Back in the Big Dirty

Cloud lightning out the window of our new apartment in Thamel.

Update time!

Many things have happened in the past month since I last posted to this blog, so bear with me:

We had a fantastic time with Austin and Beth between March 5th and 25th. Thanks to a whole bunch of unexpected factors (see last post) we had a chance to show them a bunch of Kathmandu's sights and sounds before and after our trip to Langtang National Park. Once we finally got up north we had a fun, albeit dramatic, trek through fire, ice, sunshine and rain. Oh yeah, there were a few big mountains, too. Check out the Langtang photo journal in the gallery!

It was great to have a bit of home fly in to visit us, and made us extra-excited to be back in Portland. Our return date is coming up quickly (less than a month, now!) and we're scrambling to squeeze in everything we still want/need to do here.

As Beth and Austin were leaving, Ash and I were busy moving our stuff to a new apartment in Thamel, in a building owned and managed by Sanu's family. For our last month in Nepal, we'll residing in a downtown fifth-story penthouse of sorts... Amenities included consist of running water (brown), a leaky sink drain (a bucket underneath seems to take care of it), a briquette stove, a wooden bed frame, a chair, a coffee table, horribly sooty walls and ceilings, curtains (very important), one functioning incandescent bulb, and one power outlet (we still only get power for eight hours a day). A shared squat toilet, sans sink or shower, is down the hall. Despite this downgrade in accomodation, we're pretty stoked on this relatively impoverished and totally different urban experience. Not only are we in the gritty heart of urban Kathmandu, we're close to everything we need to do and have had an opportunity to get to know a few more of the subtleties of this place.

One of the biggest changes here over the past two weeks has been the onset of the spring rains! The weather patterns have been all sorts of unusual for the past fourteen months or so as Nepal experienced a dry monsoon season last summer/autumn and a very dry winter. As a result, electricity production has been pretty much impossible, and wells are drying up all over the country. A bunch of scientists are even concerned that large portions of Kathmandu valley could collapse as water tables are sucked dry. The recent afternoon rains (and snow in the mountains) have been bringing some relief and have provided some very entertaining thunderstorms in the valley. We can't get enough of it!

Over the past week I've been busy finishing up the written agenda and reports for the project we've been doing in the Ramechhap district (click here to download the latest pdf), getting photos gathered, researching product concepts for FoST and getting acquainted to our new digs, amongst other things. In April, I'll be focused on following up as necessary with Ramechhap (and maybe going back for another short visit) and developing concepts at FoST. Meanwhile, today is Ashley's first day shadowing at Martyr's Memorial Hospital, where she'll spend the next month watching and helping out on various rotations. Our friend Krish, also pre-med, did the same thing in February and had a great experience, so our hopes our high.

Aside from that, we're looking at a bit of river time (I'll be safety-boating for a large class II/III rafting trip on April 11) and three or four days down in Chitwan National Park riding elephants and (hopefully) spotting some rhinos and big bright birds.

The Royal Palace (just down the street from our new penthouse) opened as a museum about a month ago, and we joined throngs of Nepalis last Saturday to check it out. The sprawling palace and grounds have been pretty much vacant since the massacre in 2001, and sits today much as I imagine it was eight years ago. The buildings have this super-cheesy and sparse 60s/70s architecture and interior decoration, and it was pretty bizarre to consider that the place represents/ed the 'lap of luxury' for this nation..

Politics have continued to provide a never-ending comedy in the daily papers here.. Every day brings news of more back-stabbing closed-door meetings within the countless parties and subsets of parties, which usually result in pointless riots, bandhs, strikes, or killings. Nobody can figure out how to integrate all the small party-loyal militias into one army, the Maoists in charge seem to be driving for a one-party system empowered by social disorder and poverty, and China's (anti-Tibetian) whims are frequently carried out without a second thought. Stability in all sectors is still quite a ways off here...

We made the mistake of buying the first four seasons of House MD last week (ripped of course, at a cost of around $12), and have been sucked into 3-5 episodes per night lately.

We've been toying with the idea of spending a few extra days in Bangkok on our return trip to see some more temples, enjoy more massages, take care of some dental work, and maybe even participate in their never-ending political demonstrations (or not)!

