Fly like an eagle

In the hall of the mountain king
Kathmandu


I took the famous Mountain Flight - the flight that goes parallel to the Himalayan giants, and makes a turn at Ama Dablam just before Everest, then doubles back the same way. But I don't remember a lot of it. Bad timing meant I was trapped till about 1.30 am at an event that shall remain nameless here. Then I had to get up at 4.30 am to be at the airport at 5.30 for a 6.00 am flight that didn't leave till 7.am.

I suppose I shouldn't complain...to fly past Gauri Shankar, Lhotse, Cho Oyu, Shishapangma, and the other granite titans is no small thing. I just wish I had been awake.

There are now at least four airlines offering the same route for the Mountain Flight, all with names from mythology and legend - such as Yeti Air, Buddha Air, Agni Air and Sita Air. I was on Yeti Air.

Every passenger gets a (brief) turn in the cockpit looking over the pilot's shoulder, and mine came fairly early in the flight - which meant that I got the contrast of the cloud ocean below with the ice castles looming ahead. Not a bad thing to see first thing in the morning. Mountain Flight Pilot would be a pretty cool occupation.

Some suggestions for the Mountain Flight: -They advertise that everyone gets a window seat - true enough. But all window seats are NOT created equal. Since it's a 15-seater plane, several seats are located directly over the propeller or wing. I got a propeller seat. It did give good scale to my photos.


-As it turned out, it would have been cool to sit way in the back. Reason: Everyone gets a turn in the cockpit as I mentioned, but the penultimate one is the best. That is, as you get close to Everest, there are just a few minutes in which Everest is straight ahead before they make the double-back U turn. THAT is the best time to be in the cockpit. I saw it over someone's shoulder.


-The Mountain Flight is now $120 (just 2 years ago, it was only $75). If you are fortunate enough to be flying to Lukla or another location in Everest Region, you will see quite a few of the same mountains. In that case, the Mountain Flight might be not quite redundant, but less necessary. However, if you have a very limited time in Nepal, or if you are not well enough to physically get closer to the big mountains, it's a must-do. -If you're going alone, force another hapless passenger to snap your photo getting on-off the plane or posing with it (as above). Whenever I get off an STOL plane onto a runway, I feel like a character in a 1940s black and white drama. Or maybe Clutch Cargo.

-Oh yeah, and it most definitely does NOT fly right by Everest as depicted in the (heavily Photoshopped) advertisements! (One friend was disappointed to find it didn't do donut-rings round Everest.)

-And go to bed early! Especially at the current prices, you don't want to be half asleep (as I was).

Dance Archaeology

More ancient obscure art forms pursued
Kathmandu

Finally, after very patient and gentle persistence from the tireless Raju Sakya, I have resumed my Saturday morning lessons in the Newar Buddhist Charya Nritya. (I would say Nritya Dance, but that's redundant. Nritya means "dance.")

I've mentioned it a few times before, and like a lot of my external life so far it's been stop and start. But all those years of Bharatanatyam has given me a solid foundation for Charya - it's amazing how much of the classical dance stuff remains hard-wired after years of slackerdom.

Raju is a senior student of Prajwalratna Bajracharya, who now lives in Portland, Oregon USA and runs Nepal Dance Mandala. To my knowledge, he's the only Nepali teaching Charya abroad. There are a handful of non-Nepalis that teach Charya in their own countries, like
Lianne Takeuchi Hunt, Helen Appell, and Shahrazad.

Not that Charya is by any means a simple dance, but compared to the aerobic demands of Bharatanatyam, so far it's lower-impact. It's certainly more lasya (graceful and lyrical) than tandava (percussive and forceful).

With its Tribhangi (three-bends) posture, Charya most closely resembles Odissi dance, which, if I had had my druthers, is probably what I would have learned long ago. But Odissi teachers are hard to find in the American heartland, outside of perhaps California.


Space: the final frontier
I had planned on having dance class on one of the rooftop terraces of my guest house, since the weather is delightful during the days now. But Raju arrived in my small room and declared the space sufficient for dance. Westerners are quite spoiled in terms of studio space, not to mention facilities like wooden floors, wall mirrors and sound systems. Asian dancers usually manage to learn without any of these. At one point we were meant to make a complete oval around and come back to "first position;" we just kind of had to imagine it (dancing into the wall). And there is not room for us to dance simultaneously.

