Nepal...again

Two North Carolina women, both super-hikers, joined a Groupon tour to Nepal. Their first stop was Katmandu where there was a Hindu celebration going on and marigolds were everywhere in the forms of small offerings, even decorating monuments. There they met with a student at the university who is the girlfriend of the son of someone back home...or something like that. One of the three magnets taken to Nepal was left with her. I don't know about the others.





This man is showing off his sarangi, a traditional instrument of Nepal.

Finally, the trek they all came for...up, up, up. The group hiked several hours a day past small settlements where houses were made of stacked stone, across rickety bridges over rushing waters, through lush greenery, to heights that surely must be right next door to heaven.

 

I don't know what it is about the food in other countries that makes one want to take photos of it. This dish is unusual in that it was served on the trek days away from any restaurant or commercial kitchen yet each day there were garnishes of beautifully carved vegetables.

 



Phillipines

Cedar and Ben took their two daughters to the Island of Negras Oriental to visit his father and wife and attend a family reunion. There they met an aunt and cousin who survived the big typhoon last autumn. I believe the aunt is still living under a tarp after her roof blew off. Three magnets were given to some favorable aunts at the gathering. One in particular is a midwife in Manila. Her husband is really into cock fighting and bought a couple of roosters to take home with him. Ben attended a fight but Cedar stayed home because women at cock fights are considered very bad luck.

Cedar is an artist who paints silk beautifully but she and Ben also have a pretty impressive organic gardening operation back in the United States. Naturally they noticed things that grew in the Philipines. And grow they did. Cedar's observation was that "people were doing permaculture naturally and stuff was growing everywhere."