Change In Plans

Greetings, unexpectedly, from Kathmandu.  This short post is about the disruption of today’s trip to the Maldives, and what we plan to do next.

Our plan was to fly from Kathmandu to Delhi, from Delhi to Colombo, Sri Lanka, and from Colombo to Male, the capital of the Maldives.  Connections were tight, and it would be a long day (four separate countries), but it seemed feasible.  

When we arrived at the dreary Kathmandu airport early this morning, somehow all of our flight reservations had been cancelled.  Our local travel agent and our U.S. travel agent (who we woke up in Houston) had the reservations confirmed on their screens, but the screens in Kathmandu said “VOID.”  We were at an impasse.

India (the person) and I had been having a lot of second thoughts about our trip to the Maldives anyway.  It is tremendously expensive (eyepopping) to gt there and stay there, and we would only have three full days on the islands.  It also required three additional flights in obscure countries, and yesterday’s post-bird-collision emergency landing in Nepal left us a little rattled.

We decided to change our plans, and to go to Cape Town early.  We are on a late afternoon flight to Abu Dhabi on something called “Etihad Airways.”  It is the official airline of the UAE, so we assume it will be fine.  There are so many Nepalis working as laborers in the Gulf States that it is incredibly easy and cheap to fly there from Kathmandu. 

We have a flight to Johannesburg at 2:30 am, and should be on the beach in Cape Town by tomorrow afternoon.  

Back in June, we decided to refer to the overall trip  ”a change in plans.”  Goodbye Nepal, sorry to miss you Maldives, hello South Africa (by way of Abu Dhabi).

SUNSET IN ROYAL CHITWAN NATIONAL PARK

Greetings from Kathmandu.  This post is about our last two days down in the Royal Chitwan Park and the Terai lowlands of Eastern Nepal, and the slightly scary trip back to Kathmandu today.

On our second day at Tiger Tops Lodge, we skipped the afternoon jeep safari, and drove about 20 kilometers to an animal-rescue project in the village of Kusara.  When we stopped at the army checkpoint near the park’s entrance, a civilian-clothed Nepali army captain informed us that we would be giving him a lift to the bus station in Kusara.  He was reasonably polite about it, but even in Nepali it was clear that this was not phrased as a question.  Government troops in this part of Nepal were attacked frequently by rebel forces during the (only recently resolved) Maoist uprising, and the army camps and the men in them seemed deadly serious. 

During the 45-minute drive, Zola subjected the young English-speaking officer to a highly detailed explanation of his Pokemon book.  This made an otherwise slightly tense situation slightly comical instead.  The soldier listened politely and asked a few questions, and Zola talked on and on.  By the time we reached Kusara, I think he may have regretted riding with us.

The animal-rescue camp is mostly devoted to gharials.  These are Asian crocodiles which have normal big scaly crocodile bodies, but are distinguished by their disproportionately narrow snouts.  They are extremely endangered, but to be honest, they are sort of funny looking.  The camp had scores of gharials in separate fenced-in outdoor tanks, segregated by birth year.  In the wild, 99% of gharial eggs and babies are eaten before they reach maturity.  This breeding program goes a long way toward restoring the strength of the species.

GHARIALS ARE ACTUALLY SORT OF FUNNY LOOKING

The camp also had a female tiger which it had rescued from an injury.  The tiger was contained in a big rectangular pen, with 6-meter walls made from wooden slats.  There was a rickety ladder to climb to an observation site, but the ranger (and India) got very nervous when Tallulah and I were up there, so we had to come down quickly.  As we looked through the slats at her from the ground, the tiger made a few little feint charges at us.  Cage or not, it was scary to see her coming at us.

Back at Tiger Tops, we were delighted to find that another family with kids had checked into the lodge.  The Kleemeiers live in Saudi Arabia, but are originally from Wisconsin and from Beirut.  The family has three girls, aged 14, 10 and 5, and our socially deprived kids were overjoyed to have new friends to run around with.  While the adults drank wine and talked, the kids played hide-and-go-seek and flashlight tag. Eventually, all five kids went up to one of the rooms to play cards and tell stories. Zola, in particular, was in a state of social bliss, but all of us really enjoyed their company. 

