All preparation is done, payments made, and I am off to Langtang tomorrow me. This afternoon I met my porter, a man in his fifties I think. He seemed very pleasant though not talkative. I hope he will take a good bit of my burden as I am not thrilled with the weight of my […]
Tibetan horns
We went to see the Seeker in her monastery again, this time with an ulterior motive: we had been told on our last visit that these few days there was great festivities in the monastery for the birthday of the Guru Padmasambhava and we should drop by if we could. So we did, and arrived […]
Morning wo
In the morning, the Boddhisatva and I woke early so we went off to the alu wo (pakora) place for breakfast. Luckily breakfast places are open, though they seem to close very early and not even a cup of tea is available. The pakoras were fresh and delicious this morning and the light was clear. […]
A friend arrives
A friend from Malaysia arrived today, none other than the Boddhisatva, though without the Woodland Creature, sadly. She is stayng upstairs from us in the same building. Unfortunately she has come just as everything shuts down for Dasain so, for instance, we found a restaurant open for dinner and learned they only had pre-cooked foods […]
Eight goddesses go to battle
Last night, we were walking back from Sanepa (more on that later) when we saw some bustling around the Nakbahi shrine. We stopped to watch and saw a group of men in coloured silks and jewellery being tended to, and a great air of excitement in the crowd. We stopped to watch, of course, and […]
Three meetings
A long day today. We started off with breakfast at Patan Dhoka, the gate to this old royal city, newly painted with colourful figures, then ventured to an artist’s studio set off the main road in an unusually green and treelined street. We were let in by a student who called the artist, Lok Chitrkar, […]
The Saarc advantage
We went around Patan’s Durbar Square and I was delighted to find one of the few benefits of belonging to a SAARC country is that one gets discounts on tourist admittance. I have taken to carrying my Pakistani ID card around for this reason, though to be honest they just look at my appearance and […]
The biggest stone in the world
In the morning we walked to what is known as the Roman quarry, though I believe it is pre-Roman, and possibly alien. This is about 10 minutes down the road, behind a derelict petrol station and some piles of rubbish, where an enormous hole is scooped out of the earth. Along the sides are small […]
Wassail
Today, our last weekend day in Lebanon, I decreed, would be a day of wassailing. It didn’t quite turn out like that, largely because in the afternoon we went in search of the Bird’s Nest, formerly an orphanage and now the Armenian Genocide Memorial. One does get overwhelmed, sometimes, by wave after wave of suffering […]
Trablous
On Friday, soon after I finished my work the prayer took place at the mosque across the road from the cafe. Soon after it ended the Gentleman Friend arrived, and we hailed a taxi to take us to Al Mina, the port city of Tripoli where we had booked a bed and breakfast in the […]