Thanks to all of you who emailed me in spite of me saying I wouldn't check or respond to email. The contact with home is comforting. My iPhone is now dead, too, so all my personal info devices are useless. The only contact info I have is in my brain or online via my email account. I am going back in time to pre-computer days! But I do have a Nepali cell phone that I can use to call friends in Kathmandu if I can't communicate with the villagers. Tomorrow I go to the village. The closest internet will be 5 hrs away, one way, I think, but perhaps half that. The closest big town, Paundi (called other names on maps, Paudi for one) is about 2 hours from Rinescot. I'm sorry I can't post photos of my trek but perhaps I'll do it after I get home.
I've been writing in my journal every day and realized I don't want to post my "raw material". For all the talk about "revealing oneself as a writer" or wanting to "be seen", I realize I don't feel comfortable with either! This trip has brought up so much vulnerability for me that I don't want the world to know about. My self-image as a competent can-do person had taken a beating. I feel often unsure of myself. The good news is that my digestion is good, finally. Feeling healthy is a great help. I have been eating food that I never eat at home, the latest favorite being "spring rolls", fried bread over various fillings, similar to a "pasty". Rice, potatoes, noodles, bread and fried foods are my new staples, and I have no attraction to meat. In Kathmandu and Pokhara are bakeries with pastries, which I am eating as much as possible. I've avoided the local food, dahl baat, which is pretty good, but it is all I will eat when I get to Rinescot. I figure I should load up on variety while I can. The waist belt of my pack won't tighten anymore b. my stomach is gone. At every meal I eat as much as possible and still am getting skinnier and skinnier. My thighs however look robust! Trekking did something to them. The subtle differences of walking on stairs vs. incline made my legs sore in places they've not been sore before.
The main thing I notice is that I feel better when I communicate with people. The Nepali people in Kathmandu were very kind to me. One night Raju the travel agent took me to the Kathmandu Lions Club meeting. A huge long table was filled with successful Nepali business men who network to do a huge range of charity work. All of these men could move to Europe or USA for a "better life" but are deeply committed to improving things at home. They work with a wide variety of foreign donors to bring medical care, dental care, education, care for orphans, infrastructure (electricity, sanitation) to the villages where they grew up. They introduced me to Krishna, a yoga master who I'd seen in Ryan Anderson's photos (google Ryan Anderson Nepal for his Picasa photos of Rinescot). One look in his eyes showed me God sparkling through the window of his soul. Krishna will meet me at the bus in Paundi, so his will be the familiar face I am to look for when I get off the bus. Sitting at one end of the table, in the dim light, a sea of sepia toned faces in a sepia toned dimly lit room, I felt that I was a baby being passed from one pair of caring arms to the next. How could I feel anxious with such support? And yet in moments when I am alone I lose that feeling of security. It comes back when I am with people.
There are endless stories of hardship: refugees, orphans, starvation, --the guide for a Canadian couple I met had been left for dead on Everest, and now continues to work as a guide. One hand has a thumb remaining, and the other has an index finger. One foot has no toes, and the other has three. His story is more than I will take time to write here, but it seems that if you dig a little, the stories of hardships are in the lives of so many people here. On the street, I feel completely safe. Not at all like the constant sexual harassment I felt in Central America when I traveled alone as a teenager. I don't think it's entirely due to advanced age, either. What everyone says, about the open hearts of the Nepalese people, is entirely what I feel here.
So much more I could write, and perhaps I will write again before I leave tomorrow morning.
