Puteri Harbour Marina,

Johor Malaysia

Hi All,

  This is my last email about our Tibet/Kathmandu adventure.  It seems as if it has taken longer to write about it than to actually live it.  And it has only been the last week that when I wake up in the middle of the night I don’t have to figure out where I am.  I really miss both Tibet and Nepal, but am getting back in tune with Puteri.  Threre are quite a few cruisers here we like and we have started biking everyday when it’s not raining.  When I shopt at my favorite vegetable stand at the Tuesday Night market, the owner calls me “sister” now.  And thankfully, the man at the fried chicken stand now knows we want the breast so last night I didn’t have to illustrate.  Randal usually points to his chest when he’s there, but he skipped the trip last night.  We’ll soon move the boat to Sebana Cove where it will stay while we go home to the US.  The man who had recovered our boat cushions is there and Randal has another project for him.  We like to bike around that area too.  And there are monkeys, amonitor lizards, and an occassional wild pig for entertainment.  The development frenzy around Puteri has leveled most of the forest so there’s not much to see or do right here at the marina.  One day there will be with all of the plans for this area, but we’ll be long gone into the Med and who knows where.

Ru

Kathmandu – part 3…….The End

We ate breakfast here every day, lunch and dinner many days.

They had wifi, good salads, wraps and large portions of food and were located next door to our hotel. We chatted often with one young waiter who always seemed to be there when we were no matter what time of day. One day he came to our table and invited us to go to his home and attend the wedding of his friend. Randal said sure (which surprised me) and asked where he lived. He said that we would have to fly there but that we would stay with him for a few days! We made sure that we understood his Nepalese English and indeed he did live a good distance from Kathmandu. We thanked him but said that we were leaving in a day so really didn’t have the time. He was quite disappointed. He was a very sweet young man and very capable. Randal gave him some money and asked if he would use it to buy a wedding gift for his friend. I wish I had a photo to show you. We wish him well.

“Our seats” where we ate, used the wifi and just sat and read.

This sign was over the cash register where you paid. Great idea!

You know you’re not in Kansas when the bank’s named Siddhartha.

No one knows MLB but they do know FIFA.

Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA)

Thamel was a colorful jumble of everything packed into a small area referred to as the “tourist ghetto.”

Narrow streets full of shop keepers inviting you in “just to look.”

It was a great place to buy heavy wool sweaters and professional level trekking gear neither of which we need. But it was fun to look.

Lots of great used book shops though the prices weren’t as good as Singapore’s Brash Basha.

Who are the Gurkhas?

“Gurkhas have been part of the British Army for almost 200 years, but who are these fearsome Nepalese fighters?

“Better to die than be a coward” is the motto of the world-famous Nepalese Gurkha soldiers who are an integral part of the British Army.

They still carry into battle their traditional weapon – an 18-inch long curved knife known as the kukri.

In times past, it was said that once a kukri was drawn in battle, it had to “taste blood” – if not, its owner had to cut himself before returning it to its sheath.

Now, the Gurkhas say, it is used mainly for cooking.

The potential of these warriors was first realised by the British at the height of their empire-building in the last century.

The Victorians identified them as a “martial race”, perceiving in them particularly masculine qualities of toughness.

After suffering heavy casualties in the invasion of Nepal, the British East India Company signed a hasty peace deal in 1815, which also allowed it to recruit from the ranks of the former enemy.

Following the partition of India in 1947, an agreement between Nepal, India and Britain meant four Gurkha regiments from the Indian army were transferred to the British Army, eventually becoming the Gurkha Brigade.

Since then, the Gurkhas have loyally fought for the British all over the world, receiving 13 Victoria Crosses between them.

More than 200,000 fought in the two world wars and in the past 50 years, they have served in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Borneo, Cyprus, the Falklands, Kosovo and now in Iraq and Afghanistan.

They serve in a variety of roles, mainly in the infantry but with significant numbers of engineers, logisticians and signals specialists.

The name “Gurkha” comes from the hill town of Gorkha from which the Nepalese kingdom had expanded.

