Meditation in Nepal and “The End”
August 10, 2008 3:53 amHola / Namaste / Tashi Delek,
Get yourself a drink and a snack , this is a long one.
We left India via Delhi’s very un-Indian, ultra-modern airport that included such modern conveniences as bathrooms with automatic flushing toilets (some of which worked) and hot air hand dryers! Very futuristic.
Upon arrival in Kathmandu we discovered that we could pay our visa fee in every currency except Nepali or Indian. Very handy when all we had were those two currencies. We couldn’t even change the Indian rupees at the currency exchange. Luckily a Korean guy sold us some Euros and we were set. When we made it to the visa desk, they noticed that we had already visited Nepal this year. We thought that maybe there was some restriction on the number of times that we could enter the country in one year and that they were going to give us some hassle. Instead, the officer smiled and told us that we didn’t have to pay for a new visa. He gave us a month free. Nice
We made our way out of the airport where we booked a taxi to the centre of the city. As usual I asked the taxi guy if we would have to pay any extras for luggage, petrol, busy traffic or any of the other things we usually get fleeced on. He looked at me with a puzzled look and replied that of course we didn’t. We had hired the taxi and that was it. Wow. Oh yeah. We weren’t in India any more. Hello Nepal!
The last time that we were in Kathmandu, we didn’t like it all that much. It’s dirty, polluted, overcrowded and has too much traffic. There are armies of hotel touts, trekking touts, drugs touts and beggars all competing to take our money. This time however, being the rainy season, there are very few tourists, resulting in the touts also staying away. The tourist area of Thamel, which we wanted to run away from before, is now actually quite pleasant. We can walk down the street without too much bother, and even the people that do follow us around are much less aggressive than those found in India. They aren’t too bothered when you tell them that you aren’t interested. I don’t know if it just seems so wonderful after Indian cities, or if our point of view has changed, or what. But it feels different anyway.
We came back to Nepal to take some meditation courses. The first of which was the 10 day Vipassana course. So many people in the traveller crowd are doing this one, but we didn’t know that much about it except that there’s no talking, 4:00am wakeups and lots of sitting. Everyone that comes out seems to think it’s the greatest thing ever. It’s also got a reputation for being extremely difficult. At the initial orientation in the city office they kept stressing over and over that this wasn’t a holiday and would not in any way be relaxing. They told us repeatedly that if we wanted to leave, that now was the time to do it.
We didn’t leave. We arrived at the very beautiful centre located high above Kathmandu near a forest on the edge of the city. We deposited all of our electronic equipment, books, writing material and religious articles into the safe room and then having split the men from the women, were led to our rooms and then on to yet another orientation. This talk stressed even more the importance of hard work, discipline and determination. We were under no circumstances to speak, make eye contact or communicate in any way with anyone except our teachers or the helpers. We were not to cross over to the side of the compound containing members of the opposite sex, or to even look over to their side of the meditation hall – the only place where the genders were mixed. We were to wake up at 4:00am, start mediation at 4:30, then continue with a few breaks for nearly the entire day until 9:00pm. We were to receive breakfast, lunch and then fruit for dinner. The old students only got two meals per day, so we were lucky. They told us that this course would not be easy. It would get harder before it got any easier. If we left part way through the course it would not do us any good and that if we wanted to leave, then this was the last chance to do it. It all sounded quite frightening.
Obviously the first few days were very hard. Waking up so early in the morning with 2 hours of meditation before breakfast was tough. There were a few snores in the meditation hall which were cut off by a poke from the helpers. Sitting cross legged for hours on end was also difficult. And painful. Luckily we could adjust our position as necessary – which happened a lot. It wasn’t until the 4th day, when the actual technique was finally taught that we were asked to hold one position for an hour at a time, over three different times in the day. Try to sit cross legged without moving your arms, hands or legs, or opening your eyes for an hour. It sure isn’t easy. I will admit that it did get easier, but not before a lot of stiff knees and sore backs.
