We're gone in less than two days...

PG here. It is Sunday night, rainy in Oakland and we are both ready to go...
I thought I'd share some basic information about Nepal, things I've discovered recently.
This is going to be an amazing trip. It will be eye-opening to a lot of realities about that part of the world. Nepal is a very poor country with a long history of political disagreements.
Some conservative Hindu intellectuals, acting on instructions from the king created the idea that it is a Shangrila type of kingdom where everyone seeks enlightenment and believes the king is an incarnation of the god Vishnu. They put this idea out around the 1950s -60s, but some travelers still seem to believe it. I gather that many people in Nepal have been bemused by those Western voyagers who seem unaware of the real social and economic conditions. Kate and I will be among those who keep our eyes and ears open and share what we discover. FORGET KATHMANDU by Manjushree Thapa is a good book on the history and politics.

Still, Nepal is a very religions culture. It seems that most people are Hindu, with Buddhism coming in second. Apparently these two systems of thought blend together, especially in the Kathmandu region. People in the more remote areas seem to include these philosophies with
ancient anamistic religions - belief in local nature gods. Christianity and Islam are present, but they are minority religions. It's hard to tell, but it seems that many educated people are fairly secular, although with many Hindu and Buddhist influences on their perspectives. I'll know more soon.

Nepal has four basic ecological regions, running from south to north. The Terai is flat and fertile land near the border with India. It is agricultural and industrial but it includes some rainforests. The Churai foothills rise from the south towards the North. The Midmountain zone is higher and more rugged country that approaches the Himmalayas, and the high Himmalayas are the fourth zone. Each of course has its own climate, topography, plant life and wildlife. I'll send reports on all places we manage to visit. The weather may keep us out of the real Himmalayas, but we'll see...

And literature. I'll try not to hit you with a lot of poetry, but I'll post two short ones that give a bit of a feeling about the culture. The first is "I Hate" by Balkrishna Sama:

"I hate the loveliest star-studded silks.
I hate the scent of the prettiest flower.
I hate the moonlight's thin, lacy veil,
because, because,
they come between your lips and mine."

WHOA!

The second is "Last Poem" by Lekhynath Paudyal:

"God Himself endures this pain.
This body is where He dwells,
By its fall he is surely saddened,
He quietly picks up his things, and goes."

The classic Hindu attitude "Brahmin is Atman", or the idea that God is present in all of us and in everything. Whatever one may think of that belief, this is a touching poem, especially if it really is his last poem.

Both of these were 2oth century writers. I found their work in HIMMALAYA VOICES: AN INTRODUCTION TO MODERN NEPALI LITERATURE, translated and edited by Michael James Hutt, University of California Press, 1991

That's more than enough for now. I'll probably post again from the Singapore airport in a couple of days. PG