A Tibetan Community (McLeod Ganj)

McLeod Ganj is a small town nine kilometers up a steep hill from Dharamsala. Founded as a British garrison in the mid-19th century, it remained a fairly unremarkable town, albeit in the midst of some fantastic scenery, until the Dalai Lama claimed asylum in India and settled here in 1959. I've read that there are some four thousand Tibetan refugees living here, but a local that I met at breakfast the other day thought it was more like ten or fifteen thousand. Colorful Tibetan flags fly from almost every rooftop, balcony, and terrace.

I arrived in Dharamsala after dark on Tuesday during a rainstorm. I planed to wait for a shuttle to McLeod Ganj but one of my fellow passengers on the bus, the only one to get off at the same spot, asked whether I wanted to share a taxi. He was a Tibetan just returning from a trip to Tibet. When we arrived in McLeod Ganj, he showed me to the guesthouse I had chosen, and when it was full, as he suspected, he took me to the Green Hotel, where he lives. From the cover of the awning outside my door, I watched lightening periodically illuminate a snow covered ridge across the valley under the low clouds.

The central part of McLeod Ganj is a scruffy open confluence of six narrow streets, all in ill-repair. Two of the streets lead downhill to Dharamsala, past the Tsugladkhang Complex, residence of the Dalai Lama and seat of the Tibetan Government in Exile. The other four streets lead up further into the valley that overlooks the plain to the south. There are quite a few hotels, guesthouses, souvenir shops, restaurants, travel agencies, and internet cafes, but the people are less aggressive than elsewhere in India. Aside from the occasional car honking to clear a way through the narrow streets, the town is very quiet.

On Thursday, I visited the temples and museum at the Tsuglagkhang Complex. The statues and paintings in the temples were amazingly involved and beautifully created. Offerings were stacked in front of each shrine: nuts, crackers, fruit, Chips Ahoy. The Tibetan Museum is a small, two-story section of the compound documenting the Chinese occupation of Tibet. Although I have read the Dalai Lama's account of this time in his autobiography, the museum illustrated the harsher aspects of the Chinese invasion better than any book.

In addition to the Tsuglagkhang Complex, there are several other temples and monasteries around McLeod Ganj. My favorite activity, though, has been exploring the surrounding towns and trails.

Less than two kilometers to the east of McLeod Ganj is an even smaller town called Bhagsu. Above the town, a long stream pours through a steep cut in the ridge feeding a waterfall. Several cafes are perched above and below the waterfall serving chai and all kinds of snacks. Across the pools at the top of the waterfall, a trail leads up the opposite hillside to a collection of stone huts and a shrine.

A brisk fifteen minute walk to the north is another pleasant village called Dharamkot, where there are also a few guesthouses and restaurants, but no streets. The valley is covered with terraced farmland and livestock roam the meadows above.

On Friday, I hiked a long circuit starting through Dharamkot, ascending the ridge past a place called Triund, which is a cafe and shrine at 9500 feet. Somewhere at a fork in the trail, I lost my way and found myself thrashing through sharp bushes on steep slopes and scrambling up and down through stands of rhododendron trees. I lost sight of Triund but continued through meadows on the ridges and finally through a pasture, approaching the cafe from the wrong direction. From Triund, the correct trail was obvious, stretched out like a sidewalk back down the valley. There were four men there: the cafe proprietor and single inhabitant and a group of two hikers and their guide. After an orange juice and a Snickers bar, I bought a third liter of water and a hard, sugarcane walking stick. The cafe owner said that there was snow on the ridge, but my hiking boots should be fine.

Past Triund, the trail is easy to follow despite increasing amounts of snow. After a few kilometers, the path crosses an avalanche chute, recently discharged, before ascending the ridge through well-trod switchbacks. The nearer I came to the summit, the more energy I found until by the time I crested the ridge, I felt I could walk forever up, despite being at 11,000 feet. As I came over the rolling, wide ridge top and walked to the shepherds' basecamp at Laka Got, the next ridge and its beautiful snow-covered peaks came slowly into view. There were about fifteen people at Laka Got, sitting outside a shelter cafe drinking chai. I stayed for a brief chat with a couple of exhausted German girls and a quick chai.

