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Published: April 27th 2017
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Everest
From the cockpit of the Yeti Airlines plane. Top of the World to the River of Death
We started the day at 6:30 a.m. on a one hour flight over the Himalayas turning at Everest for a full on look, from both our seats and the cockpit, at the roof of the world. I doubt I will ever forget not only Everest, but the terrain and mountains that lead up to it, perhaps the most daunting square miles on the face of the earth. We enjoyed a glass of champaign on the way back to toast our adventure--those of you reading closely realize we had champaign way too early in the day. According to our host, we must have good Karma because the mountains allowed us to see them this morning.
We then went to Bhaktapur, called the "City of the Devotees" for its palaces, temples, statues and squares devoted to the Hindu gods. While there we watched a potter throw a pot on a giant, human-powered wheel and wandered streets filled with shops and people. After lunch we visited one of the more holy sites, Pashupatinath on the holy Bahmati River where, at the large Hindu Temple, families bring their dead for open air cremation.
We watched a family ritually wash a corpse, and then the oldest son set fire to the pyre sending the soul on its journey. The entire ceremony was made even more poignant as our guide, Adup, told us about having performed the same rite for his mother recently. While it may seem somewhat odd to us of the West, to see a family attend to the disposal of remains of a life on earth, so, as Adup put it, 'you face the truth that the person is gone'. For me it was a moment of grace.
Before dinner this evening we enjoyed a lecture by Shailee Basnet, the leader of the Seven Summits Women group. It is a group of ordinary women from Nepal--one ran away from home to avoid an arranged marriage, another was branded by her grandmother as too ugly to get married--who took on climbing Everest. Not only did all of their team make it, much to the surprise of many, they have since taken on the tallest peaks in each continent. The story of training for and completing the climb was great, but even more inspirational is the work she continues to do
with www.sevensummitswomen.org. We leave Kathmandu tomorrow for the jungle and I look forward to dealing with fewer people.
Yes, the sheer number of people in Kathmandu can be overwhelming. The streets are crowded with people, buses, trucks, and motorbikes. As we walked in Bhaktapur we saw sites covered with tarps (labeled "US AID A Gift from the American People"--our foreign aid is making us many life long friends) where people still lived some two years after the earthquake had destroyed their homes. Merchants and street sellers approaching us constantly. And yet the people do not press on you. By that I mean despite the jammed streets, horns are not blaring and drivers are not engaging in 'road rage.' In fact, we watched from our bus as two motorcyclists laughed when they came wheel to wheel facing each other in the middle of six and a half lanes of traffic. People pause to place hands together and greet you, 'namaste' they say as you pass. In the midst of the seeming chaos, theirs is a sense of, well, karma. The belief that things will be as they will be and we should just enjoy being along for the
ride.
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