Help!

It is true I have been spending time with locals and even a few Westerners here and there, though most of my time is spent alone and I have been away three months (returning in March). So: a special request. See, I'm worried that Christmas will be especially lonely. A friend in Seattle has offered the temporary use of a post office box in which I can receive mail.

Maya Micronomicon
P.O. Box 45654
Seattle, WA 98145-0654



I'm hoping to have a little taste of home and friendship for my Indian Christmas. You can send a note by December 10, and all will be express mailed to me post restante. I'll paypal my friend for expenses. The heavier the package, the more expensive, so simple postcards and light letters are best. Please include a return and email addresses and I will do my best to reciprocate. Thank you. xo!

Puppy Love

It is sort of embarrassing to look back and think about how dreamy and wispy I felt when I first met Mongolia. I looked into its skies and gazed at its smiles and mountains and endless plains with such fervor, such hope. But now that I've met Nepal I realize it was all puppy love. I know what real love is now.


The bus to Kathmandu took THREE days. To hear me describe the journey you'd think I was some kind of martyr, trudging the earth with a giant cross or sack of hay strapped to my back. The truth is something else, though. It was incredible, and I can't think of words to describe it, or even trust that a good thesaurus would be enough, would do this glorious place justice. First of all, I woke up super early in Lhasa to get to the station, and I ended up waiting for what seemed like hours. No matter, Tibetans are kind and giving, curious, smiling... I spoke with one gentleman who works with a non-profit and teaches locally. He was sending off some people so the chat ended, unfortunately, at the bus station. The bus was packed with about 40 Tibetans, all hopeful and excited with very new passports and very new visas for Nepal. Over the course of the trip we shared laughs, hot tea, dirt paths as toilets, fruit, and dirty hotels. I really had no idea when the bus would arrive, so I was already surprised when we stopped at a hotel after a relatively easy 8 or 9 hours of driving. Most of Tibet looks like this first photo, and I met this sheepy thing at the border town. It was posing for me, don’t you think?




This is a photo of two of my bus-mates who were heading into exile in India after Nepal. It was really amazing to see firsthand the treatment of Tibetans by the Chinese. I’ve seen plenty of ‘Free Tibet’ stickers and maybe even signed a petition or two… Anyway, the second photo below shows the line (on the ‘Friendship Bridge’) separating China to the right and Nepal to the left.




The second day we continued to ascend high mountain passes and then, sort of suddenly, everything changed: there was grass, there was green, there were livable areas and people again, then we were descending, approaching the long, deep gorge toward the border and into the Kathmandu Valley.



I was awestruck by Nepali people I chance encountered as I waved my silly arms and head out the window. Boys screamed and waved, skipping in dirty half-sandals, shopkeepers smiled and girls washed clothing under pipes coming out of cement structures. I was in love, and my cheeks were pained from smiling so much. Not that fake Mongolia-love you always hear about. I mean, I am not trying to diss Mongolia. It was so good to me; I'll never forget the gifts and love, mountains and museums, and bad hip-hop. But I feel something new, something that makes my stomach jittery and my heart tender. I'm really happy here, and I don't even have a guidebook.

I arrived late in the afternoon almost exactly two weeks ago. While using my ATM card across the street from the bus park I ran into a friendly US ex-pat who gave me some advice about what part of town to stay in. It is where most of the tourists go, but a thriving, bustling local scene is around every corner. Right away the smells of spice and joss enchanted me, and I didn’t much mind the trash in the street and the narrow streets crowded with taxis and motorbikes, farmers and hustlers peddling their wares. There also signs of oppression, like the guards and checkpoints all over the roads.






I knew, though, that I needed to see some more of the country, so I headed west to the scenic and popular town of Pokara. Hated it. Absolutely hated it. It was paradise, sure, but I've seen paradise. I longed to be back in the dusty streets of Kathmandu eating cheap Nepali food and watching tea runners and women in sarees walk down the street. There is one part of Pokara where all the tourists go, Lakeside. I felt like I was in an open-air mall, and there is no shortage of malls in my home country. There were only local children prowling the streets begging or hassling tourists, and there were only other locals in their shops beckoning you in with incessant cat calls. I ended up staying a week, but only because I took a motorbike tour of all the surrounding sites (after silently cursing the entire Asia entire) to try and salvage my time after a few days…




And then… I met a family I’d been growing friendly with invited me to their village for a special Puja, a blessing by a priest for the villagers. It took an hour on a rickety bus and then an hour and a half climbing a small mountain to get there. There are a total of fourteen houses in the village but they are so spread out that I only walked by two of the homes and stayed in the third with my host's family.




How do I describe that day, that night? Am I supposed to thrown out 'it was great,' 'fabulous, 'lots of fun'? No, I can't. I (and all our thesauruses) are lacking yet again. Ask me about it sometime. You might think I look like I'm about to cry, the way I look when I talk about Omega House, the AIDS hospice where I did volunteer work and research in Texas. "How sad," people always say, which I never understood. What they mean is 'Wow, I'm really afraid to die and if I ever saw death in front of me I wouldn't know what to do!' And this is terribly unfortunate because it is a wonderful place full of love and light and people you've never imagined. Nepal makes me feel something along those lines, but I wonder about the intrinsic reason for this crazy love. Is this unparalleled love condescending, is it insulting, as I come from the most powerful and wealthy (albeit fairly unhappy and disliked) country?

