Chefchaouen

I have spent the last couple days in a medium-sized town in northern Morocco called Chefchaouen or Chaouen for short. It is a beautiful place in the foothills of the Rif mountains. Here is a link to some nice photos of the town.

This is the kasbah on the main square in the medina just after sunset a couple nights ago.

Part of what makes the town so beautiful to me is the fact that much of it is blue. Literally. Check it out.

And there are all of these wonderful doors. Here is a nice example.

A quick google search will reveal that marijuana is a big deal in this part of Morocco. A lot of it is grown in the Rif, and in certain parts of Chefchaouen young men are ever trying to sell hash to the tourists. But I have found that it is fairly easy to avoid. And the charms of the city far outweigh this minor hassle.

For me Chefchaouen strikes a nice balance. It certainly is touristy, and there are lots of us here. But walk a few blocks from the main square in the medina or better yet, leave the medina for the ciudad nueva--Spanish influence here, along with French--and it is very easy to find yourself surrounded by locals just doing their thing.

Speaking of taking respite from tourist overload, today I went for a nice hike up out of town into the Rif. There was an interesting mix of people up in the mountains. There were a few locals, herding goats, tending crops, etc. There was a group of 30 or so bankers up from Casablanca for the weekend. I spoke with a couple of them for a bit. They were very friendly, offering me dried fruit and nuts, talking about everything from Crater Lake--one of them lived in California--to international free trade. The only other foreign tourists I saw was a French couple.

The Rif remind me a tiny bit of Oregon's Siskiyous or Elkhorns. Rocky in a kind of understated way.

And apparently spring is a good time to visit. It was a riot of wildflowers up there!

It has been really nice to be able to just chill out in a beautiful little town surrounded by mountains for a couple days, eat good food, get lost in the beautiful, blue medina, go for a challenging hike. All the while, I've been spending time meditating on Islam... more on this later.

But tomorrow I will take a bus to Fez. I'll be there just a couple nights, and then I'll begin my journey home: Casablanca for a night, Geneva for a night, Cincinnati... And honestly, I am a little intimidated by the thought of Fez. It sounds like rather an intense place to visit. But for some reason I'm drawn there. We'll see. Wish me luck!

My first YouTube video

I just posted my first-ever video to YouTube. This was the view from the rooftop terrace of my hotel in Moulay Idriss. Really happy about my choice to go to this small town...

As we went we listened

We decided to take the bus this morning, a hundred Moroccans and me

From Moulay Idriss, one of the country's most holy cities

To Meknès

To Bab el-Khemis, the medina's western gate

We passed through olive orchards

By roadside agave and artichokes

By carob and cacti

It felt like rain

As we approached the city

The people standing in the aisle had to duck

Lest the police notice

The overcrowded bus

And as we went we listened

To the voice of the man on the radio

As he sang sacred verse

From the holy Koran

Rehumanization

A few people have asked me why I am in Morocco as a part of my current travels. I have quoted various superlatives involving Fez; biggest this, oldest that. But that does not really get to the heart of why I am here. And so the question has stayed with me. And really, it goes even deeper than that. Why travel at all, regardless of destination? This is a question that haunts me. By traveling am I being selfish, wasteful?

I flew into Casablanca yesterday afternoon from Geneva. I hopped on a train at the airport and ended up in Meknès, albeit late--like midnight late. But no worries, Hotel Majestic was right around the corner and exactly what I needed.

This morning I walked about 20 minutes over to the old town, the medina, from the new town, the ville nouvelle, where I am staying. I proceeded to get lost, literally, in the various markets or souqs of the medina--and a couple of times, at that. The souqs are quite a sight--and smell and sound and taste! Vegetables, spices, fish, meat, clothes, shoes, leather products, wood products, silver, etc. Each with its own collection of a few or a lot of nearly identical little shops. Feels like how shopping used to be, you know? All open air, little signage. No branding. Not corporate. Had shawarma, a meat and veggie sandwich, in a little place on the main square.

