A Mini-Trek

Well I couldn't spend the entire time here in Kathmandu.  It's such a beautiful country it would be a shame to spend the whole time in a congested city.  However, we've been reluctant to look into hiking because Melissa is working and we don't want to be too out of touch.  But today I worked something out that allowed me to see some nature and we were still both comfortable with it.  

Certainly I didn't want to go alone, so I asked if one of the other guys here was interested.  Bruce, a Canadian literature student and croupier has been here for weeks and not left Kathmandu, and so he was excited to join me.  Bruce knows a taxi driver that he trusts (he calls him "my driver") and Pujan, the hotel owner, told us where to go for a good 1/2-day trip nearby and sent someone he knows with us as a guide.  So we were off.

If you look at Kathmandu on Google maps, just to the northwest of the city is a large nature preserve called Nagarjun, I think.  It was a 20 minute cab ride to get to the entrance of the park, where we paid a small entrance fee.  The cab driver waited at the entrance 3 hours for us.  The guide led us up a steep hillside, and very soon the sound of honking cars faded, and we were in nature.  I had forgotten my bug spray at the hotel.  Stupid.  It was mosquito country, but our guide used branches to keep the mosquitoes away the old fashioned way of fanning.  What bothered me more was the heat.  It was very hot and humid.  

The hike was rigorous, but not terrible long.  It was a well-traveled path, and much of it had steps cut into the dirt of the hillside.  Soon it leveled out and we were on a ridge.   We followed the ridge for 4km or so, flat in some places and steep in others, until we came to a buddhist shrine at the top of a high hill.  I was quite winded the whole time, as was Bruce.  Kathmandu is at about 1,300 meters, and we hiked up to 2,200.  Much of Colorado is that high, so we were by no means at Himalayan altitudes, but I was winded anyway.  Our guide does treks for a living--he said he's been to Everest base camp over 50 times.  He was not winded.

Luckily it was a fairly clear day and we were treated to great views of Kathmandu.  At the top was small metal tower, and as we climbed it the peak of one of the Himalayas, Langtang, showed itself above the clouds.  The clouds quickly hid it again, but we briefly was a 7,000+ meter peak from the ground.  From the hill we could see the entire ridge we'd walked up and the entire Kathmandu valley.  As planes came in they were below us before they landed (obviously, but it was still cool), and we could see the hill with the monkey temple and the general vicinity of our hotel.  

At the top there were a few Buddhists conducting worship.  They sat and prayed and chanted, reading from a book that looked just like the one Melissa had bought yesterday!  So I now have a vague idea of that item's actual usage.  

I've saved the most memorable part of the trip for last: the leeches.  When we first got on the path the mosquitoes were bad, but as we climbed, the guide warned us of the leeches.  My only experience to this point with leeches was in the lakes at summer camp in the Adirondacks.  There the leeches live in the water and look like slugs.  These leeches are much more active, living on the ground and sticking their front ends up and moving around.  In the photo above, the leech is the thing that looks like a curved stick sitting on the leaf.  They were everywhere on the ground, and they stick to the bottoms of shoes then inch their way up to the skin like big inchworms.  We had to stop every ten minutes or so to clean them off our shoes.  At each stop we'd each have two or three leeches on our shoes, and some made it to our socks and ankles, so at the top of the hill we took off our shoes to really clean them off.  Bruce's sock was totally bloody, as a couple leeches had bitten him through his sneakers and socks!  It's not painful, though--you don't even know you have a bloodsucker on you if you don't look.  When we returned to the hotel I removed a couple more, took a shower, washed, got all cleaned up, and came to the lobby of the hotel to write this blog entry.  Halfway through it, I noticed I had blood running down my leg.  I asked the receptionist for some paper towels, and when she asked what happened I said "leech" she was rather disgusted.  So I bled on the hotel lobby floor a bit, which I felt bad about, but I cleaned it up and I think I'm now leech-free.  They're really nothing more than a nuisance--no actual medical danger as far as I know.  But we decided they must have an anticoagulant in them because a tiny little dot continues to bleed for some time.  I'm fine though, mom--don't worry!

A couple other comments on the above pictures.  The pictures of clouds has the peak of Langtang in the middle--it just looks like a cloud.  In one photo you can see the ridge we hiked up.  There is also a photo of Bruce in his Sabres jersey and me in my Sabres hat.  At the games they show people in Sabres garb at locations around the world, so if I don't get a better one, I might label that as Nepal and try to get on the big screen at a Sabres game.  I'm a nerd.