At first the course consisted of us doing nothing but focussing on a single spot under the nose and trying to feel any sensation in that place. We did this for 3 days. The urge to scream was very strong. It all seemed a bit pointless, but it wasn’t. The idea is that if one can focus their mind on a single spot, and feel sensation there and then feel equanimity towards that sensation – be it pain, heat, pleasure, or nothing – then this will train our minds to feel equanimity towards situations in everyday life. As we retrain the mind, our subconscious will also start ridding itself of any deep rooted complexes that we may have and that influence our reactions to life’s ups and downs. The idea is that our monkey-like brains function through two responses to everything: craving and aversion. Or want and hate. If we can recognize that everything is constantly changing, then there is no point to feeling craving or aversion to anything, because it will change anyway. Through this method we can train ourselves not to react in these two ways, and can gain mastery over our own minds. How misbehaved our mind is becomes very obvious after 10 days of watching it jump around like a mad person. It’s a bit more detailed than that, but in a nutshell that’s it. Very simple.
After 3 days of feeling a spot under our noses we moved on to trying to feel sensation over our entire bodies. Sounds easy. It’s frustrating to recognize that although our bodies are reacting to stimulus for 24 hours a day, we aren’t conscious of even a fraction of it. That’s part of the technique. Not to get frustrated with this realization. Or not to react to the pain that we felt sitting for so many hours. Even when you have the urge to scratch, this urge has to be ignored. Amazingly after a time you are able to simply look at the pain and not feel it. We did this for the remainder of the course, adding some tweaks here and there as we progressed.
In the evenings we watched a discourse on Dhamma by the main teacher of Vipassana, S.N. Goenka. Dhamma is sometimes called law or teaching by Buddhists. This dhamma follows the teachings of the Buddha, but is not Buddhist or in any way religious. There is no dogma or ritual involved. No praying or reciting of holy scriptures. The only thing that one relies on is his or her self. You alone are responsible for your own happiness or unhappiness. Something may seem like it is causing your emotional state, but in reality it is your reaction to this outside stimulus that determines how it will affect you. All of the teachings make perfect sense and do not teach anyone anything that they really don’t know within themselves anyway.
But it’s really hard. At least this first run of the course is anyway. I think it was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done. Even as far in as Day 8, I was feeling the urge to pack it in, The sitting, constant focussing, and the non-reactivity to stimuli is bloody difficult. It’s one thing to sit there by yourself practising this method, but when you have a room full burping, farting, groaning, yawning, horrifically loud throat clearing, spitting Nepalis, it really tries your patience. Even the women were in on the act. At times I wanted to scream. It felt like we were meditating inside someone’s stomach. But these are the sort of things that we are meant to learn to deal with so it was good practice.
One thing that wasn’t difficult was the silence. When we could finally talk again on the 10th day, we realized how much time and energy is taken up by chit chat. Meaningless chatter where everyone is competing to have the best story or to say something clever. Not being able to speak is actually quite liberating. It gives your mind time to calm down and to not simply play the same meaningless movies around and around again inside your head.
One other thing about this course is that it is 100% free. The centres, food, etc are all funded by donations. All of the teachers and helpers give their time voluntarily as well. The idea is that one lives like a monk for 10 days, living entirely off the charity of others. If you are paying for the course, you expect some sort of return on your investment. Or a certain type of food, or sleeping accommodation, or whatever. This way, if everything is given to you on a charitable basis you learn to take what life offers you without complaint. I have to say that the food was excellent as was the centre. I was lucky enough to be given my own room complete with toilet and shower after my roomie quit on the fourth day. Michaela however was stuck in a big room with 10 other girls where they had to share a limited number of bathroom facilities. A good way to practise non-attachment to things like en-suite bathrooms.