By this evening I had made my way to a nice open green space back in the ville nouvelle, just a few blocks from my hotel. So many people out for a post-dinner walk! I feel like I have seen this before, say in Valladolid, Mexico or Gresham, Oregon--could be anywhere, and that is starting to get to the point.

Seeing all of these people, just out enjoying the evening... couples, families, individuals; young, mid-life, old; traditional, progressive; all kinds. I was just walking around, quietly taking in the scene, when a couple of girls carrying a heavy bag walked by me. The must have been about ten years old. Their load was clearly heavy, and they started to argue a bit about it. In Arabic, of course. That was when it hit me. Rehumanization.

(The sun just set. The fairly modern guy running the internet cafe I am in turned off the cheesy French music that had been playing. The call to prayer echos in through the windows.)

That is at least part of the reason that I choose to spend some of my precious time and money on travel. The word just occurred to me hearing these girls speak, the guttural and emphatic consonants, the glottal stops of their Afroasiatic language. I do not know whether it is a real word. I certainly had not heard it before, although a cursory google search reveals that others have found a use for it, as well, e.g., here.

I feel vulnerable when I travel. I make mistakes. I do not understand things--a lot of things! It is a feeling. It is emotional. It helps me to learn to have empathy. What does it mean to be on the outside?

Moreover, I see more of the nuance and complexity of the world. Of course the world is complex you say from the comfort of your home. But it is something else entirely to feel that complexity, to smell it, to taste it. Television cannot do that. Google cannot do that. Wikipedia cannot do that.

There is such a drive to categorize, to quantify. To place people in nice, clean boxes. To stereotype. To turn people into others. But we are all human. We all feel. We all matter. We are all part of us.

That is what I was reminded of this beautiful evening in Meknès. Rehumanization. A good of a reason as any to take a trip to Morocco.

This one's for you, Kev

May 20, 2010. Moëns. That's the real deal.

Person, place, thing

This morning, now that the Kolbs have gone, I could take time to write about Genève and around, about places and things. I could focus my attention on facts and figures. On hyperlinks.

But that would miss the point, wouldn't it? Really, it's about people and relationships. About learning from one another and sharing. About conversing and lending a helping hand. That's where I'll try to focus my attention today.

By now the Kolbs, grandparents and all, are well on their way to Italy. Tomorrow, with any luck I'll be spending the night in Meknès. But for now it is simply quiet. A bright sunshiny day.

I can think back on this last week spent with the Kolbs. The beautiful singing Ruthie, the kids and I heard in John Calvin's cathedral.

The picnic lunch we all shared in a vineyard outside of Russin.

Of course, there was alone time, too. Appreciating how international of a place Geneva is. Home of the WHO, UNHCR, IFRC, etc. (The people from all over the world, speaking languages from Swahili to Vietnamese, dressed in their suites and professional-looking dresses, riding the buses into town to go to work at these places were such a stark contrast to the suped-up UN trucks I saw all over Nepal, in Kathmandu and on half-built roads in the countryside alike.)

Appreciating the Swiss sense of order on roads and hiking trails in the Jura Mountains. (Note: This is not technically an Alpine meadow.)

Simply appreciating being in a European city like Geneva, lions and all...

I've been traveling for nearly two months now. That's a while! It has given me an opportunity to think about my priorities, my values. I can get caught up in details, in information, in trivia. But really, so much of this journey has been about spending time with people: friends, new and old.

I'll fly to Morocco tomorrow afternoon, and take a train into the interior. I'll have a little over a week to eat tajines, practice my Moroccan Arabic, take in the call to prayer. (Incidentally, you can listen to the call to prayer, for example, here. And please don't misunderstand my sharing of this. I'm not Muslim or really even particularly religious. But something about hearing the call to prayer just gets me.)

And in a way I feel like this trip is coming to an end. Before I know it I'll be back home, with good people, yes. But it has been so wonderful to spend this time with my friends who are living for a time in Asia and Europe. That is something I'm truly grateful for.

What is the difference between a tuk-tuk and a rickshaw anyway?