OUR KIDS WERE OVERJOYED TO MEET SOME FRIENDS

On Monday morning we went on our final elephant safari.  Again, the morning fog was so heavy that everything seemed other worldly.  We tromped through dense jungle, and through patches of elephant grass that were 10 meters high.  The best moment was when we came upon a sleeping rhino, lying on her side and snoring away in the tall grass.  She snuffled and pawed the ground, like a hound dreaming of the hunt, but did not wake up.

The kids had a final game of freeze tag, we said goodbye to the Kleemeier family, and we boarded a small boat for the trip down to Tiger Tops’ sister camp, the Tharu Village Lodge.  As we paddled and poled down the shallow river, we saw about a dozen gharials lying on the bank, warming themselves in the late-morning sun.  Knowig how endangered they are, that was a truly special thing to see.

At the Tharu Lodge, we were the only guests.  The manager told us that December was quiet, and that most of the staff was going on leave as soon as we departed.  The “whole staff” includes 46 people working at the lodge itself, 12 working on the adjacent organic farm, and 8 teachers at the affiliated school.  I felt some implicit pressure as I put money in the communal staff tip box this morning.

The Tharu Lodge is a place of incredible tranquillity, in part, I guess, because we were the only people there. We went on a walk yesterday afternoon to visit the five villages surrounding the lodge.  As with our walk in the mountains, the villages were a little richer than I had expected: electricity, running water, good irrigation, very healthy-looking kids.  It wasn’t exactly Switzerland (no cars and practically no motorbikes, only one satellite dish), but the farms seemed productive, and the familes stable and generally happy.  We were told that the Maoists had difficulty building popular support in these villages, and in the elections the voters were strongly in favor of the Congress Party.

Maybe the best thing about our brief stay at Tharu Lodge was that we got to play sports together.  Aside from swimming (which Lu and I have done almost everywhere), we played a lot of ping pong, and also got to play badminton and tennis. Our six weeks in India and Nepal has been inspiring and thought provoking and generally great, but not much laugh-out-loud fun, particularly for Zola and Tallulah.  Between the Kleemeier girls and the Tharu Lodge, it was wonderful to hear our kids laughing and running around like kids again.

This afternoon we flew back up to Kathmandu from the commercial airport in Bhadrapur.  The 30-minute flight ended up being an all-day event, and ended up being more nerve-wracking than we would have liked.  

We were flying Yeti Air, and the flight was initially delayed for about 90 minutes for unknown reasons.  India is a generally nervous flier, and was not confident at all about the old twin-engine Otter prop plane that eventually showed up to take us to Kathmandu. The plan was to fly back 10 minutes back to the Tiger Tops landing strip, pick up more passengers, and then fly 25 minutes on to Kathmandu.

Five or six minutes after we took off from Bhadrapur, we heard a soft thud and felt a bump.  Stupidly, I kept reassuring India that everything was normal, and that the noise was nothing.  Meanwhile, the pilot made a sharp u-turn, and descended from about 2,000 feet to about 300 feet.  A few minutes later we made a quick landing back at Bakhtapur.  We had hit a bird, which took a big chunk out of the leading edge of the port wing.  I don’t know if we were in any real danger, but it was very sobering to see the mangled wing, and the look of relief on the pilot’s face when we stopped.  My guess is that I have taken at least a thousand flights in my life, and this was my first emergency landing.

YIKES! BIG HOLE IN THE WING

We debated driving back to Kathmandu instead of flying, but it would have taken 5-6 hours (for 150 kilometers), and I think the roads are more dangerous even than the ancient Otter twin engines.  After waiting around for nearly two hours, a replacement plane showed up.  With great trepidation, we boarded and made the quick flight (with the long-overdue pick-up at Tiger Tops) back to Kathmandu.  We were very glad to be on the ground again.

Tomorrow morning, however, we get back on a series of (jet) planes to get us down to the Maldives.  We will be on an island near Male for four days, before we head to South Africa on December 15th.  

We have really enjoyed our time in India and Nepal, but we are ready to be settled in Cape Town for a while, a place that truly feels like home.

