Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Pictures, pictures, finally pictures

Pictures!  (Hoping it works this time)


Detail of monastery in Pokhara



Kids and Jeny in front of Pokhara Monastery



We flew into Jomsom and later trekked out.



Cooper with Hindi pilgrim on gondola after visit to temple



jeny with some of Ranjan's family



Boys doing homework at Jeny's Pokhara house


Buddhist ceremony (around fasting) in Pokhara monastery



Elephant races!



Ranjan's aunt cooking at his family's house




Great shot of Jeny and her dad


View from Jeny's house in Pokhara


Ranjan's family and house in Kirtipur



Jeny's Mom Basanti Lalchan



Kenzie doing tons of math homework, honest!



Pokhara Street Scene



Wish you were here and love to you all!!

Love,
Robin

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Nepal in the Jungle

Hello all,

We returned to civilization last night after two days in the jungles of Chitwan National Park, staying at the "Rhino Safari Lodge" (or was it "Rainbow"?; we never figured it out) courtesy of yet another one of "Jeny's dad's friends" (connections here are everything, absolutely everything). 

We arrived late in the evening after a harrowing five hours on highways (this after hours on dirt roads in a Jeep; it is hard to decide which is scarier).  Hundreds and hundreds of trucks barrel down the barely-two-lane highway between Nepal and India -- Nepal is landlocked so everything that comes in comes on a truck.  We ate a small dinner at a firepit outside the lodge's restaurant listening to elephants in the not-too-far distance and watching the same half-moon that shined over you eleven hours later. 

The next morning, early risers that we are, we were climbing onto elephants by 8 am, and had spotted a mother/baby rhin pair by 8:03.  The rest of the hour ride we saw tons of deer, wild little bright red chicken-hens, and a couple of monkeys.  All this before breakfast!

Then off to our "reason for visiting" -- the annual elephant races and soccer game.  Yes, I'm not kidding, we got to watch races -- first between chariots (think "BenHur" with small horses) and then elephants first race each other and then elephants, yes elephants, play soccer with each other.  It turns out that just like with hockey and with soccer, the goalie rules the game. 

We ate great festival food (they can make 50or 60 momo at a time!  I was in heaven) and then eventually, mid-afternoon, headed off for the highlight so far of my trip -- a visit to the Nepalese Cancer Hospital in Bharatpur.  It was (to me) the holiest temple we've visited so far, and more about it later.

Right before dark we went to "Jeny's dad's friend's" factory.  It was an incredible thing to see a rudimentary factory (they make cooking fuel cylinders) in the middle of mustard and wheat fields.  It was also very humbling to see what a difference a tiny factory can make in people's lives -- the factory employs 80 people who are paid between 75 and 500 dollars/month and it UTTERLY TRANSFORMS THEIR LIVES.  We sat in the darkness outside the factory, drinking our fifth or sixth cup of tea that day (brewed by the female tea lady reminiscint of Slumdog Millionnaire) and watched the welders' sparks fly into the starry starry night.

Another night in a far-away lodge, another perfect beer.  But first we actually managed to stuff in one more activity and went to a "Tharu Cultural Show," a group of intensely energetic (and thin!) young men dancing their bums off to old drums and ancient stories.  Then back to the lodge for that lovely beer and bed where we were just about to drift off when the very same "Tharu Cultural Show" showed up in the lot adjacent to our rooms, hired by the lodge to provide entertainment to a group of bussed-in tourists.  So we groaned, wrapped the pillows around our heads, and fell asleep to the sounds of ancient tribal sounds and lots and lots of drums.  While rhinos meandered somewhere near us in the jungle.

The next day up and out early again, driving like banshees to the Mankamana Temple accessible only by two-day uphill trek or cable car; we chose the latter.  It was just a super thrill for the kids -- mom kept her gaze averted from the spectacle of being in the second highest gondola in all of Asia.  (Robin's Cardinal Rule:  "Never. Look. At. The. Bolts.")   We weren't allowed to enter the temple but seeing the action around it (including various sacrificial rites) was amazing.  Then of course (giving that we're traveling with Cooper) Mandatory Souvenier Buying ensued followed by a lovely cliffside lunch of yak cheese balls and etc; at a certain point I don't ask.  ;:)

A very long ride back to Pokhara and then an evening that was a little bit lost to illness (all recovered today and only the second real problem on the trip) but also included the three of us lying curled up in bed with mom reading aloud from "Forget Kathmandu," a brief history of how the heck Nepal can be all these things at once -- crazy elephant rides, Maoist strikes, hill tribe wisdom, terrifying highways, endless terraced farms, unimaginable hospitality, ubiqitous gorgeous temples everywhere, incense wafting, horns honking, polycultural food, grinding poverty, neon Buddhist shrines....