The course is very regimented and is structured in such a way that you don’t have to worry about anything except meditation. Every session or mealtime is indicated by the bang of a gong, so you don’t need a watch or have worries about time. There’s plenty of water stations so you’re never far from a refill. There are very few breaks so that you don’t have time to get distracted by anything other than meditation. As I said you have to turn in all writing and reading materials, cameras, computers, phones, etc, so there really isn’t anything to do even if you wanted to think about doing something else.
On the morning of the 11th day, we were free to go back into the world. I’d like to say that some miraculous transformation has occurred in us, but it hasn’t. There is however, a trace of some sort of subtle change. Our heads feel a bit clearer and we seem to be better at monitoring the way that we react to certain situations. Sometimes that realization is after the fact, but to actually be able to see these patterns is very encouraging. It’s like we have at least a little bit more control over our minds. We’ve been practising every day, and it actually seems like slowly slowly things are changing. It’s quite an amazing feeling. The course was very difficult and not in any way fun, but we both feel that we got something very valuable out of it and can highly recommend it to anyone that wants to get a better indication as to why we react to certain things, or why different situations can agitate us so much.
Troubles in Nepal
The last time that we were in Nepal there were so many problems with electricity shortages, gas shortages and petrol shortages. The electricity problems are better, but there’s still rationing from time to time. And a lot of unforeseen outages too. The petrol and gas problems are still here, and are perhaps even more serious than before. I read in the newspaper that less than half of the needed supplies are making it into the country. There’s dizzyingly long queues at the petrol stations where people are paying over $2.00 a litre! The average daily wage here is probably not much more than that so a lot of people are being forced off the roads. They say that roads are seeing only half of normal traffic. Great for pollution control in Kathmandu I suppose. One restaurant told us that they may have to close this week because they were almost out of cooking gas. The Nepalis to their credit, are quite resilient. I can’t imagine how we at home would cope with problems like these.
There’s still some tension across the country; even in Kathmandu. We witnessed some student protests complete with riot police and things burning in the streets. There is some hope though; a new government is slowly being formed after the king was ousted a couple of months ago so perhaps things will improve.
Baktapur
We found ourselves with a few days to kill before our Buddhism course started. We didn’t want to stay in Kathmandu so we decided to go an hour out of the city to the town of Baktapur. Baktapur was one of the former capitals of Nepal and is the site of palaces, grand public squares and magnificent temples. The old town is perfectly preserved due to strict laws regarding building, and a steep entrance fee of $10 helps to maintain the exquisite architecture. $10 in Nepal goes a very long way and I think this fee puts off a lot of tourists from visiting the town. This is a great shame because it is a truly beautiful place. I think that it is comparable with Venice in that it is almost completely unchanged since it’s time of glory as a wealthy capital. Perhaps it doesn’t have quite the pomp that Venice does, but in it’s own way it is a wonder to see.
The streets are narrow, with tall 3 to 4 story buildings crammed with tiny windows and doors decorated with Hindu markings and writing. Huge strings of garlic hang to dry from nearly all of the windows. Cars are banned from the old town so these streets are a pleasure to walk through. We spent many hours getting lost in these alleys. One thing that it has over Venice is that people actually live here. It’s absolutely bustling with life. People are hauling loads of goods around on their backs or on modified bicycles. Every inch of spare pavement has someone with vegetables or household goods, or junk on display to prospective buyers. There are tiny, low ceilinged shops crammed with people. Markets are filled with chattering, laughing shoppers. It’s one of those places where you really feel as though you are seeing the real lives of the people. The locals spend a great deal of their lives living in the open. Children run care-free in the car-less streets. Women sit in their doorways constantly knitting something or other and shouting across the road to their neighbour, or up to someone sitting in one of the windows on a higher floor. The men, with their traditional hats crowd under roofs or on street corners playing cards or chess. Nepalis are very sociable people and there always seems to be a lot of chatter going on. Along with that there’s also a lot of tea being drunk. I swear, after India and Nepal I’ll never drink tea again. I feel my blood is slowly turning into chai.