Purchases

Yesterday our goal was to find a cool old map to frame for our wall.  We've seen tons of framed pictures in the shops around here, but nowhere have we been able to find a wall map.  After a while, we started asking the shop owners, and they wanted to show us road maps.  It's a subtle difference to try to convey with a language barrier.  One shop had lots of old looking stuff, so we gave it a try.  We don't think the man knew what we were asking for, because he led us from room to room showing us random things.  He took us deep into his store, unlocking cages of junk to show us things.  We kept thinking we might find something good, so we let him continue to show us things, and he led us upstairs to more rooms and upstairs again.  On the third floor was apparently where people lived.  We were in their kitchen and bedroom and he was trying to sell us things right off of their walls.  So although we didn't find a map, Melissa and I just couldn't leave there without buying something from that family.  Melissa found a religious "bookcase," which is two carved pieces of wood that contain disconnected pages of handwritten writing about Buddha.  It is written in a Tibetan language, and looks quite old, so it might be valuable.  It's very tough to tell with these things, but at least it's a more unique item that isn't being sold on every street corner.  In the picture above Melissa is laying all the pages out to examine the different pictures of Buddha.  I thought I'd buy something for the wall since it doesn't look like I'll find a map, and I got a carved thing to go above a door.  It's probably junk, but again, at least it's unique, and we'll always remember that home/store and the old man with cataracts who we bought them from.  On a related note, we really need to stop spending money!  Everything here is cheap, but when you buy a ton of cheap stuff it eventually adds up...

A Few Random Comments

1.  I always thought cricket was on par with lawn bowling and curling in its popularity.  Apparently not.  In the world of former British colonies, it's hugely popular--why did America thankfully avoid that?  But I've actually been watching and enjoying it.  Since the matches are long it's on all the time, and when it's not, they show reruns.  Still, I haven't figured out the terminology.  Just for kicks, look at the wikipedia article for "cricket terms."

2.  Sorry that I lost the comments that people had left for my first few blog entries.  We love seeing people comment, so if you are a reader, say hi!

3.  In this new blog format, you can click on the pictures to see them in a larger format.

4.  No matter how much I try drinking it, I cannot acquire the taste for tea.  I keep trying though, since the boiling water makes it safe to drink here.  I've gone from actively disliking it to simply not enjoying it.  I'm neutral.

5.  The music scene here is diverse.  Everywhere we walk we hear western music.  The soundtrack for this trip has been a combination of Black Eyed Peas, Kings of Leon, and Jack Johnson.  But I wonder if that's just to cater to tourists.  I've had a few occasions to hear Nepali people hum to themselves and I've been in cars where people had music on, and it's usually traditional in nature.  Also, the TV has lots of music channels that are nearly all Indian music videos.  However, when the bars around here have Nepali bands that play music, it's a lot of classic rock--you can hear the Beatles and Hendrix echoing from the rooftop cafes at night, sung by Nepalis.  Interesting mix.

6.  Melissa and I have eaten just about anything put in front of us on this trip to be adventurous, but last night I just couldn't try the wild boar.  I'm sure it's not too different from regular pork, but it just looked too gross for me.  Melissa went for it, though.  Good for her.

Garbage. Wow.

In my blog, I've commented a few times on the garbage around Kathmandu.  I've tried not to dwell on it in the blog.  I actually have some real information about it now from today's newspaper.  No, piles of garbage in the street is not the normal way of life here.  Though I doubt the city would ever qualify as "clean," we do happen to have arrived in the middle of a strike of garbage workers.  They are currently on their sixth day of striking, and are negotiating with the government for "more sustainable waste management with a package of development projects."  Unfortunately, the paper reports that no headway has been made.  

I'm not informed enough about Nepalese politics to comment intelligently, but I'll just say this: if the end result of the strike is an improved waste management system, then it's probably good.  Many people here drink bottled water because, as you can imagine, the ground water system is polluted, but there's no system for recycling those millions of plastic bottles, so they're everywhere.  It's tragic that in the 21st century people still lack basic sanitation.  I don't know the full story, but if the motivation of the garbage workers is truly a better system, then I hope it works out.  What I see around here is tragic, but at least it's not permanent.

Here's the flipside of the coin: although the garbage workers may have good motivations and a better system may result, the danger caused by this garbage strike is very real.  Nepal is currently experiencing an outbreak of cholera.  Yes, the disease where people die of diarrhea.  According to today's paper, the outbreak has killed nearly 200 people in the last few weeks.  At least this disease is in midwestern Nepal rather than the more populated Kathmandu.  If it were to spread here in the midst of the garbage strike, I fear it would be catastrophic.  Melissa says that cholera is treatable--simply stay hydrated until the diarrhea has passed.  To do that effectively, though, requires clean water.  