The ranks have always been dominated by four ethnic groups, the Gurungs and Magars from central Nepal, the Rais and Limbus from the east, who live in hill villages of impoverished hill farmers.

They keep to their Nepalese customs and beliefs, and the brigade follows religious festivals such as Dashain, in which – in Nepal, not the UK – goats and buffaloes are sacrificed.

But their numbers have been sharply reduced from a World War II peak of 112,000 men, and now stand at about 3,500.

During the two World Wars 43,000 young men lost their lives.

The Gurkhas are now based at Shorncliffe near Folkestone, Kent – but they do not become British citizens.

The soldiers are still selected from young men living in the hills of Nepal – with about 28,000 youths tackling the selection procedure for just over 200 places each year.

“ If there was a minute’s silence for every Gurkha casualty from World War II alone, we would have to keep quiet for two weeks ”

Gurkha Welfare Trust

The selection process has been described as one of the toughest in the world and is fiercely contested.

Young hopefuls have to run uphill for 40 minutes carrying a wicker basket on their back filled with rocks weighing 70lbs.

Prince Harry lived with a Gurkha battalion during his 10 weeks in Afghanistan.

There is said to be a cultural affinity between Gurkhas and the Afghan people which is beneficial to the British Army effort there.

Historian Tony Gould said Gurkhas have brought an excellent combination of qualities from a military point of view.

He said: “They are tough, they are brave, they are durable, they are amenable to discipline.

“They have another quality which you could say some British regiments had in the past, but it’s doubtful that they have now, that is a strong family tradition.

“So that within each battalion there were usually very, very close family links, so when they were fighting, they were not so much fighting for their officers or the cause but for their friends and family.”

After the Gurkhas have served their time in the Army – a maximum of 30 years, and a minimum of 15 to secure a pension – they are discharged back in Nepal.

Historically, they received a much smaller pension – at least six times less – than British soldiers, on the grounds that the cost of living is much lower in Nepal.

But with more choosing to settle permanently in the UK with their families, campaigners said this left them suffering considerable economic hardship.

They won a partial victory in March 2007, when Defence Minister Derek Twigg announced that all those who retired after July 1997 would get the same pension as the rest of the Army.”

Story from BBC NEWS:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/2786991.stm

Published: 2008/03/18 16:32:24 GMT

Ram Kumar Khatri; a pretty interesting fellow.

Early one morning Randal and I were strolling through Thamel and were approached by Mr. Khatri. You know how that goes; you think “what’s he selling?” But he wasn’t selling anything unless you count the copy of Quarterly Development Review that we bought for $5. Mr. Khatri is the founder, editor and publisher of this journal as part of his quest to “contribute towards the Development of Women and Children, Environment and Tourism in Nepal.” According to his bio in the journal, Mr. Khatri was born January 1, 1945 in Kathmandu. He spent most of his working life at the Agricultural Development Bank retiring as Division Chief in December of 2002. He is currently enrolled as a PhD student in the Department of Economics, Tribhuvan University.

Randal makes a contribution

The journal includes a section to help promote tourism.  Mr. Khatri asks visitors what they like most and least about Nepal. The comments are aimed at officials who can make changes, not at other tourists. He asked us about our goals for life too. Randal and I both commented on how friendly people seemed but how poor the country was and wondered what would change that. My goal was to get up in the morning and know I was the only one controlling my day! After we’d been chatting for a while he told us about the school he was building and invited us, not only to visit but to stay there for a while. Our second invitation in the same day! Again we had to say no because we were leaving the next day.

Another sign in the Thamel area.

During our day walking around Thamel we passed the same middle-aged begging woman about 5 times. The last time I passed her I was tired from walking around for fun. I thought of how she must have been feeling walking around all that time having to ask for money. She looked tired and discouraged and her skin looked a bit ravaged. I can’t remember what I gave her, more than a few bucks but not a great deal of money. Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world. Hopefully Mr. Khatri can make a difference.

I was surprised that the $US was the first on the list and not the Euro.