They call Baktapur the town of worshippers. There are numerous ancient looking Hindu temples with scary looking statues of deities scattered around them. In addition to the large, more official looking temples, but there are dozens of smaller temples or small shrines scattered about the town. Most of them don’t seem to be built anywhere for any particular reason, and are often in the strangest places where buildings have had to be constructed around them, or even over them. Some of the shops have age-worn shrines actually inside of them. Even the bumpy, cobbled streets will have, in random places, a stoned implanted into the ground on which is carved a lotus or other religious symbol. Even the new roads with pavement will have a gap where there is a small, out of place looking, old stone with something carved upon it. These stones will usually be smeared with bright colours as are the walls of temples, shrines and holy statues. Even the doors of businesses and homes are decorated with religious scrawling. In fact the people are usually smeared with bright colours too. Almost everyone has a thick blotch of red or orange colour between their eyes. The men usually have a few flower petals on the tops of their heads, or a flower tucked into their hats. Many of the men wear the traditional Hindu hairstyle of shaved head with a small piece of long hair remaining on the back.
Our hotel was situated in a lovely little square just off the main plaza, and contained a wonderful looking temple whose stones and brass highlights where worn shiny by centuries of rubbing by worshippers. It was covered in candles which were constantly burning, small statues and a main shrine covered in candle wax, coloured powder, flower pedals and coloured rice. Inside was a tiny little statue that seemed quite important, as there was a constant stream of people coming by to press their foreheads against the protective grating and to talk to it for a few minutes. One could also call Baktapur the city of bells. There are bells everywhere. People are constantly walking by temples or shrines and ringing the things. Including the very large one directly below our hotel window. On our first night we were woken at about 3:45am by the very loud clanging of this thing. We thought for a minute that we were back in the Vipassana centre and that we were late for meditation. I looked outside and already at this time there were people filing by the temple, talking to the statue, lighting candles, throwing rice around and of course ringing the bell. In the morning and evening time, a crowd would slowly gather around the temple when finally someone would arrive holding a bowl of coloured water, which he would throw above the crowd that now had its arms raised into the air. We thought that surely this was a special occasion and wouldn’t be happening every day. How wrong we were. After while we got used it. Even the shouts of “Shiva!” at 4:00am became normal.
Obviously we were waking up quite early, so we decided to take a walk around town. Before the sun came up, the town was bustling with people, very well dressed, and carrying trays filled with flowers, candles and coloured rice, hustling around from temple to temple, shrine to shrine, paving stone to paving stone, decorating each one as they went by. They were touching their heads as they passed any holy object (that’s a lot of head touching) constantly mumbling mantras, doing pirouettes as they threw rice above their heads, or even bending down to touch their foreheads on these objects. It wasn’t very strange to be walking down the street and have to step over a small pile of rice, flowers, and a burning candle deposited on a carved paving stone. With all the rice scattered about town, the pigeons sure weren’t starving.
The religious fun didn’t stop. We were sitting in one of the large squares, watching the steady flow of people coming to visit a shrine on one of the main temples when someone arrived and tied a goat to one of the statues. The goat had it’s horns painted and the owner wasn’t participating in the rituals along with the other worshippers. Within a couple of minutes he pulled out a large curved knife indicating that perhaps this goat wasn’t going to be making the return trip home. Michaela wasn’t going to stick around for this, and she made a quick exit back to the hotel. After a while, the man and a couple of other people started pouring some liquid over the animal’s head, stuffed flowers into it’s ears (which it didn’t like one bit) and then grabbed it’s legs and held it up before the shrine. Soon, the man had slit the goat’s throat and began spraying blood all over the shrine. Bizarrely no one seemed to interested in this at all, and kept filing in to do their morning rituals, simply stepping over the rapidly growing pool of blood. Next the man decapitated the now dead goat, cut off the tail, inserted it into the mouth of the goat and then placed the head upon the shrine. He then took blood and anointed the heads of the statues in front of the temple. It was quite a gruesome affair. Once again I am confused by Hinduism. I can never seem to get a clear picture of what exactly it is all about. I read a book detailing each and every ritual and belief about the religion that was written in a question and answer format. One of the questions was whether or not Hindus sacrifice animals. The answer was absolutely not. Next question. Maybe this animal sacrificing was a crossover from Newari (a large sub-culture within Nepal) tradition that had made it’s way into the Hinduism of the area. Who knows. Definitely not something I’d like to see every day, but interesting nonetheless.