 

The paper reports that the government is doing a lot in terms of distributing medicines, setting up health camps, etc.  The PM points out that major roadblocks to combatting the disease include geographical hazards, few motorable roads, poor communication networks, undernutrition, and shortage of water, among other things, and these are not problems easily fixed.  They are also devoting resources to combatting swine flu (though there have only been 5 swine flu cases in the country, I'm told).

The paper also reports that families that lose someone to cholera are getting monetary relief: 10,000 rupees per family, and 15,000 if the deceased was the family's breadwinner.  A goodly sum to them, I hope.  It's tough for me to put it in perspective.  Melissa and I spent more rupees than that in our first 2 days here.

An Unplanned Walking Tour

I woke up from my afternoon nap to Melissa telling me we were going to a party of sorts.  She had with her Reena, the resident at Kathmandu Medical College that Melissa is shadowing.  (Melissa can tell you about Reena and the KMC residency program in a later entry.)  Apparently one of the other docs was having a ceremony/party for her 5-month-old daughter, who is at the age where she ceremonially eats her first rice.  I thought this would be a cool way to experience some Nepali culture outside of the hospital and typical tourist haunts. 

 

Reena knew where the location of the party was, sort of, but wanted to get a gift for the mother and daughter.  She knew of a baby clothing store, sort of, and so we were off to find it before going to the party.  We proceeded south from Thamel, and she said it would be a good walk but we were up for it.  We traveled crowded streets and narrow alleyways, past more sidewalk shrines and butcher shops.  Reena had not been to the neighborhood recently, though, and had to stop to ask for directions.  6 times.  So we zigzagged through increasingly unfamiliar streets, late now for the party, searching for a store that Reena wasn’t sure was still there.  The walk led us to a sort of outside/inside mall where there were only Nepalese, and I felt like we’d really gotten off the beaten path.  No longer were we surrounded by shops hawking miniature Buddhas and hippie outfits, no more stores of pirated DVDs and trekking equipment.  This was where real Nepalese people shopped, and there was no traditional Nepali garb.  It was all Shakira, Abercrombie, Tupac, American Eagle, etc.  No more proud “Made in Nepal" signs—it looked like it all came straight from China, complete with massive amounts of plastic and styrofoam to package it all in. 

 

Reena is Nepalese so obviously she speaks the language and eventually found the store she was looking for.  To my surprise, she also ran into people that she knew 3 separate times, in the midst of teeming alleyways in an unfamiliar neighborhood, in a city of 5 million.  Weird.  After also locating a shop to buy wrapping paper, we were headed to the party.  This walking excursion took about an hour, during which time I grew increasingly annoyed at the apparent casualness with which everyone here treats punctuality and organization.  But I’ll get over it—it’s just a cultural difference. 

 

The party was located in probably the busiest section of streets we’d seen yet.  For the first time, we encountered a 4-lane road.  It was packed with minibuses full of people, and crowds of people on the sidewalk waiting to get on more buses.  All the streets in Kathmandu have been crowded, but it’s mostly pedestrians, taxis, and motorcycles.  This was the first place I’d seen traffic that really looked like a big city.  On one side of the street, we were told, was the biggest hospital in Kathmandu, which stretched for blocks.  They were in the process of building a new trauma center.  The partially constructed building was surrounded by scaffolding made of sticks lashed together.  On the left side of the street was our destination—an army base.

 

From the wrapping paper store Reena said it was a 2 minute walk to the party.  20 minutes later we walked onto the army base.  She explained that the doctor’s husband is an army officer, so the party was being held at a recreation club run by the army—so not really a base per se, but it was surrounded with many rows of razor wire and had 5 armed guards at the entrance.  So yeah, it’s a base in my opinion.  The guards seemed surprised to see Melissa and I walking in.