And finally: what's up with this website/blog's new name? In short: 'hajur' is one of those Nepali words that can mean just about anything.. it works for 'sir,' 'pardon,' 'hello,' 'whaddup,' etc... So way back during the final days of the Annapurna trek we had a great night in Tatopani getting wasted on Marpha apple brandy. Krish (now infamous for taking gigantic gulps of the stuff rather than sipping it like the rest of us) had also been enjoying slices of a chocolate cake that was sitting under the bar. Upon finishing his second slice, Krish started talking about how much he needed a THIRD. The bartender (and cake enabler) was nowhere to be seen, and out of the blue Krish blurted, "WHERE'S MY HAJUR? I NEED SOME MORE CAKE!!" The phrase has stuck with us like .. um .. frosting on cake .. ever since and is somewhat emblematic of our whole experience here :)

Delayed

After my post the other night, Ashley came down with the same digestive issues I had a few days prior.. and we decided to hang out for an additional day in Kathmandu to give her a chance to improve. We moved our base of operations to a cheap, but nice, hotel in Thamel, and were planning on getting on a bus this morning. However, since today is Holi Day (more below), we soon learned that we'd have to stay in Kathmandu another additional day, since busses aren't running.

The children of Kathmandu have been preparing for Holi Day all week long.. What began as a celebration of color and culture in rural villages has turned into a water balloon throwing free-for-all event in the big city. All week balloons have been hurled from rooftops, side streets, car windows, behind-our-backs, etc.. targeting unsuspecting victims (usually women). These balloons are usually not balloons at all, but small clear plastic bags (like we get goldfish in) that hurt like hell! It's pretty much impossible to walk down the street (especially as white folks) without being targeted dozens of times.

TODAY, the actual holiday, most of the balloons contain bright pigments, and EVERYBODY is participating in this city-wide pelting contest. I'm gearing up to go find some balloons to buy down the street so we can join in the fun from our hotel's roof .. but I know that I'll be drenched and colorful by the time I return from the store (which is just across the street). Should be fun.

Last night after Ash was feeling a little better we checked out Swayambhu (the monkey temple) with Austin and Beth and then celebrated British Alex's birthday at a super-yummy steakhouse. We'll head out on a bus tomorrow morning towards Dunche, where we'll start our trek the following day. We're now planning on being back in Kathmandu the 22nd or 23rd.

Visitors!

We've been back in KTM for over a week now, and have kept ourselves massively busy. So busy that I have managed to neglect my computer almost entirely, and have been a completely lame blog-updater.

In short:

The volunteer house moved up the street in Dhapasi (Kathmandu's equivalent to Lake Oswego)! Papa's House brought a large group of girls to Kathmandu from Narti last week, and they are now living in the house formerly occupied by volunteers and the boys. We're now enjoying luxurious three story home located half-way between the old girls' house and the property with the new girls' and boys' houses.

We've spent most of our compy-time writing up a report on our project in Dumrikharka, and refining our proposal for future phases. I'll post all this when it's finished in late March.

I finally managed to go kayaking a few days ago! In November I found a friend in Bishnu Gurung, who recently opened a whitewater adventure company in Thamel (www.adventureaves.com). For my 'free' day on the 4th he hooked me up with another paddler, Bijan, to check out a fun class IV run on the Bhote Kosi. This run flows along the Peace Highway that China helped build between Kathmandu and Tibet, and provided us a few hours of splashy fun. Never mind the adventure getting to and from the river took just about 36 hours.

Austin and Beth arrived a few days ago! It's been super-fun to have visitors from home (let alone THESE visitors), and we've been busy figuring out logistics for our trek while doing a little bit of sightseeing around Kathmandu. We've been planning on a summit attempt of Naya Kanga, a 5846 m peak near the village of Langtang. Ashley and I spent a bunch of time in early February doing pre-trip logistics work for this climb, and thought we were all set. However, in the last few days we learned we'd been mis-informed about the climbing rules and regulations about this peak (and nearly all peaks in Nepal). To do the climb legally we'd need a sherpa-guide, which would change the whole dynamic of the trip, necessitate a different climbing style (we were planning on short-roping the technical sections of the climb -- with a guide we'd wind up following fixed lines), and therefore also necessitate a full team of porters to carry the additional gear we'd need. After thinking about this option for about half-a-second, we decided to ditch the summit attempt. We're still heading up the Langtang Valley with a tent, limited snow gear, and plans to climb a couple of the smaller peaks around Kyangyin, but there will be no steep-and-snowy summits for us--this time.

