So, it's been a while since I've had a steady enough internet connection to be able to sit and write on my blog. I'm starting to turn to the dark side, and wanting a stupid iPad. I've seen tourists with them out here; they're small yet I think they'd be really useful. Anyway, a lot has happened in the last week, so I'll break down the blog, and just write about Nepal here, which by itself, will take up a lot of space.
After a stint in Kathmandu, me and Katie went over to stay at a Tibetan Buddhist monastery where she had been teaching English for the past two months to all the nuns that lived there. I guess it would be called a convent or nunnery or something denoting that it's a house for nuns, not monks, but they always referred to it as a monastery. It was close enough to the city to take a taxi, but up high in the hills, and far enough to feel like you're another world. Katie had told me that whenever she stays in Kathmandu - with it's ridiculously heavy smog, crowded streets, open sewers, and shady residents - she would always look forward to getting back to the monastery, and it's easy to see why. Clean air, quiet, and you wake up every morning to about the most picturesque place on the planet. You see the entire city of Kathmandu, nestled under a thick glaze of white smog, with the Himalayas poking through the background. The monastery was built 17 years ago, but definitely feels like a thousand years old. The place simply feels epic.
It's important to note that nuns here are a little different than what I would expect a nun to be like. First off, they're mostly kids, and it seems like nearly all of them are under 30. Because of that, the place feels more like a boarding school than a holy convent. Kids in nun robes run around chasing each other, and they're constantly giggling and chatting. Katie was really fond of a couple of the child nuns, who would always be trying to braid her hair or just hang around her. One of the nuns was really rebellious, and Katie described her as "very naughty." I tried not to laugh, but Katie did, saying that the nuns use that word with out a hint of sexual connotation to describe someone who is bad, unlike us heathen Westerners that put innuendo on almost every word or phrase imaginable. Naughty Nepalese nuns indeed.
The nuns hold these elaborate group prayers (which they called a puja) everyday in this massive hall in the center of the complex, and inside you feel like you're in the movie Inception. They do these crazy sounding chants, and have these super bass-y long horns going off, accompanied by giant drums. It's by far the most epic religious ceremony I've ever witnessed, and the first time I was able to sit in on one, I don't think I moved for hours. After a while, you realize that this is just part of the daily doldrums for the people here, so you often spy some teenaged nuns giggling and whispering gossip to each other instead of chanting with the others. It's actually kind of cool how human the attitude is here. On the one hand, everything here is holy and sacred, but at the same time, they're not uptight about anything. One of the nuns is good friends with Katie, Ani Sherea (Ani means nun) Katie told me some story of how when the two of them were walking around Kathmandu, one of the city's many homeless kids started asking Katie for money very aggressively, grabbing her clothes and not letting go. Katie just tried to walk away, and Ani Shera told him to stop in Nepalese. The kid snapped back that he can do whatever he wants, to which she replied "I'll kick your ass!" I guess having a woman in a Buddhist nun's robe threaten to beat the shit out of you was a credible one, so he quickly ran away.
While I was there, some big shot Llama was there. I think they said that he was the head of the monastery, and Ani Shera had told us that was considered famous in the Tibetan Buddhist community. He lead a lot of the prayers that they held in that big hall. It's interesting how all of it reminded me of Catholic mass, with the chanting and the structure of the ceremony. I even felt that uneasiness of being the only one who didn't seem to instinctively know exactly what to do during the whole thing. They held some major puja one day, that called a burning ceremony, which I guess was to honor a monk who had previously died in another monastery. The monk's entire family showed up, and the Llama had done some ritual involving burning an elaborate piece of paper. Afterwards, everyone gets up to get clonked on the head by the Llama with a giant gold plate. It definitely felt a little awkward being blessed by some high holy man of a religion you know nothing about, but the way the Llama was grinning, you at least got the feeling he got a kick out of it as well.
