Namche -- Finally

The road to Namche

Many years ago, I drove with friends to Bethlehem, Israel. I still remember the shiver of excitement I felt then as we approached the city. In my mind’s eye, I saw story book images of the manger, the baby, the straw and the donkeys. When our car arrived at the town limits I looked up wide eyed and saw a red brick factory with a sign. It read, “Bethlehem Tobacco Works.” Gads.

A year later, Bob and our children, Brian, Mark and Susan, drove up the west coast of Turkey, alongside the Adriatic Sea all the way to Homer’s Troy. I’d loved the stories of the wooden horse and accounts of Heinrich Schliemann’s discovery of this ancient, mythical city. By the time we arrived there in our 1971 Volkswagen hippie van, I was clutching our guide book and beyond excited. Our kids, having seen gazillion archeological sites were bored to tears.

We jumped from the van and I ran ahead to the site and had another huge letdown. Troy is mounds of green grass with small signs showing the level of civilization beneath. I think there were thirteen levels in all. Oh sure there was an amphitheatre – but mostly Troy is a confusion of hills and rubble. Heck, I wanted to see the wooden horse.   

Many years later as I puffed up the last of our three hour gruelling climb to Namche, I felt relief and pride too that we’d finally arrived at this old fabled trading post on the slopes of a crescent shaped mountain where altitude becomes a danger. The village is at 11,283 (3440 meters) and so Rajendra had arranged two nights there to acclimatize.

Buddhist stupa

A women walking towards the stupa

A djopko walking up steep village steps

Signs of civilization

What we didn’t know was in Namche we wouldn’t get sick. But Rajendra would. How do trekkers manage in the Himalaya when their guide gets sick? 

In the photos you’ll see the crescent shaped mountain, steep streets where you skirt around animals and a stupa, a small Buddhist monument perched on a hill. 

On April 18th, I'm flying to San Diego to visit my sister. So we'll press the pause button on Nepal for a couple of weeks. I'll be wide eyed in SD and blog photos and stories from there.

 See you there!

Mystical and Complicated Kathmandu

On the trail to Namche Bazaar, Rajendra said, “Dashain was hard this year.” 
“What happened?” I asked.


“Well,” Rajendra said, “My parents live in a small village a long walk from Kathmandu. Two weeks ago, a snow-leopard killed their four goats. It was night time and they were sleeping. They heard the goats bleating and went outside. By the moon’s light, they saw three animals on the ground bleeding in a pen behind their house. The leopard was tearing into the fourth. When it heard my parent’s cries, it bounded over the pen’s fence. Rajendra shook his head. They were my family’s wealth and as the oldest son, I had to buy a goat for them.”

“Why did you have to buy a goat?” I asked. 


“Well, all Hindus must sacrifice a goat at Dashain.” he said. I thought of the children playing in the courtyard during the goat sacrifice, of how ragged their clothing was, that I hadn’t seen one toy in the city since arriving, not one child with even one toy. I wondered how these families could afford a goat.


Sensing my thoughts, Rajendra looked down at his hands. “Often poor families join together and purchase a goat. It’s a sign of status if families can sacrifice their own goat. That’s why I had to purchase a goat for my family -- so they could keep their status in our small village,”  he said. 


Here in Nepal, a status symbol is having a goat to sacrifice. Wow, I thought. Nepal is complicated. Kathmandu is too.  For me Nepal had been an ancient mystical country, shrouded in history, the steepest land in the world with the highest most exotic mountains. I saw Kathmandu as a place of the Gods nestled in a sacred valley. Until I landed in Kathmandu. What you see and feel there is crazy chaos – streets so choc a bloc with cars you can’t breathe or move and when they cars do it’s sometimes around cows chewing their cuds in the middle of the road.


And you feel religion. Especially during the festival of Dashain. Nepal is mostly Hindu along with Buddhism – especially in the Everest region, and also small numbers of Christians and Muslims. They all live peacefully together.  In the photos you’ll see gods decorated with red powder and flowers. You’ll see priests and temples. 


The photo below shows the Hindu lingam representing the endlass nature of the god Shiva. Some see the lingam as a symbol of the male phallus. I saw these odd little statues all over the place and finally asked Rajendra about them. “They are little gods,” he said.

The Hindu Lingam

This is a statue of the bull Nandi facing a temple. It is the Lord Shiva’s vehicle and guards the temple door. He also represents sexual energy and controlled power.

