Faith and superstition

I took a "public jeep" back up to Kathmandu from Hetauda this morning. It costs 300 Nepali Rupies (a little over $4.00) to cram into a Tata Spacio with about 12 other people. They put four to a seat instead of three, but there isn't anybody on the roof or anything. I reserved seat #6 (the one behind the driver) a couple days ago with the help of one of Tiffany's coworkers. There are a number of different companies that run these jeeps. It's about 4 and 1/2 hours from Hetauda to Kathmandu. It was a pleasent enough of a ride.

Anyhow, so we stared off a little after 7:00 this mornnig, left Hetauda, went up the little river valley a ways. So many sights, smells, sounds. It can be overwhelming and exhausting at times when everything is new, everything is a potential photo opportunity, everything is a potential story. But I was struck by one thing in particular. The couple sitting next to the driver--I'm pretty sure they were Hindu by the way they were dressed, etc.--made a religous-type gesture as we passed a couple little temples. Religion feels pretty omnipresent here to me. Got me thinking: What is the difference between faith and superstition? Of course, one often has a positive connotation, while the other almost always has a negative one. But, really, what is the difference? I certainly don't claim to have the answer, but I'd be curious to hear thoughts. It's something I've been thinking about a lot, albeit somewhat subconsciously until this morning.

There are a number of things that feel omnipresent in Nepal. Beautiful clothes: reds, oranges, yellows, blues. Motorcycles: often single men, sometimes with a woman behind, then man almost always wears a helmet, the woman almost never does. Music: people are singing, listening to music, all of the time. Trash: there is trash all over, sometimes burning, I mean really all over; I've never seen anything like it; appalling. Open sewers. Cows: in the small town, countryside, and city. Drying laundry: either on rooftops in the towns/city, or beside homes in the countryside.

There are other things that are specific to small town, countryside or city. In Hetauda people stared a lot. Just stared. There are about 5 foreigners in town. Pigs eating trash on the side of the road.

On the jeep ride through the countryside... it's hard to know where to start. Terraced fields of corn, rice, cabbage, carrots, wheat. Forests. Cicadas. Near head-on collisions. Beautiful flowering trees: purples, reds, pinks, whites. People going to the bathroom on the side of the (narrow, exposed) road--men, women and children. Women standing with children on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. Women sifting flower on the road--on the road. Men breaking rocks, lots of rocks, lots of men--may roads are "under construction." Various checkpoints, whether police or to collect fees for the "road constuction." Sheppard children with their flock of goats--on the narrow, cliff-lined road. Cows. Water buffalo. Chickens and roosters. Dogs laying in the middle of the road. More pigs. Boars. Banana trees--lots and lots of them. Pine trees. And on and on and on...

And then back into the Kathmandu valley (for my third time now). The smog. The size of the city--absolutely dwarfs anything else I've seen in the country. The "traffic jams": people, bicycles, rickshaws, motorcycles, cars, trucks all fighting for their little piece of roadway. The tourists in the tourist ghetto, Thamel. Mint lemonade and a small combo platter of hummus, baba ghanouj, pita--very much not Nepali, but very nice partially because of that.

Will meet up with the folks from Mountain Monarch in about an hour. Day after tomorrow we start our journey towards Island Peak. I'll return to Kathmandu on May 7th.

Hope to get photos up soon... for real. The internet is sooooo slow here. I'll see what I can do in the next day before I leave town...