Adventures in Nepal & India

Oh It Gets So Lonely, When You’re Walking, and the Streets are Full of Strangers

onehundredmountains — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 12:55:04 +0000

The sky is perfectly clear blue today and my heart is skipping like a broken record. I feel so lucky and alive from my head down to my toes; it tingles, almost.

Yesterday, we found out that we will not be able to do our village homestay in the Khumbu region, because the weather has been so crazy and we can’t possibly book a flight. Instead, we are going trekking in Mustang, in the far north of Nepal in the Annapurna mountain range! Of course, Khumbu sounded absolutely incredible and once-in-a-lifetime beautiful, but heart skipped a beat when I found out we are all going to Mustang: to stay in a village with a new family, to visit Jomsom and Muktinath, and trek through this place that has only been in my dreams up till now. I have no complaints, and when I think about this desert mountain beauty we are all about to witness, I feel so renewed and exhiliarated and determined to finish all of these papers and technical work. The big blue world and we’re holding on and we’re going and I suddenly feel as if I have a seven-year-old’s legs and energy again.

And of course, talk about finicky, but I’m setting my heart on a new ISP location. I recently found out that Bon, one of the religious traditions practied in Tibet before the arrival of Buddhism, is still being practiced in Dolpo, a neighboring region of Mustang. Desperately trying to contact people in the area and figuring out if I can spend a month there studying. Thinking of everyone at home and missing you terribly. I don’t think I realized my heart had this tremendous of a capacity until I came here, to Nepal. I am in love with so many people in this world and I just keep on falling. It’s really incredible.

Mustang Bound!

onehundredmountains — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 12:16:18 +0000

I am about to apply for a permit to Upper Mustang, and my legs are a pathetic excuse for jello. I have my fingers crossed a million times over that the permit will go through, and I will be allowed to spend a month living in Upper Mustang, learning about sacred geography and hopefully visiting these locations myself. I can hardly keep my heart still these days. Drinking in the mountains, the wind from the backseat of a taxi cab, the earth under feet all this time. Trying not to slip in the mud and remembering the monsoon will end and talking with everyone I can, asking all the questions I can think of. Nepal has completely captured me in the most mysterious of ways.

Flowers Really Did Fall As Rain

onehundredmountains — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 07:13:06 +0000

Once again, my eyes open and I wake up to the scattered crowing of roosters, a few whimsical bus horns honking, and a perfect layer of fog creeping through the bedroom window. Kathmandu is magnificent in the early morning… a perfectly round orange sun peeks over precariously stacked buildings as I brush my teeth on the balcony and casually glance in the mirror and run my hand over my cheek. The monsoon is over, but every other afternoon a wall of rain moves in and splashes down in a display of power and magnificence completely unsurpassed by any rainstorm I’ve ever seen. We always get quiet on those nights when the rains come in. We huddle in the dark with a few lopsided candles and create shadow puppets and tell a story or two in the absence of electricity. Batti chhaina!

Such a strange mess of experiences. I sit in the corner of a tea shop, slowing sipping a murky cup of instant black tea, and suddenly an entire array of people are surrounding me and asking questions. Two little girls with the same eyes, clearly sisters, peek over the chair, and a few young men who speak English act as my translator when an old woman, her face so weathered with age that she reminds me of an intricate wood carving, asks me about myself. I answer in a sorry excuse for Nepali, often repeating “Mero Nepali na raamro chha. Busena, maaph garnus!” Yet I want to ask her so many questions. She tells me I remind her of her daughter. I ask why, and she says that I am beautiful and that her daughter is beautiful as well. She asks me to stay for awhile, then hobbles away, sitting alone at the front of the shop and watching the chaos of Kathmandu pass by in a never-ending line of taxi cabs, overcrowded mini buses, and smoke-spewing work trucks. She is from Jomsom, Mustang. She traveled by bus ten hours to see her family in Kathmandu, so she could give them tika for the Dasain holiday. I wonder if that means she lives alone in her village, and how she managed that journey by herself, when she could barely make her way into the shop on an old and tired back. I leave by myself, and she asks why I have no friends with me, and tells me to be careful. I live close-by, I reply. Samakhosi. Just a block away. I turn towards home and catch a glimpse of her one more time as I brace myself to cross the Ring Road.

