Holi/Haircut!

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Getting my haircut is perhaps one of my least favorite things to do, nevermind having to do it in a strange country with limited vocab. I survived it though; in fact it wasn’t all that bad. Things were made much easier by the fact that the guy before me got pretty much what I wanted, so I just told the barber to give me the same. A haircut in Nepal is not just a haircut; it is a haircut, a head massage and a face shave. All this for a grand total of 55 rupees (like 70 cents). booya.

Yesterday was Holi. Holi is a Hindu holiday that has some sort of significance related to health, friendship or truth? It was explained to me, but when people start to recount Hindu mythic history to me my eyes glaze over. I suppose that is not much different than the way I handle Christian mythic history. Jesus and Mary lived on Noah’s Ark and it ran aground in present-day Missouri when Moses parted the red sea and that is why we have Mormons, right? I digress. Anyway, Holi basically involves people going around and pegging each other with water balloons and dousing each other with rungychungy (fun nepali word meaning multicolored) tikka powder. Our program house was under siege from a rebel group of neighborhood youths for about two hours. Wet colorful fun was had by all.

Going forward, next week we set out for our trek in the Himalayas. We will be doing a popular circuit route near Annapurna. I am very excited for this trek, aside from normal Himalayans vistas; we will be trekking through thick rhododendron forests, which are now in full bloom. So some more rungychungy fun will be had, hopefully less wet. We were supposed to go to the Chitwan National Reserve prior to our trek for elephant riding and rhino viewing, but ‘bandas’ aka strikes in that area are currently making travel impossible. We may go later in the semester if we are lucky. We’ll see!

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