Rabbit sent a bag of Stumptown Coffee over with Austin and Beth. We are forever in her debt :)

There is a lot of exciting and semi-scary strife in southern Nepal right now, and it's threatening to spread northward. We don't anticipate we'll be affected too much for the rest of our time here, but are keeping a keen eye on the news.

We're heading out eaaarly tomorrow morning, and putting off packing until the power runs out. Austin and Ashley are singing Flight of the Conchords songs to Beth and American volunteer Alex, while British volunteer Emma is writing in her journal, British volunteer Alex is laughing and I am desperately finish this blabber-blog before the power disappears.

We'll be back in KTM from Langtang between March 21st and 23rd. Soon after our return we'll be moving our stuff to our new April digs: a fifth-story apartment in Thamel in a building owned and managed by Sanu Kaji's (of FoST) family. More volunteering, exploring and kayaking will fill our time through the end of April.

All the Pieces

A few mornings back I was pleased to see a familiar face walk into the FoST workshop, where I was in the midst of building a prototype solar panel cooker.

Maya Gurung, a super progressive hotel owner who I interviewed during our trek around Annapurna Circuit, was visiting with her son. She remembered my sales pitch for FoST from her hotel in Yak Kharka, and stopped in to talk with Sanu for a bit after seeing the small FoST sign on the main street in Galkophaka the day prior. She had told me during the interview that she'd experimented with briquette making on her own in the past, but was very interested in the process and press offered by FoST, especially for use by her son, a lanky 20-year old with cerebral palsey.

Over the next hour, Sanu coached Maya's son through the processes of creating paper pulp, cutting up leaves and grasses, mixing them into a slurry of other ingredients, and pressing the slurry into briquettes. He picked everything up pretty quickly and had a huge grin on his face the whole time. He understood the concept of money, and got extra excited about the products he was creating when he learned each one was worth a few rupees.

He had so much fun that the next day he convinced his mom to bring him back so he could make a few more..

Watching all this made everything FoST stands for really fall into place for me. Here in the middle of a fairly chaotic and undeveloped nation was a mentally challenged man having a blast turning readily available waste materials into an uber-economical cooking fuel that his mom could use in her hotels. So much good on so many levels..

Whirlwind of Rhythm

Happy New Year!

A few updates just before the power goes out again:

- New Years Eve was a hoot: we helped demonstrate FoST briquettes and stoves at a table in the middle of Thamel until dusk, and then had a delicious traditional Newari dinner with solar-distilled whiskey at Sanu's house. Too tired to party, we Skyped our parents and passed out just after our clock struck 12.

- Load shedding (code for brown-out periods) increased to 12 hours per day throughout Nepal. Most days (but not all) we have power from 8am-2pm, and 8pm-2am.

- Skylark English School, attended by most of the kids from Papa's House, had a 'Sports Day' on Saturday to launch a 2-week winter vacation. Held at the National Police Academy, around 350 kids ranging from 4-17 years old displayed insanely disciplined choreographed drills and marches, and duked it out in 40 separate events, including 'Eat the Banana', 'Put the Shoe', 'Dress the Princess', and classics such as 'Wheelbarrow Race', '400m Relay', and '100m Dash'. Despite the fact that the event took ALLL day long, it was great fun to see so many active kids and their supportive parents.

- Although Ashley wasn't able to take the 2-week course at the Ayurvedic clinic (they couldn't start until the beginning of Feb), she found a doctor at the Ayurvedic hospital downtown who invited her to shadow him for the next month. Today was day #1, and she had a great time.

- Austin bought his plane tix to Nepal, and will be here March 6 - 25 .. longer and earlier than we were expecting! Since he'll be here almost twenty days, we'll most likely try to put together a self-support climbing trip in either Langtang (north of Kathmandu) or out of the Annapurna Base Camp.. I'm looking forward to attempting a peak (even a relatively small one) while we're in the Himalayas.