There are a number of suitable spaces (like yoga studios) in town, but they naturally all want a fee to rent for an hour or so - which doubles my class fee. Probably it's best to go ahead and rent a flat with an extra room, install a wall mirror and get on with it.

Now, to hunt for a flat (Nepali for "apartment"). Flat-hunting is always a drag, but winter should be a good time to look. With the increased load-shedding (power cuts), though, I don't want to be too far out of "town" or in too deserted an area. There's just too much darkness (in several ways) these days. If you are within shouting distance, I am ideally looking for Lazimpat, Chhetrapati, Paknajol or Sorhakutte areas. Or something like that. I see no reason to pay more than 10,000 NRS at the most.

Baby steps
Every dance has its "first position;" in Charya, that is Suchi-Tribhangi. It looks like so many of the ancient Indian statues, with a graceful goddess poking one hip out.

The basic foot movements are Alida (to the right), Pratyalida (back to the left), Suchi (right foot back) and Vajrasuchi (left foot back), which together make a semi-circular closed step sequence called Mandala. The mudras (hand gestures) are similar to the south Indian ones, but much gentler. Raju is always telling me to relax my fingers (which took so long to get ramrod-straight!) and DROP my elbows (unhearin Bharatanatyam, 90 degree elbows is a cardinal rule!).

The first "item" I am learning, other than the Refuge Prayer (a sort of opening Mangalam), is "Sodasa Lasya" or Sixteen Graces. It's an opening item invoking the sixteen forms of offering, here personified as goddesses. For instance, flowers, incense, and song, rather than just be offered as such, are depicted as the Diamond Flower Devi, the Diamond Incense Devi and the Diamond Song Devi (Vajra Puspe Devi, Vajra Dhupe Devi, Vajra Gite Devi).

Why "Diamond" (Vajra or in Nepali pronunciation, Bajra)? In Vajrayana Buddhism diamond has a significance beyond being an expensive stone, or a girl's best friend. I'm still learning but I would imagine it involves being immutable, enduring, indestructible and pure - like the teachings of Vajrayana Buddhism.

Sorry I have no recent photos of Charya, let me poke around and find some.....! above is one I have lifted from Prajwal Sir's website.

Art of darkness

A load off
Kathmandu

It's really, really, really dark here a whole lot of the time. Not too cold, mind you...but dark.


"Load-shedding," the south Asian euphemism for scheduled power cuts, has taken hold now for more than 49 hours per week. A few months ago I heard it would be up to 65 hours a week before the winter's end.

I went to the Nepal Electric Authority website to try to download the "new schedule," which seems to change daily. At least, I thought, I can schedule stuff (showers, battery charging, computer work) around the blackouts.

Not only is the schedule posted on their English language website all in Nepali script, it's too small even for someone who can read Nepali (ie, me) to decipher. The rest of the web site (all in English) is devoted to explaining the plan for ending the load-shedding problem "within the next four years."

It's one thing to have scheduled power cuts. But they are not even following the schedule. For instance, today's posted cuts were from 11.30am-1.30 pm and then again in evening. At 2pm, the power was still on, only to cut off at 3pm instead.

Various people try to excuse or defend load-shedding in various ways:

--We depend on hydroelectricity and the rivers are frozen
(This was true in Ladakh, north India in the wintertime, too. But they made a schedule and stuck to it. Midnight to 6pm, every day. From 6pm, when it got really dark, we had power till midnight.)

When the rivers weren't frozen, back in September, it was

--The broken dam in Butwal (south Nepal/Bihar region) means there is less ability to produce power

But, before the dam disaster which displaced tens of thousands of people, other excuses were:

--One of the hydroelectric projects went down and it will take three years (THREE) to fix

or,

--We have greater hydroelectric potential, with all our rivers, than any country in the world; however we haven't been able to finish the incomplete dam projects. The money disappeared somewhere

or even,
--we actually DO produce lots of power...but we need cash so we sell the resultant power to India.

Probably elements of all the above are true. The only excuse I do not accept, at all, is:

--This is a developing country.

It WAS a developing country. No longer. In the past three years, things have gone backward. It's more like a de-volving country.

