Kathmandu, Nepal

Traveling through Eastern China, we felt as though we were usually amongst the locals, or other Chinese tourists. There weren’t many westerners or English speakers outside of the Hostels and we had to heavily rely on charades, pictionary and showing images of food and Chinese characters on our phone. When we entered Kathmandu all of a sudden we were surrounded by white folks and people were speaking English! After the initial shock we were super excited to shop at grocery stores full of new kinds of recognizable foods. We celebrated making it safely through Tibet’s many military checkpoints by having some Tibetan Hot Beer called Tungba, which is really served hot and thick with millet grains.

Kathmandu is a bustling town, with the main tourist area completely over run by peace signs and other hippie apparel. It was pretty funny at first to hear everyone saying ‘namaste’ as a greeting which we learned actually translates to ‘hello’ in Nepalese. In the search to replace Kevin’s broken engagement band, we picked up a matching pair, making sure Kevin’s had the mandatory engraved peace sign.

We didn’t have much in the way of plans for Nepal or India, so we decided to hold off most of the site seeing in Kathmandu and instead spend some time on the computer. We did however take a break to visit the KEEP center (Kathmandu Environmental Education Project) to learn about porter conditions on the popular Mt. Everest trek. We watched a very compelling BBC documentary called “Bearing the Burden” that explains how badly the porters are treated and the great risks they take by taking on such dangerous work. Fortunately, the KEEP center outlines the many ways a conscious climber can make all the difference.

To officially feel like we were in Nepal, we joined a meditation group at the Om Family retreat for guided meditation. This was a bit different than the meditation class we had in Laos in that it involved first chanting with “oooooommm” while meditating and then lying on your back and meditating. Kevin learned the hard way that you are NOT supposed to fully shut your eyes when performing this style of meditation… zzzzzz.