This little boy was sitting outback behind his parents fruit stand eating up the profits!

And that’s about it. I think we short changed Nepal by only spending such a short time and that was my fault. Flights sort of dictated that we stay 4 days or 7 days and I thought 7 would be too many since we didn’t plan on doing any trekking. Friends who spent more time there seeing the countryside and trekking the mountain areas said they were beautiful. But so it goes….

The End….

Ru

DoraMac

We ate lunch at one of the many restaurants in the Boudhanath plaza and then drove through more dusty traffic to the Pashupati Development Area. I instantly felt like I was in a scene from the BBC production The Jewel in the Crown. The complex was huge and unlike any other place I have ever visited. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pashupatinath_Temple gives you the basics but David and Ronnie on their website http://www.project-7.se/?m=201007 give a really humanistic description of the place and Kathmandu in general. You have to scroll down the page to find the entry about Nepal, but their combination Swedish/French/English is charming and humorous. Interestingly, these guys who had no qualms about cutting into lines at Tibetan monasteries and the Taj Mahal felt it wrong to take photos of the cremation. By the way, their latest entry is about swimming with great white sharks in South Africa where they are now. They left Nepal, went to India and then on to Africa, the last continent of their 7 continent adventure.

It’s actually a whole complex of buildings most in some form of decay which gives the place a rather compelling attraction. The smoke is from a cremation. The river that runs through the complex is the Baghmati. It runs into the Ganges and then into the Indian Ocean.

We noticed smoke and our guide said that it was a cremation ceremony.

“A shamshan ghat or cremation ground is a platform designed for the cremation of bodies by members of the Hindu faith; Sikhs also use shamshan ghats. Typically, a shamshan ghat is located next to a river, so that the ashes can be cast out and floated away in accordance with Hindu tradition”

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-shamshan-ghat.htm

The body is covered with straw and then burned.

Our guide said it was acceptable to take photos so I did, though only from across the river. I used my zoom and cropped the photo to focus. Actually, the Pashupati brochure talks about capturing everything in photos and mentions the possibility of viewing a funeral. But our guide couldn’t tell us much about the actual ceremony. While trying to learn a bit to tell you, I came across this article from a faculty member of the University of California-Chico. Amazingly it was a story about her visit to this very same place and she explains the cremation that she saw. The words are hers, the photos are mine.

A Hindu Cremation in Nepal http://www.csuchico.edu/pub/inside/archive/99_02_11/top_story2.html

Editor’s Note: Anthropologist Carolyn Brown Heinz was in Nepal during the last week of a research trip to northern India, where she was researching the lives of women ascetics, when she and her husband, Donald Heinz, dean of HFA, experienced a ritual cremation. She generously agreed to share her story of the event, rare for a Western visitor.

The corpse was wrapped in a white cotton cloth overlaid in an ochre one. A garland of small white flowers stretched along the length of the body. It had been deposited at the top of the steps leading down to the Baghmati River, as if abandoned. No one seemed to be tending to it, no one sat beside it grieving, passers-by did not glance at it. A few yards away women were shampooing their hair and washing pots in the river, indifferent to its presence.

Don and I, however, were electrified. We were to leave Katmandu later in the day, and had come here several times for an opportunity to witness a cremation, but without success. There was almost always a body burning, but we never arrived in time for the ritual itself, when the chief mourner, usually the son, touches the torch to the wood as his supreme and final filial act.

We had spent the previous six weeks down on the plains of North India. I had been interviewing women ascetics at Rishikesh, a sacred city on the Ganges where the river emerges from the first range of the Himalayas. Don was finishing his book on death, The Last Passage (just published by Oxford).

Although seeing corpses being carried to cremation grounds on stretchers accompanied by the slightly frantic chant of “Ram Ram satya hai” is a common sight and sound in any town in India, actually witnessing, let alone photographing, a cremation is not easy. For me, a woman anthropologist, there are gender problems; women do not go to the cremation ground. They stay at home while the men take care of this terrible but essential ritual work. Photographing a cremation is yet another problem; at Banaras no one can get anywhere near a cremation ground with a camera. But here in Katmandu we witnessed our first complete cremation, and it remains among the most moving experiences of my life.