After Laka Got, I headed east along the ridge through large, granite boulders protruding from the snow. A little over a mile along the ridge, the snow thinned and the ground dips to a shoulder where I came upon a group of stone shelters by a couple of small ponds in a green pasture. After the shelters the trail becomes indistinct as the way steepens but the next landmark was clear and I quickly reached another cluster of huts with a pagoda, halfway down to the waterfall at Bhagsu. The rest of the trail down to the waterfall is well maintained and winds through a slope of bushes and more blooming rhododendron. I was soon at the waterfall, where I hopped the stones across and walked the short road back to McLeod Ganj. My legs were tired, but mentally I felt refreshed.

Shimla, Hamachal Pradesh

Shimla is the capital of the state of Hamachal, about ten hours north of Delhi, by train. The first train from Delhi arrives in Kalka, at the edge of the plain, where the passengers continuing to Shimla change to a narrow gauge rail that winds up through countless switchbacks for five hours. The gradually ascending path is a creative marvel: switching from one side of the ridge system to the other, plunging into total the darkness of long tunnels.

Shimla itself is a sprawling cluster of multistory homes that stretch up over several aspects of a complicated ridge structure. Level roads and paths are few and far between. Almost any walk leads either up or down at agressive inclines, made even more fierce by the alititude, which is over 7000 feet. The social center of Shimla is the pedestrian mall, an east-west street running along the ridge. In the afternoons it is quite crowded with locals, vacationers from other parts of India, and a handful of Westerners. Just above the pedestrian mall, at the shoulder of the ridge is a large plaza called Scandal Point that overlooks the valleys to the north and south. Long ridges of snowy mountains are visible to the north. A temple dedicated to Haruman, the monkey god, sits at the top of the ridge, a long, steep walk above the plaza.

When I arrived in Shimla, it was frigid. I walked immediately to the bathroom of the train station to put three more layers under my jacket. The overcast sky intermittently dropped rain and sleet. I found what I thought was a taxi driver and asked him to take me to the accommodation I had picked out, which was the YMCA. He was, in fact, a tout/guide who then flagged down a taxi and insisted on taking me to another hotel first. The other hotel was quite bad and expensive, so after a long discussion, I he led me to my original choice. He followed me around as I looked at the room and would not accept the fact that I chose to stay there, until I paid him about a dollar for leading me around.

After I settled in, I stepped out to walk around town to find the guide waiting for me at the gate. He followed me around for about thirty minutes telling me what I was going to do the next four days, despite my increasingly creative attempts to tell him no. Finally, I told him I was going to email for a long time and walked into an internet cafe. I think he finally took the hint, for it was another three days before he caught up with me again.

On the train I met a Dutch man named Henk who is staying in Shimla to take classes at a technical training institute called Koenig Solutions. The school caters to European and American information technology professionals and offers all kinds of the latest certifications much cheaper than they can be had in the West. I caught up with Henk by chance at dinner and we agreed to meet for breakfast the next day. His classes did not start until March 21st, so he had a few days to sightsee.

On Thursday, the sun rose bright and clear under perfectly blue skies and the weather was beautiful for the rest of my stay in Shimla. Henk and I always sought out restaurants with rooftops or balconies to bask over lunch or a beer.

Henk and I planned a day trip around the surrounding towns and hoped to visit a place called Tattapani where we we read there are hotsprings. Unfortunately, we could find no car to rent and hiring a taxi for the day to Tattapani was quite expensive. Instead, we took a shorter tour around the valley. We visited the Himachal State Museum, the Indian Institute for Advanced Studies, the University at Summer Hill, a mountain-top temple named Tara Devi, and another temple in the vally below Shimla called Sankat Mochan.

The state museum had some nice artifacts, but was not much in comparison to the National Museum in Delhi. There were some nice displays of native clothing, weapons, stamps, comtemporary paintings, and some of Ghandi's correspondence.

The Indian Institue of Advanced Learning is a school for PhD studies in Humanities and Social Sciences. The building was built by the British, completed in 1888, as the center for administering all of India from March to October when the plains are too uncomfortable. Shortly after independence from the British ni 1947, the building was given to the Ministry of Education and converted to its current role. The tour was short but informational. Much of the original furniture and woodwork remain.

