You Do the Hokey-Pokhara and Turn Yourself Around: That’s What It’s All About

Beautiful Lake Fewa from Lakeside, Pokhara

We woke up at 545, just like the good ol’ days of Kopan, and hurried ourselves to a long line of tourist buses ready to leave for Pokhara. Accompanying us were two Dharma Friends: Joel, a Singaporean our age, and Benedikt, a German Med student and all around tubular dude. We soon found out that Sarah, our Finnish friend was on the bus behind us. It took about 7 hours of winding mountain paths through jungle canopy and nearly tipping into bottomless gorges, but our steady ride finally came to a close in the beautiful city of Pokhara.

We’ve been staying in “Lakeside” beside Lake Fewa, and what a lake it is! Although the monsoon clouds are slowly drifting away, we did manage to catch a couple glimpses of some of the tallest peaks in the world, and there are sure to be many more peeks of peaks soon. Pokhara feels like some small beach town in Central America: the water makes everything cool, the streets are wide and quiet, and the people are incredibly friendly. The only big difference is that we’re surrounded by foothills and the Himalayas are within reach to the north. Such a relief from the congested crazy of Kathmandu.

The first full day in Pokhara, we chose to hop in two canoes (now joined by Sarah’s Swede friend Elenore), and were dropped off at the bottom of a tall jungle hill. Our first real taste of climbing up an elevation, a couple of hours later we were standing at one of the World Peace Pagodas and looking out over the whole lake and valley. After numerous clock-wise laps around the stupa, we head down the other side of the hill to the famous Devi’s (Davi’s? Davis? It was unclear) Falls. After hanging around for a moment, we hitchhiked on a passing tractor back towards Lakeside. Our next day we spent lounging about on the lake with our friends (minus Joel but plus Elenore’s brother Isaac, pronounced E-Sak ), and fortunately got into the dock just before a monsoon erupted. Our friends were all leaving the next day so we hit up the Busy Bee and enjoyed a couple adult beverages and some live music. It was a sad goodbye but as we learned in the monastery all things are impermanent, plus, we happened to run into another Dharma friend the next day.

Tomorrow we are planning to head out on our first trek; we’re being courageous and designing our own route through dozens of small villages, many of which rarely see two white faces. We’ll be staying in our tent and cooking over our stove unless some Nepali family decides to take us in. With a compass and a map as our only guides, there is guaranteed adventure ahead. It may be 4-8 days until we have email again so wish us well and we’ll tell you all about it soon.  

Hitching a ride on a tractor after a long hike

Max heroically captaining a vessel on the lake

Eli and Max's new friends (Left to Right: Isaac, Elenore, Sarah, and Benedikt)

Finding peace at the Peace Pagoda

Om on the Range: The Dharma Dudes and Their Little Lama Mama

After over a week amid the chaos, noise, and flute-hawkers in Kathmandu, we were exceedingly ready for a different scene. The Acclimates, accompanied by almost 40 other spiritually-parched individuals from about 15 countries, found themselves up in the foothills 25 minutes north of the city at Kopan Monastery, surrounded by misty mountain tops and over 300 Buddhist monks.

Kopan is a world-famous monastery that studies and teaches Gelug-pa Tibetan Buddhism and was featured in the film “Little Buddha,” about searching for the reincarnation of a Lama. There was a lot of really interesting, soothing, and mind-blowing experiences (do yourself a favor and google seach Lama Relics: we saw hundreds of these in glass cases, all from one man), too many to explain here, but most importantly, we enjoyed ourselves immensely and learned a great deal.

During our ten-day stay, we enjoyed a rigorous schedule, including half-day silence until after Lunch:

5:45 Wake up

6:00 Morning Tea

6:30 Meditation

7:30 Breakfast

9:15 Morning Lessons

11:30 Lunch

2:00 Discussion Groups

3:30 Afternoon Lessons

5:00 Tea

6:00 Meditation

6:45 Dinner

7:45 Final Q and A, then Meditation

9:15 or so Bed Time

And that was only for the first week, after that we started a 2 day silent retreat that dropped the lessons. Although some of the main tenets of Buddhism do not exactly correlate with the Acclimates’ worldviews, there is so much good in the teachings that the course did mange to restore some faith in organized religion. We won’t bother everyone with the extensive wisdom we received during hours (and hours) of lessons, but if anyone has any questions about the Dharma, Karma, or our homeboy Shakyamuni, feel free to ask.

Our teacher Ani Karin:

http://www.talkingbuddhism.com/info.php?bio=19

Our teacher Losang Sherab (on Facebook!)

http://www.facebook.com/people/Losang-Sherab-Sherpa/707716733

Maybe the best part of the course was the great group of people we met. After spending over a week discussing and debating the technical details and merits of Buddhist theory, everyone let their hair down in Thamel last night when 25 of us met for a raucous, vow-shattering, four hour dinner. It was an evening filled with the quenching of prolonged beer-thirst, hand-rolled cigarettes, and incredible good vibrations among the Dharma Friends.

Now the plan is to meet up with a couple Buddha-Buds and grab a bus tomorrow and head out to Pokhara; the trekking capital of Nepal.

off to new things

Today we leave for the Kopan Buddhist Monastery. We are doing a beginners retreat that will last for 10 days. We might not have access to the internet during that time so don't expect us to update the blog, but we will tell you all about it when we are done. Until next time...

These are pictures of the two Durbar Squares and from the Boddahnath Stupa.

