This is the entrance to the Padmasambhava cave near the temple in the last picture. This is also the one where his head imprint is. I love this picture. Notice the rainbow colors on the wall outside the door? For you non-Buddhists, one of most depicted forms of Padmasambhava is one where thousands of rainbow rays are emanating from his body.

This is a little temple near the other Padmasambhava cave. The guy who was showing me around said that there was another cave behind this temple, but the Hindus took it over and put a Vishnu statue in it. He also said that at one time all the caves were linked up. You can see a weird looking stone formation hanging over the temple here. It's said that it was a snake that was disturbing Padmasambhava, so he turned it into stone. The Hindus have another story for the formation, but I don't remember it.

This is the temple to one of the four Vajrayogini temples in Nepal. No pictures are allowing inside the temple. It's a very ancient building, and going inside really felt like going back in time.

And here is the outside of the cave. You can see the hand print to the left of the door. The cave is in a Nyingma nunnery complex.

This is a hand print just outside the cave that was made by Padmasambhava. There was another in the cave, but I didn't take a picture of it as I thought it wouldn't turn out. Next time I'll try it anyway, as the statue at the end of the cave certainly did turn out, and it was at the darkest part of the cave.

I met a man who took me to the Padmasambhava cave I wasn't able to visit the last time I was there. That cave was very special. The statue you see here is from that cave. I sang the Barched Lamsel there, a haunting moment.

This is a close up of the small Taras. This day was much less intense with the vendors trying to get me to buy their stuff. I was able to meditate in the grotto for a bit undisturbed.

I visited Pharping for a second time before my orientation started. This is a picture from the Tara grotto. You can see Ganesha and some small Taras to the right. These are the self-arising ones I mentioned earlier. This is quite a famous place, and you can see other pictures of this on the internet.

During my orientation, they took all of us to Kopan and Pulahari again. I didn't see these stupas the first time I was at Pulahari. This time I got to take a guided tour, and was able to visit the second level of the temple. Unfortunately, the pictures I took up there didn't turn out so well.

I got a little lost on my way to Pulahari, and despite someone showing me the way back, I got lost on my way back home. This is the gate I took to leave the monastery. I ended up walking through rice paddies and getting quite sunburnt on my walk back. I was so tired that day.

This is a protector in a little side altar with offering bowls.

This statue of Padmasambhava is pretty intense looking.

This statue is of Shakyamuni Buddha, and the throne below has a picture of the young Karmapa on it.

These are the Buddhas at the altar.

These tormas are really huge, and particularly beautiful and detailed.

This is Dzambala, a wealth Buddha, holding his mongoose that spits jewels. I see this image outside the door to many temples here.

This is on the ceiling in the entrance.

Here's a close up of the entrance to the temple. There were lots of little monks there the day I came. Inside the temple there were about a hundred of them doing a drubchen, a long 10-day ritual.

This is the main temple.

When I arrived at Pulahari, the first building I came to had this beautiful stupa of the late Jamgon Kongtrul. His whole body is interred inside.

One my way to Pulahari Monastery from Kopan, I got a bit lost. But I found this cool and very eerie shrine that local people have set up. It seems like every few blocks on the street you can find a small temple, and every large tree is smeared with sandlewood and vermillion powder from people worshiping the spirit in the tree. You can see in this pic a lot of rocks lined up with strewn flower petals and sandlewood and vermillion powders dabbed on, and one of the rocks has a goddess of some type carved into it. I don't know if you can see it, but the second rock to the right of her has what looks like a Ganesha self-arising from it.

At a prayer wheel house at Sechen Monastery here in Boudha, the 21 Taras are painted on the wall. This one is a yellow/gold Tara with a jewel in her lotus, so she grants prosperity through the practice of generosity.

Kopan Monastery is a Gelugpa center, which is a different lineage from the one I practice. This is statue of one of the Twenty-One Taras they had there. For those familiar with the Nyingma tradition, you might notice that this version of Tara has the symbol in the right hand instead of the left. Everywhere I go, I encounter different versions of the 21 Taras. Some have lotuses in their hands, but no symbols on the lotus.

This is a scene from the path to the monastery. Rice paddies like this are all over the place. Everyone tells me that just a few years ago, all around the stupa in Bodhanath where Iive where only rice paddies and a few buildings just circling the stupa. Boudha has had a huge building boom, which is still going on. There's new construction everywhere here in Nepal.

And this is a bit of the garden around the stupa and the statues from the previous pictures, with a bit of scenery in the distance of the mountains. You might be able to see from this pic and the next one why I think that, at least in the countryside, Nepal reminds me of Hawaii. Lushly green and tropical.

This is eleven-faced Chenrezig, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, in a fountain in front of the stupa.