The University at Summer Hill is a bit run down. Henk and I stopped for some tea and walked around a bit. While we were enjoying our tea and the view, a third year law student stopped to talk with us for a while. Most of the male students were dressed in a similar fashion: button-down shirts or sweaters and blue jeans or khakis. The women had a much wider variety of dress from traditional saris to blue jeans to stylish outfits and highheels.

The road to Tara Devi was deserted except for the workers doing some spring maintenance, which was good because it was a challenging drive with a single car on the road. Several kilometers of steep corners and switchbacks delivered us to a parking lot from which we hiked to the summit. There were several Hindus worshipping in the temple, ringing the two bells at the entrance whenever they arrived or departed. The view is magnificent encompassing valleys in all directions, the hillsides terraced and covered in bright green crops, contrasting with the darker evergreens.

The last temple in the valley also had a nice view up the ridges into Shimla. There were few people worshipping. Henk and I found a devotee inside that sold us some offerings, applied an orange smudge to our foreheads, and tied colored bracelets around our wrists. We returned to Shimla shortly after four to bask in the late afternoon sun and watch sunset from the terrace at the Hotel Combermere.

On Saturday evening while we enjoyed another fantastic view, we met some other students--a Dutch man named Mike, and an Englishwomen living in Japan named Michelle--who are studying at Koenig and joined them for dinner. After dinner we stopped by the Discoteque Footloose at Mike's suggestion. The dance floor was not crowded but there were several groups of men and one group of women dancing to a DJ who mixed both Indian and Western dance music. One of the men told me a bit about some of the songs--sexually suggestive songs followed spiritual techno in a strange mix of sacred and secular. The YMCA closes its gate at eleven, so Henk and I headed out just at about a quarter 'till, bidding farewell to Mike and Michelle.

Henk and I hiked to the Monkey Temple at the top of the ridge overlooking Shimla on Sunday afternoon. The paved road was ridiculously steep and quite hot in the sunlight. Near the summit, the evergreens cast some pleasant shade over the grassy expanses at the top. The temple itself is small, but brightly covered. There was a constant flow of people coming and going to worship.

I met another fellow traveller, Mike from Scotland, Monday afternoon and walked a bit more around the valley. We found yet another temple, Kali Bari Mandir, past the east end of the mall that had another grand view to the west. Mike worked the past six or seven years in Madrid and I got quite a few recommendations for my visit to Spain with my parents.

Most of the restaurants close quite early in Shimla, which I found odd, because no one seems to get up and around before about ten o'clock. The exception was the Pub at the Willow Banks Hotel, which is a pleasant place with very nice help. There we met a couple Canadians and an English couple, both of whom were visiting family in India. We stopped in quite often to talk and watch the Cricket World Cup, going on in the Carribean right now.

When I arrived in Shimla, I had only planned to stay a few days but it was so quiet, pleasant, and friendly that I stayed almost a week. I left on Tuesday, almost missing my bus because of breakfast with Mike and Henk, and arrived in McLeod Ganj last night.

Varanasi, City of Shiva

Varanasi, on the western bank of the Ganges in the northeastern plains of India, has been continuously inhabited since before 3000 BC. The more modern sections of the city sprawl westward away from the river, but the old city is firmly rooted in ritual Hindu traditions tied to the Ganges. All activities seem to revolve around the ghats, which are the concrete and stone jetties that stretch for about seven kilometers along the riverbank. A deviously complicated network of twisting, narrow alleys leads up from the ghats through temples, hotels, shops, and residences to the main thoroughfairs. The complex gives the impression of a living organism growing opportunistically up the riverbank.

I arrived in Varanasi at noon after a fifteen hour overnight train ride from Delhi. Autorickshaws are not allowed in the old city so I got a ride to the edge and started walking in search of the hotel I had picked out. A tout picked me out almost immediately and would not be disuaded from showing me around. He lead me through the city, along the walkways, up and down staircases to bring me, completely disoriented, to my hotel, which was full. At first I thought that the path he chose was deliberately convoluted to make me more reliant on his service, but as I explored later, I realized that his route was actually quite direct. He wanted to take me to his hotel once I discovered that the first was full, but I insisted on trying another I had chosen. I found a decent room there and paid him 'baksheesh', a small payment in gratitude.