Namaste from Kathmandu, where we finally have internet (and cell phone) coverage again.  We have spent the last few days exploring Nepal’s Chitwan National Park.  Until the Maoists overthrew the king and came into power in May 2008, the park was known as Royal Chitwan National Park.  It isn’t clear whether the running-dog, oppressor monarchical name will stay, or whether the new government will come up with something more egalitarian sounding.  Regardless, this short post is about our trip down to Chitwan, and our first morning there.

On Saturday, the morning that we left Pokhara, the clouds finally lifted, and we had spectacular views of the Annapurna and Fishtail ranges of the Himalayas.  We borrowed two flat-bottom canoes, and paddled out into Lake Pokhara to get a better view of the mountains, and to admire their reflections on the still water.

More precisely, when India got back from an early run, she and Zola took out a canoe, and left Tallulah and me sleeping.  I woke up about 15 minutes later, to find the hotel room door wide open, and Tallulah gone.  I rushed into the hallway and down the stairs, and out into the garden.  After a few anxious minutes, I found her wandering happily in her Princess Jasmine nightgown and bare feet.  Relieved, I carried her down to the dock, where we took the lodge’s second canoe, and paddled out to catch up with Zola and India.

Most of the drive from 160-kilometer drive from Pokhara to Chitwan was slow, scenic, and uneventful.  The road was pretty poor (which is why it took nearly five hours to go 100 miles), but as we came down from the highlands, the views of the lime-lightened green rivers, and the steep valley walls were amazing.  We got a flat tire; ironically it was on one of the very few well paved sections of highway.  This meant that as we blocked part of the road to change the wheel, cars and trucks were hurtling past us at 70 kph, instead of the normal 40.  This is about as fast as anything moves in Nepal.

DOWN BY THE RIVERSIDE

We stopped for lunch at a riverside resort (called Riverside Resort), which gave us an opportunity to walk down and explore the river that we had been driving next to for hours, and to put our feet in the rushing water.  Amidst a scene of great natural beauty and tranquillity, we found a corporate-sponsored (men’s) beach volleyball tournament in full, noisy, pop-music-accompanied swing on the alluvial sand next to the water.  This is a land of surprises.

We arrived at Chitwan just after the last match of the world elephant-polo championship finished.  They were taking down the goals as we drove up.  One of the English teams won, beating out the defending champion Scots.  Apparently, New Zealand and New York both also played well.  Again, this is a land of surprises.

Getting from the edge of the park to the Tiger Tops Lodge involved riding in a small bus, crossing a broad river in two flat-bottom canoes, transferring to a roofless old Land Rover, and driving through dense jungle for 40 minutes.  On the drive in (and the short twilight jeep safari which followed) we saw a few one-horned rhinos, many spotted and barking deer, wild boar, “marsh mugger” crocodiles, and a troop of shreiking langur monkeys.  Somehow I wasn’t shocked to find out they had no wi-fi at the lodge.

Back at the lodge, two rhinos wandered across the lawn in front of us during cocktail hour.  The staff said this was a first.  One-horned rhinos are wildly endangered, with only about 2,000 left in the world, but at Chitwan they seem well protected and almost as common as big ground squirrels.

We were woken up at about 2 am by the loud, tuneless trumpeting of the lodge’s elephants, giving repeated alarm calls.  As we lay awake, we then heard the deep, guttural growl/purr of a tiger, who must have been wandering amongst the chained elephants and creating anxiety.  Even lying in a comfortable bed, in a treehouse 20 feet off the ground, the tiger growl generated some primal fear among the Baird family in the middle of the night.  

A few hours later, we woke up for good and went off for our first elephant-back safari.  We had ridden elephants in India (for polo and on the ride up to Jaipur’s Amber Fort), but the elephant safari is unique to Nepal and to Chitwan.  The dew was so heavy that the sound of it dripping fooled us all into wearing our raincoats.  As we  lumbered out of camp, the fog over the dense elephant grass created a completely other-worldly picture.

ELEPHANTS IN THE MIST

We saw many more rhinos and baby rhinos on our morning safari.  They are skittish animals, and would go bounding through the deep grass once we got close to them.  The elephants followed the retreating rhinos, and we created a huge swath of stomped vegetation as the big animals all hurried along.  We did not see any tigers, but overall it was a great way to see the park and a lot of its wildlife.  Glamour-loving Zola was excited to find out that his elephant was the same one ridden by Princess Diana when she visited Tiger Tops in 1995. 

