The Last 3 days

5/24
3rd hour of 14 between Chicago and Delhi. About to cross the artic circle over Greenland. I jjust ate airline saag and basmati while watching Dirty Dancing (a combo much more than the sum of the parts) and having to change channels on the headrest tv because the 8 year next to me was curious about the lack of clothes in a couple of the scenes. I actually didn’t change the channel but I thought about it. So now my shirt is splattered with yogurt from the dinner/cabin pressure and blood from the mile long sprint through o’hare with 3 bags to make a 7:15 flight from a 7:00 arrival time: 26th row 3 terminals away. At some point in the dash my thumb exploded and when I boarded the 777 I was swarmed by Czech or Argentine flight attendants and shoved into the lavatory with about a dozen bandaids while they made you’vegottheaids faces at me.

Read->sleep time.

5/25
Long flight. Didn’t sleep much but excited enough not to care. The night in the Delhi airport was bad, but it could have been much worse. The AC was thankfully excellent. The airport is about exactly what you would imagine of the jewel of the British colonial empire. Everything was made of dingy white-gone-to-grey marble. No internet of any sort but every few feet a touch screen terminal to get passenger feedback inviting you to “approach and opine.” The only options were “build more parfume store” (there were 4 in the passenger lounge) and “build more duty free liquor” (there were 5). The only places to eat were 2 identical Nescafe stands and a Subway with a local favorites menu featuring hummus and falafel, and chicken tikka. Prices were cheap unless the staff saw dollars and instantly quadrupled them.

5/26 Arrival
5/27 Language class begins, die at night
5/28 dead all day

5/29

Haven’t updated since I made it here because of: a bandha (strike), 1 night of severest Delhi belly + 1 day of recovery, and now a power outage. Actually those are the only bad things that have happened, and they were all to be expected. My host family is incredible; Dan and I are staying with one of the VSN translators/Nepali teachers. We live in a brand new district of Kathmandu called Pepsicola because until 5 years ago the only building amid the cornfields was a Pepsi bottling plant. We’re only 3km from Central Kathmandu and Thamel, the tourist district, but Kathmandu is like Manhattan in that intra-city travel time isn’t necessarily a function of distance.

After language lessons one of the VSN translators took a group of volunteers to two of Nepal’s main temples, Pashupatinah and Bodhnath. Pashupatinah is the principle Nepalese Hindu temple, located on the Bagmati river. Cremations and ritual baths are preformed along the banks and groups of sadhus (holy men) live in cave shelters along the Cliffside.
Bodhnath is an immense stupa, a symbolic Buddhist structure surrounded by prayer wheels and girded by colorful flags. The Tibetan exile community is prominent here. Pilgrims walk clockwise around the structure chanting prayers while tourists ogle them from the terraces of nearby Internet cafes. The whole place smells like an amazing combination of burning, cinnamon covered Christmas trees from the monks’ offerings.