After settling in, I set out to explore the ghats. After getting a bit lost in the alleys, I found a main street but soon saw a funeral procession that I followed down to the riverbank, emerging at Manikarnika, the main cremation ghat. The procession consisted of six or sevel pallbearers holding a wooden stretcher with a body wrapped in a bright purple shroud, trimmed in gold. The chanted as they walked quickly to the river.

Hindus believe that a soul cremated here goes straight to heaven, instead of being reborn back on earth. The procession first immersed the body in the Ganges and then set it on the bank, waiting for the fire tender to build a pyre. There are several types of wood from which a pyre can be constructed: sandalwood (2000 Rs/kg or 20 USD/lb), banayan wood (180 Rs/kg or 2 USD/lb), and another that I forgot. A pyre requires about two hundred kilograms of wood, which is weighed out from the huge stacks on crude balances above the cremation area.

Once the pyre is prepared, the body is laid on top and lit from a perpetual flame kept alight in an small alcove to the side. The fire tender keeps the fire burning, roughly shoving the wood and body around with a long stick for the two or three hours it takes to be consumed. The fire is put out when only a small bit remains: the hip bones for women and part of the ribcage for men. When it is finished, a line of men from the deceased family forms a line from the river to the cremation spot. Five times, they pass a pot of water from the river up to the remains, where it is tossed over the last mans shoulder onto the smouldering remains. Afterwards, the remaining bones are thrown into the Ganges and the ash is placed on a communal pile that is later sifted for jewelry. Only the men from the family are allowed at the cremation site, as women are considered too emotional to be present.

I watched several cremations in their various stages from a slightly elevated platform until the smoke shifted and engulfed me. The lower cremation platform has room for about sixteen simultaneous ceremonies for the lower castes. Brahmins, are cremated on a smaller platform that sits above.

The ghats seem most crowded in the morning and evenings, but the afternoon was fairly quiet, except for the crowds of boatmen that offer rides about every thirty seconds. The structures at the edge of the ghats are tall, split by steep staircases leading back into the city. I came upon several groups of children playing cricket, often hitting the ball into the river. There is a large evening ritual in the evening at Dasaswamedh Ghat, which I missed because I got lost for a harrowing hour in the old city. The landmarks in the alleys are all so indistinguishable from one another that I ended up a full half mile north of my hotel and had to walk along the river after dark to find my way back. Most of the alleys had normal Indians walking to or from their homes, which felt safe, but some of the darker alleys had shadier characters and angry dogs.

After reaching my hotel at eight o'clock, I was hesitant to go out and look for the evening ritual, so I settled for dinner at the hotel. As I was preparing for bed, I heard chanting outside and saw a long procession of boats stretched across the river, their occupants holding candles.

In the morning I got up at sunrise and walked the ghats again. Groups of people gathered to bathe and wash their clothes in the river. The market at Dasaswamedh was in noisy full swing when I arrived as the sun was rising from behing the bank of clouds to the east. Just as the sun started to clear the clouds, a storm rolled in from the west. The sky darkened again and lightening struck all around the old city. As the first fat drops of rain started to fall, people started packing their things are running back up for cover in the city. I just made it to a restaurant as the storm broke and had a pleasant breakfast until the rain stopped and the sun shone through the remaining haze about an hour later.

I continued walking exploring the city for a few hours until mid-afternoon when I went to pick up my luggage and head to the train station for another overnight ride back to Delhi.

The Taj Mahal (Agra)

The Taj Mahal was built by Shah Jahan, the fifth Mughal emperor, as the tomb for his second wife, Arjumand Bano Begum, or Mumtaz Mahal. They were married in 1612, sixteen years before Shah Jahan began his rule, and she died in 1631 in childbirth. Shah Jahan had planned to build his own tomb, a black onyx mirror of the Taj Mahal across the river, but his youngest son, Aurangzeb feared that its construction would bankrupt the kingdom. Aurangzeb prevented that possibility by killing his three older brothers, taking control of the empire, and imprisoning his father until he died, eight years later.

