NEPAL 033012 A Day of Errands in Downtown Kathmandu

Dear Friends

It was lovely to be back in Boudha among the many monks from the dozen or so monasteries in the area.  One such fellow is in the picture below caught exiting the stupa.  Our hotel is full of monks and western guests who seem to be here for the classes that begin tomorrow on the Four Dharmas of Gampopa.  Maybe I'll tell you about one per day :-)

 

After watching the fascinating crowd circling the stupa and registering for our class, we taxied downtown to shop for books and electronic supplies, look at a huge thangka of a very a scary blue wrathful Tibetan deity in the Annapurna Hotel where we had lunch, then walked over to Thamel, the tourist district of Kathmandu for coffees, then caught a taxi home to the Hotel Ngudrup.

I'm sitting in our hotel room where there is no electricity = there are periodic blackouts throughout Kathmandu and the generator has not been turned on yet.  The sky is darkening and I'm hearing thunder, the shouts of children playing in the apartment courtyard below, and "Hmmm!" from time to time from Dick who is reading "Beyond Religion" by the Dalai Lama.    Cooking odors and wood smoke from the courtyard are wafting up to my second floor room.  Laundry hangs from all the balconies. There are workshops surrounding the courtyard and we've noticed welding and the same tapping sound of metal working that comes from the shops near the stupa where prayer wheels are made. Thousands of Prayer flags fly from the three to five story buildings at my right.  

A somewhat tilted image of the view from my hotel room showing the laundry, prayer flags, and working areas described.  The turmeric that was rescued just before the thunderstorm was drying on the corrugated roofing that is held down with tires.  The welding shop is under the curved metal-roofed area closest to the apartment building.

On the other side of the hotel I could see some of the monasteries with their golden statues on the roofs and prayer flags streaming above.  On the workshop roof immediately to my right a woman is gathering the dried turmeric roots that have been drying there since we left for Chitwan.  Maybe she and I both are thinking it could rain, and the prayer flags are flapping wildly.  A rain might clear the persistent smoke and reveal the mountains surrounding this valley.

Sending lots of love, Marian