- Both of these factors affect our intended schedule; we're now planning to spend most of February installing energy-efficient infrastructure and helping out at the home for rescued girls in Narti (near Lamahi, in the Dang District, S-SW Nepal). I'll also go for there for a few days in the next week or two to do some preliminary research. April will be primarily spent in and around Trisuli Bazaar, although that could definitely change.

- Otherwise I've been spending my days developing concepts at FoST and working on a few other projects. We're definitely getting into a comfortable pattern, and developing some great friendships here.

Annapurna Journals

We've been back in Kathmandu for nearly a week now (time flies!!) and we've been busy busy busy!

Amongst other things, I've been preparing the hundreds of photos I took on the trek and cherry-picking the best ones to post in the Gallery section of nepal.ethanfsmith.com. In lieu of writing a lot about the experience here, I decided to try writing a photo-journal on this trip, and wrote captions for just about every photo while we were on the trail. At the moment the photos haven't all been uploaded, but you can explore our first few days here.

Coming back into the chaos that is Kathmandu was surprisingly pain-free after our 19 fantastic days on the trail and an uber-relaxing 18 hours in Pokhara. After unpacking a bit at the boy's home and recovering from an exceptionally long bus ride, we celebrated Christmas eve by grabbing yummy coffee, cinnamon rolls, and chocolate croissants in Thamel (Kathmandu's touristy district -- and home to many yummy bakeries, including our favorite: The Pumpernickle Bakery), and then splitting up for a few hours to do a little Christmas shopping for eachother. We even bought knit stockings ahead of time so Santa would have something to fill :)

This was our first Christmas away from our families, and we are very thankful that we had the opportunity to have multiple video-conferences with loved ones during their holiday festivities and our own. Still -- we missed being around friends, family, and egg nog, and made us excited to be around for the holidaze next year...

Only 5% of Nepalese are Christian, and in Kathmandu Christmas is acknowledged, but not heavily celebrated. At Papa's House, on the other hand, Christmas is a much anticipated event, and the boys here were treated to presents galore under a small tree (at 5am no less), hot chocolate, Christmas movies, and a very festive spirit. The star of this Christmas was a new puppy, a very cute, very soft, very small female mutt the boys decided to name Snowball (picture to come). While we (and the other volunteers) were a bit dubious of this idea at first, Snowball is acclimating to this place very well, and has been under the very good care of Vinod, the 20-something Nepali man-cub who looks after the boys here.

In the days since, Ashley has been researching and visiting a nearby Ayurvedic clinic that she hopes to take a comprehensive course from, and has spent a few days playing with the babies at a government-sponsored orphanage here in Kathmandu (I visited for a bit today -- the babies are so responsive to any attention that is given them that even spending a few hours there was a very rewarding experience).

Meanwhile, I've been compiling photos, piecing together data from research I did on the trek for a pending report, conceptualizing new ideas with Sanu at FoST, and laying the groundwork for the next four months we have to play with here in Nepal (where time is already flying).

We'll reside primarily in Kathmandu for at least the next few weeks while I work closely with FoST and Ashley (hopefully) takes courses at the Ayurvedic clinic. Then we're off to Narti and Trisuli Bazaar to implement FoST products, help with basic health care, and teach what we can about basic resource conservation.

To the Hills

It became apparent during the our first few days in Kathmandu that Ashley and I needed to escape to the hills sooner than later in order to get a true taste of rural Nepal. While our initial plan was to jump straight into work here, we found ourselves a bit stuck while trying to define and schedule our time over the next five months. The problem? We're hoping to accomplish a myriad of things in rural Nepal, but have no context to base our direction or decisions on. Several people recommended we go on a trek (tourist-speak for 'a long walk') to experience another of the culture here. We first planned on a short week-long self-supported trip in the mountains of Langtang, to the north of Kathmandu, leaving November 29. However, when another volunteer at Papa's House, Krish, invited us to come with him on a guided trip around the Annapurna Circuit, we quickly decided we didn't have any good reasons to say "no." We were planning on doing this trek in the spring because December is a bit past the recommended season for this route, but since weather here has been holding a pretty nice sunny pattern, we all figured (guide service included) that we would be good to go.

