by a motorbike. Ha!

Julie and I attempted trekking in the Annapurna region, initially thinking that we would do a 6-day trek including a hike up to Poon Hill with a guide we had met at an agency in Kathmandu. We were excited to get out of the smog of the city, out of another tourist bubble like Goa (Kathmandu’s Thamel area), and to see some hilltop villagers’ farms and friendly smiles. Plans unfortunately changed a bit when Julie got ill on our second day hiking, which Dipak told us was actually more common than one would expect, especially with people coming from the low attitudes and tropical temperatures of India. I’ll let Julie expand upon the details of her symptoms, but we basically stayed up at the beautiful teahouse in the hilltop village of Jhinu for an extra day, sleeping and recuperating, before heading out along the same trail we trudged in on. Although it was slightly disappointing to not make it to Poon Hill, the variations in our journey taught me a lot about the importance of our health, of learning to be flexible for a good friend, and to just breath in the invigorating energy of that place bistari bistari. I was incredibly lucky to have my health and be able to watch the life along that trail–local people carrying chickens in metal cages, children, wood, greens, cloth, and even grandpa up the steep path in wicker baskets supported by a strip of cloth across their foreheads. Incredible. I was also lucky enough to enjoy incredible natural hot springs after meandering down beautiful moss-covered shiny stone steps to the river, only about 30 minutes from the location where we were “stranded” by sickness.

 We were also lucky to be paired up with such a compassionate, funny, and intelligent guide. Dipak was amazing. Very concerned and accomodating and full of ridiculous stories of his past 15 years as a porter and guide in Nepal…. When I return to Nepal in the future, I will definitely hire him again to accompany me in the Himalayan hills.

I shall return to my exploration of Chiang Mai. Tomorrow we head off to a Thai cooking school for 3 days of organic delicious food on a farm outside of the city–another thing I’ve been looking forward to since we started planning this trip!

Vrede,

Anne

National Pot Day in Nepal

Nepal has been, as everyone told me, one of the greatest places I’ve ever been. The people, both foreigners and Nepali people alike, are incredibly nice, everything bustles along in an amazing flurry of car honking, bright colors, and open-air shops that line the road and all sell the same things, and it’s difficult to walk anywhere without coming across a Buddhist or Hindu temple hidden among the chaos. Given that I am traveling alone for this week due to some back problems in Denmark that held me up for just long enough to miss the departure date for the trek that Julie and Anne are on, my days in Nepal have kind of fallen into my lap due to the help of some very nice, albeit random, people…

When I arrived at the Kathmandu airport, I realized it was 8:15pm and I didn’t know a single person in the country. A guy was standing near me at the baggage claim so I started talking to him about Lonely Planet books or something and then suddenly we were sharing a cab, making plans to meet for a drink, and then drinking a beer in downtown Kathmandu (in the Thamel area) in a bar called Rum Doodle. The bar was quiet except for myself, Graeme (my Scottish airport friend), and three men who were sitting at the bar- a boistrous 6′4″ tall, 35-year-old gay man from Boston who does the interior decorating for the Clinton family, his 5′ tall Sherpa friend who didn’t talk much, and a Welsh man who perked up when I asked what hashwas exactly.

The bar closed soon after we got there, however, because it was a national holiday and the streets were more crowded, and therefore dangerous, than usual. The holiday was in celebration of the wedding of Shiva, the Hindu god. Because Shiva was known for smoking a lot of pot (or so the story goes), smoking pot is legal on this one day and the Nepali government gives it out for free to the people of Nepal. The main celebration of the holiday is at a large temple on the outskirts of town, where thousands of people travel to each day to pray and be blessed. At this particular time of year, however, thousands of Indians make the pilgramage from India to this temple for a week of celebration, culminating on this final day, the day that I arrived in Nepal.

Since it was only about 10:30pm, our odd group decided to head to the temple to see the excitement. When we got there, it was overwhelming (especially since I’d been in the country for less than 3 hours so far)- thousands and thousands of people, marijuana everywhere, many temples that filled an entire park area….we basically just wandered around in a tight group with our mouths hanging open in complete awe of the chaos.

One of the more odd things that happened that night was that every now and then our group would stop and sit down to take everything in. Before long, a few men would stop and start silently staring at us. Then more men would gather, until finally at least 15-20 men would be crowded around us, all blatantly staring, a silence falling over us. It wasn’t until we’d been at the temple for at least an hour before we realized what was going on- out of the thousands of people there, I was, from everything we could see, the only woman there and they were stunned to see me.

Another thing that was happening at the temple besides rampant pot smoking was cremations. The temple is on a river that connects to the Ganges River, the holy river in Hinduism, and so whenever someone in Kathmandu dies, they are brought to this river with 12 hours of the death, covered in cloth, wood, and straw, and cremated. When the cremation is complete, the ashes are swept into the river and the pedestal is cleared away for the next person. It all revolves around the Hindu belief that humans are made up of 5 elements (earth, air, fire, water, and….I forget the other one) and so this form of cremation returns each part of the human back to where it came from. The fires burning along the river were a cool addition to the chaos of the temple.