The same evening, I return to a familiar scene: A room filled with smoke and young people packed like sardines, while punk music blasts and the Nepalis watch the foreigners attempt to mosh in a space the size of a closet. My friend Tilak’s homestay brother, a shy Nepali boy who barely uttered a word over dinner, grins and bangs his head with unexpected excitement. I feel so comforted in this space, which in many ways reminds me of home and the shows I always tried to attend. My closest friends from school dance closeby, beer in hand and a contented smile on their faces, and a wave of some strange emotion washes over me and I feel content while always out of place.

Only two and half weeks left in Kathmandu, then we all make our way north to Khumbu, near the base of Everest. Suddenly we are getting into serious talks about independent study, and I feel Upper Mustang tugging my heart relentlessly these days. Chances are, I won’t be able to afford the journey, but I am keeping my hope and resigning myself to keep asking questions and coming up with ideas and talking with everyone I can.

Settling back into the Kathmandu swing

onehundredmountains — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 06:00:49 +0000

Back in Kathmandu after a week spent in Darjeeling, and I am still struggling to process everything that just happened! Darjeeling is everything— exquisitely beautiful, overwhelming, comforting, confusing, and amazing in its complexity. Before arriving in Darjeeling, I had no clue that the town was so complex, and when I arrived, I could hardly stop my brain from launching into a neverending chain of questions.

The journey to Darjeeling was qutie the adventure, needless to say! Flying out the Kathmandu airport to Bhardapur, at the border of India and Nepal, where the land is perfectly flat and giant palm trees are growing and the humidity is nothing short of unbearable. After standing in the tiny customs office, we all hopped into jeeps and began quite possibly the most unforgettable car ride I have ever experienced (more intense than driving through Delhi, even!). Looking out the window and the flat plains suddenly turned to mountains, and gripping the sides of the seat and laughing as the driver almost careened off the cliffside. Arriving in Darjeeling itself, we stayed in this quiet little hotel with awkward and adorable workers, and right down the street was a mosque, so every morning we awoke to the call for prayer and the most beautiful view of the hillside and other towns busily living out their lives on the other side of the mountain.

Of course, we still continued all of our classes in a little guest house down the road, but I found myself enraptured by the lecturers who came to visit. We barely scratched the surface of the Gorkhaland movement, which is a rather popular movement in Darjeeling for a separate in autonomous state of Darjeeling, or Gorkahland. The town itself is incredibly diverse… Indians, Nepalis, Tibetans, and countless other groups inhabit the area, and most people actually speak Nepali rather than Indian languages. At the end of the ’80s, a wave of violence for the creation of Gorkhaland broke out, and shopkeepers still proudly display their Gorkahland signs and express their support for the movement, even though the central goverment of West Bengal in Calcutta and the Indian capital in Delhi has made no moves to create the independent state. It’s so incredible and problematic when you factor in the age old dispute between the hill people and the plains people fighting for resources, and the fact that the name Gorkahland is incredibly exclusive, and the members of the Gorkhaland movement really have no clear plans for how the state will operate once autonomy is achieved. I’ll stop there, but I found this whole movement incredibly intriguing as well as problematic, and wondered how it has been kept such a big secret over all these years.

Visiting the tea plantations was also so beautiful, and I found it very eye-opening to see the process in which the tea I drink every day. We visited a beautiful organic farm run by this quiet Tibetan man, and ate guavas right off the tree! And fair trade tea factory with one of the most adorable and amazing Nepali men in existence. The hills completely kicked my ass, but it was very gratifying to reach the top, completely soaked in sweat, and know that you basically climbed a Himalayan mountain. Darjeeling was incredible and I found myself asking so many questions, even of myself, and I feel very satisfied with my short visit to this beautiful and complex town in the Himalayan hills. I have the feeling I will head back there one day soon, but of course I can never tell when. I’m settling back into the rhythm of Kathmandu, and feeling very happy to be back home with my family and wandering the streets and watching the sunrise from my little balcony.