The guide service we're working with, Alps in Nepal, has a deal with NOH, in which 10% of the fees from volunteers who trek with the service go back to NOH. After spending a bit of time talking them down to an all-inclusive fee we could all chew on, we were told a realistic start-date for this 20-day trip wouldn't be until the following Wednesday, December 3. As we soon found, we'd need every one of those extra days in Kathmandu in order to learn some basic Nepali, visit a few of the tourist areas (finally!), replicate our documents, extend our visas, replace my walk-around lens (the aperture stopped working intermittantly .. probably due to some Thai & Nepali grit), buy snacks for the trail, do laundry, track down some Nepali kayakers who will be here in the spring, and have a few more meetings with Sanu at FoST. The horrible traffic, short days, and unpredictable power outages in this city make errands take a LONG time, and getting around is a bit draining.

We miraculously managed to finish up all of our tasks tonight, and are all packed and ready for our 6 AM departure towards the west.

Being a client on such a straight-forward hike is really strange for me .. I have almost always been a guide or independent in similar situations .. and I'm really weirded out by the porter-factor. Granted, we're going to be lodged and fed in small villages every night of this journey, so we don't need tents or cooking equipment, and we're not doing any climbing, so we don't need any technical equipment, but these guys are still going to be hauling our gear from straps on their foreheads as we, the clients, bobble merrily along with nary a care in the world on our 'holiday.' Perhaps even weirder than the porter-factor: I don't need to worry about ANY logistics.. we all just follow directions and relax. While I feel like all this service takes away from the adventure a bit, it's also the established norm on the Annapurna Circuit, so by partaking in the guide/porter option we're actually getting the 'whole' experience?? Either way, I'm stoked on our guide, Peter, and am really excited to get out of the city for a while.

I'll still be doing some volunteer work while trekking, and had good conversations with Sanu the past few days about things I can start sketching, learning, and sharing while on this mini-adventure. At all of our stops, I'll be interviewing cooks and lodge-owners about the alternative technologies they use to cook food, heat water, purify water, deal with solid waste, etc.. in order find out how some of these technologies can be improved. We're packing a few kgs of Sanu's briquttes to demonstrate where appropriate, and have a host of leaflets, videos (believe it or not, many of these remote lodges have TVs hooked up to solar-panel-powered batteries), and price lists we'll use to try and hawk Sanu's wares. In addition, I'll be experimenting with new solar-cooker forms, and sketching a bunch of ideas that I'll have the chance to build at FoST's shop in Kathmandu upon our return. I'm looking forward to this side project, and think this location will be a great place to learn and think.

A grand schedule for our time in Nepal finally began to emerge from the woodwork today, as Ashley, Sanu, and I sat down in front of a calendar and projected our goals forward. For us, this whole trip has been a study in creating our own multi-faceted adventure, and we're finally at a point where we have enough knowledge and context to start pinpointing some specific projects and needs.

At the moment, we're looking at spending another few weeks in Kathmandu upon our return, during which time I'll be primarily working with Sanu on refining existing designs and (hopefully) creating a few new ones, and Ashley hopes to take a two-week course in Ayurvedic healing. In late January through early March, we're looking at spending time in and around Trisuli Bazaar and Narti. In Trisuli, Ashley will shadow in a clinic, and I'll focus on introducing and implementing Sanu's briquette stoves to one of the schools NOH supports in a village that is a two hour hike from the main town. NOH helps support a home for rescued Kamlari girls in very-rural Narti (located in south-central Nepal), and we will help arrange a FoST workshop there, so that the rescued girls can learn to make briquettes from waste and produce a fantastic alternative to the wood currently used for cooking and boiling water.

Come mid-March our former housemate, Austin, is planning to visit us for two weeks, and we'll probably go off on a fun climb somewhere. We're saving April for project wrap-ups .. and who knows what else .. there are a lot of cool potentials in the pipeline.

We won't have any computer or internet access while we're on the Annapurna Circuit, so wish us the best, and check back just before Christmas to see pictures and read stories.. We should be back in Kathmandu December 23.

Cheers!