The Last Day

And so begins my last day in Nepal...

It begins just like the first one did, with a sunrise. Since the first photo that I took in Nepal was of a sunrise I was tempted to use a sunset photo for the last one since that would complete the obvious metaphor. However, I reconsidered and decided that another sunrise would be better because a different metaphor comes to my mind. Not one of endings but one of transitions.

I noticed when I took this photo that the sun was rising on the right side of the large tree, and that when I arrived in October the sun rose on the left side of that tree:

This trip was transformative to my life even before I boarded the plane in San Francisco because of all the things that I had to do to prepare to be away from my house and primary job for 3 months. I dropped the gym membership that I have barely used for years. I cancelled the newspaper subscription that had doubled in price in the last 5 years. I transferred over tasks at work that I've needed to transfer off my desk ever since I arrived so that I could focus my efforts on more important tasks. Some of those tasks might come back to me in January but I hope not.

I've been in Nepal for 62 days counting today. I've never been in a foreign land for that long a period in my entire lifetime. I came here not known how I would eat, wash clothes, or extract money from an ATM. I didn't know if I could deal with the traffic, the dust, the foreign food, the heat (and then the cold), and taxi drivers who couldn't speak English. I didn't know how much electricity, Internet access, or flushing toilets I would have access to. I didn't know if I would have enough medication, toilet paper, and bags of ramen to last the entire trip. Somehow, someway, I managed to figure this all out and not only did I make it to the end I did so with 1 bag of ramen and a roll of toilet paper to spare.

This would not have happened were it not for the people of Build Change Nepal. I knew a couple of them before I came but only by phone calls and emails, so I didn't really know what to expect. They welcomed me and included me in their activities, and with some of them their everyday lives. They were the ones who directed me to the restaurants, the markets, and the ATMs that can be trusted. They were the ones who invited me to dinner. They were the ones who made the effort to explain to me in English the joke that was just told in Nepali. Now they are the ones that are thanking me for coming and asking me to come back or even not leave. I am the one who feels thankful, grateful; indeed full in many ways. I have learned a lot from them and have benefited from their experience, as much if not more than they have with mine.

I am coming home a different person. Not radically different like what is portrayed in the movies, but certainly with a different frame of mind than what I had when I left. Things like how many weeds are in the backyard lawn, how hard it is to find a parking space at work or at church, why Oakland roads have so many potholes, what this word in this provision of this building code means, and so on don't seem as important as they did before. I like to look at the bigger picture of things and trips like this help to remind me not only of what that picture is but also that I should remember to look for them rather than get bogged down in the minutiae of my everyday life that I so often find myself focusing on.

I hope I'll remember to do that as I slowly transition back, though if I forget I can, as my new friends here keep telling me, always come back to Nepal for a reminder...

A Day in the Life - Nepali Style

While working here in Kathmandu I've stayed at a guest house that Build Change is renting, which is just down the street from the office. It's a nice place by Nepali standards. I suspect that if Superman picked the house over to Newport Beach it could be worth at least a million, that is once the sewer and water lines are hooked up and the dryer and pool are installed....

The front entrance. I'm in the master bedroom that is on the left

The kitchen is nice and modern and includes a microwave. When I left here last year the program director at the time asked me what it would take to convince me to come back. I told him he had to get a microwave so that I could cook my own meals. Sure enough, when I arrived this time there was a brand new microwave in the kitchen...

Notice I was wearing shorts when I took this photo back in October. I haven't worn shorts in a month...

My bedroom is the master and is at the highest occupied level of the house. Consequently I have to hike up stairs to get to it. This may be one reason why I've lost a few pounds on this trip...

Looking down from my bedroom door to the lobby

Yes, the mattress is on the floor, which has done wonders for my back. I stole a second mattress from one of the other rooms, which has helped a little....

There is a vacant lot across from the house that has been anything but vacant since I've been here. During the day there has been construction work there and at night a pack of dogs live there and howl at each other. The lot is also used to burn trash, something I've seen quite a bit of around here.

Before, from October. I understand that used to be a swimming pool

After, from about a week ago

It doesn't smell like victory...

My days begin with a walk to the office, which starts with getting the guard to open the gate. The guards here are not exactly young and spry, which leads me to wonder just how well they can guard against anything. However, they are all nice guys and they all salute me whenever they greet me in the morning.

About every other day I get coffee before work, usually at Top of the World Cafe, the expat coffee place close by. I've got a frequent buyer card and I'm this close to getting my second free cup of latte...