Nandi

                                  Temples and Priests

On our second day in Kathmandu, Rajendra said,  "We're going to see a temple." But he didn't mention that we were going to see the crematorium by the Bagmati River.

We passed by the temple with the Shiva bull and kept on walking. Soon we were at the river. I looked across to the banks on the other side. The banks were lined with stone steps and hundreds of people receiving blessings for their dead relatives. (in the photo below, look down to the left of the monkey.) If you look closely, you can see an orange flame. The square boxes hold the bodies. It's difficult to see the bodies burning. I didn't want to approach out of respect. 

Our customs here are so different. We would never (at least I don't know that we would) be witness to the cremation of our relatives.

The Crematorium

"What is happening here?" I asked Rajendra. He said that according to the Nepalese Hindu tradition, the dead body must be dipped three times into the Bagmati river before cremation. The chief mourner, who usually is the first son, lights the funeral pyre and takes a holy river-water bath after the cremation. 

Families of the Dead Receiving Blessings
by the Banks of the Bagmati River

Shrines and Gods of Kathmandu

A fierce-some God

 Many Gods take the form of animals. So for visitors these "Gods" look frightening and odd. But people worship these representations.  

The three flat sculptures here are actually Hindu shrines.
You can see flowers and shades of red powder placed daily by worshipers.

  

Although Kathmandu is mostly Hindu, here you can see
Tibetan Buddhist Prayer Flags

Kids playing a game

A priest maybe?

Procession

A bull lying in the middle of the street

An ancient entrance

A bright shrine

Workers in Kathmandu

As I thought back to Kathmandu, I also remembered that we were in the midst of a Maoist insurgency, that my insurance company wouldn't guarantee helicopter evacuation from the mountains because there was a travel advisory on the country. Yikes.

Upcoming  blog posts  “In the midst of the Maoist Uprising”

                                            "Our porter Chhiring Sherpa"

The Goat Slaughter

Happy Easter 2012!

I left you on a small plateau climbing the grunt to Namche.  If you love walking and hiking especially on trails where you can gaze at the patterns of clouds and trees, where you can let your mind wander back to people and places in your life, then you know how wonderful it is to daydream.  When your mind travels into another world beyond the here and now, you are, as they say, “living in the moment.” It’s the stuff of meditation without the agony of trying.

When you struggle to breathe, when you will your body to move as I did on those rocky steps, you are also in the moment because you don’t have the energy to think. But from time to time on that climb I thought back to our two days in Kathmandu, to that magical, spiritual and turbulent ancient city that so enthralled, excited and revolted me. We were just beginning to get over the jet lag of nineteen hours of flying and the goat slaughter we saw sent us spinning.

It was a balmy day in early October, 2003. We were sitting at a table on the third floor balcony of the Durbur Square Restaurant in Bhaktapur, the medieval capital of the Kathmandu Valley. Water curled down our glasses of imported beer onto a red and white checkered tablecloth. I was beyond tired at this point, having spent the last couple of nights willing sleep to come.

We looked across to the Royal Palace. Pigeons flew overhead landing on the palace’s ornate wooden carvings, leaving their calling cards to the already thickly decorated exterior. I looked around, remembering that in this old durbar court, the Nepali princes of old Bhaktapur were crowned.

I imagined the pageantry, the music and the throngs of people. Wendy said, “Don’t look down.” She was clenching her napkin. I stood and peered down over the old railing. The railing shifted under my weight. A few people were milling around a rusted van decorated with colourful streamers. On the ground in front of the van, someone had placed a bronze tray with yellow flowers and a bowl of brilliant red powder. Behind the tray sat a priest. A man was leading a goat on a leash into the square. I was transfixed at the following scene as it unfolded.

preparing the car for the blessing

With the nod of his head, the man pulled a knife from his trousers and slit the goat’s throat. He grasped the gyrating animal and ran lopsidedly around the van, pumping the goat’s neck. Blood splattered a wild abstract design on the sides of the van and the old cobblestone courtyard. I felt sick. I didn’t want to look; but stared at the same time.

I grabbed my Nikon and tried to focus with shaking hands, not as much from disgust, as wanting to record this display. We had come here for a quiet lunch during a tour of the city. It was only our second full day in Kathmandu and as luck would have it, the ninth day of the fifteen-day Hindu festival of Dashain, a celebration marking the triumph of the gods over wicked demons.

