Trekking!

After climbing back up the mountain to retrieve my camera I was stokin' on life!

Today was a national strike and everything was closed... fancy that :D Tomorrow things look like they will be opening up so I'm off to go trekking. I've got to catch a 9 hour bus ride that covers 120 KM... I'm used to buses that move as fast as I can jog so it's ok.
The itinerary it stands is to hop on a bus tomorrow at 6 AM bus it out to a place called Dunche almost directly north of Kathmandu on the edge of Langtang national park. I'll do the popular "Langtang Trek," then the idea is to connect via a 14,000 foot pass to another area known as the Helambu and walk back to Kathmandu. This should take me about 14 days give or take a few. I'll be out of contact entirely until I get back. This kind of trekking is known as "tea house" trekking. There are lodges and tea houses along the more popular sections. I have a tarp with me and we'll see how realistic it is for me to camp as much as possible. Wood can't be used for fires in these areas because they are heavily traveled and I'm not going to bother with a stove so I'll be eating out while wandering around mountains. It's quite a new concept to me, I'm used to just going out and fending for myself. I'm excited to do what "70% of all tourists who come to Nepal want to do." Haha.
Some highlights of volunteering on the farm were spending time with Ramu's older brother's son, who is two and a half and at the age when he's curious about everything. One night, when we had electricity, and all the geckos we're eating insects that flew around the light I was lifting him up so he could try and grab them. It was a repeated, "Lizard" and then me hoisting him up as high as I could so he could try and grab one. He came very close.
Another moment that is making me smile is learning and singing Kirtan (Devotional songs) with "Ama" (Ramu's mother, and another one of my many adopted mothers :) We were working out in the field side by side and she was slowly teaching me the songs of Lord Krishna (One of the manifestations of Vishnu and known for his flute playing, his naughty nature as a child, stealing milk and cream from the milkmaids) We sang together as the sun was setting and it gave me energy after a long day's work in the sun. it was so much fun to sing as the parrots flew back to their roosts in large flocks and the sun turned red, setting over India.
While I was sick I had a couple brief moments of literary inspiration, here's a poem that I wrote.

I long to find the end of the earth
Take the leap into the unknown.

Falling with giddy glee
and a smile on my face
I will plummet into stormy clouds.

Amongst these ethereal giants
I will have tea with my fears
Dance with my joys
Hug my sorrows,
and paint them all with my dreams.

When I am hungry I will eat chubby cumulus clouds
and suck the cirrus clouds dry.

I will learn to speak with the wind,
Learning ancient secrets
from the her eons of wandering,
whispered into my eager ears.

I will make friends with the sun and moon
Share with them my heart
and chase them in circles around the globe.

When the cloud has tired of it's burden,
and spits me upon the earth
as a human hailstone.
I'll look up and smile because it was all worthwhile.

It's quite crude but the sentiment is there. I remember the inspiration of this. Everyday almost clouds would roll in and we'd get thunder, lightning and sometimes full on tropical storms. I've never seen a hailstone so big. They were seriously the diameter of quarters. They came with 40-50 mile an hour winds which knocked down trees and ripped off the neighbors roof. Quarter sized hailstones coming almost horizontal is quite scary, take it from me.

New pictures are up on flicker, sadly it's taking forever to load so only about 150 new ones are up and they're quite old. I'll be sure to keep my camera handy wandering about in the mountains.

Namaste

Over a month...

and so much to say.
I'm sitting in an internet cafe in Kathmandu Nepal situated across the street from my "Didi's" house. Didi is the Nepali (and Hindi) word for older sister. My ideas when came to Nepal were to get out of the cities and make it into the mountains and find out what big mountains really mean. I completed one of the requirements and I plan to leave for trekking in 2 days! I worked on a farm for about a month in a small village called Megauli in the Chitwan district of Nepal. Megauli's claim to fame is that it hosts the elephant polo championships every December! It is a rural area bordering Chitwan National Park in lowland Nepal.
I crossed the border without any difficulties (I walked across without getting my Indian visa stamped without even realizing it) and went to Lumbini, the birthplace of Buddha. Through the website workaway.info I was in email contact with a man named Bishnu who has a volunteer organization out of Kathmandu, he saw my profile and said, "I have a place for you." From Lumbini, i hopped on local transportation and with a little difficulty arrived in Megauli and met Ramu. Ramu is a second generation farmer (There has been a little unrest in Kathmandu lately, strikes and such, a march is walking by the cafe at the moment...) His family migrated to the fertile lowlands, known as the Terai, from the mountains after DDT was used to eradicate Malaria in the 1950's and 60's. Southern Nepal is under 1,000 feet elevation on the Gangetic plain. This area has much of the arable land and almost all of the industry. It is also hot. It was between 80 and 100 degrees with almost 100% humidity.
Ramu and his family took me in without any questions, Bishnu asked Ramu if I could come only 3 days before, and we got to work on the farm. I joined in the daily ritual of: wake up at 5:30, out in the fields by 6 or 6:30, depending on whether we had tea or not. Work until about 9 or 10 when the sun was scorching and then breakfast of "Dal Baat Tarkari." Lentils Rice and Curried veggies. We ate entirely food that was grown on the farm! Then we'd do odd jobs near the house, feeding the cows, etc. or rest until about 4 PM when we'd go back out in the field until dark. Then we'd eat Dal Baat again, or roti's and then sleep. It was a wonderful and wholesome routine.
During my stay I attempted to reach an internet connection in Narangarh (24 kilometers and almost 2 hours by bus...) there wasn't electricity and I got heat stroke, which proceeded to become a fever and diarrhea, I was knocked out cold for a couple of days. My immune system was out of whack big time, consequently I got 2 staff infections on one foot. This put me down for another week. Luckily there's a rural clinic no more that 200 meters down the "road" from Ramu's house. I became a regular there for about a week and a half. For the infections I got shots of local anesthesia and then they popped the suckers like giant mutant zits and packed the holes with iodine soaked bandages. I spent a week with nothing to do but stare at the ceiling and hope that there was electricity so that the fan would run. I survived the ordeal and it's just another lesson of how important our bodies are and how much I take my healthy body for granted.
While I was bed ridden Ramu's older sister came to visit and she told me that when I come to Kathmandu to come and stay with her. So that's how I'm living like the locals again. I am so astounded at how open people have been to me, inviting me into their lives. Ramu's family has become my Nepali family. Bishnu's husband works as a chef and she's a stay at home mom until she can find work as a teacher. I've been helping her three year old son practice his ABC's, walk him and the neighbor's daughter to school and cooking dinner. My Hindi has morphed into a Hindi/Nepali mix that allows me to communicate adequately here. I plan to leave for trekking in two days! I'm determined to get some mountain time!
Excuse the scatteredness, it's reflecting my state of mind, trying to organize everything for trekking and opening up the cyber world after a month of not looking at it has sent my mind spinning.
Love to everyone and sorry if anyone was worried :D