Having a lazy afternoon in Ornex with the Kolbs. It's beautiful and sunny out, nice little breeze. A perfect spring day for mowing the lawn and barbecuing. Ribs will be had shortly. Doing some daydreaming about Nepal for now, and mentally gearing up for the journey to Morocco in a few days, as well.

One of the many things that was striking to me about Nepal was the variety of vehicles. That reminds me that Ruthie referred to me as "the alliterator" earlier this afternoon. I'll try not to get too carried away.

Anyhow, so vehicles, yes. I've already mentioned the Tata Sumos that provide a nice alternative to buses around the country. Here is an example of a typical stop on the road from Kathmandu to Hetauda in the south.

Another very common vehicle is the Tata truck. They are wonderful in so many ways. So colorful. Invariably covered with paintings of gods and other religious imagery. Things written in Nepali, which I couldn't read. And things written in English: Slow Drive, Long Life; Speed Control; etc. Here is an example from a side street in Hetauda near Tiffany's work. Note the swastika, which I discussed previously here.

Motorcycles are, of course, extremely common. Generally driven by a man, who nearly always wears a helmet. There is often a female passenger, who essentially never wears a helmet. Incidentally, both of my trekking guides for the two different treks I went on explained that owning a motorcycle is one of the surest ways to a girl's heart in Kathmandu. For the most part in Nepal dating does not happen. Marriages are arranged by parents, and there are one or more viewings of the potential bride. I was led to believe that while things are changing a bit in Kathmandu, they are still quite traditional in the rest of the country. Anyhow, so here are some motorcycles on School Road in Hetauda.

And now the answer you've all been waiting for to the question posed in the title of this post. My understanding is that these are tuk-tuks, right off of Main Road in Hetauda.

And that this is a rickshaw, also off of Main Road in Hetauda.

In Nepal rickshaws are very common, both in places like touristy Thamel in Kathmandu, as well as in ordinary everyday places like Hetauda. Honestly, I never took a ride in either. They are omnipresent, though, and very exotic coming from the US. Their utility seems fairly self-evident.

And now the smell of the ribs is beginning to completely overwhelm any thoughts I might have had an hour ago about distant Nepal. Time to eat!

A reminder that physicists are frequently furry

A few days ago the Kolb family and I visited CERN, where Jeff is currently working. An interesting note, the acronym CERN does not stand for the lab's current name, but rather for the council that originally set the lab up in 1952, Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire, see here. What is CERN? Well, perhaps most interestingly for most people reading this post, it is the birthplace of the World Wide Web, although of course that has essentially nothing to do with the main purpose of the lab, physics, which I'll get to in a moment. Here is a photo of the office where the web was invented.

So why does CERN exist? I suppose at the simplest level the point of the bulk of the research being done at CERN is to improve our understanding of how subatomic particles behave and interact with one another. Incidentally, this is not too dissimilar from the research I did as a graduate student. You can think of a particle accelerator like the one at CERN like a really big microscope. The reason it costs so much is that it takes a tremendous amount of energy to "see" these phenomena.

Jeff is working on the Compact Muon Solenoid Experiment.  Oh, I almost forgot to say, CERN, and the Large Hadron Collider, in particular, is huge. Like 27 kilometers around huge. Here Jeff is pointing to Ornex, France, where his family lives. Note that it is within the ring of the LHC. Crazy, huh?

Anyhow, in the morning he took me over to the CMS site. Here is the control room. Very cool. A lot of CERN feels like it could be straight out of a science fiction movie.

In addition to being on call from time to time, Jeff works in here occasionally, monitoring various components of the CMS experiment.

As you might imagine, it takes quite a bit of computational power to make a machine of this scale work, let alone to crunch through all of the data that is produced. Here is one of many rooms full of computers at CERN. And by the way, a very significant portion of the data processing is actually done in other sites all over the world.

For lunch Jeff, Ruthie, their kids and I went up to one of the cafeterias at CERN. It was here, in particular, that I was pleasantly reminded of just how frequently physicists are furry. And really, whether or not an individual physicist is furry, they are certainly likely to be at least a bit eccentric, and that's wonderful.

Towards the end of my tour, we walked by a statue of a particular manifestation of Shiva, apparently a gift to CERN from the Indian government.