And here's the stupa itself. Inside it is a thousand copies of the Kangyur and Tengyur. For my non-Buddhist friends, let's just say it's a massive amount of Buddhist texts. I've been attending my orientation for school for the last two weeks. It's been pretty grueling. Beyond the Nepali and Tibetan classes, there were a lot of lectures on various topics around how to deal with living in Nepal, and still do well in school. Then afterwards, I was looking for places to live. I'm so ready to start school!

At Kopan Monastery, they have the most detailed and elaborate stupa I've ever seen. You can see the spire of it here over the head of a beautiful statue of Maitreya Buddha.

This was also on the wall to the nunnery temple, and shows the six worldly realms of samsara (cyclic existence), with Mahakala, the Lord of Death and Time, gripping the wheel.

On my trip to Kopan Monastery, I first stopped at the Kopan Nunnery. This is a shot of one of the paintings on the outer walls of the temple. It's called the four friends, and is a popular Buddhist symbol to put on doors or on the wall.

I took this picture just around the corner from the guesthouse I was staying in. It's so normal to see cows everywhere, even in the middle of a busy street. This one was a little freaked that I kept stoping to take her picture.

Here's the front of the temple where my school is. I've just found a new place where I can get wireless, and I'm having much more luck getting my pictures on here without having to reduce their size, so do click on the pics to see the enlarged versions.

Here's the entrance to the temple at the school I'm going to.

This is a temple that faces the entrance to the inner part of the stupa. It's run by the Tamang people, who are Nepalis related to the Tibetans, and they are the ones who've maintained the stupa for centuries.

This is a shot of the road that circles the stupa.

Lyla and Bruce in Boudha 8/18/07

Lyla and Bruce came to Boudha last Saturday, and I showed them around. The picture here is of the Boudhanath Stupa. Bruce is a Chinese guy living in London, and is about to start college there. We had a nice breakfast at the New Orleans Cafe, and then went to meet Chokyi Nyima. First there was a reception in a beautiful room, and then the dharma talk happened in one of the large classrooms. It was packed when we got there. We had to sit in a small aisle that was left for Rinpoche to get to his seat. I was hoping the talk wouldn't be too difficult for Lyla and Bruce, but it was. Chokyi Nyima talked about the meaning of the lama, yidam, and dakini. It was a great talk for me, but I think most of it went over Lyla and Bruce's head. Then we when back to the stupa and did some shopping, and they bought some bracelets for their friends back home. Lyla bought a copy of Sogyal Rinpoche's "Tibetan Book of Living and Dying" at my recommendation. Then I took them inside the outer wall of the stupa. There's a small room just inside with two huge prayer wheels, and two little people who are always there saying mantra and taking alms. They can't be much more than two feet tall. Then we went out and I showed them where people do prostrations on boards a little larger than the size of doors that are worn down to silky smoothness. At the upper most part of the stupa, you can walk around the dome, and the views are pretty nice. You can see all the rooftop restaurants and cafes that can't be seen from street level. The dome of the stupa itself is very interesting looking. From far away it looks totally smooth, but close up it's pock-marked and greenish. I'll take a picture of it sometime so you can see what I mean. Then we had a drink at the New Orleans Cafe again and shared some hummus and pita bread, and then went to a Tibetan restaurant I know of. They liked the food there a lot. Afterwards, I walked them to Sechen Monastery, which they were very impressed by. I noticed the temple was unlocked, so we went inside. I think they were in the middle of a drubchen, a ten day ceremony, because they had large tormas set up like the ones I've posted on this site before. Not long after we went in, and old man shooed us out. Then I walked them to my guesthouse. Lyla may stay there later after her orphanage gig is up. Then they caught a cab, and I went to my room, laid down on the bed to read, and fell asleep for four hours. Showing people around town is tiring work!