At Tiger Tops they keep everyone busy.  After breakfast we went on an hour-long nature walk.  Zola spotted (that is, nearly stepped on) a long green and black snake with a bright red neck.  The elderly Nepali ranger leading the walk gave us great confidence by saying, “Oh, he is not poisonous.  Well, not very poisonous.”  Tallulah rode on my shoulders for the rest of the walk.

NOT POISONOUS, OR AT LEAST NOT VERY POISONOUS

The next post will describe our second night and day at Tiger Tops, and then our time at a Tharu village lodge about 30 kilometers away.  Nepal is definitely a wild place

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Namaste from Pokhara, the jumping off point for treks in Western Nepal.  This post is about our activities over the last two days, since we flew up from Kathmandu.  My writing may be more choppy than usual for two different reasons:

• I am sitting in the administrative office of our hotel, the Fishtail Lodge, and there is a rat the size of a soda bottle running around in the small office with me.  I’m not exactly afraid of rats, but it is distracting.
• Nepal does not generate enough electricity, so there is a “load shedding” program in place.  This means that the power goes off suddenly at arbitrary times.

Having established that Pokhara is a little off the beaten path, we have been having a good time here.

The flight from Kathmandu is only about 25 minutes (apparently the 200 kilometer drive takes about 10 hours), but is very dramatic.  From the right side of the plane, the views of Annapurna and Fishtail are spectacular.  Because the passengers are told that the right-side seats have the views, and because there are no assigned seats, there is a huge scramble during boarding.  It was fun for Tallulah and me to watch my highly competitive wife and son wade into the planeside scrum with two dozen equally competitive Japanese tourists.   India and Zola prevailed, and we ended up with great seats.

Yesterday afternoon we took a long walk through the town of Pokhara, and up to an old Hindu temple on a hillside. 

We started by walking through a Tibetan refugee camp, which was completely different from what I expected.  The fact that “Tibetan Refugee Camp” is marked on the maps of many Nepalese cities indicates their longstanding presence.  The Pokhara camp has been in place since 1959, and looks permanent.  The houses are made of cement, and have sewer and electricity.  There are schools and shops and a monastery.  The streets are tarred, and swept clean.

We visited a women’s rug-making co-operative, where Zola demonstrated handicrafts skills that he learned at the Willow School.  It was very sweet to see him carding wool excitedly with the elder Tibetan ladies on the porch (carding duty comes when their eyesight fails).  Inside, Zola and Tallulah helped make several rows in a couple of carpets, while the women sang, and their little kids played.  The whole visit was so pleasant that I happily gave in when Tallulah insisted on getting a tiger carpet for “her room” (a hypothetical room for the time being).

We walked across to the schools just as they were letting out, and Zola and I got to play cricket for about 45 minutes with a group of teenagers.  Nepalese (and Tibetans) are nowhere near as cricket mad as Indians, but these kids told us that they play every afternoon.  I think they were pretty good, and I was flat-out horrible, but they humored us (”Nice bowling, sir, nice bowling”), and we had fun. 

Zola interviewed a 10-year-old monk named Yeshi, who lives at the monastery next to the cricket field.  Families frequently “give” their eldest sons to monasteries at the age of four, knowing that they will learn to read and write.  Everyone’s karma gets improved in the process.  During the brief interview, some older monks came out and glared at us, which was a little uncomfortable. I think Zola came away appreciating that he does not live in a monastery. 

[Incidentally, the rat running around here in the ceiling sounds a lot like rain falling on a metal roof.]

Pokhara itself is not very scenic, although the views of the mountains are amazing when the clouds lift.   Our walk up through the town was mostly interesting because we saw families preparing their dinners, and kids playing on the sidewalks, and packed buses dropping off adults coming home from work.  We saw groups of talcum-dusted young men playing Karom, the billiards-like game where you flick little disks into four corner pockets.  The talcum makes the disks slide more smoothly.  Zola and I have played against each other a few times in India and Nepal, so we appreciated how amazingly good these players are.