We had stopped at Pashupatinath, an ancient temple complex in Katmandu whose principal deities are Shiva and Kali. The long stretch along the Baghmati River is devoted to cremations. A bridge divides the royal site upriver, from the commoner cremation sites downriver. The Baghmati feeds into the Ganges, which spills out into the Indian Ocean, the ultimate point of dissolution and regeneration for king and commoner alike.

It was on the downstream side of the bridge that we encountered the solitary body, wrapped and waiting for its destruction by flames. Before long, the family arrived, including the widow and daughter. The widow, newly robed in white, stood alone in front of her dead husband and wailed a long, mournful cry. Then she and her daughter were led into an alcove where they could watch and cry in private. The only son, dressed in white dhoti and head scarf and struggling to keep emotional control, awaited the task for which he had been born: to light his father’s funeral fire.

The men, kinsmen and friends of the dead man, did almost all of the ritual work. They lifted the body onto a stretcher so they could purify the corpse in Ganges water. They carried it to the bier and laid the body on top, headed downstream. They opened the shroud to expose his face to the sun, also a god. Each man circumambulated the body, adding ghi [clarified butter] and sprinkling a little purifying water on the face of the corpse. The dead man’s brother broke down in sobs and had to be led into the alcove with the wife and daughter. Finally the son was led forward, clutching a bundle of straw, to do pranam to his father’s feet for the last time. This simple, everyday gesture of respect undid his composure. His face wet and distorted with grief, his hand full of straw shaking so badly they had trouble lighting it with the fire they brought from home, the son had to be assisted to put it to the wood. Slowly he was helped to circle the pyre, laying the flame that would burn his father’s body and release his soul.

This stark Hindu funeral and those I have seen since have deeply impressed me. Once I thought this must be a grotesque custom, but I have come to respect Hindu cremation. No body is ever taken to a sterile lab where its fluids are drained by an expert class of morticians and replaced with chemicals, nor does it lie in a commercial parlor tended by businesspeople. Their way of death is an act of family love and powerful religious ritual. The body is burned within the day of death, the soul is released to new life, and the heat by which the gods brought the universe into being is rekindled.

Carolyn Brown Heinz, Anthropology

There was a legend connected to these small shrines where women could learn how many children they would have.

These people look to be cleaning out the grass that had grown over the stone path.

It was impressive but Randal and I were pretty tired out by this time so just followed our “guide” but not learning a whole lot. And I didn’t pay to take photos of the holy men with Rasta hair and white faces.

The whole complex is divided by the river where people swim and wash clothes and where the dead are cleansed before the cremation and their ashes scattered afterwards.

We walked across the bridge an up the hill overlooking the complex.

The temple of Pashupatinath is located on the western bank of the Bagmati but only practicing Hindus and Buddhists are allowed to enter the temple or even take photos from outside.

We went off to our final stop and really should have just skipped it because we were really too hot and tired and should have saved it for another day. The tickets cost about $4 apiece, not much, but I don’t think we even got our money’s worth. Hanuman-dhoka Durbar Square sounds really interesting when you read its brochure. However, by the time we got there, the museum was closed so that was out. Randal got surrounded by a group of begging 6 year olds while he was trying to eat his ice cream cone and those kids are lucky to still be alive. Lots of the structures that we saw looked like they were falling down and were surrounded by mounds of rubble. We did see “the living goddess” Kumari Devi. We weren’t allowed to take photos of her either. Our guide was pretty impressed that we got to see her when she came to the window of the house she lives in during her time as the living goddess. I have to say that I was more flabbergasted than amazed. I read that there was a recent high court case in Nepal as to whether she should be allowed to attend public school and the answer was yes though she had been being “home schooled.” http://www.visitnepal.com/nepal_information/kumari.php