Monsoon Rains and Phone Stuff

Since then, we've been getting a lot of rain, so I've been staying home and doing a lot of reading. I've been reading Dzongsar Khyentse's commentary on Chandrakirti's Madhamakavatara, quite a mouthful for you non-Buddhists! The weather has been changing for the better though. It's been a lot cooler. When I first got here, it was so muggy and hot. I felt like I was sticky all the time. Another big improvement was a power strip I bought. I wasn't able to use any of my electronic stuff here at the guesthouse as the outlets don't fit western style plugs. Now I can use my computer at home, which is why I can get this blog going again. It's rather tedious to sit in a cafe all day writing all this stuff out, while the waiters keep trying to ply me with expensive food and drink. The place where I can get wireless is kind of spendy compared to other local eateries or internet shops, but until I know of another place to go, I'm stuck going there to load up my blog. Now I can write out everything at home, which will save me a lot of time and money at the cafe. By the way, I've found out that making calls to the states only costs me 4 rupees a minute. For an hour on the phone, it would cost 240 rupees, which is about $3.50. Since I'm living on a tight budget, I can't make tons of calls, but I can call my friends every so often. If you're wanting to talk to me, just let me know in an email, and I'll give you a call. I also have a cell phone here. My number is 9803470841. I think the international prefix you need to call me is 00 977. My cell phone is a pay as you go kind of thing, which is very cheap for local calls. I have no idea what it would cost me to call you, or what it would be when you call me, so for now only use this number in case of emergency. I don't have voicemail on the phone yet. I'm also curious about how much it will cost to send text messages. For those of you who are interested in texting, call your provider and ask how much it would be for you to text a foreign country, and let me know what you find out. I'll find out from the place I bought the phone at how much it'll cost to receive a call from or make a call to the States, or send texts, and I'll let you all know what I find out. And like I said before, Skype internet phone is another possibility, free for you, and less expensive than calling on a normal phone for me.

In Narayanthan 8/12/07

My next outing was to a small town called Narayanthan. Chodrak had heard that Sakya Trizen was coming to Kathmandu, so we went to a Sakya monastery to ask about it. They told us that he wasn't coming, but that one of the two Sakya regents was here, who's called Trulshik Rinpoche, and he was in Narayanthan. So we took two buses to get there, and walked up a long hill to a Kagyu monastery, where they informed us that Trulshik Rinpoche's house was just down the way, very close. We went to the gate, and after they shooed off the dog, we were escorted inside. The house was very nice, mansion-like, with a lot of monks running around. They served us a fruit drink of some kind that tasted like it had Chinese herbs like ginseng in it. It was totally refreshing, as we were still hot from the walk up the hill. Then we went in to see Trulshik Rinpoche. He was sitting in meditation posture on his bed, and a monk was there to translate for us. After a few moments, I left the room, as I knew Chodrak wanted to ask a few personal questions. When he was done, Chodrak motioned for me to come in, and I just asked him to bless my mala. He was a very kind sweet old guy. He gave me a protection cord and a packet of dutsi. Then we left. We caught a bus not far from the house, and Chodrak told me about a very important Hindu temple there that has a murti (statue) of Vishnu lying of Shesha, the serpent, in a pool of water. The town's name, Narayanthan, means Vishnu's shrine. The shrine, like many others here in Nepal, was once buddhist, but when the Hindu kings took over, they installed their own deities. In this temple, there's a head of Amitabha over the statue of Vishnu, but the priests there keep it covered up with flowers. The Kings of Nepal are said to be incarnations of Vishnu, and they believe that if the King ever sees this particular statue of Vishnu, he would die. That's why this temple's so important. Normally westerners aren't allowed into Hindu temples. Since we have no caste, we're considered to be below the lowest caste, untouchable. But when Chodrak went there some years ago, and they wouldn't let him in, he complained saying "why don't you let me in just because the color of my skin", so they let him in, and he got to see the statue. About four months later, some close relatives of the former King went to that temple, and within a few days, the King was murdered.

