What the K-YAVs see? The Kathmandu.

AKA Travelling! #3: Kathmandu, Nepal

Hi everybody!  Long time no blog, sorry about that!  BUT this blog is a big one about our big , exciting trip to Nepal, so I hope it's worth the wait.  I felt I had to get it done before the next big trip, which just so happens to start next week.  More on that after it happens!  One thing to note is that I find myself unable/unwilling to write more succinctly, mostly because I want to be able to remember this year in as much detail as I can manage.  So, for the TL;DR (Too Long; Didn't Read), look to these excellent blogs about Nepal by my fellow K-YAVs: Nepal... in pictures and captions by Anna Curl and Nepal: the Mission, Nepal: the Adventure!, and Nepal: the last word by Anna Shustitzky.

Day 1: Travel, first impressions, UMN, Patan Durbar Square, old friends, and food

So let's talk Nepal.  Last year's YAVs went to Japan as their big retreat trip, but Uncle Simon and Haejung 이모 decided to take us to Nepal, where they served as mission co-workers for three years, to show us a mission field that is much different than the one in Korea.

After a long day of travel (Chinese stamp in my passport -- check!), we arrived in Kathmandu at about 10pm.  As our plane landed the lights of the city seemed few and dim, but I chalked it up to the expected pollution and ignored it, choosing instead to look up at the stars which I hadn't really seen much of since arriving in Korea.  We were picked up from the airport by James Park, his smiling Korean face a welcoming sight in the crowd of insistent taxi drivers vying for our business.  As we drove to our hotel, the surroundings reminded me of Juarez with its dust and trash everywhere, except for the maze of narrow streets that make Kathmandu feel a  little more claustrophobic.  How little I knew the delightful things we'd find there over the next couple days once the metal shutters were rolled up and Kathmandu opened for business!

The next morning, after breakfast and "chiya" (Nepali milk tea) at our wonderful hotel, we headed to United Mission Nepal (UMN), where Uncle Simon and Haejung 이모 did some of their work during their time in Nepal.  We took two taxis, and in mine, Haejung 이모 remembered both the way there and enough Nepali to direct the driver like a boss.  UMN had a very pleasant little campus, and everyone there was very welcoming.  UMN is not directly a service organization, rather, it works to find funding for its partner service organizations around Nepal.   Uncle Simon worked with several of these, apparently traveling to each and telling them financial things they didn't want to hear in the interest of making each organization more self-sustainable.  The staff at UMN seemed to be about half Nepali people and half foreigners from all over the place, which made me so curious about their lives -- what are their stories?  It's fascinating to think about the twists and turns someone's life must have to lead them to work in such an interesting place.  I guess you can say the same for our time in Korea, but that's only a one-year commitment, not a life-long calling.

After visiting UMN, we went headed out to lunch, walking the way Uncle Simon would go every day to their house and towards their favorite restaurant.  We found neither.  Our lunch objectives were finding two dishes in particular, "Chicken Chile Boneless" and naan.  We had to settle for only the CCB, but it was really delicious.  I think this may have been where each of us YAVs tried a lassi -- a mistake we'd come to regret in time.

On the way back from lunch, Haejung 이모 recognized a gate on the street, and we went through it behind some new buildings to find the house they had lived in was still there!  The landlord noticed us checking it out, and, remembering Uncle Simon and Haejung 이모, invited us in for tea and cookies.  He and his wife were so nice and pleased to see S&H again.  We even got to see the little orange building behind the house where S&H had studied Nepali.

Next we went to Patan Durbar Square, a gathering place with several Hindu temples and lots of people.  Hindu temples in Nepal all look similar to my eyes, two or three tiers of brown and red colors with intricate wood carvings, a statue of a god inside covered in red with offerings around it, a couple guarding statues outside, sometimes with a statue of that god's vehicle (animal), and pigeons on the roof.  The animals can't be harmed in the temple, so there are plenty of pigeons.  Nepal also has millions of stray dogs, and they're a pretty cute breed (although usually dirty and/or beaten up) and seemed sweet-tempered -- probably because they can always find food at the altars in each neighborhood.  There were also a few kids we talked to there that tried to connect with us by telling us things about the USA they had learned, although the eventually starting asking us if we wanted them to guide us on a tour of the nearby golden temple.  It was much more adorable than begging or pick-pocketing.