In a way I kind of felt like I had come full circle. There was also a quote by Fritjof Capra, author of the Tao of Physics among other books. I read this book when I was a rather young and impressionable seventeen year old. And I realize that reading it may be part of the reason why I decided to study physics and theoretical high energy physics, in particular. He painted such a beautiful picture of the world. I think in some ways, though, I think I misunderstood what he was trying to convey, and just took away a somewhat naive, if not downright crude caricature of his profound ideas. In graduate school, as I learned about the scientific method on a much deeper level, about assumptions and approximations in science, about experimental error, I became a bit jaded and came to strongly disagree with arguments such as those put forth by Capra. I found them misleading at best. But now I feel a little more relaxed about the whole thing. You could call it intellectually laziness if you like. I'd rather say I'm a bit more at peace, a bit more wise maybe even. I should be careful, though. I don't want to get ahead of myself... Regardless, it was great to visit CERN, and be reminded of all of this, in particular after just having been in the East. Way to be.

Color in Nepal

One thing I really noticed during my time in Nepal was how colorful everything was, and I have a few examples I'd like to share. A picture says a thousand words and all that.

In between the two treks I went on, in Langtang and the Everest region, I spent time in Kathmandu and Hetauda, a medium-sized town in the south where Tiffany is living and volunteering. I especially noticed color in these more southern, more Hindu places. The more Buddhist north was somewhat colorful, as well, I suppose, but not nearly to the same extent.

For example, this was a very common scene walking into town from Tiffany's apartment.

I love the saris and kurta surwals. But maybe even more than the clothes, I really appreciated the judicious use of the umbrella for blocking the sun in Hetauda. This was the most southern and therefore the hottest part of the country that I visited, and the umbrella usage was unlike anything I saw anywhere else. Very nice.

Another colorful part of Hetauda and the surrounding region was all of the red flowering trees. This photo starts to give you a sense, although it doesn't quite capture just how brilliant these trees are this time of year.

One my last Tata Sumo ride back up to Kathmandu from Hetauda the day before I left Nepal--which was just a few days ago, crazy--we stopped at the Dakshinkali Temple just a few kilometers before reaching Kathmandu. Incidentally, the goddess, Kali, and Hinduism more broadly, is so interesting to me these days. I know quite a bit more than I did before my trip to Nepal. I guess at this point it pretty much just blows my mind. So for example, I honestly don't know what the goddess, Kali, is all about. From what I've read and some of what I saw in Nepal she seems like a pretty dark character. But I've heard and read things, too, about her somehow being viewed as a mother goddess. Who knows? Anyhow, when we stopped there by the temple to change a flat tire, a young man came over and offered everyone in our Tata Sumo this tray of tika powder, etc.

All of the Hindus in the Tata Sumo, i.e., everyone but me, took a healthy portion of the tika powder on one of the flowers and applied it judiciously to their forehead. I believe it must have been some kind of minor festival of some sort, as I had never seen anything along these lines on any of my previous Tata Sumo rides past this temple.

In Kathmandu there was quite a bit of color, in particular at Pashupatinath, which is one of the holiest if not the holiest Hindu site in Nepal. Pashupatinath, by the way, is a temple of Pashupati, a particular version of Shiva associated with animals. As you walk in towards the temple complex, you are bombarded with stalls full of color. There are the beautiful marigolds, which would appear to play an important role in Hinduism that I don't quite understand.

There was the tika powder, and not only the most common reds, oranges, and yellows, but other colors as well.

And there were the widows, the female sadhus, or Hindu holy people, who hang out at the temple.

So much beautiful color all over the country. Really, this is just the smallest little taste of what I saw. One of the most important things that is missing is the clothing that women wear and the tikas that men, women, and children so commonly have. Hard to get photos of people sometimes, I suppose...

And now as I sit in Jeff and Ruthie's place outside of Geneva, the color is starting to fade. But I know Nepal is just as colorful as the day I left. I don't see that changing anytime soon.