 

It was like entering a different world.  It was quiet and spacious.  We found our way to an outdoor reception area where many people were milling around in nice clothing drinking wine and eating hors d’oeuvres.  We met the host and his wife for whom the celebration was happening.  We seated ourselves among a number of the other OB docs and had good conversation for a while.  Whereas I had expected a traditional Nepali celebration, something different and unique, it actually could have been any reception for any formal event anywhere.  It was pleasant but quite ordinary as far as those things go.  There was a buffet and some more conversation, and we then got a ride back home.  I definitely felt, however, that we were sitting among the most privileged of Nepali people, since right outside that razor wire there were people clearly impoverished, and many others conducting their daily business struggles just to get by—and we were drinking wine among doctors and army officers.  Oh, the one difference that distinguished this reception from any I might find at home was the continued presence of those stray dogs.  Nobody paid any attention to them.  Imagine going to a nice outdoor wedding reception and having random mutts begging at all the tables.

Thamel's Mountaineering History

After bothering Melissa with my explanations about Whitman, we went to dinner.  Our guidebook suggested the Rum Noodle, which I was excited to try because of its connection to mountaineering.  It was literally 30 seconds from our hotel in Thamel.  This restaurant, which caters to the trekking crowd, is very popular for mountain expeditions because Sir Edmund Hillary ate there (and apparently left his signature on the wall somewhere I think).  Consequently, it has become a tradition for mountain expeditions to stop there, and each leaves its mark upon the wall.  The marks take the form of giant yeti footprints, which the expeditions draw on or sign to commemorate their trips.  The restaurant is big—many rooms—and every surface is covered with giant yeti feet describing the mountain, the date, and the participants.  It is quite cool for someone who has read a lot about Everest.  I didn’t see any of the famous people’s signatures (I didn’t want to be obnoxious and walk all around where people were eating) but apparently Hillary’s signature is there, along with Reinhold Messner, the first person to climb all the world’s 8,000 meter peaks (I think) and Rob Hall, who’s dramatic death on the south summit of Everest was described in Jon Krakauer’s outstanding book Into Thin Air.  In the pictures you can see the giant feet and more of the Buddhist prayer flags that expeditions often use to pay appropriate respect to the sacred nature of the mountains for the Tibetans and Nepalese.  Have I mentioned that I want to come back to Nepal during the clear weather season and go on a trek?  Yeah.  Any takers?

Melissa's Medical Adventure

 So this is my first time writing one of these posts, and it looks like it's about time, if you happen to have read Chris' post from today first - if not, have fun reading it... (it's below this one.)

As you read from earlier posts, yesterday was my first visit to the hospital here.  It was fairly brief, mostly just a tour, and completing some paperwork to make my visit official.  So today was the first full day at KMC (Kathmandu Medical College).  Dr. Chanda has me following one of their "residents", Reena.  I learned today that she is actually the only resident in ob/gyn right now.  After completing medical school, aspiring doctors first do a general internship year, then do a "post-grad" in whichever specialty they plan to enter.  So right now on labor and delivery, there are a few medical officers (their version of third and fourth year medical students), a couple of interns, who are only on rotation for a couple months, and then their one and only post-grad/resident in ob/gyn is Reena.  She is on call three times a week, and her post-call days still ends up working, so really she only gets to go home one day a week, maybe one other evening, and just stays at the hospital in her little call room the rest of the time - and this is the same schedule for three whole years!  I really love my residency program, let me just say - hearing Reena talk about her work hours gave me a whole new appreciation for the 80 hour work week limit in the US.  

Despite her crazy hours, she still has a great attitude, and seemed very happy to have a new "shadow".  We started our day with a presentation about cesarean sections - it was pretty basic broad overview, and fortunately given in English.  Then on to rounds - their wards are very different from our pods of private or semi-private rooms.  There is a big room with 10 beds or so for antenatal patients, another for labor or possible labor patients and one more for postpartum, a room with two beds with stirrups for deliveries or minor procedures, and another room with about 20 beds for gyn/post-op patients.  Rounds were very quick, and all in Nepali, so I pretty much had no idea what was going on, other than looking at the patient to figure out if she was still pregnant.  Afterward Reena tried to catch me up a little.

Their labor monitoring is very different - every three hours one of the docs goes in to listen to the fetal heartbeat with a stethoscope, compared to home where we essentially monitor all of them electronically continuously.  They don't even have a computer on the entire unit.  Despite the lack of more intensive monitoring, however, Reena said they have a 40% cesarean section rate, which is even higher than ours at home (which is probably closer to 30%).  I guess this disproves Dr. Wood's theory about monitoring leading to increased cesarean section rates...

Anyway, the rest of the day was actually fairly slow - lots of discharges, and then two admissions, which, thanks to the lack of required documentation and paperwork were much faster than any we'd do at home, but no deliveries or surgical cases today.  

