Hypertravel with Hardie #14: Nepal

NEPAL First some backstory: My first trip to Nepal—and KTM—was around 1994-5, when I made a brief trip here as a world handicrafts dealer, for only a few days, to shop for wool sweaters to complement my alpaca product line from south America, especially Bolivia, which was the staple of my business for at least about a decade from around 1987 to around 1997, until a totally different SE Asian woodcarving line largely took its place for me. So, I spent less than a week, in KTM only, seeing almost nothing, not even a mountain, until my plane left the city, staying in a neighborhood, that I couldn’t even find today, now knowing the city well, even if I wanted to, with only vague references to ancient roads that I could only navigate by dead reckoning, I having no map. I’m not even sure if Thamel was a tourist area then, but I know that I wasn’t there, Freak street, either, though I suppose that I at least got a glimpse of the classic 70’s-80’s era of that region, before they shut down the hashish shops. Oh, well, I enjoyed Latin America in those years, instead. Fast forward to 2016, and I don't care much about the 'sights' as such, anyway, especially since I'm here to attend a Buddhist monastery, but not much anyway, regardless. I'm pretty much from the 'Long March' school of backpacker tourism, which relies on random encounters for little thrills, like the little girl who takes my hand and walks with me a block or two, or the shoe-shine boy, complete with story, enough to double-up his pay, since he's gonna' take it upon himself to repair my classic leathers anyway. My days here are largely scheduled around the power outages. In Nepal, getting a good Wi-Fi signal is the least of your problems. Getting electricity is the real challenge, with power out typically half the day. What decade is this? What century? About the only thing predictable about the blackouts is that they won't occur during the night. Stock up on it when it's available...But you'll have plenty of power while you sleep, if the drunks downstairs out on the street will let you. This is Party Central, for Nepal, at least, Thamel is, even if mild by Bangkok standards. A band-for-hire plays an early Beatles hit: can you imagine somebody playing Al Jolson to us back in the 60's or 70's? Life is weird—and ever-changing. Durbar Square charges $10 for admission now, to all pale faces, but this can be 'hacked', just pick an entrance other than the broad way leading from Thamel Street and avoid the guy who wants to show you Kumaree the virgin princess. And wear a baseball cap like the stars do in Hollywood. And don't ask questions: worked for me twice. Harder still is avoiding Thamel while staying there. The noise and crowds get loud and old, think I'll stay at Freak Street next time, rooms for four bucks... ...The temps are nice this time of year, though a bit rainy, but not overbearing, and fairly predictable: the clouds roll in every mid-afternoon. I'm going vegetarian again for the first time in two years, no buff nor boeuf, and that's easy to do here, just like India, where every meal is a humongous pile of rice surrounded by minimal amounts of veggies. The farther from ground zero Thamel, the cheaper the price, as little as 35 c for a plate of chow mein. They have good coffee here and peanut butter at reasonable price. I'm good. Pokhara is Nepal's second city, and such a change from the first, that it's almost hard to believe they're in the same country. Where Kathmandu is noisy and chaotic, Pokhara (pronounced like a distinctly southern-drawled and gooey 'okra', y'all) is chilled and peaceful—almost TOO tranquil. I start to miss all the chaos and manic maniac drivers with foot on the gas and hand on the horn (I even had one flashing lights at me, so I stopped in the middle of the road to force him to do the same, just because I could)...Of course, I'm talking about Lakeside, where all the tourists and local groovers hang, and full of spa-like accoutrements, boutiques and yoga, trekking centers and restos, caffeine and alcohol. But there's another Pokhara, too, the original one, just up the road a piece, as high up as you can get in that particular valley, and filled with goldsmiths and silver, as opposed to the lakeside scene that tourism built. So, I had to go check it out, just to get some traffic to avoid, if nothing else. Lakeside only really comes alive at night, and much of that in second-level clubs and drinkeries, so not immediately accessible to pedestrians. But to call it a 'little Thamel' or 'second Thamel' is a bum rap, as the place is eminently walkable, as opposed to the bruised knees and psychological near-misses involved in just walking Thamel after dark. It's cleaner, too, with wide sidewalks flanking one broad thoroughfare, with a lesser muddy walkway along the lakefront itself... Prices are higher, though, for nearly everything except 'momos', the hearty Tibetan dumplings that are ubiquitous in the region. The real challenge is to find the bro' price on food, the Paknajol price (where you go in Thamel), where any meal with dal baht (soupy lentils and rice) will allow you extra to fill up on, like tortillas in Mexico, nobody goes hungry...And coffee goes for a price here that would make Mr. Starbucks himself blush, much too expensive, so I go for Red Bull rip-offs (which was a rip-off itself in a previous Thai life). But the power still goes out half the day, maybe even worse than the Kathmandu area, and I end up staying up half the night just to use Internet. In all fairness: WiFi is generally good, whether there's power or not (they have backup), so the power is the real problem—what a shame...So Nepal missed the Digital Nomad boat, just a few old hippies left from the old days who could care less about