After the striking white marble with which the Taj Mahal is constructed, symmetry is its next most conspicuous feature. The entire structure, from the Taj Mahal itself, to the enclosing walls and buildings seems in perfect order. The mosque located directly west of the Taj Mahal even has a counterpart on the east side--necessarily used for other functions as its orientation to Mecca is not correct. Large expanses of the Taj Mahal itself are inlaid with floral patterns and verses from the Quran in semiprecious stones, from as far as Baghdad and Russia.

The Mughals Empire was founded by Babur in 1526 and declined after the end of Aurangzeb's rule in 1707. Many of the most impressive monuments--tombs, forts, and palaces--in the areas surrounding Delhi were constructed during this time. Agra Fort, precursor to Red Fort in Delhi is a beautiful example of the evolving architecture.

The outer and inner walls that surround Agra Fort, 30 and 70 feet high, respectively, are constructed of red sandstone that was quarried nearby, as are the older sections of the palace. Shah Jahan's material of choice was white marble, from Jaipur in Rajasthan some 400 kilometers distant, which he retrofitted into the older parts of the palace and used entirely for his own additions. A sense of regal imagination is evident throughout, from the emperor's quarters themselves to several mosques and a bazaar. The buildings were designed to stay cool in the summer and a system of elevated water tanks fed water streams and fountains that flowed around the palace.

Agra is not far from Delhi, only 200 kilometers, and many people take day tours here. I have found Agra itself quite pleasant--much more laid back than Delhi. There are people here who are actually interested in conversation without ulterior motive. Indians also seem to want to have their picture taken with foreigners. I think I was asked to pose with vacationing Indians five or six times. If you ever find yourself here in Agra searching for budget accommodations with a phenomenal rooftop view of the Taj Mahal, I'd recommend Shanti Lodge. Just be sure to bring a mosquito net--sleeping in DEET is gross.

Tonight I take the overnight train to Varanasi, the city of Shiva, on the Ganges river, which one of my friends back home describes as one of the craziest cities in the world.

Four days in Delhi

My first few days in India were hard. The tourist sections of Delhi are crowded and filled with three types of people: tourists, very friendly people who want your money, and people who couldn't be bothered by your existence.

My taxi ride from the Delhi airport to the traveller's neighborhood of Pahar Ganj set half of the tone for my stay in India's capital. The taxi driver was exceedingly polite. He was full of information and opinions about what constitutes "real" Delhi and "real" India versus what constitutes the "fake", Westernized culture. These opinions gradually changed to recommendations about where I should stay and how I should travel, culminating in a stop at a travel agency where the agent called the hotel I had chosen and informed me that there were no rooms available. I left the travel agent and asked the taxi driver to drop me off at the hotel anyway, against his protests, where I found a room.

Pahar Ganj is a dirty strip of indistinguishable, four story buildings--hotels, restaurants, and shops--clustered for a quarter mile along a central street. What it lacks in charm and cleanliness, I hoped it would compensate with convenient and inexpensive accommodation. It is also situated next to the New Delhi train station, not so far from both the central upscale section of New Delhi, Connaught Place, and the sights and bazaars of Old Delhi. Cows and dogs wander the streets aimlessly, sometimes snacking on the piles of trash that accumulate in the less traficked areas.

While walking down the street in Pahar Ganj, tourists are constantly hailed by touts, who start friendly conversations with the intent of arranging the next leg of your journey. After an introductory several minutes of dialogue they try to get you inside of their 'office'. After the second or third repetition, this dance gets stale. There are also aggressive beggars, overbearing rickshaw drivers, and obnoxious cab drivers. Each time I encountered one of these characters, a game ensued where they argued why I should either give them money or use their services, invalidating any objection.

Sunday was the second day of the Holi Festival, which is the Hindu celebration of the arrival of spring. Unlike Thamel in Kathmandu, where the celebration seemed quite intense around the tourists, Pahar Ganj in Delhi seemed largely empty of revelers. Sitting in a rooftop restaurant, reading, I could often hear shouts of large crowds, but they always seemed a few blocks away. Their presence was evident by color everywhere: pinks, oranges, reds, and greens, splattered on streets, people, and animals.