Visas and Vishnus

So we've been really busy in the last few days; exploring new parts of Kathmandu, learning how to circumvent the all-too-polite scam artists, discovering the Samosa Queen and her tasty, flaky delicacies. Thus far, the theme of the trip has been striding confidently into unknown territory; permitting our sharp wits and destiny to guide us, and so far so good.

Here's a little history for everyone: in 1482 the Kathmandu Valley was split into three kingdoms: Kathmandu, Patan, and Bhaktapur. Since unification, the best way to see evidence of the former kingdoms is from the Durbar (or Palace) Squares, which are filled with beautiful (and often enormous) temples, shrines,  and palaces. These buildings look like something straight out of Indiana Jones, like there should be armies of undead warriors running through the streets or something.

So far we've walked to the Patan and Kathmandu Durbar Squares, both with incredible and unique Newari architecture. We saw the building that houses the Kwari Devi, a living goddess who is a prepubescent girl that waves from her window and rides a yellow chariot around the city only 6 times a year. After puberty starts, she gets kicked back into mortality, and a new Devi is sought after. In Patan we walked through a fantastic museum that explained much about Hindi and Buddhist art from the last 1000+ years, accompanied by magnificent examples. We learned about some of the gods, but there are 33 million of them so....

We're having dinner with our friend from the flight over, Prakriti, and her family tonight, so we've got to go grab them a gift. Later!

I'm with Stupa

After collapsing at 4:30 pm our first day in Nepal and not rising until about 6:30 the next morning, the Acclimates were refreshed and ready to jump fully into wonderous Kathmandu. We took off into the city, kind of knowing which direction we should head in order to reach Swayambu (aka the Monkey Temple). Grabbing a quick breakfast off the street of some sort of fried dough (pretty excellent), we found the temple after about a half hour of wandering.

Swayambu is incredible both because of its age (something like 1400 years old), and its views that span the whole Kathmandu Valley. Climbing the Pilgrim stone staircase, dozens of monkeys sprouted up, and soon enormous simian gangs were running wildly about, generally with good-natured fun, but sometimes growing violent against another monkey pack or a pack of wild dogs. We spent a few hours walking about, looking at the homes that are built into the hill yards away from the shrines, talking with (excitable) locals, and receiving Tikas from an old, mostly-toothless woman.

Leaving the temple, we stopped in a small restaurant for some Momos (dumplings filled with mystery meat, but good nonetheless) and we met a young Brahmin named Daniel (pictured below), who shared a lot with us and gave us his number if we wanted to hang out this week (he’s in college learning to be a manager at a tourism agency). Really cool guy.
On our way home, we stopped in an art school and received lessons on Buddhist art from two young students and their master who taught us how different types of paintings are used in meditation. Although we had to weasel our way out of the school without buying anything, it was well worth our time.
That evening, we got our first taste of the Nepali nightlife: it was crazy. All the streets light up, and the glow from the motorcycles headlamps gives everything a little bit of an eerie, night-at-the-carnival type of feel. Avoiding the men offering us hashish and the “Teen Age Shower Shows,” we climbed up into a nice restaurant and enjoyed a fantastic meal before carrying our battered bodies back up to our hotel room.
Things are going great here, we’re learning a lot quickly, and we just received our packet of the 130 organic farms that we might possibly spend next month on, so everything is progressing and accelerating nicely. Much love to our families and friends, until next time.

Namaste from Kathmandu

Ok everyone, we’re officially in Kathmandu after a marathon of flights spanning 3 days and as many continents. We spent 10 hours in the Delhi airport, which wasn’t as bad as one might imagine, largely due to the serendipitous companionship of two fellow travelers: Prakriti, a very sweet young woman who attends the University of Chicago and is a native Nepali, and Allen, a self-described “red-neck” who spent two of the last three years as a military contractor in Iraq for the US government and is in Nepal to find his fiancé and bring her back to the states to get hitched. Needless to say, we had much to talk about, and we’re both now sure that we will find wonderful wives during the next couple months (but for real, the people here are astonishingly beautiful).

Anyways, we emerge from the airport in Kathmandu with freshly stamped 3 month visas in our pockets, and there’s a man standing with “JOHN WISE” written on a sign, ready to sweep us up and take us to our hotel. Let me be clear here: Kathmandu is a wild place. The drive to our hotel took about 20 minutes, but in that time we watched a monkey scale a brick building, smelled the unmistakable odor of burning garbage, and heard the symphony of horns that fills all the streets. Eli and I couldn’t even speak, the shock was so intense; it was clear for the first that we were very very far from home.

It might sound grimy and even dangerous, but let me assure everyone that so far, the people have been exceedingly kind and interested to talk with us, and the country obviously has a lot to share. Our hotel is awesome, our first taste of buffalo was delicious, and we’re raring to get some much-needed rest and plunge into this great place.

Thanks for all the support thus far, we promise there will be more pictures soon.

Bracing for Takeoff

      Hi all! Right now Max and I are mere hours away from being on an Air India flight out of Ohare.  We fly to Berlin and then to Dheli for what is sure to be and interesting 10 hour layover. After the Dheli airport (and 36 hours of travel) we arrive at our destination of Kathmandu at 9 am. It will be a brand new day in a brand new place.      

      The purpose of this blog is to keep our friends and family up to date on our adventures. We might not always be able to update this blog due to a variety of reasons but bear with us and check up on us periodically. Thanks. You will here more from us soon.