Happy 2067!!

Wednesday, April 14th marked the first day of Nepali New Year, and now we are living in 2067. It was quite nice to celebrate two new years, because the next chance I get to celebrate 2067, I will either be dead or nearing my 85th birthday. Who knows though, maybe I will be one rocking granny…Surprisingly there wasn’t a huge New Year celebration, like we do in the western world. There were a lot of parties for tourists, expats, and young Nepali men, but most of the locals I know, stayed at home, and maybe went to a temple the next day in order to mark the occasion. The most exciting of the Nepali celebrations was held near Kathmandu in Bakhtapur (Bisket Jatra) where they erect a 30 meter lingum, a sign of Shiva’s you know what. Miniature Shiva Lingums are found all over Nepal and are representative of the convergence of male and female parts. Sexy.

Other than that I have been nothing more than a tourist over the last weeks. I currently have my boyfriend here and we went to Pokhara for five days, where we explored the city and its vicinities. There, we took a short hike to the World Peace Pagoda and visited a bat cave in which I made many new sleeping friends. Turns out they sleep holding on to one leg and every 30 min they switch so they don’t cramp up. So cute! I might want to be a fruit bat in my next life. The rest of the time we ate, drank, and hung by the lake. There might have been a museum visit somewhere in there too...i don't remember.

After Pokhara, we came back to Kathmandu and have been exploring more local temples and stupas. I've also had to go back to the office, where I have been trying to get in touch with local NGOs and iNGOs for interviews and background information. Some of my field trips fell through, since I never heard from the American Himalayan Foundation representative who told me I can join her on a few trips in order to track down graduated students from the program. Bummer….I should have remembered from Azerbaijan, that such promises in developing countries are not always valid. I go on my next field trip in about a week and again will be staying in Pokhara from where I will be making day trips to the surrounding regions and conducting interviews, focus groups, etc. in order to get more feedback for my research.

That’s it, no deep insights this time.