Latte from Top of the World

On Saturdays Top of the World is closed so instead I go to Cafe Soma. The atmosphere is not quite as good and it is a little further away, but the latte there is decent and they have the best grilled chicken sandwich of any place I've tried around here.

Latte from Cafe Soma

After getting my latte fix I head off to the Build Change office, which is also in a house that's not quite as nice as the guest house but it is bigger, which helps when you have so many people working for you as Build Change Nepal does.

The Build Change office, before the staff arrives

The living room is where the engineers work. I have a space at one of the far corners below the white board, which I've used a lot while I've been here

The Build Change Nepal staff at Tihar. Aliza Baidya, the office's lead HR person and one of my many new Facebook friends, posted this photo

Lunch is usually served at the office by a 2-3 woman service staff who cook rice, soup, and meat every day. I usually take lunch there because the food is good, the price is great ($3 or so per lunch, beat that LBNL cafeteria!), and you can't beat the convenience. However, the same meal every day can get tiresome, so occasionally I go out with some of my colleagues and get lunch elsewhere. One place we went about 2 weeks ago featured Newali food that my friends wanted me to try.

This is Yomari, rice dough filled with molasses & sesame.

Sherpa is local craft brew, one of 3 I tried here (not all at this sitting ;). The others were Everest and Gorkha. They all pretty much tasted the same...

And on occasion I have gone up to the roof and looked at the view:

Click on the photo to see the panorama

When work is done for the day I walk home and either cook something in the kitchen (often pasta because it is quick and easy) or go out. My favorite place has been the Roadhouse Cafe, which specializes in pizza but also has a really delicious Caesar salad with bacon.

Hmmm, bacon. And greens too. That's a win/win

When the day is done I usually catch a couple of hours of TV. The Sopranos are still shown during the week and there is Premier League football on weekends. The rest of the time it's pretty much all cricket. Most of the English language sports channels here are from India, and when you think of sport in India, you think of cricket.

From the India-England test match series. I believe India is cleaning England's clock in this series, but I can't really tell...

On weekends I usually walk around the neighborhood to the store, or to lunch, or just around. This is not as easy as it may sound with the sidewalks around here. Many roads don't have them, and the ones that do exist are uneven and full of obstructions like trash, dirt, power poles, and the occasional animal feces. You really do need to watch your step around here.

Yeah, this pretty much covers the condition of some sidewalks in Kathmandu.

Then there is the traffic that is usually snarled with cars, taxi cabs that have drivers that drive like cab drivers everywhere do (insane), and lots and lots of motor bikes, some of which have drivers that like to cut as close to the curb as they can (perhaps to make a sport of it?). Then there are these unusual vehicles that I would swear were built in someone's garage if a) there weren't so many of them and b) there were houses with garages:

It's always nice to try and get home before sunset, so I can see views like this from my bedroom balcony:

And that is my everyday life in Nepal.

On the Banks of the Bagmati

Just imagine, I spent 8 weeks in Nepal with no health problems at all, and then in my last week I got hit with a stomach infection. My bottle of Cipro medicine that was getting lonely sitting on my bathroom vanity unused suddenly had my full attention. I'm doing better now, my hope is to make a full recovery before I leave on Wednesday so that my long flight home doesn't become a really long flight home. It does mean though that I have to avoid drinking any lattes while I recover since their milk contact reacts badly with the Cipro, and since my stomach has troubles when I drink coffee or tea without milk it means I may have made my last stop on my Nepali latte tour...

The stomach problems also kept me away from work the last two days. Thus there is a lot of catching up I have to do in the next few days to get everything done before I take to the friendly skies where there are no free Internet connections. I did set aside some time today though to talk a walk down to the river to stretch my legs and get away from my laptop.

The Bagmati River forms the border between the city of Kathmandu and its primary suburb Lalitpur, which is where I am staying. There are a lot of Hindu temples on the river banks, which led me to think that the Bagmati may be considered sacred. I looked online and indeed it is considered sacred. It's where Nepali Hindus are taken when the die. The bodies are dipped in the water and then cremated in one of the temples. The ashes are then placed back in the river and sent downstream to eventually flow into the Ganges River in India.

Some of the temples along the Bagmati

Some of the temples still have damage from the earthquake

As you may be able to tell from the photos, the Bagmati is also very polluted, and not from cremated ashes. The Bagmati not only serves as the final journey for Hindu worshipers, it's also the final journey for the waste of many of those who are still living. When we were in the Himalayan villages a few weeks ago one of my Nepali colleagues remarked about how refreshing it was not to see water that was black, referring to the typical color of the Bagmati.