Need to stop, don't want to lose this.  Don't want to lose ANY of this!

Love,
Robin 

Sorry!

I haven't posted in a while, but I just can't write without picture and (for those that don't know what I mean, my camera has a SD card, the computer doesn't have an SD slot, and I don't have a SD converter, so therefore I can't load pictures to show to you.
P.S. A picture's worth a thousand words.
P.S.S.We went on a like 200 foot high cable car! Awesome!

Saturday, December 26, 2009

a brief foray into civilization

The adventures continue, with different interpretations on different hours of the day.  Christmas Eve we flew into Jomson a tiny tiny airport in a wind-buffetted hamlet in the Himalayas, hiked three hours to visit Marpha (Jeny's father's village) and then spent the night in an absolutely frozen guesthouse, finally emerging to shiver through dinner with a space heater at our feet and choke down tea and toast the next day trying to avert frostbit.  Then found out high winds had cancelled all flights (both of them)  flying out which resulted in a 24 hour Indiana Jones epic of us trekking and overlanding but leaving us stuck at a truck stop in Beni unable to get home because of the threat of bandits. 

I kid you not. 

Of course we always have happy endings, mostly due to the resources of Jeny's family, so we ended up at a fabulous "Hotel Yeti" in the heart of Beni (a glorious couple of km away from the truckstop) owned by a friend of the family.  It was warm, it had great food, and it had beer, so Christmas night was exceptionally wonderful and exceptionally unique.

The kids remain troopers through some very very hard parts and at this point we've shared socks, water bottles, and bedwear without a peep.

Now off to elephant park, another strike, and who knows what other adventures.....

Love to all!

Robin

around dec 20th

We never hear from you, you never write....

This is incredibly long, as explained below, but please read all the way through. Please comment if the pictures don't work.

From Robin: We have a good excuse why we haven't blogged. The only access to the internet is through internet cafes, but every internet cafe – and in fact every business, every school, every activity in Nepal – has been shut down by a nationwide strike. So we couldn't have blogged even if we wanted to, and we have wanted to, all the time... so much to tell, so much we've seen and done.

The strike, which is to end Wednesday, impacted most of our choices and activities the first week. We only spent a couple of days in Kathmandu and then raced, and we mean RACED to Jeny's hometown of Pokhara out in the countryside (more on that later). There, the town was largely shut down for three days – no driving was allowed and no commerce of any sort – so we went for long walks, ate, wrote, went for more walks, ate some more.

One walk was particularly memorable; we got up at 5 on Monday and walked a couple of miles to a hillock at the edge of town where we watched the sun rise over the Annapurnas. It was the kind of thing we can only do because we are with Jeny – she knew all the twists and turns and guided us through the darkness to the light as she has been doing throughout this trip.

The walk up the hill was like all of Pokhara, undeveloped, rough, and littered. After walking a circuitous route through the edges of town, we started up a hill, mostly by path, with a couple of heave-oneself-over-the-ledges. At the very top of the hill was a single tree, shrouded like the rest of the town in fog and nearby there were yogis either doing yoga positions or chanting Om, and some very funny odd yogis doing “laughter yoga” where they would shout with laughter over the hilltops. There were also a few small groups doing typical athletic exercises, pushups and situps and whatnot and a small number of joggers who hit the top of that hill like “Rocky.”


This was the path we traversed in total darkness (Coop and Jeny's dad on right).


This was the tree at the top of the hill just before dawn with fog everywhere.

The mountains began to change around seven. Their tips began, one at a time, to turn pink and then yellow and then golden, and then the color changes would slowly seep down the sides of the hills. It was only much later that the sun actually began to rise, and it was amazingly quick, a matter of just a few minutes until the sun was high in the sky and most of the fog had burnt off. It was truly magnificent beyond all words.