And now for something completely different

So I'm not in Nepal anymore. I arrived in Geneva, Switzerland yesterday to visit my friends Jeff and Ruthie and their kids for about a week. Here is Jeff and his beautiful 18 month old daughter, Eva, in the parking lot of the grocery store on the Swiss side of the border yesterday afternoon.

And here is Ruthie and their nearly month old son, Manny, on the walk to church this morning in old-town Geneva.

Last night after dinner we all went for a walk near Jeff and Ruthie's home. They live in Ornex, France, which is so close to the Swiss border that we actually walked right across the border through these beautiful fields on this small road yesterday evening.

Note the rockin' pack that Eva is traveling in. Well done. Happy kid.

It's very green and grey here, reminds me of home in that way. Due to the grey, though, I have yet to really see the Alps. Jeff and Ruthie tell me that on a clear day one can even see Mont Blanc from where we were standing in the above photo. Not bad. Hoping it will clear up a bit in coming days.

This morning we went to the English-speaking congregation worship service of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Geneva. It was a lot of fun to attend the service and meet some of Jeff and Ruthie's community here in Geneva. And what a diverse community it is! Literally people from all over the world: Brazil, Denmark, Namibia, and New Zealand just to name a few. For all of these people, though, English is more convenient than French for a church service. That doesn't mean by any means, though, that they speak English as their first language. When it came time in the service to say the Lord's Prayer, everyone was invited to say it in their own language. I'd guess there were probably at least 10 if not 20 languages spoken. Moreover, we sang songs from all over the world, and Africa in particular, as we were praying for Malawi and Zambia as a part of the Ecumenical Prayer Cycle, which by the way, I had never heard of before. Fascinating.

Right now Ruthie and Manny are taking an afternoon nap. Jeff and Eva are having some yogurt on the living room floor. They just finished checking out Turkey and Georgia in Jeff's world atlas. It's good to be here. My six weeks in Nepal were wonderful, and I'll have more to say about it. In a way being here feels like coming home, though. The green and grey. The Western sense of order. One chapter ends and another beings.

Symbols of Hetauda

I only have a few hours left in Nepal, but I still have lots of thoughts about all that I have seen here over the past six weeks. So much to process.

One thing that I've been thinking about a lot is symbols. I just did a quick google search. A couple interesting sites popped up that seem to merit further investigation, symbols.com and symbols.net. Also, here is the obligatory Wikipedia article.

Walking around Hetauda, where my good friend, Tiffany, is a VSO volunteer working with COSAN, a local Nepali NGO, I felt constantly bombarded by symbols. Really, this was the case all over the Nepal, but it seemed especially so in Hetauda.

I'll start simple--relatively. I saw this cross on the gate to Tiffany's neighbor's home.

They are Christian. They sing religious songs (in Nepali) in the evening, while other neighbors play guitar and sing secular songs or light candles and incense as a form of puja. By the way, according to this Wikipedia article, less than one percent of Nepalis are Christian.

A symbol that is perhaps a bit more common than the cross in Hetauda--and certainly much more common in Nepal as a whole--is the communist hammer and sickle. For example, I saw this flag hanging over Main Road in Hetauda a couple days ago.

I think it's kind of nice that there is a tractor driving down the street in the photo, as well. Kind of completes it for me. I'll write a bit more about Nepali politics later, but for now I'll just say that there are two different--and opposing--communist parties in Nepal, the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist) and the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). Here are their official web sites, CPN-UML and UCPN (Maoist). Interestingly, UCPN (Maoist) has a facebook page, as well.

A couple weeks ago I went up to the mountain with an Israeli guy named Moses or Moshe in Hebrew. Much more about this later. For now I just want to say that both he and I noticed hexagrams all over the place up there--think Star of David. It would seem that--perhaps among other meanings--it is associated with education in this part of the world. Here is an example of one on the gate to a school--on School Road coincidentally enough--not too far from Tiffany's home in Hetauda.