After tidying things up on the ward, Reena took me out to lunch at one of the local places within walking distance for some daal bhaat - a typical Nepali meal of rice, a sort of lentil soup, and assorted vegetables, washed down with lassi, which sounds kind of yucky - a curd drink, but is actually pretty tasty, kind of like a thin yogurt.  I felt very brave, eating at a local restaurant where no one (other than Reena) spoke any English, and I had no idea what we were eating until Reena explained it to me.

The rest of the afternoon was spent mostly in comparing and contrasting how ob/gyn is practiced at home versus in Nepal.  Reena and I hung out in her call room, reading through Williams (the obstetrics bible, apparently everywhere in the world), and asking questions about how the other would do things.  It was a great chance to get to know her a little better, and also learn more about the many similarities, and few big differences, in how babies are born on opposite sides of the world.

Anyway, enough "doctor talk", as Chris would say.  Over the rest of the next two weeks, I'll hopefully get to see some more action, both at KMC, and also Dr. Chanda promises to take me to a few other hospitals in town as well.

It will be a busy but rewarding rotation.

For now, back at the hotel, I'll be catching up with Chris, and I'm sure learning all about Whitman and his Leaves of Grass, and getting some dinner before heading to bed.

More tomorrow, and hopefully soon I'll have some pictures as well.

Gunter's Mental Wanderings about Poetry and Religion

Today has been an uneventful day for me. As Melissa’s first day at the hospital, I took it easy and stayed at the hotel most of the day.  The courtyard is a peaceful place to sit and read, and I didn’t want to go too far without a cell phone. 

 

Since I have no new or interesting pictures or stories about Kathmandu, I’ll talk some about what I read today, which relates well to my journey in the East.  I brought along a bunch of books, one of which is Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.  I thought poetry would be good for a trip like this because I would likely have lots of short snippets of time to read, which are more suitable for poetry than an absorbing novel.  I’ve never been a big fan of Whitman.  I pay him some obligatory respect in my 11^th grade class by looking at a few samples, but I rush through to things I find more interesting.  He wanted the common worker to read his poetry, so it’s written almost like everyday speech, with no attempt to be pretentious or follow academic contrivances.  But that turns me off.  I like poetry to be challenging to understand and I like academic contrivances.  (I enjoy T.S. Eliot for this reason.)  Whitman just seems too, I don’t know, casual and rule-less for my taste, as though he wrote whatever came to his mind and never edited a bit.

 

But I brought along Leaves of Grass because I know I’ve never given Whitman a fair shot.  It’s been on my list to read for a long time, and I’ve avoided it.  A while ago I read a book called The American Classics, in which the author argues that there are only five books that warrant that label: The Great Gatsby, Huck Finn, Walden, Moby-Dick, and Leaves of Grass.  I knew I had to get through Leaves if I wanted to feel knowledgeable about American lit. 

 

I am going somewhere with this, so bear with me—

 

Whitman’s poem seems so arbitrary and repetitive, so uneven and long-winded, but it’s actually easy to read, and I found myself enjoying it.  I thought it funny that I’d go to Nepal to read something that’s quintessentially American.  But as I absorbed line after line of commentary on the beauty of humanity, the oneness of humanity, the joy and depth that can be found in observing humanity, I decided it was particularly appropriate that I’d read it in Nepal.  This is a place where I pretty much sit back and watch people, as Whitman probably did on the streets of Brooklyn.  I’m observing daily life of tailors, deliverymen, artisans and salespeople, cab drivers and butchers, policemen and beggars.  (No garbage men though.)  When do I do this at home?  Never—I’m too busy watching TV or something.  And even when I’m out on the street I don’t think about what I’m seeing because it’s too familiar.  (The formalist school of thought in literature says that art succeeds when it de-familiarizes us with our environment—when we notice that a stone is a stone.)  Anyway, Whitman struck me as not exclusively American in his observation about the connectedness of society, but as more universal.  Perhaps being in Nepal was the best way for me to appreciate what he was trying to get at.

 

It goes deeper yet.  Whitman’s ramblings about the interconnectedness of life include much reflection on death and birth.  He meditates in his verse on the timelessness of the universe, the nature of the body, the nature of the spirit.  He declares that all people are timeless, that life is the same as death, that each person has god in him/her.  And so on.  The rationalist in me gets annoyed with all this new-age mumbo jumbo, but that’s to oversimplify Whitman’s reflections.  Furthermore, the rationalist look at the universe and the spiritual one are not mutually exclusive: the most devout believer and the most devout non-believer can be equally in awe of the timelessness and grandeur of the cosmos.  But I’m getting sidetracked—my point is that Whitman’s philosophy, as he develops it over 100 pages of exclamation points, suddenly struck me as very similar to Eastern philosophy and religion.  It sounded like something straight out of a Buddhist or Hindu text.  The notion of reincarnation (without using that word itself) was present on every page almost.  It was deeply religious in its own way, and completely non-Christian, as far as I could tell, despite mentioning God repeatedly. 