This morning, Sangeeta led us on an 11-kilometer walk through the mountains, starting in the town of Sangkot.  The dirt road goes past the jump-off point for Nepal’s #1 paragliding route, and then through about a dozen tiny mountain villages.  Because this is a touristy area, and well supported by private and inter-governmental aid, I think these villages are much more prosperous than most in rural Nepal.  The homes were made of stone, and all had electricity.  Water was being piped into homes and communal wells.  We passed eight or nine schools, all of which thanked foreign sponsors on signs outside their buildings.   The neatly terraced fields looked fertile and well irrigated (but what do I know about that?)

We talked to scores of uniformed school kids, as they walked home in small groups from the half-day.  90% of them just wanted to say hi and look at Tallulah and Zola.  It was surprising to me that literally every kid over the age of five spoke enough English to have at least a short conversation. 

A few of the kids asked for money, mostly using exactly the same technique: asking  “Where are you from?” and  “Do you read English?” and then whipping out a handwritten appeal on notebook paper , that asked for help in funding “The Mountain Sports Club for Boys” or the “Village Pencil Club.”  When we said no, they were polite and gave up smilingly.  We only saw about ten tourists while we were walking, but there must be enough to warrant carrying these sheets of paper around every day.

In one village, two separate groups of very small kids linked hands and blocked the road, while singing a “welcome to our village” song. When we stopped, the kids formed a tight circle around India, and literally would not let her go until she paid for the singing.  This was pretty aggressive (although not really threatening from seven and eight year olds).  India handled it with grace and firmness, and no money, but it definitely freaked Zola out a little. 

Overall, the walk was great.  The scenery was beautiful, looking hundreds of feet down into a valley on one side, and at the distant Himalayas on the other.  It was also fun to see so many kids and families.  Both kids were troopers, even though it was a long walk (although, to be honest, Lu spent a fair amount of time riding on my shoulders).  As she always is on hikes, India was as happy as can be.

We ended the day with a paddle boat cruise on Lake Pakhora.  The big, square paddle boat looked like an end-of-year project for the metal-shop and wood-shop classes at a junior high school.  There was a lot of badly welded and rewelded cast iron, sheet metal fastened with thousands of rivets, and awkwardly constructed wooden benches.  We had fun, and the boat didn’t sink, so all was well. 

With Zola at the helm, though, we nearly did crash into the rock wall of the lake’s man-made island.  With me saying “Turn to starboard” and “Hard to starboard,” he jammed the rudder to his right, steering us hard to port.  After we stopped paddling, and the danger passed, Zola literally said “I thought you meant my other starboard.”

It’s a laugh a minute, here in Pokhara.  The power has stayed on, and the rat has not run across my feet.  Tomorrow morning we are driving down to Chitwan National Park to go on an elephant safari and watch the world elephant polo championships.

Greetings, again, from Kathmandu.  We have had another unbelievably full day of exploring the Kathmandu Valley.  This post is about the most interesting part of that day, watching the rich pageant of life (and death) from the banks of the Bagmati River, next to the Pashupatinath Temple.

BODHA STUPA FROM MONASTERY ROOF DECK

We started the day by visiting the ancient Bodha stupa, which used to be a simple, enormous white dome in the shape of Buddha’s inverted begging bowl.  It now has a bronze superstructure, and prayer flags attaching to its steeple from all directions.  The stupa area is surrounded by pilgrims’ rest houses (some converted into shops and hostels), so it is completely cut off from the noise and activity of the streets.

As we looked out at the stupa from the sunny roof deck of an adjacent monastery, we could hear prayer music and the ring of prayer bells.  We saw and smelled hundreds of yak-butter candles and lamps, and watched Buddhist devotees worship and spin prayer wheels.  I was overcome with a great sense of tranquillity and happiness.  This is exactly what I would have hoped to find in Kathmandu.

After leaving the stupa, we went back toward the Pashupatinath Temple, where we had the sunset walk on our first evening in Kathmandu.  This time, we approached the temple from its western side, walking up a long hill and through an ancient deer park.  We descended steeply toward the holy Bagmati River, walking through a group of orange-clad old holy men, lazing in the sun.  It was hard not to stare at the leprous sores and the lost fingers and toes on some of these ash-covered sadhus.  

