Day 1 in Nepal

I'm in an internet cafe in Kathmandu, after a sweaty but exciting day of

seeing the city. I'm much happier today than I was yesterday--I was supposed

to be in KTM by 5 pm but instead was stuck in the Bahrain airport until the

afternoon because a vehicle ran into the plane we were supposed to be taking.

Seriously. Anyway, I got out of the KTM airport around midnight, where Chris

was waiting with a taxi to pick me up. I was exhausted, and just generally

annoyed with traveling, and kept mentally questioning why the hell I had ever

decided to come to this country. I was actually kind of worried that I might

hate Nepal. What if I absolutely hate everything about it and am stuck here

for a month? That possibility hadn't crossed my mind before. Thankfully,

that was just my jet-lagged brain talking. I woke up this morning at 6:45, after a restful sleep, and couldn't wait for Chris and Hannah to get up so we could go explore.

And explore we did. We started at Boudhanath, the world's largest Buddhist stupa. We watched monks doing their morning prayers, spun enormous prayer wheels, and walked around the stupa several times. Hannah and I got our picture taken, awkwardly and without warning, by one of the monks on his camera phone. Chris made an offering and received a blessing, which was pretty interesting. Later he was talking with another one of the monks who then gave Chris another, even cooler blessing and then invited us all to have a glass of soda water with lemon with him at a tiny hidden cafe. It seems like the Nepalis love a Westerner who can speak their language, because Chris makes easy friends wherever we go. Of course, it turned out that the monk was also soliciting a donation for the monastery, but whatever. It was still pretty neat. On our way out of the area we were looking at thankas, extremely intricate Buddhist paintings, when the salesman invited us upstairs to watch them being painted. I don't even think I can describe how small the paintbrushes are, and how intensely detailed these paintings are. It was amazing to watch.

We then went to Pashupatinath, the holiest Hindu cremation site in Nepal. It's located on a river, and bodies are cremated all along the bank so the river is essentially full of dead people. The water is a greenish-gray. In fact, while we were standing there, watching the fires burn, I'm pretty sure that we each inhaled about half a person. We watched both the ceremony that takes place before the body is burned (horribly sad, especially because one of the grief-striken relatives was completely distraught and here we were, stupid gawking tourists) and the final ceremony, where the family takes a final saved
piece of the body and buries it in the river bottom. Chris got us a tour guide, who was full of information about the Hindu religion and also helpful because he took us to some photo-op places I wouldn't have found otherwise.

I think we're going to do a little more walking around yet today, and then hopefully back to the hotel for a nap. What a great first day!