With the Esperantists and Lyla in Thamel 8/11/07

The Saturday before last I went to the local Esperanto group in Thamel. Some of you may know about my Esperanto mania, some of you may not. For those who don't know anything about it, it's a language that was created over a hundred years ago to be a universal language for the world. It's extremely easy to learn, as all the rules are completely regular, no exceptions, and no idioms. You could fit the grammar of the language on the back of a postcard, and for Westerners the vocabulary is fairly recognizable. Here's a basic sentance: Mi estas tre felicha ke vi legas mian blogon, which means, I am very happy that you're reading my blog. There are a few million people around the world who speak the language, and people use it for travel, and to get to know people from other cultures and countries. There's quite a few people here who speak the language. I'm not exactly sure how many yet, as most of the people were away during my first visit. Some were in Japan attending the World Esperanto Conference, which usually has about four to five thousand people in attendance, and some were attending the World Youth Esperanto Conference in Vietnam, and they get about two to three thousand attendants. They have all come back, and just this last Saturday they all met and had slideshows and so on, but I wasn't able to come because Lyla and her friend Bruce came to Boudha and wanted me to show them around. I'll write more about that later. The Esperantists here have a large office in Thamel, which is a shopping district that a lot of westerners go to. They were very nice, and spoke pretty good Esperanto. I'm fluent in the language, although a bit rusty. The two Nepalis who spoke the most to me were Narendra and Poshraj, and there was another westerner there named Phillip. He's been living in Nepal for about twenty five years, and some kind of work cataloguing Nepali and Tibetan manuscripts, and is a translator. Mostly they were asking me questions about myself, although I unfortunately and unwittingly started a more controversial topic when I did a bit of Bush bashing. Phillip, admitting that he is a contrarian, said he liked Bush, and said he was a lot better than the Maoists. So then a long conversion about the Maoists and the King started, and on that topic I stayed totally silent. Apparently, it's quietly known amongst the people here that the present King, who just stepped down, was the one who killed his whole family, if any of you know about that bit of recent Nepali history. Then the meeting ended, and Poshraj said he'd accompany me around Thamel a little bit. He followed me into a few bookstores, which are numerous in Thamel, and then he suggested I come with him to his house. I told him I was waiting for a friend who was going to show up in Thamel in the late afternoon. He said he wasn't far from Thamel, so I agreed to go. He has a nice little house, and I met his wife and two daughters, as well as a number of his neighbors we met on the way who all seemed to know a bit of Esperanto. One neighbor named Nabin knew a fair amount, and accompanied us to Poshraj's house. Poshraj showed me pictures of some of the local functions they put on here. They host a yearly Pan-Asian Esperanto Conference, which gets a few hundred attendees, and also a Himalayan outing, where maybe thirty to sixty people go trekking in the mountains at the Tibetan border. Most of the other Asian participants seem to come from Japan and India, and there are a good amount of Europeans and Americans as well. Then Poshraj's wife fixed us a small dinner with coke, which was very good, a curry noodle soup. I found out that Nabin is a teacher of math at a private school in Kathmandu. Most families that can afford it send their kids to privates schools, as the public ones don't give a great education. Poshraj's eldest son had only days before gone to the U.S. for college in Oklahoma. Then Lyla called, and I had to bow out. Nabin gave me a totally frightening ride down the hill from Poshraj's place on his motorcycle. He's a good driver, but the roads are terrible, and with all the other cars, pedestrians, and animals, you have to do a lot of swerving. The bigger holes in the street had me bouncing up off the seat. Yikes! Then I caught a bus to Thamel, called Lyla, and both of us got very confused about how we were to meet, as neither of us really knew a landmark, or where we'd find it if we knew it. We ended up seeing each other on the street though, me on foot, her in a rickshaw. She took me to a bar called the Funky Buddha. We both ordered long island ice teas, and talked away. She told me about her experiences working at this orphanage in a small town. It's very sad. The conditions the kids live in aren't good, and they're very poor. They only have one pair of clothes, and often they're full of holes. I won't go on too much, as I don't want to depress you all. She and Bruce, the other volunteer, do what they can for the kids. She brought a whole suitcase full of pencils and inexpensive toys and so on to give to the kids. The guy who runs the place isn't a good guy. He hits the kids, and Lyla and Bruce suspect he's pocketing money from the government and the organization that set them up with the orphanage. They've talked to some local people who oversee other orphanages in Nepal, and they learned that the conditions at their orphanage shouldn't be that bad, so they may be looking into trying to shut it down and transfer the kids to place that has better conditions. Lyla says it's so hard for her to deal with her living conditions there. The insects are incredible, and her first night there she couldn't sleep. The last time I saw her, she had so many mosquito bites, she looked like she had smallpox. Once she saw a spider in the kitchen that was big as a saucer, black and furry. Can you imagine? It's like something out of a horror movie. A friend of hers got a pic of it, and I made her promise to send it to me, and when she does, I'll post it here. Eeeeuuw! Then we talked about Buddhist stuff, and she had a lot of questions. It came out that she's always had a lot of interest in it, and now that she's here and seeing it all around her, she wants to do something about it. I invited her to hear a talk with Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche on Saturday, who heads the monastery where I'll be going to school. During all this, we ended up having a couple other drinks, something creamy and mangoey with vodka and rum. She decided that she wanted to splurge and stay in Thamel that night for a treat, and have a real bed and a proper shower, so I chaperoned her to the place she decided on, as it was late and I wanted to be sure she'd be safe. Then I took a frightening cab ride home. What I didn't like about it was the driver took a lot of back roads on very run-down streets, and I kept imagining that he'd stop somewhere dark and some guys would come out an rob me. I was steeling myself up for it, and was drunk enough to feel some bravado rising up in me. But the trip was uneventful, thank goodness.