The enterprising traits of those youngsters were also present in Kathmandu's shopkeepers.  We spent the rest of the afternoon poking around shops, and they would be very welcoming and try to relate to you to get you to buy whatever they were selling.  I'm not a shopper, but this made it pretty fun, especially later in the trip when we got the hang of haggling with the shopkeepers.

For dinner we all piled into one taxi (six people in one of the cars at the end of the slideshow), and headed back to our hotel through the ridiculously crazy traffic.  In Nepal, driving on the street is an extreme exercise in navigating a maze of cars trucks, bicycles, bicycle rickshaws, and people.  The restaurant, Thamel House, was near our hotel, and it served us some excellent traditional Nepali food.  Afterwards, S&H went to bed while we continued exploring the shops, buying a few things and noting the nearby places to buy gifts on the way back through Kathmandu at the end of our trip.  Nepal sells some pretty neat stuff for low low prices, so we couldn't help ourselves.

Click the arrow to start Day 1 slideshow!

Day 2: Bandh, walking, Lalitpur Nursing School, Nick Simons Institute, and food

The next day was a totally different and unique experience.  It was a Bandh (pronounced "ban-dah" with a hard /b/) day!  Don't what that is?  Well, I can tell you the what, but maybe not so much of the why or how.  Bandh means strike, so on a Bandh day, nobody works, and nobody drives.  As for the why, I gather that Nepal was recently in a state of civil war.  There was a monarchy that was overthrown and a democratic (?) government installed in its place.  The people still don't seem very happy about the government, so perhaps the Bandh days protest it somehow.  I'm not really sure, though from the wikipedia entry, it's much more complicated than I've explained.  How a particular day is chosen and the word is passed around I don't know, but everyone seems to get the message.

The point is that for this day, we were on foot.  We decided to still try to make it to our meetings for the day.  Our first goal was the Lalitpur Nursing School.  As we walked about, the former traffic was completely gone on streets that had been totally packed the day before.  The people seemed to be in a good mood, all walking or riding a bike somewhere with purpose.  We walked over the bridge over the saddest river I've ever seen (and I normally live near the Rio Grande, remember).  This place more than any other showed the pollution problem in Kathmandu.  The water is slow, clogged, gray, and stinks.  Garbage covers the  banks, and a slum is built a little higher up.  We saw kids playing among the trash, really heart-breaking stuff.  On a more positive note, we also walked by a temple with lots of monkeys on the roof, doing their monkey thing.

As we walked and walked, like kings down the middle of the road, the only people we saw working were the police.  These were full-on soldier-like riot police, with transport trucks, assault rifles, helmets and shields.  Six to a dozen of them were stationed at each major intersection.  I suppose they were to ensure that no demonstrations got violent, but the demonstrators we saw seemed peaceable enough.  Some were even chatting amiably with one group of policemen.  It was very strange to be walking through a scene similar to one you'd see on TV with people (who look very different than me) protesting and all the riot police at the ready, though thankfully minus the violence and turmoil you'd see on TV.

Eventually, after getting a little lost and asking directions several times, we made it to the nursing school.  The people there were again very kind and took us on a tour.  This is one of the organizations Uncle Simon had worked with.  They told us how they had grown to be one of the top nursing schools in Nepal.  We happened to be there on the day that the students were taking their nursing exams, so of course Uncle Simon stuck his camera in a classroom to get a picture of them writing furiously in their identical red sarees.  I'll admit that the most exciting part of this visit was going up on top of one of the buildings and getting our first real view of Kathmandu.  Every building is very colorful, built in tiers as the owner gets enough money to build another floor.  We finally were up on a hillside where we could see them covering the valley with our first views of snowy peaks off in the distance.

Next we headed just down the hill a bit to the Nick Simons Institute.  This organization has a very interesting background that you can find if you follow that link, but I'll summarize the story for you quickly.  Jim Simons is a renowned mathematician that made billions managing a hedge fund.  His son, Nick, drowned swimming in Bali, after having worked in Nepal and grown to love it over the nine months he was there.  To honor his memory, his parents made a general statement that they would fund a worthy proposal to start an organization in Nick's name that would have a real impact in improving Nepal's healthcare.  Uncle Simon helped with the financial planning part of that proposal.  After researching the problem, they figured out that Nepal's government hospitals were pretty good in terms of infrastructure, but lacking in human resources.  So they decided that the Nick Simons Institute would partner with hospitals to provide training for rural doctors, nurses, and other health workers.  We learned all about it through a presentation with the head honcho there, Dr. Mark Zimmerman, and headed up to lunch.