There are also only a few bridges that cross the river, so traffic between Kathmandu and Lalitpur is constantly congested during the day since it's all being funneled across these bridges. Consequently, at times it seems like the Bagmati is considered more of a sewage line and a traffic inconvenience than a sacred river.

It would be easy I suppose to accuse the Nepalis of turning one of their sacred spaces into a toxic dump.  However, the waste has to go somewhere (after the last 2 days I am thankful for that), and Nepal doesn't have the infrastructure or the money to construct and maintain an effective sewage disposal system. They don't have the money to fix the roads and repair all the homes destroyed by the earthquakes, let alone to install sewage lines and a waste treatment facility. Thus while the richer homes like the one I'm staying in have septic tanks, the poorer ones only have the Bagmati.

Even still, there is lots of beauty in Nepal, even along the Bagmati. One example is some of the Hindu temples along its banks. Another is the suspended pedestrian bridge that I walked to today. I don't know when it was built or why the builders chose a suspension bridge instead of a column supported one like the vehicle bridge next to it was, but I thought it was a quite beautiful bridge.

Don't be surprised that I believe bridges can be beautiful. I am a civil engineer you know... ;)

Love Is in the Air

Ever since I arrived there has been construction work going on at the house next door to where I'm staying. The driveway was repaved, a bunch of trees and bushes were removed, and the entire exterior was repainted, though not in the safest way...

I sent this photo to the safety folks at LBNL and their reaction was "what the...?"

The driveway repaving project

I learned at 8 am yesterday morning why all this work was happening, when the band started playing...

There was a wedding at the house yesterday, complete with lights, a tent, and of course the band that included a horn section. Turns out this is wedding season in Nepal, and there are a lot of weddings happening around here. Pretty much everybody here at the Build Change office has gone or is about to go to a wedding in the next few weeks, some are going to more than one (not unexpected given how young everybody here in the office is). Even one of my Nepali friends who is going to school in America just posted photos of a wedding she attended there.

Weddings are big events in Nepal, even more so than they are in America. They are large, loud, and all day affairs. There are also a lot of flowers being worn by women and being strewn on cars. Small weddings doesn't appear to be an option here; even the ones in backyards are large.

I'm not sure why December is such a popular month for weddings. Maybe it's because the weather is decent here like June is in America. Maybe there is a Hindu tradition surrounding weddings during this time. Or maybe there is just a lot of love in the air. It does make things more colorful around here. I am thankful though that the band stopped playing around 6:30...

Swayambhu, the Monkey Temple

There are a lot of holy sites in Kathmandu and the surrounding area, but perhaps none are considered as sacred as Swayambhu. Swayambhu sits on top of a steep hill on the west side of the Kathmandu Valley, overlooking the city. Buddhist tradition has it that the fully enlightened Buddha Manjushri had a vision of a lotus growing here and traveled to see it. At the time the valley was a large lake. Manjushri cut a gorge to drain the lake, creating the valley. When he did that a hill grew up where the lotus was and the lotus turned into a Buddhist temple or stupa.

The stupa was believed to have been constructed in the 5th Century, and it has become one of the major pilgrimage sites for Buddhists, or so I am told. It is also a major shrine for Hindus. Pilgrims climb the long, steep steps on the east side of the hill and then walk clockwise around the stupa spinning the prayer wheels as they go. The eyes on top of the stupa are said to be the eyes of Buddha and represent wisdom and compassion.

Swayambhu is commonly referred to as the Monkey Temple because there are monkeys that live there and are considered holy because they originated from the hair of Manjushri. There are monkeys everywhere on the hill, and yes they often tussled with each other. The merchants don't seem to like the monkeys but they can't do anything about it except chase them away from the merchandise with sticks and slingshots.

I'm glad that I had the opportunity to come here. While there were a lot of merchants, a lot of pigeons, and a lot of monkeys and all of them were annoying at times (more so the merchants than the animals), there was something spiritual about this place. Maybe because it was on a hill above the city, or maybe because there were many worshipers there, or maybe because it's an important place of worship for two of the world's largest religions. I'm not sure, but there were times when I could feel, just for a moment, what one of my ordained friends referred to as a thin place.

And now the photos, starting with a panorama of the city from the hill:

And continuing with a virtual tour of the site:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Somehow, I feel more enlightened today...