In Pharping 8/10/07

About ten days ago I went to a town called Pharping (pronounced with a p, not an f) that is well-known for having a lot of Tibetan Buddhist centers and monasteries. A guy from Italy named Chodrak who's staying at my guesthouse took me, because otherwise I was still too timid to go traveling on my own. We took three buses to get there, and each bus was ten to twenty rupees, not much at all. It's a very smoggy trip, even when you get out of the city and into the country, because the exhaust from even a single car is enough to choke you. I hold my breath as much as I can when I'm on the road. The countryside is very beautiful, green and peaceful. When we got off the bus, the first thing Chodrak took me to was a little cave that Padmasambhava spent some time meditating in. Padmasambhava is said to be an incarnation of the Buddha, and was the one who brought Buddhism to Tibet. Everyone will have to forgive me here. My buddhist friends will have to be patient with my explanations of very basic buddhist stuff, and my non-buddhist friends will hear a lot about things they may not understand. Before we could get to the cave, there were a number of people waiting to hound us into buying something. Two people in particular were very persistent about me buying a butterlamp from one of them. At one point, they both tried to shove a butterlamp in my hand at the same time, and had a collision, with one of the butterlamps falling to the ground. That seemed to sober them up a little, and I was able to finally have a moment of peace at the cave. There is a large concave impression in the roof of the cave, which you can see in the picture here, where they say that Padmasambhava pushed up the roof when it was falling in on him. There's a monastery one level above the cave, and we went in just as they were starting puja (ritual service). We did our own pujas in the foyer just outside the main temple. There definitely was some kind of special energy to the place. Then we walked up further into the town and had a nice lunch at a Tibetan restaurant. I had some fried spicy tofu and chapatis with an orange Fanta. Fanta, Coke, and Sprite are in almost every eatery. The glass bottles are reused by the factory, which you can tell by the condition of the print on the bottle, and the bottles are usually dirty from their transport in the back of trucks in open racks. But the drink itself is great, and made with sugar, not high fructose corn syrup. Then we headed up the road a bit more and stopped in a cave-like room where, on a rock wall, a large image of Ganesha (an elephant headed Hindu deity), and a couple small images of Tara (a buddhist female deity called the Mother of the Buddhas) are self-arising from the rock, which means that they are spontaneously coming out of the rock on their own. Chodrak says that every time he comes, the images seem to have more detail. There's a lama there who does Tara puja in there all day and all night. On the constructed walls surrounding the rock are images of the twenty-one manifestations of Tara. There again was a lot of guys trying to push us into buying their prayer flags, which they said they'd put up for us. It's a popular spot, so there was quite a flurry of activity in small space of the room. I did my best to meditate a bit while Chodrak talked to the lama about having some pujas done for some of his friends and family. The energy was very charged there, palpable. Then we went up the hill a little further, and stopped at a retreat center of Ralo Rinpoche. Chodrak said he's a very high nyingma lama. I still don't really know who he is, but I don't doubt that he's a high lama. After they let us in, and explained we were there to meet Ralo Rinpoche, his wife had us sit down for a bit and we talked a bit. Rinpoche's sister brought us sweet tea and cookies, very nice. Then we were shown up to a patio where Ralo Rinpoche was sitting on a couch. We did the usual presentation of the katak (a silk scarf) and an envelope with a bit of money, and he had us sit down. Chodrak asked for a lung (pronounced loong), which is a recitation of a text which grants permission to use the text for practice. He asked us to sit on the ground while he recited. I found it very difficult to look at Rinpoche. My inclination was to keep my head bowed. I had no idea until afterward what the text was we were receiving the lung for. It turned out to be four concise biographies of the life of Padmasambhava, a very auspicious text considering our visit to the cave where he practiced. It turned out that the text was very long, unexpectedly so. After it was over, I was shy to ask for my lung, but I did it anyway. It was for the text of the Twenty-One Praises to Arya (Noble) Tara. Some of you may know how important it was for me. After it was over, he gave us some packets of dutsi, which is little black peppery-tasting stuff that has a lot of blessings. My time with him left a big impression on my. I'm going to have to google him and see what I can find out. We didn't have time to visit another Padmasambhava cave Chodrak said was further up the mountain, as the last bus was at 6pm. I'll be going back to Pharping very soon, because there's a retreat center there in my lineage, and I'll be stopping at the Padmasambhava caves and Tara shrine again for sure.

I read in one of the local papers when I was in the Delhi airport about air pollution in the Himalayas which is melting the glaciers there. You might remember that Al Gore mentioned the brown clouds over the Indian Ocean in his movie. Below are some links to pictures of the haze similar to the one I saw in the paper. You'll see the haze totally covers Nepal, which is right below the Himalayan mountain range in the photos. Here’s a National Geographic site that talks about the problem: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/08/070801-brown-clouds.html And this one has a picture from last year of the haze over Pakistan: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/shownh.php3?img_id=14046 Here’s another article with a picture of the haze over India and Nepal also from last year: http://www.newsroom.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/display.cgi?id=1379