The following link to an article from the India Times tells the story.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/south-asia/Nepals-Living-Goddess-passes-acid-test/articleshow/6123697.cms Nepal’s ‘Living Goddess’ passes acid test IANS, Jul 3, 2010, 12.16pm ISTIANS, Jul 3, 2010, 12.16pm IST

KATHMANDU: An extraordinary 15-year-old girl, who never went to school after being chosen as a ‘Kumari’ or ‘Living Goddess’ of Nepal revered by thousands of Hindus and Buddhists, has created history by becoming the first goddess to pass the tough school-leaving examination that leaves thousands floundering every year. Chanira Bajracharya, one of the three ‘Kumaris’ of Kathmandu valley, became even more god-like in the eyes of people on Saturday after the results of the dreaded School Leaving Certificate examination were declared and she was announced to have passed with “distinction”, having secured over 80 percent marks. Chanira, the Kumari of Lalitpur city, becomes the first reigning living goddess to have passed Nepal’s “Iron Gate” examination. It is an extraordinary feat considering that out of the over 385,000 students who took the examination, only 64.31 percent made the grade. In Chanira’s case it is even more extraordinary considering that she never went to school and wrote her test from her official “sacred” chamber in her intricate official robes. The Kumaris, regarded as the incarnation of a Hindu goddess of power, Taleju Bhavani, are selected from a Buddhist community on the basis of 32 auspicious signs, which in the past included having a horoscope compatible with that of the king of Nepal. The Kumaris were also regarded as the protectors of the royal family and the only living beings before whom the monarch humbled himself by bowing down. Chanira, like her peers and predecessors, lives in her own palace where her movements are restricted. The Kumaris are not allowed to walk on the ground and are either carried or tread on a red carpet. Though the teen was enrolled in the Bhasara Secondary School, she never went there to attend classes. Instead, her teachers came to her palace to coach her. When she took the exam in March, it made news worldwide and images of the goddess, arrayed in red and gold clothes with a third eye painted on her forehead were circulated far and wide. After getting her results, the shining-eyed Kumari said she would now take admission in a private college. She is said to be keen to study computer science and Newari, the language of her clan. In the past, she had said she would like to take up a career in banking. Chanira is nearing the end of her reign, since as per tradition a Kumari is replaced before she starts menstruating. A former Kumari, Rashmila Shakya, became a celebrity after she studied computer science and co-authored a book on her life as a goddess, “From Goddess to Mortal”. However, Rashmila went to school only after her reign was over; so did many other Kumaris. The rules were relaxed after 2008 when an advocate challenged the restrictions imposed on the young girls and called them a denial of their fundamental rights. Subsequently, Nepal’s Supreme Court ordered the government to allow the Kumaris to attend school. However, the curbs continue to be there and another Kumari, Sajani Shakya, was “sacked” in an unprecedented move by her priests after her family accepted an invitation for her to go to the US to attend a film festival that showed a film featuring her as well as two other living goddesses.

Our goal was the museum located at the complex. Once we found the museum was already closed we decided to just head on back to our hotel. It was about 5 pm and, anyway, time for our guide and driver to go home. If you follow that link at David and Ronnie’s site, Project – 7 you can read about Durbar Square which they seemed to like. We might have too if we had gone early in the morning and just visited there and the museum and skipped the visit to the Monkey Temple.

http://nepal.saarctourism.org/hanuman-dhoka.html will tell you much more than I can.

My photos from Durbar Square

Kal Bhairav

“This huge stone image of Bhairav represents deity Shiva in his destructive manifestation. It is undated, but was set in its present location by King Pratap Malla (mid 1600s) after it was found in a field north of the city. This is the most famous Bhairav and it was used by the government as a place for people to swear the truth. “From our Durbar Square brochure. The chair is there coincidentally…no one is being made to tell the truth.

This photo of “Kathmandu Mutts” is for my sister’s dog Max who wanted a photo of a Tibetan Lhasa Apso. Somehow I managed not to see one when I went looking for the photo.

In China shoulder poles were used to carry heavy loads and in Tibet, a sort of backpack apparatus. But in Nepal people seemed to use this head strap.

Ru

DoraMac

July 27, 2010