 

So I was once again struck by the appropriateness of my reading Whitman in Nepal.  I was almost through with Leaves when I decided to look at that long introduction I’d skipped over.  After some explanatory notes about Whitman’s early life and the start of his writing, the critic who wrote the introduction began to explain why he felt Leaves of Grass was a remarkable work of literature.  As it turns out, much of that explanation includes a comparison of Whitman to eastern religions!  After patting myself on the back for drawing that comparison independently, I read the rest of the introduction.

 

The critic argues that Whitman had zero knowledge of eastern religions when he wrote it.  For that reason it is a brilliant work.  It is as though Whitman developed a philosophy very similar to Hinduism and Buddhism completely independently, in the midst of a heavily Christian culture.  Part of Leaves of Grass describes a specific moment of revelation that led to the philosophical observations that comprise much of Leaves.  Such moments of enlightenment, or ecstasy, are well documented by individuals throughout history.  Their true nature (hallucination, hypnosis, divine revelation, etc.) is debatable, but time and again individuals claim such moments and report similar enlightenment following them.  Buddha’s is the most famous.  (Buddha’s enlightenment under the tree is the central moment of eastern religion, as the Exodus or crucifixion is to western religion.)  Anyway, the critic who introduced Leaves argues that Whitman’s text is deeply religious and has more in common with the Baghavad-Gita, the Upanishads (sacred texts of Hinduism) or Arthur Rimbaud’s Illuminations (French poetry) than it has with other American texts.  It’s a kind of emotional mind-dump that follows moments of ecstatic vision, and the philosophies that result from those visions are remarkably similar.  Again, I’ll point out that Whitman had no knowledge of these texts—they had not even been translated into English when Whitman wrote Leaves.  The introduction says that when Thoreau met Whitman after the publishing of Leaves, Thoreau asked Whitman if he knew much Indian philosophy, and Whitman responded, “No, tell me about it.”

 

Well…if you made it this far with me, I applaud you.  I suppose this is what you get when you put a literature and religion nerd in the middle of an ancient religious city and tell him to blog.  Well anyway, that’s what I’ve thought about today.  I didn’t expect all this gobbledygook to come out in the blog, but I actually kind of like it.  Maybe I’ll try to turn it into a publishable essay.  I’ll entitle it “Reading Whitman in Nepal.”  Wait, no, that sounds like a plagiaristic spinoff of “Reading Lolita in Tehran.”  I’ll keep thinking about it.

Melissa Starts Work

The next day presented new challenges still.  Our culture shock has died down as we are becoming acclimated to the environment, but Melissa’s first day at the hospital was sure to be eye-opening.  The hotel arranged transportation for her, and I accompanied her the first day to make sure all was well and see the hospital for myself.

The hospital is right near the airport, so the driving route has become familiar now.  Geographically it's not far, but with all the traffic and pedestrians in the crowded streets, it takes 30-45 minutes.  To make it even tougher, it has started to rain.  I suppose that's good news for the millions of Nepalis who want to have a rice crop so they can eat, but it sure makes transportation inconvenient for the tourists!  The rain made for fewer people on the street, but not by much.  Since there isn't really a sewage system or storm drain system to speak of, it made the roads flooded and messy.  Those piles of garbage everywhere are now being washed everywhere, and when we crossed the river, it was clear where that garbage all ends up.  Very sad!

The hospital is a building of perhaps 6 stories, and it is roughly U-shaped.  The center area on the ground floor is outside, and that serves as the receiving area and waiting area for emergency.   This area was full of people, but not any more so than one might see at Strong.  We weren't sure if we would see lines of destitute people or what it would be like.  Melissa had heard that at some hospitals, pregnant women come from rural areas and camp outside the hospital waiting to deliver.  There was nothing like that--it was busy, but not out of the ordinary.