When I got there, I had met the caretaker of the monastery who was this deaf guy. I was told his name but soon forgot it, so I ended up just calling him Coco (Katie forgot his name too) He was a nice guy, but desperate for someone to communicate with. He didn't know standard sign language (neither did I) but made up his own, and would always be doing some hand signals to me, trying to tell me something. Some of it I got, most of it I didn't, but I still got a kick out of hanging out with him. He would sometimes dress G-ed out, with a hoodie, baggy pants, and a baseball hat slightly to the side, and I can tell that he really liked talking smack about some of the nuns and the nearby villagers. He took me to see his house, which he shared with his parents and his brother, who I briefly met.
Later that day, I decided to leave the monastery and walk around the village. I passed Coco's brother, who was hanging out on some motorcycles with all his boys. I passed him, and we nodded at each other. After about fifteen minutes, I walked to a series of homes where a wedding reception was being held. I was planning on just walking by, but a group of kids ran around me and started trying their English on me. One little shit asked "Can I have money?" then "Can I have candy?" then "Can I have a motorbike?" I replied I didn't have any of that stuff, but told him his English was really good, to which he responded with a giant grin. One of the wedding guests came down from the reception and started talking to me too, and within minutes he invited me up and gave me a big plate of some awesome food. They also gave me a cup of this rice wine they make themselves, which was actually kinda awesome. The whole thing took placed in a dirt patch covered by a series of tents, crowded past capacity. I talked with some old guy for a while, who told me he was a retired sergeant in the army. He said his son was that little shit that asked me for money. He then asked me to come with him to his house. Someone else comes up to me and says "If he gives you trouble, let me know." I asked what that meant, and they told me will probably ask me for money. Just then, Coco's brother shows up with his posse, and I just returned to the wedding with them. I talked with them for a while, and then walked back to the monastery with them, since they lived along the way. They invited me for drinks, which I wanted to do, but I knew they lock the monastery up at sundown, and didn't want to stumble back there drunk in the dark. So, I had to decline.
On Friday that week, I went back into town to visit a friend of my friend Larkin. I walked down the hill with the new English teacher of the monastery, a woman from Germany named Nicola. We took a bus to town, and I met up with the dad of Larkin's friend, Narendra. He works for the Ministry of Justice, and picked me up from another government building. He took me to his place, which was a three story house in the middle of the city. He was a really nice guy, but we quickly ran out of things to talk about while we waited for his son Nabish (Larkin's friend) and his brother Nishab. I even had less to talk about with his wife, that spoke about as much English as I did Nepalese, but I found out quick she liked getting her picture taken. I did some photos of her with my 7D, which she gladly posed for. She then brought me a series of photo albums. You'd think a mother of two would mostly hold pics of her kids, but the albums were almost entirely of her. Nabish came over later. He works for a Nepalese magazine, helping with their website. He just started, has no training in web designing, but said he learning. It's important to note that Nabish had some serious condition, where his legs were kind of mangled. He could just barely walk, needing crutches. It seemed like web design was a perfect job for him, and the sites he showed me looked pretty nice and elaborate. We ended up chatting for a long time, with him doing most of the talking.
I stayed at their house, and in the morning Narendra took me to Pashupatinath Temple, a massive Hindu complex nearby. It was Saturday, the holy day for Hindus, so it was fairly packed, but Narendra said that it's usually more crowded. There, I watched people do open cremations by a river that ran by the temple. It was kinds of weird inhaling the smoke coming from a series of burning bodies, but what the hell. Narendra told me that next to the temple was a deer park, closed off for people, where Shiva comes to have sex with animals. I also saw a Brahmin, who wore expensive sunglasses and a fleece polo (no local would ever be able to afford any of that). Narendra told me that the Barhmin, Hindu high priests, come from the south of India, and then told me with a noticeable amount of disdain, that they make nearly a million dollars a year. I asked if I can take a picture of him, and Narendra said yes. The Brahmin started then yelling at me for something, and when I asked Narendra what he wanted, he just kind of grinned. I think it was his way of sticking it to the man, having the clueless white tourist photogrpah some holier-than-thou a-hole high priests demanding exorbitant pay in a country of such mass poverty.
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