On Monday, I set the modest goals of posting a package home and buying a rail ticket to Agra, to see the Taj Mahal. These goals turned out not to be so modest and I was relieved when I finally succeeded, eight hours later. I won't go into the details, but the impressions I took from the experience were the other important half of how Delhi affected me. In contrast with the specious camaraderie of Pahar Ganj, postal workers and train reservation bureaucrats can't be troubled about you. No one explains anything, only gestures vaguely that you should be somewhere else.

Tuesday and Wednesday, I actually got out to see some of the city. I spent Monday in Old Delhi, seeing the huge and impressive Red Fort, built by the Mughal Empire in the 17th century, Jama Masjid, the largest mosque in India, Chandri Chowk, the crowded marketplace, and the Gandhi Memorial Museum. I enjoyed the Red Fort, with its high, red sandstone walls and the delicate architecture of its state buildings within. The highlight, however, was the photography collection at the Gandhi Memorial Museum, with its interpretive documents.

"In my humble opinion, non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as cooperation with good. ... as evil can only be sustained by violence, withdrawal of support of evil requires complete abstention of violence." - M. K. Gandhi

On Wednesday, I spent almost all day at the National Museum, whose three floors are full of diverse collections. Probably half of the exhibits are closed for renovation, but I could have spent even longer perusing the open collection. The audio tour and extensive maps did a good job of framing the first civilization to inhabit the Indus Valley, the Harappans, but the rest of the museum, despite the quality of its artefacts, failed to pull together a coherent history.

By Wednesday I started to feel better about my experience in Delhi. I could recognize who wanted something from me and who was really interested in conversation for its own sake. I no longer felt guilty for evading the polite but circular and vaguely disrespectful arguments employed by people who want something. The more confidence I find in my surroundings, the more I am able to open up to the worthwhile aspects. Nevertheless, I was happy to depart on the train bound for Agra at six-fifteen on Thursday morning.

Rain in Pokhara

The bus ride to Pokhara is long. It took us ten hours to travel less than three hundred kilometers westward along one of the main highways in Nepal. The road is two lanes wide and winds through some of the most rugged terrain I've ever traversed. It's no wonder that Nepal has retained so much of its old culture--it is deviously difficult of transporting anything into or out of the hills. On the way we saw two accidents, one resulting in a charred bus that remained on the road and the other a crushed bus that had rolled off the highway and down a steep precipice to rest two or three hundred feet below.

Pokhara is a lakeside town in central Nepal a few dozen kilometers south of the Annapurna Range of the Himalayas. The Lakeside district is the highly touristed strip on the east bank of the Phewa Tal (lake). The Pokhara valley stretches south and east from the lake and is covered with small farms. The ridges that surround Pokhara are high and shield most of the large mountains to the north from view.

My first morning in Pokhara started out clear and from the hotel balcony I saw Machhapuchhre (or Fishtail), which at 6997m is the largest mountain I've ever been so close to. It was strikingly beautiful. When I checked back after breakfast, the clouds had rolled over the town, where they would stay until I left.

My time in Pokhara was less than ideal. Besides the clouds and rain, I got quite sick and ended up spending about twenty-four hours in a tenuous state--on one hand wanting to get out and hike in the hills, but, on the other, being afraid to be far from a bathroom. I did try hiking to the World Peace Monastery which was built by Japanese monks at the summit of a hill overlooking the lake, but as I got close to the summit, the dreary conditions delivered their latent precipitation. I was within a few hundred yards of the monastery but I turned back as a thick fog obscured my view and the conditions turned a bit hypothermic. Despite the rain, clouds, and being sick, the hike was still enjoyable. The thick forest isolates the trail from the surrounding settlements until it emerges on the ridgetops where stone houses sit above steep, terraced farms.

After several different kinds of medication and twelve hours of sleep my body started to recover, just in time to catch a flight back to Kathmandu. The weather cleared about an hour before we boarded. It felt a bit criminal to leave such a beautiful place so superficially explored.