Internet connectivity. Pokhara seems fully given over to tourism, with sweet smiles and pleasant dispositions well-suited for it, everything but the electricity. So, I feel sorry for the taxis without passengers and the hotels without guests, whether victims of the earthquake or not. So, they're building buildings like no tomorrow, all with no power; only Commie countries ration power rather than raise the price...But it's not all sweetness and smiles. Nepalis will blow cigarette smoke in your face no joke, right inside the resto, and Europeans all too happy to follow suit. So I take long walks and befriend all dogs, writing on scraps for later transfer to computer on the midnight shift. I even finished my curry cookies on the uphill climb to Sarangkot, for lack of better options. I got halfway up before turning back, more put off by the prospect of a twisted ankle than a twisted psychopath. I mean: what if I meet someone on this lonely narrow path? Worse still: what if I don't (meet anyone)? Fear is the great conservative influence on behavior, the what-ifs of life come forward to haunt in advance of any display of unwarranted bravado...And the bus ride Kathmandu-Pokhara is beautiful, if problematic. A round-trip is not backtracking, not the first time, since it's an entirely different view, right? But the drive stretches out forever, one hour to leave KTM, and worse on the return. They stop for lunch TWICE for driver to fill his gut free while passengers mingle listlessly. And trucks pull over to sides of roads with no shoulders, so no shortage of anxiety there... But the real problem is that the last 12 mi/20 km on the return to KTM takes at least three hours, due to road work and traffic jams, so plan accordingly. And you'll FINALLY see mountains after three weeks, if you know where—and when—to look, same in Pokhara. In Kathmandu, you'll only get that at the airport. Now you know... Did I mention that Bhaktapur is the real deal: with cobblestones and muddy streets, jugglers and clowns, musicians and townspeople all gathered in daily celebration, in worship to all gods, deities and governmental authorities alike, where chaos rains supreme, especially in the reigny season, the chaos of fuzzy logic and faulty reason, post hoc ergo propter hoc, begging questions and begging for dollars from unsuspecting tourists??Or maybe that was just me. Year 2022 Fast forward again and I’m back in Nepal to spend the winter of 2021-22, in prime COVID time, with the Omicron variant ascendant. I spent the first month in India, mostly Bodh Gaya, then high-tailed it to Nepal to tough it out for the next 2-3 months. KTM is cold, though, and I’m a Buddhist by this time, so I’m drawn to Lumbini, the Buddha’s birthplace, on the border with India, where the temps are moderate, not like the capital uphill. But the fog persisted about a full month before finally lifting, so I got a lot of work done, writing and re-writing my historical novel abou the Buddhist pilgrim Fa Hien (Fa Xian). Finally, well into February, the temps started rising and the sunny room got toasty, complete with mosquitoes. Still, the temps in KTM (Kathmandu) were chilly but improving. And the lockdown was long gone, so a couple days ago I made the big leap, and took the longest taxi ride of my life (so far), a full nine hours over bumpy roads. I did that because people won’t wear masks on buses, so I don’t trust the Covid virus to exempt me from its cruel reach, even if I’m one of its kinder sympathizers, figuring it can probably teach us a thing or two. So, the taxi cost basically the same as a plane, all things considered, and I could stop along the way if I wanted. I didn’t. There is nothing spectacular along that road, and much of it I’d already seen coming from Pokhara previously, a fact that I wasn’t previously aware of, that I would be retracing some steps. What else? Lumbini is very close to the border with India, so it definitely feels more like that than Little Tibet. In fact, that is one of the prime features of Nepal, that it is something of a Kathmandu sandwich between a slice of Tibet and India. And the food reflects that influence, also, not surprising since Indians are probably the main tourists when times are normal. Nepalis can party with the best of them, also, New Years’ Eve one of the biggies, but weddings every so often. Even the nearby villages get in on the action. Basket-weaving is a local craft, also, and of high quality. But the Buddhist connection is the big deal here, so Hinduism is not as dominant as usual. And there are Islamic mosques, also, with even local saffron-robed Theravada monks here, too. Back in Kathmandu, there’s only one thing left to do, and that’s another small trip to the heart of Nepal, the Gurkha heartland, which is who the Nepalis, that Indo-Aryan group, really are, aside from the other immigrant Tibetans and the original Newars and other ancient tribal groups. But the purpose of this trip, this side-trip, from Kathmandu, was hardly of the ‘Lost Indo-Aryan Tribes’ theme. In fact, I doubt that anyone would even consider that a proper theme, since, in general, Indo-Aryan peoples, and the larger Indo-European group of which they are a part, tend to rule wherever they are found. This occurs so frequently to the point that others must take a backseat and wait in line, while those Indo-Aryans get first dibs on the land’s bounty, as cultivated by those same lower castes who must wait in line to eat. The purpose of this trip was to help rural poor disadvantaged children. But in fact, poor impoverished Indo-Aryans are at the core of Nepal’s existence, as best exemplified by the Gurkhas, famed for their expertise in battle, as evidenced by their status in the British armed forces, where they have their own battalions and are renowned for