By the way, I just asked the nice Nepali guy sitting next to me in the internet cafe what is written--in Devanagari script--in and around this particular hexagram. He said the bit in the middle is a year, the year 2016, in particular. Recall that Nepal uses Bikram Samwat calendar, and the current year here is 2067. His guess was that that was when the school would have been build, i.e., 51 years ago. The word in the top right is "golden" so it would make sense that this nice gate would have been made for the school's golden anniversary. The yellow word towards the bottom is Hetauda, the town where the school is located. The rest of the symbols seem to indicate the name of the school, but without more context it was hard for this fellow to decipher with certainty. Just an interesting little aside...

In the Hindu world, Om is a very important symbol. In fact, it's about the only symbol in Devanagari that I can recognize. You see it all over the place, for example on the sign above a little shop near Tiffany's work.

The god in the painting is Shiva, one of the most important gods in Hinduism. His weapon is the trident or trisul. Here is one of many, many trisuls to be seen in and around Hetauda.

By the way, up in the Buddhist part of the country Padmasambhava, a.k.a. Guru Rinpoche, is often seen holding a trisul. My trekking partner, Moses, thought of Lucifer every time he saw this particular symbol.

Finally, the swastika, perhaps the most challenging--for Westerners--symbol of the region. Here is one of many examples in and around Hetauda, from a small temple on Main Road.

Note the Om in there, as well. It was particularly hard walking around up in the mountains with Moses seeing so many swastikas, tatooed on peoples' hands, on carpets, etc.

What's the point? I guess it's twofold. One, symbols are very common in Nepal. And really, I bet they are pretty common at home, too. It is probably just that I notice them more being in a foreign land. Two, and much more importantly, I think, the meaning of a symbol depends on context. Take the hexagram or the swastika, for example. For my whole life those two symbols have held very strong and very specific meanings. In this part of the world, though, they have utterly, completely different connotations. It really just takes some time to integrate that. It's one thing for someone to say that or to think it abstractly, and another all together to walk down the street and see a holy temple covered in swastikas. Makes you think. Makes me think, anyway.

To the Kingdom of Bahrain and beyond!

This is a photo I took in the Bahrain airport six weeks ago, when I was on my way to Nepal. Note the sign indicating the mens and ladies prayer rooms. Wow. That was different. Call to prayer in the airport and the whole bit.

It's crazy to me that it has already been six weeks since I arrived in Nepal. It's Wednesday morning now. Today is my last day in Hetauda. It has been a wonderful visit. I still have lots of stories to tell and photos to share. Today, though, I'm starting to think about my journey west.

My travels will begin at 7:00 tomorrow morning when a Tata Sumo comes to pick me up near Tiffany's dhera (that's Nepali for apartment). We'll drive north towards Kathmandu. The journey takes about four and a half hours. It can roughly be broken into thirds. The first and final thirds are paved. The middle third is not. We will go over two ranges of hills. Somewhere in the middle we'll stop for khaja (that's Nepali for snacks). The food in Nepal is very good. Even stopping for khaja in a little hamlet on the side of a dirt road in the middle of nowhere is a treat. Likely I'll have something similar to the curried potatoes I had on a similar stop a few weeks ago. Mmmm...

By the way, here is a pic of one of these infamous Tata Sumos, as well as one of the little roadside inns where we had our khaja on a previous trip.

And then it will be one final round of Kathmandu before... Bahrain for a few hours. And then Jeff, Ruthie, and family, Geneva, Switzerland, France, CERN, and if I'm lucky... fondue!

Buddhism is a religion

I only have a few days left in Nepal. That really hit me for some reason yesterday, Monday. I take a Tata Sumo back up to Kathmandu first thing Thursday morning. And then Friday it's off to Switzerland to visit Jeff, Ruthie and family.

Today Tiffany is off with one of her coworkers in a small village a few hour's bus ride from Hetauda attending a uterine prolapse workshop. So I have a relaxing day here in Hetauda... to cook and clean, walk around town a bit, hang out at the internet cafe for a while, read.