Luckily for us since all the restaurants were closed, they provided lunch on the roof.  It's different and kind of awesome, but in Nepal, you go outside to get warm.  So this was a nice little lunch bar were you got your common Nepali lunch (rice with bean and lentil soup topping, curry, and cooked greens), and sat out under the sun to eat.

We walked aaaaaalllllll the way back to our hotel, stopping to take a few pictures that would never be possible if weren't a Bandh day.  After a bit of relaxing, we headed to dinner at a nearby restaurant that was much bigger on the inside than it appeared on the outside.  Like a TARDIS.  The Bandh ends in the evening, so this restaurant wasn't violating it or anything.  The power in Nepal can be intermittent, so this was a pleasant dinner by candlelight.  It was really tasty: tandoori chicken, veggie and chicken curries, a cheese-chile-curry sauce that was so good with naan, and naan!  The only downside was that a couple of ladies at the next table wouldn't stop smoking, and it put Haejung 이모 in a bad mood.  To complete my sci-fi references for this paragraph, I've noticed that Haejung 이모 is to our group on a retreat as Kaylee is to Serenity, whatever she feels, we feel.

Click the arrow to start Day 2 slideshow!

Day 3: Ever Vision School, traditional Newari village, shopping, and Korean food

On our third day, our first stop was the Ever Vision school, where Mr. James Park works.  It's a private school in a poor neighborhood that's funded by Korean money and with some Korean staff.  This may not be the most culturally competent statement, but it's great to see other countries that also look outside of their own borders to try to help others in the world.  Mr. Park works for Food for the Hungry International (if you're a YAV reading this, yes that song pops into my head every time I hear this phrase too), which supports the school.  The school has an interesting Child Development Program (CDP); it goes into a community and sponsors one child from every nearby family to go to the school, and as they succeed and move on, the CDP money moves on to a new community to help students where they need it.  After a couple of presentations about these programs, we toured the school, stopping by a couple classrooms with the principal to say hi to the kids.  We happened to interrupt both an English lesson and a Nepali lesson, and the kids were super cute and talked to us nervously.  Interesting fact: in Nepal private school classes are taught in English and Nepali is just one lesson, while in government public school, the opposite is true.   Nepali people in general seem much more comfortable in English than Korean people.  No offense, Korean friends, I still love you.

The next place we headed was a traditional village on the outskirts of Kathmandu where the lifestyle hadn't changed much in about 400 years, according to Uncle Simon.  It was an amazing place.  The people seemed happy, the men farming or in groups playing some sort of board game on the ground, the women washing clothes, bathing, carrying, spinning yarn from raw wool.  The kids were, of course, really cute and followed us around.  There was a group of late high school boys playing volleyball.  We joined them later for some fun times.

The scenery here was the most breathtaking yet.  The farms are made from terraces cut from the mountainside.  The mountains loom, green ones nearby with snowy peaks behind them in the distance.  Dogs, duck, goats, chickens, and some sheep wander everywhere.  The people there were very friendly, a couple girls even got Anna Curl's email to correspond later; some were becoming accustomed to the tourists and wanted money for taking pictures.  When Anna saw the women spinning the yarn, she had to have some (she's a knitter), so she offered one of the ladies 100 rupees (about $1.25) for a spool.

The rest of the day was spent perusing the free trade shops, checking out the grocery store where S&H used to shop, shopping again near our hotel (there's a theme here), and going out to dinner with the Parks.  For dinner, we went to a Korean restaurant!  It had been started by the wife of a Korean photographer that was in Nepal a few years ago, but they've since moved on and the Nepali staff they had kept it going.  It was a little different than the real thing, but still tasty.  At dinner we met Mr. Park's daughter who was finishing up her high school career and was worried about college.  Now, it's usually easy to tell a high-schooler how college will be so much better, but maybe it's not so convincing for someone who went through high school in Nepal with a tight-knit class of 26 friends from all over the world.

Click the arrow to start Day 3 slideshow!

The adventure continues as we head southwest to tropical Chitwan!  Click to continue reading: Chitwan-dering