Cooper found a huge spider between two trees which was nearly as big a thrill as the mountains.


All told, a wonderful morning.


And then we went home to tea and toast with Jeny's mom.

Walking in Pokhara


Walking down the main street


Love the juxtaposition of the holy cow and the holy cellphone.



Yummm, lunch!

Wonderful signs everywhere.

Visiting Ranjan's Family

We spent Saturday morning visiting Ranjan's family in the village of Char Ghare in the town of Kirtipur just outside of Kathmandu. His family lives in a small agricultural village and farms ancestral lands they have had for over a hundred years. We visited and they served us a wonderful meal made in their tiny kitchen with no counterspace at all; all food is prepared on the floor and cooked on two burners supplied by a cooking gas cylinder. The water comes from a public cistern at which women were washing each other's hair, gossiping, and staring at us. The area is tremendously fertile and famous for its cauliflower; all farming is still done by hand including carrying the harvest on one's back. They are surrounded by absolutely gorgeous small mountains. The whole family (three brothers, four sister-in-laws, four kids) lives in the same house and shares everything.







Ranjan's Dad




The Maoists by Kenzie


From Kenzie: On December 20th, one faction of Nepal's Maoist (Communist) party planned a nationwide transportation strike. They blocked the roads for cars and trucks and closed all shops, except for official vehicles and buildings. If you were driving or opened your shop on that day, the local Maoist party would attack and burn your shop/car.

On the night of the 19th the Maoists had big rallies in the center of every town. We had been driving for 7 hours to Pokhara, where more of Jeny's family lives. The main highway from Kathmandu to Pokhara, besides being very narrow and windy, passed through 5 rallies. All the Maoists had torches and were chanting. They also stopped cars and then let them through, one by one, probably as a threat to show “We have power.” Plus, they had big bonfires. There was 3 rallies in one town, and one group let us through, the second did too, but the third said “Who let you through!?” The third group was very angry and didn't want to let us go.

Driving to Pokhara: Saturday Afternoon, trying to outrace the strike

From Robin: We left Ranjan's family's house around 1:30, hoping to get to Pokhara in the usual four-and-a-half hours, thus avoiding the more dangerous driving after dusk. A set of unfortunate circumstances led us to instead crawling into Pokhara after 9:30 pm having gotten a full dose of what “lack of infrastructure” means in Nepal.

The road to Pokhara (a ten-day pony ride as recently as 1952) has only improved slightly. It remains a narrow winding barely two-lane road, which sounds like “oh, interesting, winding,” but in fact it means that when there's an accident or a breakdown traffic is wrecked and I mean wrecked. There's no breakdown lanes, no passing lanes, no room for error at all. Jeny says she sees one or two accidents per ride, and we saw our share. But one can't guess when they happened – “no infrastructure” also means there's no tow trucks, so wrecked or broken down cars or trucks just sit until they're repaired or slowly (piece by piece) carted away, a process that can take weeks. In the meantime, traffic has to get around them so somehow some police-less process is worked out with five or ten cars going around the wreck in one direction, and then five or ten (or twenty) cars go around it in the other direction.

We hit one of these right away and traffic stalled for over an hour, slowly and painfully inching forward first around a broken down truck, and then around an ill-advised car who had tried to outmaneuver the traffic jam and had himself ended up a penned-in obstacle in the road.

So the first ten miles took 90 minutes and it was hot and irritating. The last ten miles also took 90 minutes but were uncertain and scary. About 10 miles outside of Pokhara, after over six hours in the car (with one brief stop at a “rest stop” complete with open-air restaurants, small stores, public restrooms and a fabulous farmers' market), we encountered the first of three groups of torch-bearing Maoist demonstrators in the middle of the highway at village centers. The first group was just sort of eerie, a group of about thirty young men carrying torches and standing in the middle of the highway in the now-complete darkness. We crawled through with Jeny cautioning us not to take pictures and saying, “Oh, what a hassle.”

The second, a few miles down the street at another village intersection, stopped the car completely and said we couldn't pass. Jeny's dad and Jeny both argued with the men, and tried to push the car through anyway. Several torch-bearing men shouted at us and came close to the windows. Jeny's dad put the car into park and got out and talked to some of the guys. I don't know what he said (it felt like he was saying “Are you kidding, come on, the strike hasn't started yet, I've got children in the car, you can let me through, right?”) but whatever it was, it worked, and we plowed through most of the crowd until the very end when the car was again blocked by men saying we couldn't get through and who gave us permission anyhow? Jeny and Jeny's dad kept talking out the window and we made it through the edge of the crowd.

