NEPAL 040612 Trek Day #1: Naya Pul to Hille

Hello Everyone

We bundled into our van at the hotel in Pokara at 8:00 AM and drove to Naya Pul where the trail starts.  Karma and Donna were remembering that on their trek in this same area, the WALK started near Pokara and there was no road to Naya Pul.  As we were to learn, roads are a mixed blessing to the communities along the trekking routes in the Annapurna area – making access easier in emergencies, but reducing the work opportunities for porters and the number of visitors to trail-side lodges.

Here is the "wilderness trail head" at the Hotel Buddha at the bus stop in Naya Pul where our van left us = 6 Trekkers, 3 porters, 2 helpers, and Jawane, our guide and "Chief Operations Officer." 

Hotel Buddha, Naya Pul, Nepal

NEPAL 040512 Kathmandu to Pokara

Dear Everyone

Today we made a most interesting drive from Kathmandu to Pokara, the epicenter of trekking in the Annapurna Himalaya.  We left our hotel in Boudha at 8:00 AM with our guide Jawane, his 15-year-old son, our four porters, and the driver and his brother.  Our vehicle was a Toyota van that holds 12 passengers and lots of luggage.  We arrived at our hotel in Pokara at 2:45 in the afternoon with two stops, one that included having milk tea, McVittie's Digestive Biscuits (yet another vestige of the British Empire in this part of the world), and Peanut M&M's, and the other to deal with the liquid vestiges of the metabolism of the tea from the first stop.

My first picture for you for today shows some of the traffic in Boudha that we encountered near the stupa as we were leaving our neighborhood. The stupa was teeming with people there for a special celebration.  Never a dull moment in KTM!

Traffic in Boudha

The light tan smudges on the lower right side of the picture are my fingers covering part of the lens on my iPhone as I held it out the window of the van in a death grip.  I love the smile on the guy driving the scooter, so I'm particularly sad about the smudges, but I didn't drop my precious phone cum camera.

NEPAL 040412 Gifts for the Rinpoche and Dancers at Pashupatinath

Dear All

This was our last day in "KTM" before our trek.  Yesterday evening we had dinner with Karma's daughter Maisie, his son-in-law Sky, and first wife Arlene at our favorite restaurant, Flavors which is next to the stupa here in Boudha.  It was a warm occasion repeated tonight at the Kathmandu Guest House in the heart of Tamel, the tourist district in the old part of downtown Kathmandu.  We are glad to have stayed in Boudha at the Rinpoche's quiet guesthouse away from the intense shopping and busy huckstering of Thamel.

Today was our last day of teaching.  After the last talk there was a ceremony to thank the teachers, translators, and assistants.  Then the students had a chance to offer a donation to the Rinpoche and his translator.  Donations – such as  made on our behalf by our Friendly Helper Monk before we went to Chitwan -- are placed in envelopes and then wrapped in a kadha and presented. Below is a somewhat blurry image of Donna wrapping her donation.  When a donation is made, while the donor is bowing before him, the Rinpoche drapes an acknowledging kadha over their shoulders.  Quite an elegant ceremony.

After lunch in the manicured gardens of Sechen Monastery and a little shopping, we went back to our room and sorted out what we would leave at our hotel in Pokara and what the porter would carry for us on the trek.

NEPAL 040312 Monks Can Dance and "Rainy Day Schedule"

Monks Can Dance

This is an account by Donna Barnett of the lama dancing at the Sechen Monastery :-) 

"I often think of monks practicing meditation most of the day.  Nothing is what is seems in Nepal and that proved true for my perception of monks.  We attended a series of ritualized dances performed by the monks of Sechen monastery. Each dance was unique in costumes but similar in style.  At one end of the courtyard was a raised platform where the musicians sat playing very strange looking instruments -- Long brass horns, drums and cymbals.  All of which when played together created a loud rhythmic beat.  A chanter with a deep resonate voice blended with the cacophony of sounds.  Fifteen monks walked down 10 steps on the opposite side of the musicians.  They were helped by 2 monks who were needed to hold up the heavy, colorful, and most elaborate costumes I've ever seen.  

NEPAL 040212 Pashupatinath, the Varanasi of Nepal

Dear Everyone

This afternoon we made a trip into one of the most sacred places in the Hindu world, Pashupatinath, a complex of temples, shrines, cremation ghats, and a "Hospice House" on the Bagmati River.  Non-Hindus cannot visit the temples, but we could peek into the many Shiva shrines and watch from across the river the families caring for the dying and the rituals for the dead.  Not my usual Monday afternoon.

Mourners gather to wait together near the small shrines below the Hospice House and on the steps along the sacred Bagmati River in Pashupatinath

 The first picture in "Read More," shows more about what's happening on the right of this image

NEPAL 040112 Shopping in Patan: A Prayer Wheel for Claire

Dear Friends, 

My writing group teacher, Claire Braz-Valentine, asked that, in lieu of tuition while I was absent raveling in Nepal, that I find a prayer wheel for her.  This is an account of that shopping trip.

My introduction to prayer wheels was at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California.  There the wooden prayer wheel is at the gate to the retreat area.  It’s a cylinder about two feet high and a bit over one foot in diameter with eight handles at the bottom of the wheel, one for each of the steps in the noble eightfold path.  Prayers left at the nearby Spirit Rock gratitude hut are placed inside the wheel and the prayers are sent out into the universe each time the wheel is spun by grabbing the handle next to your "favorite" step :-) and giving the wheel a friendly whirl.

On our first evening in Nepal this March, I first saw another sort of prayer wheel as Dick and I joined dozens of Tibetan Buddhist devotees walking clockwise around the Great Stupa at Bodhnath.  Many of the worshipers were spinning prayer wheels.  Some held their small prayer wheels mounted on handles in one hand and spun them clockwise as they walked.  Others reached into the niches adorned with the red curtains -- seen below -- to spin the prayer wheels there as they walked past.Nearby prayer wheels in a room attached to the Bodhnath stupa were twelve feet high and eight feet in diameter – big enough to hold the whole world’s prayers for peace and terrifically hard to spin alone (not that one is often alone in this sacred place!).

The Great Stupa at Bodhnath showing its rectangular prayer wheel niches sheltered by red curtains and devotees circumnavigating the stupa at street level, perhaps spinning  the prayer wheels as they walked.

NEPAL 040112 A Rinpoche Teaches and a Puja in Patan

Dear Friends

Well I didn't think anything could be more amazing than yesterday, but little did I know that today I would learn that I was heading for Buddhist Hell and that performing a Hindu puja (offering and prayer observance) to an elephant-headed God could move me very deeply.

Our day began at breakfast in the Hotel Ngudrup in the company of an international cohort of guests who are here to assist with [translating Tibetan into English, for example] or attend the teachings by Drupon Rinpoche.  The teachings are given at a school for children from the Himalayas who would not otherwise have an education and is funded by donations made to Trungpa Rinpoche for his charitable works.  This means that to go to the teachings we can walk through the playground of the school with is between the dormitory and the classroom building.  I stopped in a corner to take a picture and was engaged in conversation by a charming 7-year old boy who told me in his clear, pan-pipe bright young voice that I was very beautiful.  Not a bad start to the day.

Students, monks, and nuns listen to the teaching of Drupon Rinpoche at Thrangu Rinphche's school, Shree Mangal Dvip,  in Boudha