This is my second day working on my blog. Not only was it slow yesterday getting pictures up, but then about 6pm the power went out for a couple hours. When everyone goes home for the evening, of course the TV’s go on, stoves and other electronic stuff gets used. They don’t have enough power here for the whole city, so different sections of town have regularly scheduled outages. Now today, I can’t even get one of my photos to upload to my blog. A guy I met here yesterday told me that there’s an American club near Thamel where the internet is very fast, so I think I might have to make a special trip there once in a while. He said they also have a swimming pool, which definitely sounds inviting. So for now, I’m just going to load up the rest of the text, and leave the photos for a few days from now. The place I’m at is called Café New Orleans. They have some organic items on the menu, and also have a healing spa upstairs in which they offer a whole list of treatments like mani-pedis, facials, body scrubs and wraps, and about ten different types of massage. I had the organic veggie curry last night, and it was great. And by the way, fresh mint in hot water makes a great tea, much better than mint tea from dried leaves. While I was sitting here writing this yesterday, my friend Kelesyn and I talked by internet phone for about a half an hour. We got cut off a couple times, and found that if we didn’t use the video, we could talk without too much interruption. And at that club I mentioned, I would be able to have video chat with no interruptions. I’m saying this to encourage my friends to download Skype so we can have some free talk. Go to http://www.skype.com/download/ and click on "Download Now," then follow the prompts. For those who don’t have the memory power in their computer for phone chat, instant messaging is another alternative. Let me know which service you want to use (yahoo, msn, etc) and I’ll download it. I don't know what my schedule will be once I start school, but we can work that out when that happens. Just email me and let me know you want to chat. If you want to figure out the time difference, now it’s 11pm in S.F., and it’s 11:45am my time, so add 12 hours 45 minutes to your time if you live on the West Coast. Keep tuned to my blog, as I’ll be writing in it pretty often from now on. Definitely email me if you have any questions or comments about what I wrote, or if you have any requests for pictures for me to take and so on.

Yesterday I met up with a nice young Swiss guy, Andrien, who I met at Chokyi Nyima’s monastery when I was there to hear Rinpoche give a dharma talk. Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche was feeling tired from his trip back from the U.S., which I could totally sympathize with, so the talk was cancelled. Andrien took me to a local tea shop where a cup of tea was 5 rupees a cup. We had a long talk, and also talked with a Tibetan man who spoke great English. He was from Dharamasala, and teaches Tibetan there. After that, we separated at lunchtime, as he lives with a Tibetan family who feeds him his meals, and we met up again and went to Durbar Marg by taxi, about twenty minutes away. Durbar Marg is more like what we would expect in a shopping district in the West, a much more expensive place than Bodhnath. We also went to the Dream Garden, another oasis, which you can see in the picture here (along with Adrien's back). We spent a lot of time there relaxing on the grass, reading and talking philosophy. Then we went to Thamel, which was not too far to walk to. We went into a large three story bookstore. I’m definitely going back there sometime. They have a lot of Buddhist books, lots of all sorts of types of books, almost all in English. Then, after some intense bargaining by Adrien with a couple cab drivers, we went back to Bodhnath by taxi paying 130 rupees (a little less than two dollars), a bargain for sure!

What’s a more fascinating are the shops where people are doing craftwork, like making rugs, doing metalwork of various kinds, sewing, fixing motorbikes, and so on. You often see the whole family sitting in the metal shops, including the small children, tap-tap-tapping away with hammer and awl working on traditional Buddhist items like prayer wheels and so on. I stopped in a shop today where a Tibetan man was explaining to some Americans about how they made some beautiful tapestries from the traditional skirts and other clothing of Tibetan women, which you can see in the picture here. I wish I could have gotten a picture of some of the tapestries that were hanging up, as they were even more gorgeous, but the overhead lightbulbs prevented me from taking a good picture of them.

Here's a typical street scene, with the Bodhnath Stupa above it all. I'll take more street pictures so you can see what I mean about the shops, people, and so on.

I haven’t bought anything yet, besides my meals, as I’m still a little intimidated by the whole bargaining process. You don’t have to bargain at a restaurant or café, but in shops or with taxis, it’s totally normal. The streets here in Bodhnath are mostly made of dirt, and not very regular because of the monsoons, I think, which wash away the dirt. After the rains there are many muddy puddles to walk around. On the side of the street one can often see piles of garbage, as there is no garbage service here, and it can be pretty stinky. There’s always a lot of smoke on the street as well, from people cooking on the side of the road, from people burning trash, and of course from the black car exhaust. One of the more interesting sights are the watering holes where local people on the street can get drinking water and wash clothes. Here is a not-so-great picture of one of them. I felt shy to take one where people are actually using it. Below the water spout, though you can’t see it in the picture, there is a little statue of a goddess there.