Cooper had (blissfully, blissfully) slept through all of this but Kenzie was sitting next to me rooted to the spot. At one point he asked me what was going on and I tried to explain as quickly and succinctly as possible, which was probably not terribly illuminating. During the second crowd he said something like “What can we do here?” and I said, “You know, we really have no control at all over this situation, it's all up to Jeny and her dad.” Then after we got through the second much more scary crowd we drove along in silence and then he said, “It feels to me like you feel troubled.” What a sweet word! I said, “Yeah, this is a troubling situation. These guys can stop our car, they can delay us if they want to. We don't have any choice but to obey them.” There was a long silence and then we talked a little about communism and what not and then I said, “So what do you think would be the most important thing to take with us if they made us get out of the car?” And he said what and I said “Passports. You always want to have your passports.”

So I asked Jeny to pass me back my purse and I got out the passports and gave them to Kenz, and then got out all our money and my credit cards and asked Kenz to carry half the money and I secreted the other half away. And I think we both felt a little better having a little plan, that little bit of control. And we tried to wake up Coop a bit but then decided to let him stay asleep, and I think we both felt a little better making that decision, too.

It was good to have that little period of peace because then we drove into another village with the biggest crowd of all. They were more organized and bigger and had already started redirecting traffic so that cars couldn't drive through the middle of the highway but instead had to go to the left onto a dirt road that went around the crowd and headed back on to the highway. There were already cars and buses being forced to take this detour, and some of them were having trouble maneuvering over the potholes of the dirt road. Jeny explained that we might have to get out of the car in order to lighten the car up so its low bottom could get over the rocks and Kenz and I agreed we would get out together and leave Cooper behind. I don't quite remember how it came to pass, but suddenly Kenz and I were standing on the side of the road while Jeny directed her dad over the rocky path. We were on the edge of a group of women and children who stared at us with big eyes reflected in the torchlight. I immediately began smiling at the children and saying “Namaste” and Kenz followed my lead; the kids auto-responded with uncertain smiles and ritual bows; I then started making eye contact with the beautiful confused-looking women (one moment they're living by the side of the highway, the next moment they're watching nervous foreigners being ordered around by men with torches). I figured it never hurts to have the women on your side, and it felt like the only way to have a personal contact in an utterly foreign situation.

The incident was over in less than a minute, the car made it to the road, we opened the cardoors, jumped in, and slammed all three doors at once. Cooper never once moved. We made it home without seeing any other gatherings, and pulled into Jeny's driveway thankful and beat.


This is the broken-down truck that caused all the trouble in the first place. The driver, who unfortunately can't be seen in this shot, looked remarkably calm for having backed up traffic for hours in both directions.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

back on the grid, nationally and personally

Nepal (and we) have been in the grip of a three day national strike --- no businesses open, no vehicles allowed on the road, and so, sob, no internet cafes until an hour ago when the strike was officially lifted and the question was posed to the Schoenthalers:  do you want to go to a restaurant?  do you want to go sailing?  do you want to go shopping?  and we all answered in unison, no no we want to go to a CYBER CAFE   So here we all are.

We have been having a wonderful quiet time waiting out the strike in Pokhara.  (Pokhara for the Nepal-Novice is Nepal's second or third largest city; it lies at the base of the annapurnas, is a jumping--off place for trekkers and climbers, and is the hoe of Jeny's parents.  So we have been enjoying their wonderful hospitality and food and venturing out into the streets where the whole city has poured out, kids playing soccer and hackie-sack and badmitton and acting for all the world as though they are on a snow day, which I guess they are. 

We also went for a gorgeous sunrise walk to see dawn rise over the Himalayas; it was too stunning to describe.  We have a ton of pictures of this and other adventures (including visiting Ranjan's village) which we will post as soon as we find a cybercafe that can handle our software. 

We heard about the snow on the east coast on CNN and can't begin to imagine it.  Here it is quite temperate during the day (50s/60s) although it does cool down at night (40s).  In a day or so we plan to fly to Jomson where we will perhaps see some snow and may perhaps have a White Christmas ourselves. 