In my field of study, anthropology, there is a term, or a theory called the noble savage. It is typical for us, even for middle class populations in the ‘third world,’ to see farmers and peasants as beautiful, so see them as being close to the land. In the United States we’re fond of speaking heart-lustily about Native Americans, we like to tell people how neat their lives out. We put ‘dream catchers’ on our walls and talk about how they use EVERY PART of a buffalo- wow, no waste! We think about people in Africa and Asia, their sweet simple lives, and then we catch a taxi to a bar with a $20 cover charge or dust the top of out DVD player. So that is the noble part. This is the savage part: none of us would trade or grand lives for their puny ones would we? I’m so in love with this place, right? Well, should that mean I would trade my life for one of theirs? If it is so beautiful and fantastical, is it not worth the same as mine? I wouldn’t trade, I admit it. And I’m sure all those grade school teachers who said those things about Native Americans wouldn’t trade their lives either. And I don’t think this is a matter of being used to what we know, being familiar and comfortable. I think it is a severe value judgment, and my love for this place and the people here is rooted in my Western idea of beauty in being close to nature with a ‘simple’ life.

Well, I still love it here. There is so much green, sometimes I get to share a meal with a new friend, and almost every day in Kathmandu (before Pokara and now that I am back), I visit these kids…



I have had tea in one of their father’s shops, I have been invited into three of their homes and even tonight I return for dinner and a visit. I’m not sure when I will leave and head south to India. Sometime within 3-8 days I’m guessing. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to feel not only this boundless love, but also the hope that time proves it pure and real.

Bye-Bye China

I've given up waiting to properly update with pictures and everything, so I have scraped this together. Besides, China will be a country of my past in a few days. I'm currently enjoying Tibet but I am sick of being sick and my mantra isn't om mani padme hum, but stupid China. Enlightenment, no. Karma, yes.



The highlights of my second sets of days in Beijing were the Lama Temple and the Taoist temple- they really pound the afterlife punishments into you. I suppose if your religion enjoys icons you may as well go all out! My favorite dioramas reminded me that those spooky stories of faraway places we hear as children do serve us well as adults (hell, for one). Oh yeah, the last picture is at least someone's version of hell, Chinese acrobatics.








Being back in China was delightful at first, food is easy and predictable and transportation is generally easy- long and short distances alike. After wasting some time in Beijing, I headed close-by for some rarely-visited but pretty spectacular sites. In one day I hit Yungang Caves, the hanging monastery and the 11th century wooden pagoda Mu Ta. The caves are awe-inspiring, carved into the mountain are over 50,000 Buddhist statues. It is hard to impress the size and scope of the carvings. They are so amazing that I found myself trying to convince strangers that they must be made of cement and couldn't be actual carvings. I do think many of the statuettes were made with molds, but the majority of what is there is truly world-class.




The hanging monastery, where to begin... I've never even thought of describing myself as having a fear of heights, but this place dates over 1400 years ago and really isn't hanging off a cliff, it was built straight out of the cliff's face above a canyon. Several small buildings are connected via corridors, steep stairways, bridges and boardwalks. It was frightening, and I felt for the first time what a severe physical reaction to a phobia must feel like.



The pagoda was nice, plucked it seemed from the past and precariously placed in the middle of one of China's bustling nameless cities. An appropriate swelling of souvenir shops selling the same crap surrounded the structure, but once inside the grounds and up the stairs I found some peace. It was worth a stop, as recent Western monies have brought some regeneration to the tipping pagoda.

My next major stop was Wu Tai Shan, one of China's scared mountain ranges. I slept and read a couple days away and then did a mountain tour of temples, nunneries and monasteries. Even after a short visit at one temple, a nun invited me to spend the night on the premises. There was no way I could say no- until I tried to find my way back there at the end of the day. My only true regret in China.

One of the "Top Sites" in China is supposed to be the Terracota Army in Xi'an, so there was no way I could miss that! Oh God, I wish I had. Other than some tremendous Chinese-Muslim food and a quaint Muslim Quarter in which to indulge, Xi'an is a tourist trap engulfed in a giant cartoon character with tiny traps as necklaces and eyes. If I was big on regretting things, I'd punish myself for taking the time to see the army and Xi'an at all. Question anyone who claims the city was worth it. A few moments at the site were nice, but nothing of the spirit of the find exists in my eyes. You'd be better off watching a public television documentary about the Qin Dynasty.

I set myself up to revel in the sweetness of my next major stop, Chengdu. I loved the park and the main temple. It is a great city even though there are millions and millions of people there. At some point all my pictures will be up and I will be back home. By request I do a wonderful imitation of all elderly chinese women dancing in the parks and temples of Chengdu. Something happened to my body in that city and I fainted in a cafe. I was okay, save for my bumped (stone floor) head, and quickly recovered. The next day was I went to the Giant Panda Breeding Research Base:



I paid for the privilege, but it was worth it. I sniffed and hugged and was denied a change to hand that HUGE thing some food. Qing Zai is just two years old, and clearly hundreds of pounds. The encounter with the red panda wasn't as spectacular, but they are pretty cute.

So, now I am in Tibet, and I take a bus to Kathmandu, Nepal in a couple days. I've been sick here- two visits to the hospital- but have little choice about leaving. I'm already paying a high tariff to be here a few extra days since my visa has run out. Socialized medicine is nice for the pocketbook (two visits, all meds, less than $12 bucks), but more than one of my SEVEN prescriptions was some weird herbal thing with antlers in it. Better than you'd think.

See you soon!