India
We spent a few pleasant days in Baktapur before going back to Kathmandu. As we are flying to our respective homelands via Delhi in India, we need to get a transit visa. This of course involves a trip to the Indian embassy in Kathmandu where we were subjected to all of the things that we knew and loved about India. A queuing system that was ignored by all. Surly, smug officials. Delayed opening times. Having to queue just to get a form, etc, etc. Ah, India. In the end it all worked out of course. As it always does in India.
I had a comment posted on the website from someone telling me that I have been unfair in my criticisms of Indians and also in comparing them with other people such as the Tibetans. I always wonder how and why people came across our website and am amazed that they are actually interested in reading it. It’s nice, and I especially welcome the comments. This one in particular raised something that I too have been thinking about for a while.
It is perhaps correct to say that my criticisms have been unfair. I know that comparing two places or people is never a good idea. But it’s something that we all do. This place is better than that place, this food is not as good as over there, these people are nicer than those, etc, etc. These comparisons don’t really give an accurate picture of anything, but sure make us feel good when we use them. It helps us to categorize things, and to order things, to put them in little boxes that make them easier for us to deal with. Try to go a day without comparing things. It isn’t easy.
I know that I have harshly criticized India on a number of occasions. Actually, on probably every occasion. India is tough to deal with. So, what do we do with situations that we don’t like, or that are difficult? We often make it so that it isn’t our fault, but the fault of the situation, or person that we don’t like. If I’m doing poorly in school it’s because the teacher is an idiot, or the books aren’t written well. If I’m unhappy at work it’s probably the boss’s fault. And so on. India is an excellent parallel of life. Life’s tough too. We encounter things that we don’t like, or that make us unhappy and we never stop to think that maybe it’s how we deal with those situations that determines whether or not they will make us unhappy. India is great for making a person realize this. It pokes and prods you and winds you up just to see how you react. Sometimes I think that India isn’t real. It’s a giant Sims game where God puts silly westerners into absurd situations to see how they will react, in order to teach us a lesson. I think that over time, and especially now that we’ve left India and have had a lot of time to think (or not think, while meditating) I’ve been able to process our experiences in India a bit more and am perhaps a little bit closer to figuring it all out. That doesn’t mean that I’m close to figuring it out, just a little bit nearer. So yes, I probably was harsh on India but it’s a such an easy target. I’m sure you’ve figured out by now after reading these things for the past few months that what we’ve been going through has been a huge learning process. Or growth process. Whatever you want to call it. And what you read here every few weeks is a written account of my thoughts and my state of mind at that point in time. So, if I rant and rave about how shite India is, it’s because that’s how I’m feeling that day. You’re not really getting the sanitised view of it. But now, after having left India, I really miss it. We were very lucky (or had the right karma – to use the terminology of our current locale) to have had that experience. India wasn’t about being a backpacker or a tourist. Maybe that’s what we went in thinking it was going to be, but it didn’t happen. Somehow we got pulled this way and that way, shaken up, beaten up, flipped around and spat out again as different people. Not different as in shiny and new, with completely different world views. Maybe changed is the better word. Or refurbished. I think that now we are more sure in that the direction that we were heading in life is actually the right one for us. The experiences that we had in India – on the entire trip, but India in particular - have armed us with something that has given us hope of leading a better, less bothersome life. Especially now after learning different meditation techniques and being able to look at our minds and to see how they react to things, it is making life easier to deal with.