their fierceness and bravery. They are at the heart of Nepal’s existence, and yet they were never really more than peaceful village people—except in battle. The British found that out the hard way, more than 200 years ago. Their motto is “Better to die than be a coward.” Sound familiar? Yes, they’d be right at home in America, “Live free or die.” Any many, in fact, do live now in the UK, after a long hard struggle to gain the same rights as the native-born British soldiers that they have fought with over the years. Most recently they were noted for their ‘cultural affinities’ with the Afghan soldiers where they were stationed, and this goes straight to the point that I want to make. They’re related. And so are we, most Americans, and Europeans, that is. So, a lot of these random similarities are not so random at all, since we have a common history not so long ago, apparently, in the Yamnaya Horizon some 4-6000 years ago, AND (cue drum-roll)… This has been proven genetically for at least five-ten years now, that we all share a genome, specifically haplogroup R (y-DNA), R1a predominating in East Europe, parts of Central Asia, and north India, R1b in West Europe (and Armenia). If you don’t believe me, just ask David Reich at Harvard. So, my biggest surprise at meeting some of the poorest most disadvantaged kids in the Nepalese region of Sindhupalchok was that not only were they not pockets of remote tribal Tibetans or aboriginal Austronesians, but in fact they looked very similar to anyone on the streets of Kabul, Kathmandu—or Keokuk. And not only that, but these pure-blood Indo-Aryan Nepalis are shudra by caste, the lowest caste of menial laborers. How did that happen? In the Vedas the original Aryans in the Rg Veda were transformed into Brahmins in the later Atharvaveda, so why did these outback Aryans miss the boat and descend the ladder to the status as menial laborers and worse. Worse? Yes, it gets worse, at least in the case of Sindhupalchok. Because this is the region of Nepal famed for its women—trafficked. Apparently, these girls often end up in big cities of the region as prostitutes, though I’ve never seen a local girl on the streets of KTM (Kathmandu) with a foreigner, at least not in broad daylight. So, life can be hard in one of the world’s poorest countries, and it’s not always because of racial disadvantages. Often, it’s just because of circumstances, and the lack of access to the fruits of modernity, particularly education and job opportunities. So, girls still get sold so that her family can eat, and another light is extinguished in the wilderness of civilization. Is this simply one of the perks of city life? Maybe, but that need not be the case in the age of Internet. Light can shine on remote villages even where transportation is almost impossible. So, if you thought that this was something only found in Thailand and Cambodia, think again, because these are our kin. But besides the dark back story the main town of Melamchi is pleasant enough, even if the ride to get there from KTM is not for the faint of heart. The ravages of 2021’s flood here are still painfully evident, also. It’s only a few hours away, but the road is rough, though it’s better than it used to be, apparently. Soon the outback towns that are not suitable for trekking may at least become suitable for exploration by public transport, and for me that’s an interesting development indeed. Because I’m not particularly interested in trekking, at least not the organized kind, but I am interested in remote villages and the culture that sustains them. If you’re interested in helping them, let's talk. Finally, back in KTM, I enjoyed the spring weather and awaited my flight back to Europe, then Colombia, then Mexico. Yes, that was the cheapest route. 3

Buddha Talk: A Buddhist Theory of Knowledge...

Buddha Talk#0: Emptiness...

You can have infinity, i.e. endlessness, with no boundaries, but it’s empty. Or you can have things, but only a limited number of them. You can’t have both. Infinite stuff is a fool’s dream. But that’s exactly what many Christians believe, or buy into, I should say. Because it ties directly into the capitalism that accompanies so much Christianity, especially the Protestant sort, which by no accident came into existence at almost exactly the same time as capitalism, maybe even preceding it by a bit, thereby giving the lie to any idea of mutual causation, in fact maybe a direct cause. And many of those Christian values get carried into Buddhism by the same Christians who gave up their worldly ambitions in the process, at the same time that they cast piercing glances at the senior monks over the status of women in the ranks of the ordained. The meaning of the hallowed Buddhist concept of ‘Emptiness’, i.e. ‘shunyata’, is also up for grabs. Because, while shunya is the Sanskrit word for ‘zero’ and dates from right around the same time as the invention of the zero (yes), and may very well have originally been a philosophical concept long before becoming a mathematical one, that doesn’t stop certain westerners from frowning upon the concept. Because ‘Emptiness’ has a very negative, and strong, Western psychological connotation as the cause of depression and unhappiness, this in a culture that rewards engagement above all else. I see it every day as a digital creator on social media, with no seeming recognition that such engagement is exactly what drives many people away from such media. Apparently driving sales is more important. So, I let many comments go unanswered, not because I agree or disagree with the viewpoint expressed, but simply because that uncertainty is fine, and often not worth fanning the flames of dispute, since the only certainty is negation. Then there’s spiritual bypassing, but that’s for another day. Be kind.