Flowers and Storms
Well I'm very glad you all seem to like this blog - I've been hearing from family I didn't even know I had and finding out all sorts of cool stuff. So, apologies for not adding another update until now - it also doesn't have pictures and I'm sure that's what you're all really after! :) Most of the links I wrote here do have photos. I'm not sure why I have so much news about flowers, it seems sort of random; I'll just hope you like them.
Just when I finally seemed to be getting over a cough, I got bacterial dysentery again. I'm taking medicine though and feeling fine now. Other, worse news first: my nepali family's goat ended up dying, and then a few days later their dog got very sick too and just recently died. Now all that is left is the poor little baby goat. Very sad.
I went to a place called Budhanilkantha and stayed with a family there (the wife and children of a 'brother' who is working in LA). It's a beautiful but large village up in the hills, famous for a huge temple/statue of sleeping Vishnu Narayan, his head surrounded by yellow flower petals. I saw this as well as a recently built Buddhist ghumba, which was covered with really brightly colored and detailed paintings of representations of Buddha, scenes, and mandalas. We (me and my 'sister-in-law' and her 3 year old son) came during a prayer ritual, so I got to hear the prayers recited by all the monks (this is a Tibetan Buddhist monastery as well) and the gong and horns too. There is an ISKON (Hare Krishna)temple in Budhanilkanth also, but this was closed so I didn't get to see the Krishna statue. There were some devotees outside (Nepalese) and one of them gave us tikaa, just a cream colored spot on our foreheads. Instead of 'namaste' they say 'hare krishna,' and the devotees wear a distinctive tikaa of two cream lines running vertically on their foreheads. Different colored tikaa denote different religious devotions. The laypeople of Budhanilkanth worship Krishna in much the same manner as they worship Vishnu in the other temple, but devotees to the ISKON tradition often come from all over the world and are practicing the religion differently - it isn't the same sort of Hinduism you find here in Nepal really. I won't list all the differences or similarities, but anyways - there is an ISKON temple in Los Angeles, on Venice. It's worth checking out if you're in the area, they have a great buffet of Indian food which they sell by weight. There is a Nepali restaurant near there as well, called Katmandu Kitchen. While I'm at this restaurant advertising, here's the website for the Pasadena Nepali restaurant, Tibet Nepal House: http://www.tibetnepalhouse.com . Another website on Nepal I've found recently that has some great photos and is totally unrelated to restaurants is http://www.culturefocus.com/nepal.htm .
I'm not sure if jasmine plants are rare in the US or not, but I don't recall having seen them. There are these huge vines of jasmine all over the place here, and I can smell them all the way from my window. They have little white flowers. There are also a lot of orange trumpet looking flowers blooming on vines in the area - the colors are great to see, along with leaves on trees that have been bare for some time.
The weather here has been strange, hot and sunny during the day with a storm in the evening. Apparently this isn't the start of the monsoon, but it sure seems like it. I heard but can't find verification that there was an earthquake in Nepal a couple of days ago. Apparently people could feel it in Kathmandu even thought the epicenter was some ways away. At that time I was on a picnic in a place called Godavari and didn't feel anything. Going on a Saturday picnic is surely a famous Nepalese pastime - there are a number of picnic spots and they rent buses to get there, as well as huge dishes and kerosene stoves to cook on, and sound systems to play music for dancing. I hadn't been on one before and was surprised by the numbers of people who came. A group of teenagers on the next level up (it's a terraced area of course) were dancing to hiphop music with their own (somewhat strangelooking) style (sort of shifting weight heavily from one leg to the other) which made me wonder where the learned that or if that's just the general dance around here. The other groups were dancing to Nepali music or Hindi music in a more traditional style. I was invited to this picnic by my Bungamati didi and her friends, and we joked around a lot and had a good time. Near the picnic area was the Royal Botanical Gardens, which were surprisingly nice and very relaxing to walk in. In Nepal there are rhododendron trees rather than bushes, and I saw my first rhododendron flowers in Nepal that day also, very bright red. Lali guraas, it is called. You'll be blown away, check out the photos of the rhododendrons and mountains on this site: http://www.nepal-dia.de/int__England/EV_Annapurna/EB_Rhododendron/eb_rhododendron.html
My Bungamati didi is going to get married in about two months - this time I was around to see more of the process of the arranged marriage, um... arrangements... It has been hard to come to terms with cultural realities like this and dowries, trying not to see things from my own cultural bias. My sisters are really emotional about it and I find myself caught up in it a lot.
I've been to a nursery show recently at the Kathmandu Exhibition Hall - Ginny, the professor with whom I went to see Shivaraatri, invited me to come. It was a nursery fair, really, and if I had a garden I would have spent a lot of money on some of those flowers, they were beautiful. I bought a really gorgeous orchid, a fairly big one for only about $12. Which is a lot of money for here but very cheap for an orchid. It has medium sized flowers, white-pink with a little yellow. Last month's issue of ECS magazine (mag for foreigners living in Nepal) had an article on orchids with awesome pictures but I can't seem to find it on their online site, http://www.ecs.com.np . It hasn't shown up in their archives yet I guess. It's worth checking out their site to see the other photos and articles though.