  We walked in and just looked around, since Melissa had not been told where to go.  We asked a security guard for the obstetrics area, and he pointed us to the stairs.  We located the third floor obstetrics ward, which to my surprise looked nearly empty.  We were led from one person to another, all looking for the doctor we were to meet.  Considering how small the hospital was, she took a long time to locate, but when we found her, we were put at ease.  She greeted Melissa warmly and talked about how happy they were to have her.  We were led around to meet some of the other faculty members, and then went to the administration offices to do paperwork.  Dr. Karki led us the office of the director of the hospital, who sat with us and talked about the differences between how medicine is practiced in Nepal.  (All the doctors, by the way, speak excellent English, as they all attained their medical degrees abroad in India, the US, Pakistan, and other places.)  The director said that in the US they rely a lot on biochemistry and lab results, whereas in Nepal there are no labs to get results from.  Consequently, the practice of medicine is much more clinical in nature, and Melissa will get good experience diagnosing problems with less support from labs.  

We were only at the hospital an hour or two.  I sat in the reading room and did Sudoku--I stayed because we were in an unfamiliar neighborhood and we do not have cell phones here.  Soon enough, Melissa was done, and she starts for real today.  Already she learned things she was surprised about.  She said that some procedures that are very standard in America are unusual here, and other things she expected not to find are very typical here.  For example, their rate of c-sections is as high or higher than at Strong.

I'm sure after she goes to work today and the next few days she'll have plenty of interesting things to report.

After the hospital yesterday we made some purchases at various shops, including a large North Face backpack for camping that I got for only $45.  Everything here is very cheap, though it doesn't feel like it because the denomination of currency for most things is in the hundreds and thousands.  1000 rupees is something like $15 bucks.  I did find one item I really wanted to purchase but didn't--it was a framed cloth map of India, Nepal, and Tibet, dating back to the colonial era.  I thought, "awesome, what a find, I bet this is so cheap!"  When I inquired, the man said 200, (like $3), and I was excited, until he said 200,000 that is ($300).  Apparently it is a valuable antique.  I was surprised to find a valuable antique, since most of the shops here have mass-produced tourist junk.  We're trying to keep our purchases interesting, unique, and of high quality.  

Tibetan Beer

After the monkey temple, we ended the journey with a cab ride back to our neighborhood of Thamel, and dinner at the Yak Cafe, a Tibetan joint.  The guidebook recommended tongba, a kind of beer.  It works like this.  They put some hard alcohol into the tube, then fill the tube with millet (this is the first time I’d seen millet, a coarse grain that provides sustenance to much of India).  Then they poured hot water into the tube and let it steep like tea.  So it’s not really beer, though it has the basic ingredients.  More like alcoholic millet tea.  Weird, and not particularly tasty.  Not as strong as the rice wine from the previous night, though.  I suppose if you like it it’s a great bargain, because for about a dollar you get the drink, and you can refill the millet with hot water 3 or 4 times, so it’s actually a lot of beverage.  As you can see, Melissa tried it, but she was satisfied with one or two tastes.  I drank some more, but supplemented my meal with a Sprite.

 

The Monkey Temple

After the mountain flight we decided on our next walking tour.  We would go see the Swayambhunath Stupa.  The small stupa we saw on our first walking trip is modeled after Swayambhunath.  The big one sits on a hill that overlooks much of Kathmandu.  (You can barely see it on the hilltop in the photo at the bottom.)  Legend says (and archaeologists agree) that the valley was once a lake, and legend says that this hill was an island.  So as early as 2000 years ago it was a sacred site, and by the 13th century it had structures of various sorts paying homage to both Hindu deities and Buddha.  Now it is almost exclusively a Buddhist location, with statues of Buddha everywhere, of all sizes, ranging from an inch high to the large golden Buddha of 6 meters (about 20 feet) to the giant Buddha eyes that watch the valley from all four sides of the center spire. 

 

Getting to the temple was...interesting.  We debated about walking, taking a cab, or taking a rickshaw.  We decided to brave it and find our way by foot.  Armed with map, guidebook, and compass, we proceeded west from Thamel.  Our host had told us it would be about a 15 minute walk.  We had to find our way through some crowded streets, hoping we were going in the right direction, but soon enough we were descending toward the river, a distinct landmark, and we could see the hill with the stupa rise on the other side of the river.  It was a lot of stairs to climb that hill.  The air quality in Kathmandu is very poor--the dust is thick (it has not yet been washed from the air by monsoons), the motorcycles are everywhere, and sanitation is poor.  Add to that the fact that Kathmandu is a mile high, and we were definitely winded climbing those stairs.