Of course, for me and many city-dwellers, the inconvenience extends only so far as inability to charge my cell phone, or take a hot shower, use a credit card, or get a cafe latte. What about those trying to run factories, restaurants and offices? Zero productivity.

I really feel for those trying to sew garments or manufacture toothpaste. The tailors with their foot-pedalled machines and the chai-wallahs with propane stoves are really better off.

Most nights I read myself to sleep with a flashlight. What about the schoolkids struggling to do homework in the early dark (around 4.30 pm here now)?

Sales of diesel and kerosene fuel should be booming; let's just pray that the Terai (Nepal's flat, dusty corridor to the Indian "mainland") stays open, since that's where all the fuels are imported from. The largest places (star hotels, for example, or major supermarkets) have diesel generated backup.

Crime has gone up in the city, as not only is there an earlier dusk these days, but the streets are completely dark a great deal of the night. Sometimes it seems the power is off more than it's actually on. People, especially women, are forced home earlier.

Of all the things Nepalis have rioted and shut down the city or valley over - raised transport fares, petrol prices, unsolved murders and unavailable school textbooks -why doesn't anyone get up in arms about this?

It would almost be better to be up in a remote village where no one relies on electricity, and everyone goes to bed at 8pm anyway.

PACKING LIST FOR KATHMANDU:
Glow-in-the-dark clothing
Flashlight with extra extra batteries
Candles and matches or lighter
Solar-powered charger
Head-lamp
Battery-powered everything
One of those deep-sea fish that have lamps growing out of their foreheads

Amaravati's Most Wanted

The new Flickr stats device shows that my all-time Most Viewed photo was not my portrait of the Dalai Lama of which I'm so proud, nor even the portrait of my Tamil Muslim friend Mumtaz in the slums of Chennai (though she has quite a following).

It's not even the news photo I snapped of a Tibetan monk being attacked in Kathmandu, which made MSNBC.

It's this photo of a young Telugu lady in Amaravati, Andhra Pradesh, sporting the traditional south Indian half-sari. So far, she's gotten 7,871 individual views (not including my own). I think the half-sari is also called "skirt and thavani" (thavani being the top part).

In these days of internet porn, there is something very comforting about this. As the jewelry salesman said in Breakfast at Tiffany's, "Do they still put the ring in the box of Crackerjacks? It gives one a feeling of...solidarity."

My friends Vijay and Teja still live in Amaravati, the town where the 2006 Kalachakra was performed by the Dalai Lama. Maybe they know the name of this young lady.

The occasion for her special dress was Pongal, the south Indian holiday that falls in mid-January. (It just happened to fall that year during the Kalachakra.) Otherwise, it's increasingly rare to see this elegant dress for young "unmarried" ladies.

Sister act

Three for the Road
Delhi, Agra, Kathmandu, Patan, Lukla & Namche

It's been nearly 2 weeks, and I am still getting over my sisters' (one older, one younger) 17-day visit. Not that they are at all difficult, and they are both experienced travelers, but it was such a whirlwind tour that we were all breathless by its end (and not from altitude).

We had only 15 days (excluding the travel days) but managed to get in, in two different countries: no less than seven UNESCO World Heritage Sites including Taj Mahal, Agra Fort, Qutb Minar, Humayan's Tomb, Swayambhunath, Patan Durbar Square, and Sagarmatha National Park; a ride on the Indian sleeper train; visits to some home-cookin' restaurants in Delhi and Patan; rides on public buses, cycle rickshaws and auto rickshaws; seeing an elephant walking down Aurobindo Marg; watching a Hindu-Buddhist puja at Swayambhu; shopping for pashminas; seeing the Himalayan snowcapped mountains from a plane no less than three times; a trek to Namche Bazaar Solu Khumbu Region, a five-hour wait at the Lukla airport, and getting stuck in an authentic Kathmandu traffic jam near Ason Tole.

Somewhere in there we got to visit a bit - but not nearly enough.

Here are just a few photos.
with Newar women for Kartik Ekadashi puja at Swayambhunath temple, Nov.2
The 15-seater Sita Air flight to Lukla from KTM was only delayed by one hour, which compared to the return, seemed like nothing.

On the street in Agra.

With our most excellent host and Delhi guide, Tak Noguchi, at Qutb Minar complex.

Sleeper train to Agra!