When I think about the struggles we had in India and how in retrospect most of them were pretty stupid, it makes me think about all of the problems I used to have at work, or with the Tube, or whatever. A lot of those seem rather silly too. Maybe now we’ll be able to see the silliness before they become problems. Wow, that all sounds very idealistic and new agey doesn’t it? You’ll have to check in with us in a few months after Tube delays, a grey dreary London winter and being overworked have worn us down a bit to see if things are so rosey as we want them to be. Maybe I should keep writing even after we get back. I can tell you all about what we had for dinner and what was on the TV.
Tibetan Buddhism Course
For the last 10 days of our time in Nepal we stayed at Kopan Monastery, just outside Kathmandu where we studied Tibetan Buddhism. After months of visiting Buddhist regions and speaking to Buddhists, we decided that it would be nice to get a bit of a clearer picture of what this stuff was all about.
Kopan was I believe established in response to the number of westerners visiting Nepal and wanting to learn more about Buddhism. It’s very western minded and the parent organisation has branches all over the world where they focus on giving western people the chance to learn about Buddhism. The monastery is a beautiful place on a very high hill overlooking the Kathmandu valley.
Like the Vipassana course there were a few rules that had to be followed while living in the monastery. There was to be no talking (not as strict as the no communication rule at the Vipassana course) but only until after lunch time. Michaela and I were in separate rooms, but we were next door neighbours. She had her own room this time; no army barrack-style accommodation this time around . Ugh. I just realized I’m comparing things like crazy. Please bear with me…
This course was designed for soft westerners. There was more free time than actual teaching. The meditations were short and easy. Even the food was protein rich for all the meat eaters and there was even white bread and a non-spicy dish. Non-spicy. Can you imagine? I don’t think we’ve eaten one meal without masala for the past 7 months. There was even a shop selling things like chocolate and soft drinks. And an internet cafe!
The teachings given by the British monk were very funny. British humour – how we’ve missed it. For us it felt a bit like a holiday camp after the Vipassana course. At first it felt too easy, and a bit too wishy washy. There was so much discussion. People were asking millions of questions - “What if this?” and “What if that?” We had discussion time where we discussed and discussed. Too much discussion. At the Vipassana course we didn’t have time for questions. We realized that after a while, we answered all of our questions for ourselves.
This was a good way of easing back into western society. People wore makeup, and smelled nice and had fresh, clean clothes on every day. There were mobile phones in hand. Many of the people on the course had travelled here specifically for this teaching and were perhaps combining it with a bit of touring around Nepal. It was very interesting to see again how people at home think and act. There was a lot of note taking, and hypothetical questions. A lot of struggle with concepts such as karma and reincarnation. For many people this was their first trip out of their own countries or their first contact with real life Buddhists. So sitting on the floor in a Gompa surrounded by paintings of monsters and statues of deities, being taught by a monk, with the sound of chanting in the background was I think a bit strange for some people. There was even a bit of giggling when we were asked to recite a mantra.
I go back to our experiences on this trip. I can see however how those experiences have made us much more able to deal with unfamiliar situations, and to seem to have slowed us down a bit in comparison to other westerners. Many people wanted an answer straight away, when in many cases with these techniques, there was no answer. At least not in the way that we are accustomed to receiving. It was quite amusing to observe this behaviour, because this is very much how I was a few months ago. You can tell that a lot of people are wanting to change their lives, but are very confused as to how this can be achieved. Over the course of this trip a lot of my confusion has gone away and things are appearing clearer. One guy taking this course was telling us that at this point in his life, he finally realises that the world that he is living in is a big mess. He’s still living in it, but at least now he realises that he’s in it and that he can start to figure out how to get out of it. That’s kind of how we feel. We’re not even close to being out of the mess, but we know that we’re in it and that we want to get out.