Back in Kathmandu I checked into a hotel in Thamel for what I hoped would be an overnight stay and then headed out to find an air ticket to Delhi for the next day. The second airline office I tried had a seat, but it was in first class. I was about to turn it down, but I asked how much it cost. As it was still within my budget, I took it and arrived comfortably here in India late this afternoon.

Both India and Nepal are celebrating a holiday or festival called Holi this weekend. This morning in Kathmandu, kids were standing in the streets and on rooftops throwing bags of water and dye at each other and everyone else. I've heard that here in Delhi today is usually reserved for prayer and tomorrow is the big wet color day. I hope my camera survives to take some good pictures.

James!

What are the odds that on my first trip to Nepal one of my good friends would be visiting also? I've no idea, but they can't be that high, which makes it really fortunate that James and I were able to meet up in Kathmandu for a couple days.

James's Nepali friend from Seattle, Anup, just got married and invited a group of his friends over for the traditional Nepali wedding. They arrived in mid-February and spent two weeks celebrating the wedding and sightseeing. I met them on Saturday just after they'd returned from Pokhara, a beautiful town in western Nepal.

In addition to catching up with James and hearing all kinds of stories, both ridiculous and horrifying, about his stay, his friends are quite interesting and fun. On Saturday evening, we went out to the swank Hotel Everest to have some drinks with some high school friends of Anup and Santtu, who is Finnish, but grew up in Nepal. It turns out that their high school friends are now all entrepreneurs--one of them owned the hotel. The service was excellent and the conversation gave those of us new to Nepal a view on what it means to be rich in a poor country.

Afterwards, we all went to Anup's parents' house over in the Dilli Bazaar neighborhood of Kathmandu, which is a little less hectic than Thamel, where I was staying before. Anup's sister cooked a traditional Nepali dinner, which was fantastic. They told me I was lucky to dine on Saturday because that is the only night that they include meat. After an epic stuffing, Anup showed us some pictures of the countryside until late, when we all retired to either the guest rooms or the hotel.

On Sunday, I had breakfast at the hotel with Tom while we waited for James to come over from the house. Tom knows this group from Seattle but is currently working for a Chinese manufacturer in a city close to Hong Kong. His experiences in China sound both exciting and painfully frustrating, but always entertaining.

When James arrived, he and I agreed to meet Tom for lunch over in Thamel and set out walking across Kathmandu to run an errand and do some shopping. After getting lost for about half an hour we eventually met up with Tom for a _very_ slow lunch. Afterwards James and I walked through a light drizzle looking for some interesting souvenirs. Our success was mixed and I think James gave up on some of the items he would have liked.

That evening James, Tom, Santtu, and I went out in Thamel. It seemed that we found the best places earliest in the evening--the venue selection seriously thins after about ten-thirty. Santtu stayed out for two places, Buddha Bar and J Bar, but things got strange after that.

Some Nepali men insisted that we join them dancing at our third stop. There was a strange improvisational battle going on between three women on a short stage and a group of patrons, who were all men, on the dance floor immediately in front. One man and one woman would face off, each singing a clever rhyming composition. Between each verse the women would sing a chorus and all the men would dance in a strange Nepali style, holding their arms out at shoulder height, dipping one shoulder towards the floor, and then turning in that direction. While I was trying to imitate them, I asked one to translate for me, but the lyrics didn't make much sense. I think that the singers were using a lot of poetic euphemisms, or my translator had no idea what he was talking about.

That place closed at about eleven-thirty but some of the men who were dancing wanted to take us to another place that was deserted and overpriced. After Tom got extorted in the rest room (I think they charged him about five dollars to let him leave) we left and tried to find another place. We started walking in search of another place but eventually took a circuitous cab ride where the driver took about fifteen blocks to drop us off one block from where we began (we complained and didn't have to pay). After the bum cab ride we decided to call it a night and headed back to Dilli Bazaar.

Tom and James flew to Bangkok on Monday afternoon on their ways home. After our goodbyes, I headed back to some budget accommodations in Thamel and booked a bus ticket to Pokhara for Tuesday.

James was definitely ready to head home. He'd had a bit of rough health in Pokhara and was generally tired of the developing world. It was therapeutic to vent with someone. Despite his readiness to leave, it would have been nice to hang out a little while longer.