 That random night was to be the beginning of an exciting, and just as random, week by myself wandering around the Kathmandu Valley…

-Luthien

What to do when a monk falls asleep on your shoulder and other cultural musings

While on a bus from Kathmandu to Pohkara today, a young Nepali Buddhist monk sat next to me. He and his fellow monks had come to one of the main monasteries in Kathmandu, Swayambhunath, for training and were now headed back to their home monastery in the mountains. Our driver was actually quite good and cautious, so without the normal sounds of horns and screeching brakes to keep one awake (driving here is really a bit tame compared to India, but that’s probably a good thing), one by one the passengers slowly fell asleep as the sun rose higher and the bus temperature rose with it. The monk next to me drifted off, and as the bus turned on every sharp right mountain curve, he would lean over closer and closer to me in his sleep until finally he rested on my shoulder, still sleeping. What to do? In Nepal, men and women do not touch in public. Women can hug women and men can hold hands, but inter-gender contact is rare and frowned upon as it is seen as being sexual. If this were any other man, I would have just moved him off of me, but since he was a monk I wasn’t quite sure what the unspoken cultural rules were. I didn’t want to embarrass him by waking him up, but I also wasn’t sure if it was right to leave his head on my shoulder. Unable to decide, the eight-hour journey continued on, with the monk swaying away from me on each left-handed curve and then back to rest on my shoulder with each right-handed curve. Nepal is a land of hills and mountains (”a little bit up, a little bit down, Nepali flat,” they say), so the road was constantly curving. Every once in a while the monk shook himself awake and sat up, but then a few minutes later he was asleep and falling over again. I guess if it didn’t bother him it shouldn’t bother me . . .

Travelling in Nepal and India has given me a greater appreciation for just how complex human cultures are. By that I mean that there are so many intricate, rich, and unspoken patterns in every society that are quite foreign, and often baffling, to the outsider. Children from those societies grow up surrounded by these norms, whether it be that when you share a drinking vessel, your lips should never touch it (even amongst couples), or that tucking in your sari a certain way means you are from a particular region of India. And I haven’t even mentioned much bigger issues such as trying to understand gender roles or the thousands of Hindu gods! Even if I lived here for years and years, I wonder if I could ever truly understand it all. I discussed these thoughts with a Nepali friend, Narayan, in Bhaktapur yesterday, but I’m not sure that my ideas were communicated quite right. He told me that if I dyed my hair black and wore Nepali clothes, I would fit it quite well as a very pale Nepali woman! In any case, I am continually fascinated by what I can learn just by watching people and talking. It also is interesting to reflect on how many and which unspoken cultural norms we have at home that must seem crazy to visitors to the US.

I will leave my musings here, as we have just arrived in Pokhara and it is time to explore the town. Anne and I leave tomorrow for a six-day trek in the Himalayas. It is part of the Annapurna circuit, a loop called Ghorapani (Poon Hill) to Ghandruk. We are going with a Nepali guide named Dipak, who seems to be filled with more calm and happiness than I thought possible. We’re gearing up for spectacular views, meeting mountain villagers, and eating lots of dal bhat (stewed lentils and rice, a Nepalese staple). Should be great!

Never Ending Peace And Love (NEPAL),*

Julie

*Acronym courtesy of Narayan.  He has many of them, some even more amusing.

 

Quaint vs. Historic

FINALLY- I’m 23 years old and I’ve been to Europe.After some last-minute changes, I split up with Julie and Anne and made the 48-hour trip from New Zealand to Copenhagen, Denmark. Upon arriving here, I realized what all of the hype is about- Europe, or at least Denmark, truly is a fantastic, bustling, exciting place.

I immediately described the city as “quaint”, with the windmills in the ocean as we were flying in, the brightly-painted apartments lining the cobblestone streets, and the narrow roads filled only with small cars. However, due to my limited knowledge of Europe, I was unable to determine if the quaintness came from my familiarity with countries like Thailand or an actual quality that Europe, in general, possessed. Luckily, Karl and I took a trip to Berlin and I was able to sort it all out.

My conclusion: Copenhagen= quaint; Berlin= historic.

While it may sound like either these two things are basically the same or they don’t have anything to do with each other at all and can’t be used as contrasting adjectives, describing the two cities in this way has let me wrap my mind around how Western Europe as a whole is so different than Southeast Asia (where the majority of my exotic traveling perspective has come from so far).

Copenhagen and Berlin are both filled with beautiful, old buildings that are used for everything from museums to apartments to grocery stores. However, where Berlin proudly displays all of the flags of the city, region, country, and a few other things outside of these buildings to exhibit a nationalism that can only be explained by decades of history, Denmark plops only the Danish flag everywhere it can find an empty space merely because Danes like the novelty of the decoration.

Copenhagen is a small “big city”, where Metro rides take only a few minutes and each neighborhood looks more or less like the surrounding neighborhoods. Berlin, on the other hand, has a vast Metro system that will take you from the wealthy business districts to the alternative neighborhoods and back again over the course of 20 minutes, while only actually traversing less than half of the city.

The closest you’ll find to a park in Copenhagen, because it is a fairly small, condensed city, is an ice skating rink right in the middle of a busy intersection. Nevertheless, with Christmas lights filling the trees and the glow from the streetlights illuminating the skaters, you feel like you’re in a Hallmark Christmas special. Meanwhile, Berlin is filled with vast parks, with war memorials scattered around the area (don’t miss Treptower Park if you ever get to Berlin).

The big clincher of this theory, however, is this: Denmark has hearts, of all things, all over its coin money. Berlin is almost entirely covered in graffiti that is, if not encouraged, at least clearly accepted in the city. A better contrast, for a first-time Europe visitor, could not be found.

-Luthien