So, it’s back to the comparisons. At first, in comparison to the Vipassana course, this one was not looking like it would be giving us much benefit. The teachings were quite confusing; with near-impossible concepts such as emptiness. Telling us that we don’t exist. Well, we do exist; just not in the way that we think we do. Huh? But after a while, the teachings, in conjunction with some very excellent guided meditations, started to make sense. Buddhism has always kind of made sense to us. This course has reinforced this idea. It’s more of a science than a religion. It’s as if the most brilliant scientist in the world had studied the mind, categorized it and built up a framework of rules for how one can free themselves from their own mental suffering. It’s pretty difficult to find any faults with the teachings. Everything makes sense. It’s like a rulebook for how to alleviate your suffering. If you do this, then this will happen. If you don’t do this, then this will happen. It’s all very logical.
We’re not about to become Buddhists. Although it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. Buddhism is still a religion, with many of the faults that religions tend to have. But if you take away the religious aspect of it, and just look at the teachings or dhamma (or in this tradition, dharma) there’s not a whole lot wrong with it. The theoretical teachings of this course, combined with the more practical technique of the Vipassana meditation seems to be having a nice effect. We both feel pretty good, and like I said earlier, feel confident that we have a bit more control over our minds, and consequently our lives.
I can imagine that there’s people out there that think we’re going a bit loopy. Maybe we are.
It was also interesting to see how reincarnation is such a matter-of-fact thing. There were a couple of little monks running around that were recognized reincarnations of high monks called Rimpoche. One in particular, a five year old, told people when he was two, that he was the reincarnation of a high lama. He subsequently passed all of the test to determine whether or not he was truly the reincarnation and now resides in the monastery.
Oppression in Nepal
While we were at the monastery, we took part in a light ceremony along with people all over the world, where we lit hundreds of candles to raise awareness of the troubles in Tibet. Most of the monks from Kopan went down the hill to the massive stupa at Bodha to take part in a ceremony and public meditation there. This being the start of the Olympics, when all eyes are on China, a protest in Bodha was planned for the next day. Before many of the monks and nuns even made it to the stupa, they were all arrested by the Nepali police and all of the monasteries in the area were banned from protesting. Around 800 people, including many monks and nuns were arrested. We heard that many were beaten by the police. The UN was involved, trying to the get the them out of jail, but we heard that it would be a few days before they were to be released. . There are a few people on this course that work in NGO’s or even for the UN in Kathmandu, and they told us that Nepal has a deal with China to snuff out any protests before they start. They don’t even issue refugee cards to the thousands of Tibetans seeking asylum in Nepal. This leaves them with an illegal status, unable to work or attend school.
So, while you sit at home and watch the Olympics with corporate sponsored athletes competing in expensive, state-of-the-art stadiums before a carefully managed image of smiling Chinese, try to remember that a whole lot of oppression and violence is helping to maintain this image. It’s not just the Tibetans, but the Chinese people who suffer as well. Minorities are oppressed, the internet is censored. Google is filtered, Wikipedia is banned. Even the website for Amnesty International is banned. That tells you something doesn’t it? We are all a little bit responsible for this as well. Our lust for cheap, disposable goods keeps our governments from making much of an effort to do anything. So, the next time you go to Wal Mart looking to save a few pennies, please take a few seconds to look at the label and see where that item comes from and then think about where your money is going.
Back to Civilization
The countdown is down to single digits. In a day or so (depending on when I post this, and when you read it) we head back to Delhi, where we have half a day to repack our bags, have a last Indian meal, and to say our goodbyes to each other before going our separate ways as we check back in with our respective families before going back to London. It’s going to be very strange, but we are excited. Sad, and happy at the same time.
So, that’s it. A bit of a long one today. This report will likely be the last. Thank you everyone for reading about our boring little life. And thank you for putting up with my ranting and raving and finger wagging for the last 20 months.
The last photos will be up in a few days, so check out the links on the right to take a peak.
Maybe I will keep writing. I always thought that those people out there with blogs were a bit weird, but now I’m not so sure.
Anyway, adios or perhaps hasta luego.
Len y Michaela.
Categories: Nepal, Travel
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