This is the temple at Sechen Monastery, the back of which you saw in the previous photo from the window of my room. I slept a lot the first couple days, and just didn’t feel normal until today. Also, last night was the first time I slept normal hours. I just couldn’t keep myself awake past 5-6pm, and then would wake at about 1am and couldn’t sleep again until just before dawn. I was taking long naps everyday as well. My head was feeling like it was packed with cotton, I think because I stopped drinking tea. People go to bed here very early. By 10pm, the streets are quiet. Then in the morning, the birds and roosters wake you before dawn, and you can hear the world starting up just before six with the ringing of bells and gongs, and you can smell incense in the air and people starting their puja. In the middle of the night, I get woken up often from the barking of dogs. There are dogs everywhere. I think they don’t have owners, and they all look about the same, of medium size, brown/black, and thin. And then there are all the other animals on the street, the chickens, goats, cows, and even ox. In fact, the first animal I saw on the way from the airport was a huge ox standing there on the city sidewalk before we got to Bodhnath. Unless you’ve been to a “third world” country, there’s no way to understand what it’s like on the street. There are homeless everywhere, in much worse circumstances than in the U.S. Many people come up to me asking for food, or to shine my hiking boots (a thoroughly ridiculous request), or to buy something I usually don't need. Most of the people who approach me are young boys or young men. I’ve been told about 4-5 times now that my shoes are broken, and that they will fix them for me. I try to be as kind as possible with everyone, and only once in a while with the young men who want to fix my shoes I have to give a more firm “No thanks.” Most of the poor are people who’ve come from villages to find work, and Kathmandu is inundated with them, as there just aren’t enough jobs for everyone. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of middle-class and wealthy people here as well. People are well-dressed, and there are mansions here behind large gates built by the nouveau-riche. This morning I saw lots and lots of children on their way to school, very cute in little Catholic school-like uniforms. The finest hotel in Nepal is within walking distance, which is the Hyatt Regency. "The Rough Guide to Nepal" says about it: "Nepal's biggest and swankiest five-star hotel dominates the skyline 1km west of the (Bodhnath) stupa. Offers everything you'd expect for the money including plentiful "heritage" detailing and a fashionable restaurant-bar." A friend tells me they have a great pool as well.

Shekar was kind enough to show me around the next day, taking me to the Sechen Monastery, where they have a great vegetarian restaurant (the picture here is of the restaurant garden, and the Sechen guesthouse is there surrounding the garden), the stupa, some internet cafes, and the school I’ll be attending, and left me her phone number in case I might need to ask something. Despite how scary everything seemed from the car, walking around was no problem. People are extremely friendly here.

This is one of the gardens at the guesthouse where people can eat when it's not raining. By the way, I'm having to make the picture images smaller because it takes too long to load up the large pictures I was putting on while I was in the states. You can still click on the images to see them in a larger version though.

Then there was the ride through town. OH MY GOD! That’s when I knew I was really on the other side of the planet. The chaos was incredible. There are taxis, buses, rickshaws, bikes, motorbikes, pedestrians, and animals everywhere on the road. There seem to be no rules of the road, just a general understanding that when other cars are coming, you veer to the left (like in England), and there’s a lot of honking of horns. I’m very surprised that no one gets hit, although near misses happen constantly. It’s all very dusty dirty, with lots of car exhaust, since almost no one has air filters, and I think cars use diesel here. The streets are lined with little dark shops, and lots of bright posters and signs in Nepali, and filmi (hindi) music blaring. Then when we got to Bodhnath where I’m staying, that was even more shocking. There are many mazelike tiny dirt streets that I was surprised the taxi could travel on, especially without hitting anyone, with the same little shops lining the roads, but many more Tibetans around. The shops are all elevated from the street by a couple of concrete steps, I imagine to get above the rivers of water that can develop from the monsoon. We finally found my guesthouse, which was a big relief. It’s like a little oasis, and I’ve come to find out that there are many such little oases here in Kathmandu, which you’ll see from my pictures. I got a double room, as that’s all they had, at 400 rupees a day (about $5.50). It’s very nice, has large windows on three sides that look out into the gardens there, and Sechen Monastery can be seen not too far away, which you can see in the picture here. I'm only putting up the pictures that came out ok, so I'll take more pictures of the guesthouse later.

In Nepal! - Start here and work your way up....

