Feringhee: The India Diaries

Namche Bazaar, SoluKhumbu district, Nepal

Wow, there are some big-ass mountains up here (10, 335 feet or 3,445 metres). Internet time is so expensive (10NRS a minute) I can't write much. Tomorrow is an acclimatization day, however, so perhaps I can squeeze in a post.

Labels: everest, internet, namche, nepal, sirensongs, travel, trekking

I think the Telegraph needs a new correspondent.


In Nepal related news this morning:

The escape of the Czech forester from Darjeeling has raised serious security concerns in the region especially in the light of Nepal’s lenient immigration policy and the largely porous border that it shares with India....
The problems they believe lie in the fact that foreigners do not need visas to visit Nepal. They only have to get the passports stamped while entering the Himalayan Kingdom.

Foreigners don't need visas? My friends and I will be so glad to hear that!!

Hilarious - of course we need visas, oh boy do we need them. A few laws have permutated recently, but until about this past June, we had to report every 30 days at immigration and get a new one. They didn't even trust us with a few months at a time.

Indeed, foreigners do need visas for Nepal. However, visas can be taken either in advance from a Nepali embassy or, more commonly, at the border (or airport) upon arrival.

It's not just a stamp...like most visas, it is a sticker in your passport. Tourist Entry Visa. AHEM.
And it costs all of $40 for 30 days, pretty hefty when you consider that six months in India only costs you $60.

When you get to the Immigration queue at Tribhuvan Irrational Airport, just get in line and be sure to have 2 copies of a passport-sized photo, as well as photocopies of your Passport front page. AND $40....the denominations required keep changing. They used to ask for $40 US and only accept US. Now I hear they won't take USD.

And we're no longer a Kingdom! Wake up and smell the incense, Telegraph "correspondent"!

Labels: border, botanist, calcutta, czech, darjeeling, india, nepal, siliguri, telegraph, travel, visa

Sort of
Delhi, Agra and Kathmandu


One of the many, many things preoccupying me these past months has been the pending visit of my 2 sisters from America. They arrive in Delhi on 31 October. I haven't seen them in six years.

Since one has been to Turkey and the other, to Malaysia and Singapore, I suppose technically it is not their first visit to Asia. Still, there is lots of preparation for them.

Now if only they had been reading my blog all these years, they would know most of these things. Anyway, I am now answering questions like

"how many hair scrunchies should I bring?"

and

"do I need to bring sheets, towels and bedclothes?"

In general, I have found travel in this part of the world to be a great lesson in how little you really need. But to answer:

Scrunchies are available on the street here. Bring 3 from home, you will probably lose two.

All the the grungiest lodges have decent sheets and towels. If you are exceptionally picky about towels (ie, need to have 100% cotton - I know I do) bring one from home.

"What kind of stuff should I bring?"

A great many, many things are available here now, particularly in Nepal which has a history of being much easier on the imports than India. But there are a few things that really make life easier:

1--hand sanitizer and wet-wipes. They are in stores here, but you will want them on the plane ride over...plus they are ridiculously overpriced here.

2--Something to put your hair back with. Yes, you can get this in the stores but do you want to spend your first night looking for a scrunchie?

Why put your hair back? It is usually too hot or windy to do anything else, and long loose hair on women is associated with easy morals. Besides, as soon as you get off the plane your hair will be sticky with pollution.

3--Ziploc Bags. These do not seem to have made it over here yet, and they have 100 uses.

4--Some kind of washcloth or sweat-and-dirt-wiping rag for your pocket (see #2). Also available here, but you will need it en route.

5--Since we are doing some hiking, 2 pairs of shoes only. A pair of Teva type sandals, and a pair of hiking boots. For some reason, good shoes like this are still unavailable even in hiking-capital Kathmandu. Reebok, Nike and Adidas do have shoppes here....but not the serious outdoor brands like Teva, Merrell and so forth.

What are readily available are a lot of Chinese copies - best avoided. Chinese fakes are fine for some things - but not for your feet. You cannot put a price on how your feet (and back) feel.