Tiffany woke me up to say goodbye around 7:00 this morning. I got up, heated up some tea, made toast--this involves frying a couple pieces of bread in butter on the gas stove. Also, heated up some water to have with my muesli. Washed all the dishes by hand. Set another big pot of water to boil. All water has to be boiled--and filtered--here. Tiffany then puts the boiled water into used one-liter plastic coke bottles. Some of these go into the refrigerator, although there is only power for about 12 hours a day so there is no guarantee that there will actually be cold water. Quite a process, but not that bad, really. Surprising how easy it can be to adjust to these minor inconveniences.

Then I sat down for a bit to read some of the book I'm currently reading, Fragrant Palm Leaves by Thich Nhat Hanh. Tiffany read this book a few weeks ago and really enjoyed it. I've been thinking a lot about religion in Nepal and so took her up on her suggestion that I read it, as well. He sounds like a young man. I guess he was in his mid- to late-30's when he wrote this. It's hitting the spot right now. Sometimes the right book at the right time in the right place, eh?

Another book of Tiffany's that I read a few weeks ago was Karma Cola by Gita Mehta. I read it when I was in Hetauda the first time between my time trekking with Tiffany in Langtang and my time in the Everest region. This book really helped me through a hard time here in Nepal. I'd say it was the low point of my travels here. I think it is partially that I was sick. But mainly, I think it was that I was just intellectually and emotionally overwhelmed with the fact of Nepal. The reality of being here. Hard to express just how foreign it feels. And that can be so exhausting. When everything is a potential story. Everything. And everything is a potential photo opportunity. Everything. Gita Mehta's writing helped calm my spirit. She's a bit cynical. Very intelligent. Insightful.

My second day in Nepal I went to the Swayambhunath and Boudhanath stupas in Kathmandu. This is a photo from the area around Swayambunath.

It was very beautiful there. So many people. Some tourists, but mostly Nepalis. Just being at the holy site. Just being.

In the monastery at Boudhanath there were so many exquisitely beautiful thangka paintings. Here is an example, complete with various heavens and hells.

When I was up trekking in the mountains, I saw many, many simple altars. Here is an example from a lodge in Dingboche.

And also so many mani stones and walls, prayer wheeles, chortens... and of course prayer flags absolutely everywhere. Here is an example of a small chorten with Island Peak--the 6,189 m (20,305 ft) peak I was to climb a few days later--in the background. By the way, the omnipresent mantra Om mani padme hum is inscribed in Tibetan again and again and again in these stones.

I've been in this little internet cafe for over an hour now. I walked here through the intense morning heat. Many of the locals are smart and have umbrellas--not for the potential pre-monsoon torrential downpour, but for the sun. Walked down Bhairab Road to School Road. Picked up a cold Sprite and a chocolate bar at one of the many nearly-identical small markets. I've been having cravings for the last week or so. I was fine for my first five weeks or so in Nepal. But just recently I've been craving soda and chocolate... and coffee and Mexican food! Whew. So interesting how Hetauda is set up. There is a main road, Main Road. In different sections of town there are different types of business. For example, on School Road there are all of the cell phone places. Everything is pre-pay here. No bills. There is a place where there a bunch of hardware shops. There is the part of town with all of the vegetable markets. Everything is so personal. For better and worse, right? You get that personal touch. Tiffany knows the woman she buys bananas from, for example. It is very much not corporate, right? But then again there are open sewers and there is only electricity for 12 hours a day. You hand wash all of your clothes and all of your dishes. People don't have cars. They walk. Or ride a bike. Or take a rickshaw--tones of those around. Or if they're pretty wealthy ride their motorcycle--quite the status symbol here.

So there's something that's been on my mind the whole time I've been here in Nepal. People in the US say this thing sometimes that really kind of bothers me a bit. They say, "Buddhism isn't a religion." What could that possible mean? I suppose they are saying that perhaps it is a philosophy instead. I guess that just begs the question of what is a religion. I need to do more reading and thinking on this, but it seems to me that a religion should involve a practice, a cosmology, and likely some element of belief or faith. I'm sure many people have thought and meditated long and hard on this so I'll leave it at that for now. The point, though, is that somehow the argument is that Buddhism doesn't fit whatever the working definition of a religion might be.