Back to India

onehundredmountains — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 05:13:57 +0000

Finally feeling healthy and sprightly again, drinking a ton of lemon and honey tea, and heading to Darjeeling in two days!! The time here has been going by so incredibly fast. I feel like my head is constantly spinning with questions and worries and good things, and every night I crawl into bed completely mentally and physically exhausted. I’m looking forward to the chill and fog and warm sweaters in Darjeeling, and hopefully heading to Pokhara with my family for Dasain holiday. To think, by the time Dasain is over, it will be the end of September! I can hardly believe it.

Perched on the rooftops of Samakhosi

onehundredmountains — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 09:53:22 +0000

My second week in Nepal is coming to an end, and I already feel my heart growing attached to this noisy, bustling, and muddy city. Kathmandu is absolute chaos: buses and trucks tumbling down the street, taxi drivers honking, street vendors shouting, and stray dogs barking on every corner. Yet despite all the noise that inevitably reaches my room as I try to fall asleep, I am falling so head over heels in love with this place.

My homestay family are quite possibly the sweetest people in existence. My baa and aamaa (father and mother) own a little shop right next to our house, and they sell the most delicious black tea I have ever tasted. My nineteen-year-old sister is quickly becoming my best friend here, and let me tell you how cool she is. She is currently applying to study abroad in the United States, but while she is waiting, she is a volunteer at the Red Cross, and a local orphanage that houses over 200 kids. We are actually heading over there this Saturday to help out at a carnival the orphanage is holding for all of the kids, and I can’t wait to go!! My sixteen-year-old sister is insanely wonderful, too. She recently bought a beautiful blue guitar, and I’ve been giving her (and my entire family, basically) lessons every night after our usual dinner of dhaal baat (lentils and rice). And of course, my little brother Abtar, who is seven years old, is the happiest child I have ever met, and I LOVE him to pieces. He loves playing with balloons, and we usually spend our afternoons drawing pictures, blowing bubbles, and dancing around to Indian Idol. He is missing his two front teeth and is always smiling speaks really quietly in English. I think his presence has helped abate any loneliness I have started feel while being here. I feel so lucky to be living with this family. Also, when I wake up in the morning and step outside, the city stretches out as far as the eye can see, and the blue Himalayas are always present.

My friend Briana, who is also on the Nepal program, lives right down the street from me as well. Our parents are best friends (its so adorable… our baas are always hanging out in my dad’s shop together), so we meet up at 6 in the morning and walk to school together. It’s the most beautiful walk. It takes about an hour, and we amble through small roads and past little shops, and the way is so peaceful compared to the main streets of Kathmandu. My Nepali teachers are incredibly smart and seriously adorable (one man who works at the program house is smaller than I am, and he calls me “Neeeecoley”), and we have already had so many inspiring lecturers come visit that have really encouraged me to make the best out of my time here. Overall, I am so happy to be here even though my heart is still at home as well. I am hoping to make the most out my time here, but I will be so overjoyed to return home in December to the cold and good friends and my little apartment in Friendly Hills….

How to reach me…

onehundredmountains — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 15:47:52 +0000

Here is my address for the next 3 1/2 months!

Nicole Ferreira

SIT Nepal

Box 1373

Bhagawati Bahal, Naxal

Kathmandu, Nepal

Make sure you send me your address at some point as well, because you are going to get love letters like you’ve never seen! Also, I should be able to check my facebook often, and my skype name is kngcarrotflwrs (oh yes, I plan on awkwardly video chatting in Kathmandu cafes). Until October, Nepal is 9 3/4 hrs ahead of Greensboro and the East coast, and after that, Nepal is 10 3/4 hrs ahead. I really and truly want to keep in contact, so please feel free to drop me a line whenever you like, and hopefully we can establish some kind of correspondence while I’m wandering the Indian subcontinent!