6--Again, for some reason, mosquito repellent products containing DEET are mysteriously unavailable here. Bring some DEET sprays (spritzers are best to cover wide areas).

7--A travel mug with a sippy top really, really comes in handy. Yes, you can buy it here; but again, usually the western quality is better (ie, local ones often leak).

I really like having this on long trips or walks round town...I can buy a mug full of tea and keep going, or sit on a boulder or park bench, or wait for a train, drinking tea and watch the world go by.

8--A non-material thing many people forget - actually two things. A whole bunch of passport photos and photocopies of your passport and visas. These come in handy countless times during your travels, for entry permits and all kinds of things.

Another very important thing: make sure you scan and upload your passport and visa to your email account or other online account. After all, if you can lose your actual documents, you can just as easily lose the photocopies. This way, if the worst does happen, copies of the critical documents are available in the ether.

Labels: asia, china, india, indian travel, nepal, packing, sirensongs, travel tips, what to bring

Naach your average dance
Patan, Nepal

Kartik Naach, the Nepali annual dance cycle depicting scenes from Hindu mythology (but danced by Newar Buddhist dancers) begins Oct. 31st in Patan's Durbar Square.

Kartik Naach is an eight-day series of dance-dramas instituted several hundred years ago by King Siddhinarasimha Malla. Though Patan's population was primarily Buddhist, the Hindu king hired the Buddhist dancers to portray Hindu stories.

Especially popular is the final night, when the tale of Narasimha disembowelling Hiranyakashipu is re-enacted to what can only be called mass hysteria from the crowd. (I would imagine this scenario is especially prominent because it's the namesake of the originating King Siddhinarasimha.)

All dances are free and open to the public, and take place on the Kartik Dabali platform in front of the famous Patan Museum from about 7pm to 9pm.

Here is a photo from the 2006 Kartik Naach depicting Lakshmi and Brahma Padmanabhasana (seated on the lotus from Vishnu's navel!).

I wrote to my Newar Charya dance teacher Raju Sakya about the origins of Kartik Naach. Here is part of his answer;

The King is Siddhinarasingha Malla who instituted and started for 15 days and his son SriNivas Malla elaborate it with other opera and dances for 1 month.But today in this century only for 8 days and some of the dance and dance parts are already lost or dissapeared with modern age. We have to preserve it but it's already missing . Let's hope and try to do revise and research on it.

Happy Deepawali and Nepal Sambat 1129 \Mhapuja.May Mata Laxmi bless us.

Labels: buddhist, dance, hindu, kathmandu, lalitpur, malla, newar, patan, ritual, sirensongs

A note from Flickr
Kathmandu

Back in February, you may remember I attended the Tibetan New Year celebration Losar out in Boudha. The Tibetan community, like Ladakh, is a cinch for "beautiful old faces" photos.

One of them was this lovely white-bearded Gandalf of a Ngagpa, or non-celibate Nyingma yogi. (Nyingma is one of the five Tibetan Buddhist schools and literally means, "Old School.") I wish I could have illuminated his face better, but it was still a good composition.


He spoke a bit of English and invited me up to see his monastery in Helambu (about five days' walk from Kathmandu).

Just yesterday, a Flickr member named Joakkim wrote in with this note:

Hi I also met Lama Rechung is his name by the way, at his home in Helambu in 98. Read more about Rinpoche at arobuddhism.org/encyclopaedia/shared/text/n/n rr_ph_01_eng...

The Rinpoche does not appear to have aged a great deal in the 10 years since Joakkim met him, if the website photos are any indication. There must be something to those Tantric Arts.

Time for a closing cliche: What a small world it truly is.

Here are a couple more photos I took that day. Old school indeed.

Labels: aro lineage, buddhism, buddhist, flickr, helambu, kathmandu, monk, nepal, ngagpa, religion, rinpoche, sirensongs, tantra, tibetan

Stoned
in Kathmandu

Yeah, I am so lame. I haven't blogged in nearly a month. But I have been playing Tour Guide to a number of friends tripping through the Du. Literally every time you go to an historic site, you see some new detail. Here are a few I've noticed this past month:

At the entrance to Mhyepi Ajima Buddhist temple. Just an archetypal female figure seated in something like Padmasana, and a bell to call her with. I like the way it's so worn down with centuries that nothing remains but the basic shape.