As I read later, on this bloody and colourful day, sacrifices are given to all vehicles such as cars, airplanes and trucks for protection against accidents during the year. In a courtyard, somewhere else in the city, we missed the slaughter of hundreds of black buffaloes. When the killing ended, the area would have been filled ankle deep with blood.

After circling the van, the man positioned his still dripping knife and with a flick of his wrist lopped off the goat’s head, placing it on the bronze tray. He quickly severed the tail and rammed it into goat’s mouth. I felt like an impostor to this exhibition, recoiling even as my shutter clicked.

Children played tag in the courtyard. This was a day of worship and the scene our grotesque initiation to Kathmandu, a picture unimaginable at home. I turned around to find our guide, Rajendra.  He was chatting with our guide at a nearby table. Our eyes met.

 He must have noticed my revulsion because he shrugged his shoulders. He said, “Yesterday was the eighth day of Dashain and last night was the dark night when hundreds of goats, sheep and buffaloes are sacrificed at the mother goddess temples. Most families sacrificed a goat yesterday, as well. We can visit one of the temples if you want.”

The priest blessing the car

The afternath

My inners turned. City slickers aren’t used to such remarkable shows of blood and gore and I wondered why Rajenda hadn’t prepared us. Wendy toyed with her Dahl Baht. I took a few more gulps of beer and peered over the railing again. The priest was blessing the car and its owners before walking away, his white robe transformed into giddy abstraction by the blood of the hapless goat.

The priest leaving the scene

Goats for slaughter on their way south
 from Tibet to Kathmandu

The waiter removed our untouched plates. I looked out onto the square, to the bloody car, to the women passively looking down at the street, to the priest walking off after blessing the car. I remembered the mystical photographs of bronze gods in Power Places of Kathmandu. Those photos were taken here in the Kathmandu Valley, I remember thinking.

I think it was the gruelling trail that threw me back to that scene. As we climbed higher, my memories of Kathmandu changed along with the blue sky and the anticipation that at some point, no matter in what shape, we’d arrive in Namche.

Women passively watching

Upcoming posts

Meeting Swiss diplomats in Namche

Our porter Chirring Sherpa

Rajendra is sick 

The Climb to Namche

Dizzying suspension bridge over the Dudl Kosi  (milk river)

I looked up from my dusty boots on the crooked rock stairs but couldn’t see more than forty feet up ahead. My progress was dogged. No mental preparation on the Bruce Trail or in Nelson British Columbia’s Kootenay Mountains could have prepared me for this grunt to Namche. The problem was the lack of oxygen at altitude.

What’s it like? It’s like every cell in your body has slugged out. You’re not panting but you don’t get enough oxygen to move. I was using a gait called the ‘rest step’ where you lock your downhill leg and swing the uphill leg forward, pause and then shift your weight to the uphill leg. It’s like an exaggerated goosestep and without it, I’d have been a goner. The idea is that you don’t lose momentum and energy by stopping and starting. Slow and steady wins the race as they say.

I wanted to take photos so everyone would gasp at the trail -- so I could brag about the climb later. But life is humbling. I couldn’t see the way ahead because the trail curled around corners so you couldn’t tell where you were going -- which was probably a good thing. Even if I had decided to break my rule of not stopping, I was too tuckered to drag my Nikon from its pack on my chest.

Partway up, sensing that I was alone, I turned and way back down saw our guide Rajendra slinging Wendy’s pack onto his back. Oh, oh. Alcatel got me to Nepal. But working in Paris meant that Wendy had no hills to train on and walking the streets of Paris for eight hours on Saturday and Sunday doesn’t cut it. When I suggested that she climb the Eiffel Tower, Wendy said, “Don’t worry. My body has memory,” referring to her years of climbing Mt. Washington, skiing and cycling marathons. But after all my preparation, I couldn’t imagine how she’d finish the trek without training on hills. Besides, Wendy’s Achilles tendon had flared up before leaving Paris. Trouble ahead.

A little further beyond we found a small plateau and took a planned rest. There were a few trekkers hanging out there. A South Korean economist wandered over to talk. He said, “I’m 73 and so proud to be doing this.” Then he looked at Wendy leaning over on her hiking poles. “You’re old like me.” he said. She shot him a daggered look.

The trek from Lukla to Everest

Lukla is on the bottom right. Namche Bazaar is north of  Lukla on the left.