By the way, when I was trekking up in the Everest region, my guide, Yugal from Darjeeling, said one day out of the blue, "Buddhism isn't a religion." What!? Where did that come from!? Turns out he meant that Buddhism is not distinct from Hinduism. Of course, this is entirely different from what some of my fellow Americans are saying about Buddhism. I don't buy this either, though. I think it's pretty clear that there are large differences between Buddhism and Hinduism. Sounds a bit like saying Christianity and Judaism are one in the same.

The other thing that bothers me about the "Buddhism isn't a religion" thing is the implicit corollary, "and that is a good thing" or "and that is a strength of Buddhism" or "and that somehow makes Buddhism superior to the other major world religions." One thing to consider here is that Buddhism is not monolithic. There are many different schools, etc. Broadly, Mahayana and Theravada.

But beyond all of that, beyond all of the reading one could do on this, my experience here in Nepal just screams at me that, "No, it's not true! Buddhism is most certainly a religion!" The Buddhist people here in Nepal have a particular world view, a particular cosmology, one full of supernatural beings. They believe. I believe they have faith. The have a practice--daily, yearly, etc. How or why isn't it a religion? And why would that be a good thing? Something to meditate on.

Puja and dharma in Nepal

One thing that I have been struck by again and again in my time here in Nepal is how vibrant and alive religion/spirituality is here. Of course, it takes many different forms throughout the various regions of the country. But it feels consistent, nonetheless.

Before I came here I did a little reading about religion in Nepal, about Hinduism, Buddhism, even Bön--fascinating! In particular, I read a book called The Snow Leopard, which I highly recommend. Really gives a sense of rural Nepal. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say that reading this book helped convince me that this whole adventure was a good idea.

Anyhow, in spite of that reading I really didn't have any understanding of what Hinduism and Buddhism are all about. What is the point? But then I arrived in Nepal. This self-portrait is on my second day in Kathmandu. I walked over to Swayambhunath. A holy man gave me a tika as I started my way up the stairs to the stupa.

Once I finally got up to the stupa--it was hot, and there were a lot of stairs--there was so much going on. People walking around the stupa, always clockwise with your right shoulder to the stupa. Incense, etc., etc., etc... I don't really even have words for what all was happening up there. I like the word puja (also, here). My understanding is still very minimal, but to me puja seems to mean practice, worship, whether it's on a daily level, a yearly festival or a once in a lifetime event. It's so strong here. There are always bells ringing to waken the gods, people making small religious gestures as they pass temples. It's really beautiful, actually.

Up in the mountains, in the Solukhumbu, for example, it looks a bit different. The Khumbu Sherpa, for example, have these small altars outside their homes. They burn juniper in the mornings to ward off evil spirits.

There is so much more than that, though. They are ever chanting under their breath as they count their mala. Their is the omnipresent mantra Om mani padme hum. Every small village has a monastery, with beautifully painted walls, idols, etc.

I'm down in Hetauda now where it is very Hindu. Again, though, there is a consistency throughout, whether in the Buddhist north, the Hindu south or the very confusing mix in between. Tiffany lives right off of Bhairab Road--which is surprisingly hard to pronounce correctly, by the way. On my first day in Nepal, I walked down to Durbar Square in Kathmandu, which is an amazing place. Stunning. Among many other wonderful temples, statues, etc. was a powerful statue of Bhairava, who as best as I can understand is a terrible manifestation of Shiva--most if not all Hindu deities have terrible manifestations--associated with justice. I guess criminals used to be killed at the idol's feet. Now people just come to make offerings. Yes, there are some tourists there. But really--and this is the point of the whole post--it is Nepalis who come, do puja, make offerings, worship. The idol. Wow. That is so different. So profoundly foreign for me. And really, really beautiful, too.

As best I can tell dharma is kind of the sum total of all the puja you do throughout your life. The puja are all of the small acts, the daily practice, etc. But it all adds up to something. That is what I understand dharma to be. Of course, I'm still learning, I'll want to do more reading about this part of the world when I return to P-town. But I feel like I have learned something in my time here. And I like it a lot. I'm a bit surprised by that. But I do. It's profound.