The morning after the wedding I hopped into a great big winged metal global warming machine with dozens of others and we flew to Delhi then Kathmandu where I rocked my Pierce Coop connection and met up with my lovely friend form Uni Mike Slouber. Mike is living in Nepal for the year studying Nepali and Sanskrit for his PHD work at Cal. Pretty cool eh? He is also spending some quality family time with his wife Corinne and two baby daughters, Anna and Lilly, two years and two months old. Thanks Slouber family for letting me stay in your spacious apartment and feeding me good home cooked food. The steamy hot showers were a nice touch as well.
Kathmandu is a lot of things. It is the capital of city for an epicenter of Eastern spirituality with plenty of devotees, shrines, temples, and spiritual merchandise. It is also very polluted. The rivers running through town are stinky toilets and on a bad day the hazy air beats Delhi's for opaqueness. Nepalis are keen to the pollution problem, however, and are often seen wearing urban survival masks to filter out some of the gunk before they breathe it in. There is also battery powered electric public transportation! Thats right, three wheeled electric cars carrying a dozen or more commuters all over town. There are hundreds of these Safa Tempos (Clean Busses) operating in the city every day and they have been around for a dozen years competing successfully with their C02 emitting counterparts using way primitive lead acid technology. It makes me wonder why we are unsure of electrics in the West. Ok so these guys only go 25 mph but that's kinda nice and they only cost a couple thousand bucks. As you can imagine, I am stoked on Safa Tempos.
After a week of hangin' with the Sloubers and doing some more shopping (I got a silicon mouthpiece for my teeth grinding at night and some wild paisley pattern clothes made for the price of a big night out in SF) I went on a fancy big hike in the Himalayas. Looking through a Lonely Planet I chose the Langtang Valley hike which ascends from 4,000 feet to 12,000 feet, wow, with peaks up to 23,000 feet towering above. The hike took 6 days with an extra day on a sketchy overloaded windey cliff side bus ride to reach the beginning from Kathmandu. I had my pick of lovely lodges to eat and sleep at along the way up and back. No sleeping bag or camping stove necessary on this adventure. The day I started happened to be Tibetan New Years, 2136, the celebrations of which lasted the whole of my hike. At one particularly memorable instance I was getting drunk on home made rice beer, Chawng, before noon at 10,000 feet. The new years fried bread twists handed out to guests quite readily was my favorite trail food. The bread is best when served with a steaming cup of Tibetan tea, or Yak fat with salt in hot water. The scenery was spectacular, on par with Yosemite back home. I saw plenty of Yaks as well, grazing on the late winter brown thorny alpine bushes. On my way down I bumped into a Buddhist ceremony parading my way. Dozens of villagers were carrying sacred texts wrapped in orange cloth to the local monastery where they would be read by monks for blessings. Singing and dancing around an altar of Chawng at the monastery ensued with plenty of food and drink after wards. It was all a beautiful experience. I highly recommend it.
On the bus ride back, not quite as overloaded, I had my very own Nepali spiritual enlightenment experience. Painted onto the side of a village shop in the brightest of colors was my very own spiritual mantra, "Boom Saka Laka." Back home I had been awakened to this prayer in a dream and had been using it accordingly but it wasnt until now that I discovered its true meaning here in Nepal. Just below the sacred mantra is written a reference to the great one, Instant Noodles. The great Western learning Easter sage, Michael Slouber, says that the Earth is Food so Food is the Earth. This whole time I had been chanting to Gaia, "Boom Shaka Laka Gaia," but really I should be chanting to instant noodles, "Boom Shaka Laka Instant Noodles!" Thank you oh holy noodles which cook so quickly when added to boiling hot water and are conveniently seasoned with a small packet of MSG for delivering me from my material prison.
Next stop, Sydney Australia.
1 comment:
you is good.
Post a Comment