Hey everybody. I think I want to start writing about my flight first, which was an adventure in itself. I was on British Airways to London, and then to Delhi, with a four hour layover in Heathrow. I felt like I was in England for about twenty four hours, and I was the one with an accent. The meals were amazing. I had chosen a Hindu meal, and they were very authentic. They even had lime and mango pickle, raita, halva, chapatti besides the curries, sag paneer, and rice. As we flew over London, I could see the Thames, Buckingham Palace, the Old Bailey, and other old buildings. We disembarked on the tarmac for security reasons, which was great because I got to actually step on ground in England, and there was a pleasantly strong smell of the sea in the air. When I was in the airport, I was amazed by the shops. It was like being in an upscale mall, very flashy. I watched a lot BBC World and read most of one of the local papers. I saw a scene of the Old Bailey on the tube which I had just seen in the air, very cool. I hardly slept on any of the flights. I was too wound up, and besides I was drinking tea before landing at each stop, as I didn’t want to be sleeping in the airports. On the way to London, I saw Pan’s Labyrinth, which I had been wanting to see for a while. It was ok, not as good as I expected. On the way to Delhi, I saw Spiderman 3, which I did like. It was hard to see all the action on the tiny screen on the seat ahead of me, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. The only other movie I remember seeing (there were a few others) had Anthony Hopkins in it, playing some genius killer. I didn’t see the beginning or end of the movie, so I don’t know the title. I think Mr. Hopkins is getting typecast. Flying over Delhi, there were miles and miles of suburbs, very modern and Western looking. In fact, I was a little too far away to know for sure, but I could swear they looked like gated communities. Getting off the plane, I was hit by a wave of heat and humidity. The first sight I saw was of a man-sized Shiva murti (statue) made of some dark hardwood, and a little further on one of Ganesha of the same size and make, very welcoming. Since I was connecting to another flight, I and a few other people were set aside, and we were interviewed by a nice lady who made us wait in some seats for a couple hours to wait for our boarding passes. There seemed to be no ticket offices that I could see. I met up with a woman from London named Lyla, and we had quite a nice conversation. While we were waiting, we watched the news on a large flat screen tv. I think it was the Indian version of CNN, and was very slick and impressive. There were many flight officials and police (or military, I couldn’t tell which) walking around, standing in groups, and I’d say there were at least as many of them as there were passengers waiting for flights. I saw one policeman with a machine gun walking around, a bit shocking. I see them sometimes here in Nepal as well. I don’t know if I’ll get used to that. Lyla and I were told that someone would be coming to us, but no one came. Apparently, another lady was paging us, which we didn’t hear as we were talking up a storm. Finally, the lady came to us and chided us for not paying attention to the page. She told us that she would meet us again at a certain time, so we took that as a cue that we could get up and move around. We went to a bar and had a beer. Well, she found us there, fifteen minutes before the time we were supposed to meet her, and she scolded us again, and told us not to move, that she’d meet us in the bar, which she eventually did. On the flight to Nepal, I again had an excellent Hindu meal. On none of the flights could I see the Himalayas. In fact I still haven’t, as it’s monsoon season here and there’s always clouds on the horizon. Getting off the plane, again it was instant heat and humidity. But, like India, there was a slightly floral scent in the air that's just like the air in Hawaii. Even now in the café where I’m writing this (I’m out on the patio), I can sometimes smell that same odor. Going through customs was never an issue at any airport. No one looked through my bags at all. I got my luggage, said goodbye to Lyla, and headed towards the door. Before I left I changed all the money in my pocket at a stall that had a sign that said “Government Approved.” My mistake was not counting it first. The man behind the counter told me I had sixty some dollars to change, and when I looked skeptical, he recounted and said it was eighty some dollars. I’m pretty sure I had at least a little over ninety dollars. Welcome to Nepal! Then there was the real pandemonium, getting outside. There was a monk on the other side of a bank of glass windows just before the entrance with a sign that said “Sean”, and I pointed to it and we smiled at each other. After stepping outside, I could see literally hundreds of people, and many were taxi drivers, all poised to harass you into their cab. I just told everyone I had a ride, and the monk and his mother Shekar helped me fend them off. What we couldn’t fend off were the young men who wanted to tote my bags to the car for a fee. Because Shekar and Sanggye (the monk) let them take my large piece of luggage, I went with it. At the car, when I got my wallet out to give them something, I was hesitating because I wasn’t sure what to pay four guys pulling one piece of luggage that I didn’t need help with anyway. While I hesitated they were reaching into my wallet saying “this one, this one,” pointing to a 500 rupee note (about seven dollars). Sanggye told me not to pay, and he and Shekar took care of it. I had carried a laptop and a carrying case to Nepal for them, as they are the buyers for Rigdzin Ling's shop Tibetan Treasures, and the shop wanted them to have internet at their home.

A close up of some of the goddesses. You can see more of Harry's art here: http://users.rcn.com/harryleaf/index.html

My friend Harry makes clay goddesses for a living. Here he is with my friend Rem at his booth at the Pride Parade, selling his wares.

These are the seven offering goddesses. Dana is on the right....Hi Dana!

This one and the pic above I got from my friend Dana. I'm circumambulating the prayer wheel house.

Hey Johnny, Phineas, and Dave. You're so silly! I love you guys so much...