claireabraham — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 11:15:14 +0000

nepal in numbers

claireabraham — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 11:09:50 +0000

1 elementary school advertising “mind management”
5 whole cloves crunched, raw — an after-meal palate blaster offering from a lovely Nepali woman.
7 hours of siwtchbacks, terraced rice paddies, distant snow-covered peaks, red saris spread out to dry, feeling my spine crunch in the worst seat in the bus…
4 leeches attached themselves while i was wading in the waterfall pool of a secret stream 15 minutes outside of Pokhara, shown to me by a new friend. I was very brave and barely grossed out — Annapurna leech havens, here I come.
70 rupees to the US dollar. My hotel room is 200 rupees, a good espresso 50 Rs, and it’ll be 250 rupees for the local silversmith to spend the day teaching me how to make a ring.
1 olympic gold medalist and i chatted — amidst widespread fawning and admiration — at the Kathmandu Guest House (USA rowing 8s in Beijing).
8 signs along the main drag in Pokhara, where pashmina scarves abound: “Dear Humans, Touch me!”
9 entities share the roads – cars, noisy trucks, roaring motorcycles, pedestrians, cows, rickshaws, carts, adapted farm vehicles, throngs and throngs of bicycles. Somehow, incredibly, accidents are few.
44 letters in the Nepali alphabet. I’ve learned 8, and can remember 4. My record for spoken Nepali doesn’t fare much better — my vocabulary stretches to a dozen phrases on good days, but more often than not my mind draws a blank at opportune moments…

… moving into a period of bewilderment

claireabraham — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 17:28:32 +0000

My list of things to do is not quite under control.

The remaining days are rapidly diminishing but I barely notice their passing until sunset.

Feeling emotional. Unprepared. Vulnerable. Perhaps this is the beginning of forever.