Today we officially trekked in Nepal. For 2.5 hours with only 2 5min breaks to connect with some of the gorgeous souls we happened upon, we trekked on unsealed and deeply rutted tracks. Our guide for the day, Tserieng (meaning Long Life) at my side constantly with his hand outstretched steadying my path. I am unsure whether they have been warned about me or whether they are intuits.
For the 2 hour journey in the car up to the holy site, sometimes going only 5kms/hr over roads that would not be considered roads back home, I picked Tserieng’s brain about random stuff as usual. Here is some of it. I will bullet point as I am beyond exhausted tonight.
– I mentioned how I am amazed at the amount of people I see just standing in doorways, leaning against buildings, sitting on stationary motorbikes, (sometimes 3 deep), lying asleep on the footpath or squatting on the ground. He said that people who work also have lots of free time, people who dont work won’t have money but can grow vegetables to survive.
– There is no (or very little) smoking in public for it is discouraged/prohibited for health conscious reasons. I remarked there must be a host of respiratory illnesses due to the dust and thick pollution. He claimed there are not.
– Families rely on the father for support
– There are crumbling buildings everywhere yet building housing is the biggest industry next to brick making
– More industry is construction of roads and bridges, hydropower – all engineering
– Hosts of peeps moving from farming to city and good farming land being built upon
– At an altitude of 1600feet i spied a kid in a doorway in a wheelchair. There was a completely unsealed road outside and a huge concrete platform dropping to the road. I cannot imagine his reality.
– For all the apparent lack of road rules I was told that people drive with care, beep when turning extreme corners and I was told there are few road fatalities.
More observations from the day are that men do not leer at women in the way we are accustomed in Australia. They just look straight ahead.
We saw baby goats being encouraged to their mother’s teats minutes after being born and the placental sac hung from the mother still.
When we got to the monastery that is only 10 years old, sumptuous and colour ridden we were told that on that site
6000 yrs ago there was a starving mumma tiger with 5 cubs found by a prince travelling through the area. He realised he could save the tiger so wanted to sacrifice himself for the betterment of them all. The prince was the buddha in a former life.
We walked today over some of the roughest terrain I have encountered but at the journey’s end I spied a wedding ceremony of some sort happening in the town ahead so I said I wanted to check it out.
There was a big group of women, most of them dressed in red encircling a few dancing in their seductive, bollywood style to the tamping of drums. I stood and wanted to film them but they were having none of it. I was to join them in the middle! This is after walking 15kms and I was simply exhausted however their smiles and encouragement won out over my old ‘I aint doing that dance stuff’ attitude.
I realised their style is completely perfect for me. Small little steps, hip wiggles and windy, wavy arms and flourishing hands. I found my peeps everyone!!
Go to _byaccident_ on Instagram for a peek!
The pics are my fav from the day at the Thran Gutashi Yangtse Monastery and 3 generations of the female members of a farming family in a tiny village