We walked down a long set of broad stone steps, and stopped when we were still about 20 meters above the river.  This put us at about the same height as the temple gates, across the narrow valley.  There was so much to look at and think about that we sat for almost an hour, and could have stayed all day.  Here is what we saw:

• Directly beneath us, on our side of the river, a three-year-old girl was having her head shaved with a straight razor by her parents.  They were sacrificing her hair to some deity. Tallulah told me several times, “I do not want you to shave my head.”  She did tell me that it would be OK if we shaved Zola’s head, however.

 NEWLY SHORN THREE YEAR OLD GIRL

• One level down from the barbering family, construction workers were hand carrying load after load of rebar to a construction site at the river’s edge.  Amidst all of the other action, they weaved gracefully through a small crowd of Nepalis and foreigners.
•  Just below the crowd and construction site, the Bagmati River itself flowed gently by.  It is shallow enough that a man with a rake was pushing charred wood, waterlogged flowers and other post-cremation detritus into the downstream current.  The river is considered very holy by Hindus (it is a tributary of the Ganga), but has gotten so polluted that the Nepali government has banned all bathing in it.  
   
• Although Nepalis seem to be obeying the bathing ban, an enthusiastic group of Indian pilgrims was not deterred.  They showed up suddenly on the steps (ghats) of the far bank, and jumped in the water.  Men in loincloths, and women in sarees, scrubbed themselves thoroughly and drank from the river. 

 ENTHUSIASTIC INDIAN PILGRIMS

• Only five meters downstream from the happy pilgrims, a mourning family sat on the steps next to a flower-bedecked corpse. The departed had already been through the pre-cremation rituals at the riverside: face and mouth washed with river water, feet washed, rewrapped in a sheet daubed with red vermilion, and covered in chains of marigolds.  Now the family was waiting for an “auspicious time” to start the actual cremation.  A pyre had already been built on one of the cremation ghats a little further downstream.  Unlike what we saw at Varanasi, women were mourning at the cremation site, and it seemed acceptable to cry.

 MOURNING FAMILY AND RECENTLY DECEASED

• Farther downstream, there were already two cremation fires burning on the ghat platforms.  A third fire was burning smokily, right at the river’s edge, but that was to dispose of accumulated rubbish from recent cremations.  These cremation ghats are relatively far from the temple steps, and until recently would have been used only by lower-caste Hindus.  The ghat nearest the temple was reserved for royalty, with the next nearest for Brahmins, and the next nearest for Kshatriya, etc.  Now they are allocated on willingness to pay.

CREMATION GHATS IN USE

• One level up from the bathing and cremation ghats, there is a kind of hospice, with multiple doors leading right out to the river.  ”Breathing your last” by the Pashupatinath Temple is supposed to absolve you of all sins in this life, and increase the chances of going directly to Nirvana.  As we watched, medical personnel dragged an oxygen tank down the temple steps and into the hospice area.

ZOLA WITH TWO NEPALI SADHUS

Namaste from Kathmandu!  We have had an unbelievably full and interesting day here.  Any notion that Nepal would be “just like India,” has been completely undone.  I will try to write about our day in a later post.  This short post is mostly focused on the Royal Kumari, the living goddess of Kathmandu.

As we are finding out, Nepal is unique in many ways.  In some “fun fact” uniqueness, Nepal has:

1. The only national flag that is not rectangular.  Nepal’s flag is two red triangles stacked on top of each other like little pennants
2. The only Maoist national government (elected or unelected) in the world.  They have only been in power for a few months, so it is too early to figure out whether this will be a good thing.  The monarchy was such a disaster that the bar is set pretty low.
3. The only time zone which is 45 minutes off the rest of the world.  If it is midnight in London, it is 5:45 am in Nepal.  Indian Standard Time (where it would be 5:30 am) was slightly confusing, but NST is maxing out our math skills.

Nepal is also unique in having a tradition of “living virgin goddesses,” in many of its cities.  The most important one lives in Kathmandu, and is known as the Kumari Devi, or the Royal Kumari.

For many centuries young Kathmandu girls have been carefully selected to act as Royal Kumaris.  No one seems to know exactly when this tradition began, estimates range from 1300 AD to 1750 AD, with the most frequent guess about 1550 AD.  Also, no one knows precisely how the tradition started, although the myths all involve a Newar king who somehow offended a powerful Hindu goddess.  Questions of origin aside, these pre-pubescent living goddesses are entrenched deeply in the culture and religion of Nepal.

