Elephant Safari

Took a quick rafting/safari trip. Highlight was being on top of these beast and seeing them tear their own path through the jungle, uprooting trees and stomping fallen branches like toothpicks. We also got to play with the elephant baby below. Yeah...there aren't many safety rules, haha.

Tata Trucks

Villages in Nepal

Kids in Nepal

Kathmandu

So the highlight of KTM was seeing the the Kumari Devi, which is a young girl in Nepal with too much make-up, silly rules like not being able to touch the groung, and the status of "living goddess." We randomely walked in her courtyard exactly at the time when she came to her window to wave awkwardly at a handful of people. This rare event supposedly brings on-lookers good fortune. The Kumari may not be as lucky, since her trip to the US (first in Kumari history) will most likely lead to her being deemed mortal again. I know people think America is morally loose, but going from God to regular human over night is pretty drastic. Anyways, the Kumaris is one of the many bazaar things in Nepal that have made this trip interesting. Read more on the Kumari at:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-nepal-living-goddess,1,2344839.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true

http://www.visitnepal.com/nepal_information/kumari.php

Western Nepal

So these are random pictures from my new home in Western Nepal. One of my favorites is the picture of me and my colleague in a minibus from one city to another. They packed 28 people into a 10 passenger van. One lady passed out on my shoulder while her baby was entrusted to perfect strangers like ourselves. When the vans get so packed that not another body can fit, they put a dozen people on the roof. If you can survive the ride without falling off when the driver breaks for a cow sleeping on the highway the roof is actually a great seat because the breeze brings the temperature down to the double digits. Then again, when the monsoon suddenly breaks, you're in trouble!

CES Welcome

When we arrived in Western Nepal we were welcomed by CES (Creation of an Equitable Society), which is the NGO that we have come to help. The welcome included having red tika put on our foreheads and greating long lines of people who would introduce themselves, hand us flowers, and say "namaste" with a small bow. It was an overwhelming welcome, partly because of the generosity, and partly because my bare feet were burning on the sun scorched cement.

Welcome to Nepal

These pictures are from a cultural program that was put on for us in a Dalit village when we arrived. There was a lot of dancing, speech-making, eating, and saying "namaste" with overflowing handfuls of flowers. Highlights of the day included eating our first meal off of dishes made of leaves and being forced to dance Nepali style. Little did we know that a 1 hour television special was played on a local news channel about us! The next day we were stopped in the streets by people telling us how they watched us eat, dance, and make speeches for an hour.