The torana (carved archway) of Sweto Kali or NarDevi temple, in the heart of Old Kathmandu. If you want to find her, the neighborhood is actually named after her (NarDevi). The white stuff on her mouth is milk-sweets (people "feed" her). Inside the temple are three more Devis. The torana is just a sort of "signboard" heralding the gods that live inside.

An unusually sensual statue of Sri Vishnu, Hindu god of preservation. He obviously seems "glad to see you." My friend Sean in California observed, "instead of sporting a Woody, he's sporting a Stoney."

Labels: art, goddess, hindu, kathmandu, nepal, sirensongs, statue, travel

Looking for porn in all the wrong places
Blogosphere

Sometime last year, DesiPundit ran a summary of a blogger's Greatest Attempted Hits. Most bloggers track USPs and referrals via something like Sitemeter; this guy (sorry, I can't remember his name) had listed the Top 20 Search Requests that had resulted in his page.

In other words, What People Were Really Looking For when they landed on his blog.

This week, I had some really interesting ones. I have taken out the weird machine-code between the keywords.

It's always gratifying when people look for "sirensongs" or "feringhee" or one of my other signature keywords. Heck, believe it or not, more than a few people even Google "Indologist at large."

I'm also pleased to see a number of people looking for Indian and related travel advice:

"dakshineswar temple"

"sudder street"calcutta backpacker accomodation

"dried foods ladakh"

"types of amoebas"

"bhutan altitude sickness death"

"licchavi democracy"

"meaning of teertha"

Or even names of my specific blogs or photos:

"organic orphanage"

"flower girl"


As usual, there are a few people looking for

"hot indian girls"

--who isn't? ;-)


Since I went to visit Ram Bomjom the "Buddha boy" a couple years ago, there are always requests for

bomjom location

"buddha boy" nepal

"mystic buddha boy meta"


Some appear very random indeed, and a bit confused:

"Geezer 2Bindia"

"Gandhi Seven Habits"

"pharma sutical"


But then there are more unusual requests, for

"caitlin derivation"

"what goddess of sri lanka believe in"

"love yourself in tibet alphabet"

and this week's favourite:

"uncut nepali men"

Labels: blog, blogger, blogging, blogosphere, feringhee, google, india, indologist at large, sirensongs

This just in! mountain made from molehill, film at 11
Kathmandu, Nepal

We have enough mountains here in the Himalayan Former Kingdom. In fact, with no petrol, no money, no roads, limited diesel and propane, no electricity, no schoolbooks and no real government or rule of law it's about all we've got.

I can't help but notice that some writers have lately added to the surplus, marking "Mountain" on our cultural and political maps where mere "Molehills" once stood.

One easy way to create a mountain is to heap up the hype of "news" where there is none.

Case in point: (jumping over to the western Himalayas for a moment):
Nicolas D. Kristof's assertion a couple weeks ago that HH Dalai Lama's acceptance of Communist Party Rule in Tibet marked a "major turning point" (or some such nonsense) in the so-called dialogue between the Tibetan Government in Exile and the Chinese.

"An Olive Branch from the Dalai Lama"? What was he doing before, hurling invective?

Breathless with excitement, the double-Pulitzer winner Kristof rings what he clearly believes to be a clarion call:

One signal is this: For the first time, the Dalai Lama is willing to state that he can accept the Socialist system in Tibet under Communist Party rule. This is something that Beijing has always demanded, and, after long discussion, the Dalai Lama has agreed to do so.

News Flash to Nicky!: The Dalai Lama has always said this. He's been saying it for years (HHDL always says he's a socialist anyway, even calling himself a Marxist) and besides, it will hardly be seen as some major concession - the Chinese never considered it up for discussion.

Before I could muster my disdain for this silliness, Manyank Chhaya beat me to it in this very lucid article which explains the non-event.

Indeed, the entire (widely republished, including in the International Herald Tribune) article appears to have been written in order for Kristof to reiterate, "I met the Dalai Lama personally. That's right, I got to sit and talk with him. The BIG D.L.! and ME!"