The Royal Kumari is believed, literally, to be a living incarnation of the goddess Taleju. Taleju is the “wrathful” manifestation of the goddess Durga,  and Durga, in turn, is one of the many manifestation of the goddess Pravati. Pravati is the wife of Lord Shiva.  And to think that people say Hinduism is complicated.

The living goddess is selected at the age of 3 or 4, and serves until she starts menstruating.  Her role as goddess is: to live away from her family (in a small palace called the Kumari Che); to dress in elaborate red costumes and theatrical makeup; to wave to occasional visitors down in her courtyard; to receive important priestly and royal supplicants; and to be paraded around Kathmandu in a chariot a few times each year at important festivals.  Aside from the festivals, she does not leave her palace during her +/- 8 years on the job.

WAITING FOR A WAVE FROM THE GODDESS - THE MIDDLE WINDOW ON THE LEFT SIDE OF THE PICTURE IS HERS

New living goddesses have to be selected roughly every eight years.  If you thought that the admissions process for Manhattan private schools was tough, you will feel comforted to see the extremio ad absurdum of the Kumari Devi selection process.

• Prospective kumaris are drawn only from a specific caste of Buddhist gold- and silversmiths, known as Shakya.  Choosing Buddhist girls to become a Hindu goddess is only slightly strange.  Also, they must live within a small and strictly defined area near the center of old Kathmandu.
• Prior to reaching puberty, and long before getting married for real, most Nepali girls go through two symbolic weddings.  One wedding is at age 4-5 to a fruit called the bel (a type of apple), and one wedding, at age 11-12, is to the sun.  A prospective kumari must not have gone through either of these symbolic weddings, as they would somehow reduce her purity.
• The few little girls who meet the basic selection criteria are subjected to a series of tests.  As I understand it, these tests include:

1. A physical examination, which is theoretically a 32-point check against ancient criteria of godliness (”strength of a banyan tree,” “voice as soft as a duck”).  In reality, it sounds as though the girls are checked for birthmarks, scars, crosseyedness, and any other mortal flaws.
2. A character test, which involves watching the sacrifice of some number of animals (somewhere between 12 and 108 animals); seeing their decapitated heads with candles attached, in a darkened room; and not screaming for Mommy.
3. A spirituality test, in which the girls are shown a line-up of identical sets of red “living goddess outfits,” and are required to pick out the clothes which were actually worn by the retiring Royal Kumari.  Apparently a similar spirituality test is used in selecting the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama.
4. A matching of horoscopes between the king and each prospective goddess. This is likely to change with the Maoists now in power.  In September, the new Maoist government appointed its first kumari -not a Royal Kumari, it was out in the provinces.  It isn’t clear how the selection process changed, if at all.

Once the new little Royal Kumari is identified, she is ensconced immediately in the Kumari Che, and has a pretty weird and isolated life until she reverts to being a normal mortal about eight years later.

All four of us thought that the idea of the Royal Kumari was pretty strange.  When we visited the Kumari Che, though, the kids were tremendously excited to find out that we might get a glimpse of the living goddess at her window.  Because we had seen Queen Elizabeth waving from her car when we went for the changing of the guards in London in June, Zola could not stop making excited comparisons between the (relatively modest) Kumari Che and Buckingham Palace.

Summoning the goddess was simple.  Our guide, Sangeeta, shouted up to the window in Nepali, “Kumari, please come!  Please come, Kumari.”   Eventually a very cute little three-year old girl toddled into sight.  She was dressed in the red and gold goddess outfit, and had the classic dramatic kohl outline round her eyes and sweeping up to her ears.  The tiny living goddess waved twice without smiling, and toddled back away from the window, presumably to finish her breakfast.  I thought Zola was going to burst with the glory of it all.

Unfortunately, it is forbidden to take pictures of the Royal Kumari, so we didn’t capture the moment.  It was an experience that was so bizarre and special and unexpected (particularly because I haven’t read any Nepal guidebooks yet) that it set us up for an amazing day of exploration.

ANYONE SEEN A LIVING GODDESS AROUND HERE?

