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."

Columbia, South America

It is never a good thing to be told by a traveling friend that he is in a particular country and "you'd love it here". It gets me every time. So I hopped a plane to Columbia which has everything from beaches and rainforest to high mountains. I opted for two weeks down the middle of the country. No beaches.

Bogota from the Candelaria section.

Villa de leyva, a Colonial village.

So green! Between Popayan and San Augustin.

On my flight I sat next to a young man name of Camilo who is a journalist. He had been in the South Carolina city of Columbia with a group that had somehow won a trip to see Justin Beiber who my new friend does not speak too highly of. He did like the outlet stores and stocked up on Armani brand clothing while in the U.S. Camilo is from Cali and is well aware that he is lucky to have been raised in circumstances that allowed him a college education. His is really not an unusual family because even he has a sister who he says is a drama queen. Camilo is exceptional in that he can talk to anybody, and he does. Three plus hours passed quickly in his company. Clearly he had to have a magnet.

A sneak shot of Camilo waiting for luggage at the Bogota airport.

One strong piece of advise Camilo had for me other than to be smart on the streets of Bogota was not to go to the market in Sylvia by myself. Not to worry because I tagged on with a hostelmate, a fellow by the  name of Niko who is as easy with people as Camilo. Every Tuesday the indigenous Guambiano people come into the small mountain town of Sylvia to buy and sell their wares. Many of them still dress in their traditional blue capes, bowler hats and skirts, even the men. They are camera shy, I am told, but Niko made friends first and had no problem getting them to smile for the camera as well as for his teasing conversation. He made fast friends with Maria del Carmen and her mother who sell fruit at the market. We both sat on the steps by their table for quite a while and she sent us on further adventures to an agricultural school and the small village of Casique. Maria has one of my magents in Sylvia.

Maria del Carmen has the magnet.

Guambiano people in traditional dress.

While in Columbia I gave a magnet to a girl from Belgium who was staying at my hostel, Casa de Nelly, in San Augustin. Niko also has one he ways he will drop off somewhere in Equador.

Nepal

A friend sent a magnet with her friend who passed it to yet another friend who took it to Nepal. This is the response, once again passed from friend to friend to friend:

"We have been having another great adventure in both Bhutan and Nepal.  I gave one magnet to a Nepalese naturalist in the Chitwan national park.  He was very kind and helpful.  I took his picture and explained the project to him.  Yesterday We got into the river after our daybreak elephant ride and washed and got on the elephant in the water.  The elephant soaked us."

Cambodia and Vietnam

This post is a continuation of Tom and Brenda's trip to southeast Asia. See the previous post.

Cambodia is a country that has been devastated by wars. Brenda described it as being like a sick person still recovering but not yet up to full strength. So many of those who would now be considered the older generation were killed leaving few to go back to raising food, teaching, doctoring, and so the younger generation have to figure it out on their own. I've heard similar comments from others who visited that country.

 

An American who was working there as an economic developer and other investors bought an old pepper plantation with the idea that it could be a model for growth to rehabilitate the plantations. He also built a resort and this is where the magnet was left. What's interesting is that the brother of this developer left a magnet there a couple years earlier. Such a small world.

I think she got the magnet. One of them did.

On their first day in Vietnam, Brenda and Tom took a tour of the Mekong River. There they saw a floating market, all in the water. Vendors advertised their wares by hanging samples on poles and the people wore conical hats. They say vendors in Vietnam are very aggressive.

Traffic is very heavy in Saigon and when drivers get frustrated the aren't above going onto the sidewalks. It can be dangerous being a pedestrian. Another site visited was the Presidential Palace where there is on display a helicopter captured when they were landing on the roof, loading up and taking away as many people as possible at the end of the war as Saigon was lost, or gained, depending on viewpoint. In Vietnam they people don't talk about politics. At all. None.

The Imperial Palace

A magnet was left with the manager of the hotel where they stayed in Hue.

　

　

Thailand & Bhutan

This is another story about the travels of Brenda and Tom. They are described in a prior post about Austria, Germany, Slovakia and Italy. On this adventure, they toured southeast Asia. I will break this up into two posts to keep it short so stay tuned for Cambodia and Vietnam.

The first stop was in Bankok, Thailand. Brenda is a member of a worldwide network of musicians who have their names and locations in a catalog so they can find each other and play duets together. The violinist Brenda is playing with was the recipient of a magnet.



This is a bridge made of boats leading to a market.

Bhutan is a country that does not want to be 'westernized' and thus retains its own culture. People in Bhutan still wear their traditional dress. Men wear a short robe called a goh and women wear an ankle-lenght robe called a kiri. This is a Buddist country where there are a lot of little pagoda-like temples for people to stop and pray, sometimes in the middle of rice paddies. Prayer flags can be found in surprising places.

 



A visa is required for entry and a tourist must be accompanied by a guide each day. In the photo below, the guide in traditional men's dress is eating his lunch in the company of a hopeful couple of dogs.

The fellow on the left was their guide who was given a magnet.

 

Burundi and Rwanda

Judy, one of my neighbors, went to Burundi as part of the Friends Peace Team to work with the African Great Lakes Initiative (www.aglifpg.org), a group working with survivors of the genocides that took place in both Burundi and Rwanda in the 1990s.

In Mutaho, Burundi, land was donated to build a guesthouse for those who participate in the REMA gatherings. Rema is a word that means 'be comforted' which is appropriate for women who lost their husbands and family members in the genocide.  Judy spent most of her stay working with this project. She said she wanted to leave a magnet with someone with a refrigerator but nobody had one. The office had one but it was aluminum and the magnet wouldn't stick so she left it on a shelf in the kitchen.




Beginning the building process.

The REMA women.

Burundi drummers, always good entertainment!

Judy also attended HROC training in Kigali, Rwanda. Participants came from several African nations as well as the USA. HROC stands for Healing and Rebuilding Our Communities. They are striving to build a sustainable peace through trauma healing workshops and gatherings such as these.



Overlooking Kigali.

At the Peace Garden there were lots of these.

The magnet in Rwanda rides on the dash of the car owned by the the African co-ordinator for the HROC project, a man Judy has great respect for.