Hope all are well and looking forward to posting more very soon. 

Pictures of Pokhara

Here are some pictures of Pokhara:
Here,
Here,
Here,
and here
PS We even have a servant in Jeny's mom's house!! His name is Ram!!

Pokhara

Jeny's hometown of Pokhara is the second biggest and most popular tourist spot in Nepal after Kathmandu. It has amazing scenery and good hiking spots. You can see the Annapurna range from any point in the town, especially Fishtail Mt.
Jeny's house is also really cool. It is 4 stories tall, with a courtyard in the center. It's shaped like a U, with the front gate between the hypothetical arms of the U and the courtyard in the center. It has about two rooms per floor. The staircase takes up another arm of the hypothetical U. It also has a ton of bars on windows, deadbolts, spiky gates, that sort of thing. It even, on the back of every door, has those horizontal bars like in a castle that stop it from opening. It is SO secure.
Her other house has some security too, like razor wire and a cement gate.

Friday, December 18, 2009

In KATHMANDU!

We're in Kathmandu right now, and there is SO much polution. Mom coughed up black stuff because of the dirt and smoke\smog. We wear masks, whick makes me feel like we are a bunch of surgeons, which then makes me want to say STAT! We just traded in some USD for rupees, but the excange rate is 75 rupees to the dollar, so i got the MASSIVE stack of bills. Plus, we ordered a pot of tea for breakfast, and it was only 150 rupees, or 2 dollars. In the US, it would be something like 5 dollars. And that was a very expensive resturant!
PS: I got 2 hours of sleep in 3 days. Darn airplanes.
PSS: Virgin Atlantic FTW! its better that Gulf air!
PSSS: I ate CHAPATIS, like in 6th grade during our Shabanu unit. Super good.
PSSSS: By now, my blood is "90% caffiene, 10% kenzie"-william. Mmmm, masala tea...
PSSSSS:Ice age, dawn of the dinosaurs is the third worst movie I've ever seen, after Dances with Wolves and City of Joy. the fourth is Mama Mia. The best ever is either Mirrormask or 2001.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Hullo from Bahrain from Cooper


We left Boston at 8 pm Tues and only got about 90 minutes of sleep.  Then we spent 14 hours in London seeing the tourist sites.  On the way to Bahrain I got 2 hours and 11 minutes of sleep.  But we saw some great stuff in London.  Bahrain is full of skyscrapers and mansions. 





here is what London Looked like.  It was snowing!







He's taller than me!!??

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Water Leak in the Basement 18 Hours Before Departure

Water in the basement
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Very tough prep

Very tough prep

  • Very serious visa trouble for one of the travelers, now resolved.
  • Money trouble, since resolved
  • Winter-coat-forgotten-at-the-Prudential-Center-Christmas-Concert-on-Saturday trouble, unresolvable
  • The-students-must-xerox-four-chapters-of-their-textbooks-prior-to-departure trouble, not yet resolved.  

And then there is.....



And then there is Joe-working-in-the-basement-on-the-broken pipe trouble.


Awaiting for nepalese zen tranquility to descend.  Eg rum and coke on Virgin Atlantic at 7:45 pm.

This was posted by Robin.  
The boys' version of Zen Tranquility is more like 
all-flight,all-night, all-Ipods 
all the time.


See you at Heathrow!

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Friday, December 11, 2009

What are we reading/watching; what should we be reading watching?


From Robin:

In preparation for the trip I've read

Are we not there yet? Travels in Nepal, North India, and Bhutan by Chuck Rosenthal

and The Velvet Shyness of their Eyes

and have downloaded my friend L's friends book Thin Places: A Pilgrimage Home

And the kids and I have watched, kicking and screaming in protest:

City of Joy

Children of Heaven (or this )

and Gandhi this week-end

and maybe Raiders of the Lost Ark?

Any other suggestions? Watchable movies that show Nepal scenery, third-world issues, history, and et cetera? Great books that can help the kids and I start to approach this all?

Countdown to Nepal!

From Kenzie: Only 4 normal days, 2 school days, and no work days left till Nepal! We're going to try to post as much as possible, but we know that will be hard, with the current state of the Internet in Nepal.