Greetings from Kathmandu, Nepal.  We arrived here from Delhi at about 1 pm, navigated our way slowly through the immigration and customs processes, and got to our hotel in time to take a long walk before sunset.  We are delighted to be here.

As many people had told us, the descent into Kathmandu is quite spectacular.  After flying past the snow-capped Himalayas, visible in the distance, the plane descended rapidly into a valley surrounded by low craggy hills.  Suddenly we were over a flat spot, and then on the ground.  After several days of melting heat and humidity in Kerala, it felt great to step out of the plane and into the crisp mountain air of Nepal.

We are staying at a beautiful small hotel, called Dwarika’s, on the east side of Kathmandu (www.dwarikas.com).  Dwarika’s is a compound of old brickwork Nepali buildings, which have been restored with great care over the last 38 years.  The founder started by just trying to preserve old teak woodcarvings (”an asylum and hospital for the care of wounded masterpieces in wood”), and built a beautiful oasis of craftsmanship in the middle of the city.  It is a special place.

TALLULAH AND DAD TRYING TO GET A HAIR OUT OF HER MOUTH DURING OUR WALK

We met our local Nepali guide, Mrs. Sangeeta Thapa, and went out for a walk before sunset. The Pashupatinath Temple is close to Dwarika’s Hotel, so we headed in that direction.

Pashupatinath is a temple to Lord Shiva’s “peaceful incarnation” as Pashupati, the master of all animals.  It is described as the most important Hindu temple in Nepal.  The temple itself is closed to non-Hindus, but we managed to peek in before being chased away (gently) by a security guard.  We saw a large golden statue of Nandi, Shiva’s signature bull, from the doorway.  Apparently there is also black four-headed Shiva/Pashupati statue inside.  

We got a very good early feeling about Sangeeta, our new guide, as she kept Zola’s and Tallulah’s rapt attention for nearly ten minutes, explaining just to them about the temple and the statues.  It was great to see how much Zola has learned about the Hindu gods and myths, and to watch him ask detailed questions about Shiva’s incarnations, and Nandi’s powers.  He understands this part of South Asian history and culture a whole lot better than I ever will. 

We walked up a series of steps behind the temple, past a few smoking garbage fires, and then up a broad dirt path into an open area.  This little park also has religious significance, but I didn’t quite catch it.  There was a huge revival tent, and a ceremony being conducted in Sanskrit (which no one speaks), and then translated into Nepali.  It reminded me of the movie, “The Passions of the Christ,” which was acted in Aramaic, then sub-titled in English.  

There are more beggars in Kathmandu than we saw generally anywhere in India.  All four of us were pretty  disturbed to see a boy of about 12, lying curled on a blanket in the park, with a begging bowl in front of him.  The boy seemed to be suffering from some horrible neurological illness, and was crying and shaking and moaning loudly.  Sangeeta explained that he is frequently lying on that spot, and that he has not been abandoned.  His mother leaves him there, hoping people will put money in the bowl, and she hides nearby. Despite the explanation, I felt powerless, and shamefully cold-hearted, and shocked, and sympathetic, and concerned for my own kids, all at the same time.  An awful combination of feelings.

We walked back down the hill, avoiding the direction of the cremation platforms on the Bagmati River for the time being.  We went into an old complex of five shrines, called Panch Deval.  The shrines have been turned into a strange dormitory/hospice which is packed with very old Hindus who want to die next to the Pashupatinath Temple.  Sangeeta’s description, as we walked up, made it sound pretty morose place.  To my surprise, we were greeted with vocal enthusiasm by the thirty or so old folks who were socializing near the gate. They seemed particularly happy to see Zola and Tallulah, and could not have been more cheerful and welcoming.  I would think that the big stacks of cremation-pyre firewood in the central courtyard would reduce the levity, but I would be wrong.

Finally, we walked back through the dark streets to our hotel.

We were only out for a few hours, but it gave us some early sense of the city and the people.  My initial impression is that Kathmandu is much less crowded than the Indian cities that we saw, but it is also considerably poorer.  Nepalis really seem to like burning garbage: there were little fires all over the place. I read somewhere that “fire is considered sacred.”  The old buildings are beautiful, all unmortared red brick and carved teak.  And the mountains around the Kathmandu Valley are spectacular.  

We are looking forward to really starting our visit tomorrow morning.