It's just like last year's reports that claimed the Dalai Lama was going to "resign." The Dalai Lama's been saying for literal years that the minute he's not needed politically, he will devote himself entirely to delivering Buddhist teachings and spiritual matters. This is nothing at all new. Every writer just wants to be the first to break some new angle on a Dalai Lama story so they try to put old Chhang in new bottles.

...dot dot dot.....

By the way, in case you were wondering what the so-called "dialogue" or "talks" between HHDL's special envoys and the Hu Jintao sound like, our special Siren On the Scene had her ear to a tea-glass against the wall at the most recent Round of Talks in Beijing. She swears it went something like this:

HH: We give in! You run the government, just let us run our own religion. That's all we want.

Chinese Govt.: DALAI AND "DALAI CLIQUE" IS A SPLITTIST WOLF IN MONK'S CLOTHING TRAITOR TO THE MOTHERLAND BARBARIC FEUDAL LORD WHO DRINKS THE BLOOD OF POOR PEASANTS FOR AN APERTIF AND SUCKS THE MARROW OF THE WORKING CLASS DURING HAPPY HOUR

HH: Not really, actually you can stay in political and military power....we just want to run our monasteries and rituals according to our own traditions.

China: YOU WANT TO DESTROY UNIFIED CHINA AND RETURN TIBET TO THE DARK FEUDAL AGES WHERE EVERYONE WORE LEG IRONS LIKE BLING BLING AND ON THE WEEKENDS WENT TO PUBLIC EXECUTIONS INSTEAD OF INDOCTRINATION RALLIES LIKE NORMAL PEOPLE

HH: Uh, no...

China (sticks fingers in collective ears): LA LA LA, LA LA LA LA LA........

(Lather, rinse, and repeat - for the past six years.)

The "di" in dialogue means "two." The Sino-Tibetan DI-scussion is more of a monologue, going only one way.

And in other non-news....

On the other side of the Himalayas, scandal-mongering secularists attempt to create child abuse stories where there are none. The way to create a mountain, in this case, is to accrete creative imagery and selective exaggeration atop a religious custom you clearly don't understand.

There is plenty of child abuse in Nepal. Bonded labour, child trafficking, and so on. But these folks aren't concerned with that.

Witness today's "news" by AFP's Sam Taylor:

KATHMANDU (AFP) - A Nepali tradition of locking a young virgin girl in a palace and worshipping her as a "living goddess" has been dealt a blow with the country's Supreme Court ruling she has the right to go to school.

"LOCKING a YOUNG VIRGIN" (as opposed to a wrinkly, OLD virgin) "in a PALACE! " Now there's real objective journalism - visuals courtesy The Brothers Grimm.

It's sort of like saying that child monks are locked in a monastery, or that kids in a Catholic boarding school are prisoners. They are kids. Their parents decided where they would go, like most kids. In those places, there are rules. No kid has a "right" to go just anywhere he or she wants to...that's part of what it means to be a kid.


These girls' parents accepted the title of Kumari for the girl. They could have refused. The girl receives home-schooling, which is quite a luxury in a country where many children get no education at all. Her health care needs are met. There is no "labour" to speak of and even if there were, why are the plaintiffs not equally concerned with the thousands of bonded child labourers across the region?Above: Sajani during, and below after, Kumarihood. Photos by me

What if the girl doesn't want to be a Kumari? What if she doesn't want to enter a beauty pageant, be a child spokesmodel on TV, or take piano lessons? Do kids ever really get to say no?

Sure, she could be non-cooperative. She could sulk and be rebellious (I definitely tried it). The parents could still force her to do any of these, non-abusive, activities.

Those claiming to be so concerned for the various Kumaris' "rights" should review the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the ones they keep harping on but haven't actually read. It seems none of them are violated by the Kumari tradition.

Labels: buddhist, child rights, china, dalai lama, hindu, kathmandu, kumari, living goddess, media, nepal, news, nicolas d. kristof, sam taylor, sirensongs, tibet, united nations