Recommended reading about women in Nepal/South Asia, look them up by title on Amazon or somewhere: In the Circle of the Dance - Guneratne; Daughters of Hariti - Rozario (ed.); Dangerous Wives and Sacred Sisters - Bennett. For those who are interested I'll send more recommendations. For now I'm off to the villages!
Just when I finally seemed to be getting over a cough, I got bacterial dysentery again. I'm taking medicine though and feeling fine now. Other, worse news first: my nepali family's goat ended up dying, and then a few days later their dog got very sick too and just recently died. Now all that is left is the poor little baby goat. Very sad.
I went to a place called Budhanilkantha and stayed with a family there (the wife and children of a 'brother' who is working in LA). It's a beautiful but large village up in the hills, famous for a huge temple/statue of sleeping Vishnu Narayan, his head surrounded by yellow flower petals. I saw this as well as a recently built Buddhist ghumba, which was covered with really brightly colored and detailed paintings of representations of Buddha, scenes, and mandalas. We (me and my 'sister-in-law' and her 3 year old son) came during a prayer ritual, so I got to hear the prayers recited by all the monks (this is a Tibetan Buddhist monastery as well) and the gong and horns too. There is an ISKON (Hare Krishna)temple in Budhanilkanth also, but this was closed so I didn't get to see the Krishna statue. There were some devotees outside (Nepalese) and one of them gave us tikaa, just a cream colored spot on our foreheads. Instead of 'namaste' they say 'hare krishna,' and the devotees wear a distinctive tikaa of two cream lines running vertically on their foreheads. Different colored tikaa denote different religious devotions. The laypeople of Budhanilkanth worship Krishna in much the same manner as they worship Vishnu in the other temple, but devotees to the ISKON tradition often come from all over the world and are practicing the religion differently - it isn't the same sort of Hinduism you find here in Nepal really. I won't list all the differences or similarities, but anyways - there is an ISKON temple in Los Angeles, on Venice. It's worth checking out if you're in the area, they have a great buffet of Indian food which they sell by weight. There is a Nepali restaurant near there as well, called Katmandu Kitchen. While I'm at this restaurant advertising, here's the website for the Pasadena Nepali restaurant, Tibet Nepal House: http://www.tibetnepalhouse.com . Another website on Nepal I've found recently that has some great photos and is totally unrelated to restaurants is http://www.culturefocus.com/nepal.htm .
I'm not sure if jasmine plants are rare in the US or not, but I don't recall having seen them. There are these huge vines of jasmine all over the place here, and I can smell them all the way from my window. They have little white flowers. There are also a lot of orange trumpet looking flowers blooming on vines in the area - the colors are great to see, along with leaves on trees that have been bare for some time.
The weather here has been strange, hot and sunny during the day with a storm in the evening. Apparently this isn't the start of the monsoon, but it sure seems like it. I heard but can't find verification that there was an earthquake in Nepal a couple of days ago. Apparently people could feel it in Kathmandu even thought the epicenter was some ways away. At that time I was on a picnic in a place called Godavari and didn't feel anything. Going on a Saturday picnic is surely a famous Nepalese pastime - there are a number of picnic spots and they rent buses to get there, as well as huge dishes and kerosene stoves to cook on, and sound systems to play music for dancing. I hadn't been on one before and was surprised by the numbers of people who came. A group of teenagers on the next level up (it's a terraced area of course) were dancing to hiphop music with their own (somewhat strangelooking) style (sort of shifting weight heavily from one leg to the other) which made me wonder where the learned that or if that's just the general dance around here. The other groups were dancing to Nepali music or Hindi music in a more traditional style. I was invited to this picnic by my Bungamati didi and her friends, and we joked around a lot and had a good time. Near the picnic area was the Royal Botanical Gardens, which were surprisingly nice and very relaxing to walk in. In Nepal there are rhododendron trees rather than bushes, and I saw my first rhododendron flowers in Nepal that day also, very bright red. Lali guraas, it is called. You'll be blown away, check out the photos of the rhododendrons and mountains on this site: http://www.nepal-dia.de/int__England/EV_Annapurna/EB_Rhododendron/eb_rhododendron.html
My Bungamati didi is going to get married in about two months - this time I was around to see more of the process of the arranged marriage, um... arrangements... It has been hard to come to terms with cultural realities like this and dowries, trying not to see things from my own cultural bias. My sisters are really emotional about it and I find myself caught up in it a lot.
I've been to a nursery show recently at the Kathmandu Exhibition Hall - Ginny, the professor with whom I went to see Shivaraatri, invited me to come. It was a nursery fair, really, and if I had a garden I would have spent a lot of money on some of those flowers, they were beautiful. I bought a really gorgeous orchid, a fairly big one for only about $12. Which is a lot of money for here but very cheap for an orchid. It has medium sized flowers, white-pink with a little yellow. Last month's issue of ECS magazine (mag for foreigners living in Nepal) had an article on orchids with awesome pictures but I can't seem to find it on their online site, http://www.ecs.com.np . It hasn't shown up in their archives yet I guess. It's worth checking out their site to see the other photos and articles though.
Recommended reading about women in Nepal/South Asia, look them up by title on Amazon or somewhere: In the Circle of the Dance - Guneratne; Daughters of Hariti - Rozario (ed.); Dangerous Wives and Sacred Sisters - Bennett. For those who are interested I'll send more recommendations. For now I'm off to the villages!
posted by Alani Price | 5:56 PM
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