 

The coolest part of it all was the monkeys.  Though the official name is Swayambhunath, everyone refers to it as the monkey temple because the hill is swarming with wild monkeys.  I had a picture of a monkey on yesterday’s blog, but that was just one random monkey.  At Swayambhunath they were everywhere!  We kept our distance to avoid being bitten (though the danger of that I’m sure was low), and we were entertained by their swinging, jumping, playing, and occasional fighting.  They hopped on the Buddha statues and swung playfully from the Buddhist prayer flags that hang from the trees.  Melissa particularly liked the mother monkeys that ran around with baby monkeys clinging to their underbellies.  Very cute, very human-like, and fun to watch.  Monkeys in zoos are fun, but usually pretty subdued.  It was just very cool that these were naturally occurring wild monkeys, thriving in this treed hill in the center of an urban mess.

This stupa is one of the main tourist attractions in Kathmandu, if not the main one.  It was nice to blend in to a sea of other tourists rather than stick out completely as we do in most streets.  But most of the tourists are Indian, it seems, or perhaps Chinese or Tibetan.  It was also nice because, though the standard vendors were everywhere, they were not as pushy as most others.  It was crowded, but actually rather peaceful.  The view of Kathmandu was great, since the hill has a pretty high profile in nearly all directions.

 

Internet is Fixed

I have all my old blog posts saved, so I will be able to re-upload them I think, but it will be time-consuming.  For new readers, I did have a successful blog going for a few days, and then it inexplicably stopped working, so I've resorted to this clunkier program, but at least it's something.

I'm going to keep this quick: Melissa and I went to a great place yesterday called the monkey temple, where wild monkeys run around in packs around an imposing and ancient Buddhist stupa.  Today Melissa found where she'll be working at Kathmandu Medical College, and we've been enjoying shopping around for various things.  I ended up purchasing a new backpack for hiking.  I've been looking to buy a bigger one so I have the space to pack what I need for trips of several days.  The one I bought would cost $150-200 in the US, but I got it on the street here for $45.  Anyway, I'm going to work now on recovering my old posts and uploading the photos (that's the slow part...).

Thanks for reading, and I apologize for the technical difficulties!

Internet Frustrations

This blog is a sad attempt to publish something while here in Nepal.  The blog I had going for the first week of our trip has encountered some technical errors and has failed to work at all.  So here is something...

The Everest Flight

Well it was a cool experience but we didn’t see Everest.  It was a very cloudy day, and they took us up, and we had some good views, but the clouds were thick and many-layered.  We saw some mountains amidst all the clouds, and I thought I saw one that might be Everest, but after a while they turned the plane around and said we couldn’t see Everest so they were going to go land.  We never paid anything for the flight, and if we want to go again they will arrange it.  Melissa has to work tomorrow, so we’ll figure out what her schedule is like and try to fit it in another day.

 

We were picked up early and had a quicker ride to the airport, since the streets are mostly empty at 6 a.m. (but not entirely--there were a lot of people up and about already).  We went to the smaller domestic terminal, from which flights leave for about 6 other airports in Nepal, and the mountain flight is a daily special.

 

As we climbed, we got pretty good views of Kathmandu.  It is surrounded by green hills higher than anything I’ve climbed, and even those low ones presented some beautiful panoramas, as they were blanketed in layered clouds.  It was as though they were floating, hiding in the sky, fading in and out of visibility as we climbed higher.  The plane rose in a slow spiral out of the valley, and so we got views of the increasingly rural and mountainous regions.  Soon enough, the snow-covered peaks appeared to the north.  It was breathtaking.  They, too, were blanketed in clouds, so we could never see a continuous mountain from the populated valley all the way to the summit. 

Rather, it was like looking at three separate layers of earth--the valley below the plane (then clouds) then the rugged green mountainsides carved by deep gorges and rivers (then clouds) then the jagged snowy tops.  At times, the mountains rose above the plane. 

We had been given a panorama drawing that illustrated the chain of mountains with labels, but among so many clouds there was no way we could identify what we were seeing.  We continued to climb, and I thought, well maybe that was it, and he’s going to do a u-turn.  We went higher still, and then more mountaintops popped out of the clouds.  Those first ones we’d seen (and I had thought might be Everest) weren’t even among the highest.  Crazy.

 

Shortly thereafter the flight attendant said we were turning around.  The whole flight was maybe 30 minutes.  I don’t actually know how close we came to Everest, but it couldn’t have been far.  I think it was probably in front of the plane.  When they said there were too many clouds, I don’t know if that meant it was entirely invisible or if they could see it but just not well.  If we go again, we’ll find out.  So our whole excursion was technically a failure, but by any other measure it was an awesome experience.