More festivals

The 5 day Tihar festival started on Wednesday, with crows as messengers honoured, followed by garlanded (rather than usually much abused) dogs on Thursday as we set off for Janakpur. I love being at a bus station at dawn. Pink-grey sky; hustle and hassle as conductors try to fill their buses. Attempts to find a seat that was welded to the floor with the back attached to the seat and glass in the window proved impossible, so we departed precariously at 6am. Surprisingly chilly and damp as we crossed the huge Koshi barrage that supplies much of the electricity for the Terai. Endless stretches of sugar cane and rice paddy in shades from bright green to ripe yellow, with brown stalks where it had alreadybbeen harvested. Large herds of cattle and goats; the many rivers were alive with boys washing buffalo, while in the villages women were repairing their house walls with mud and cleaning for Laxmi puja.

After 6 bone shaking hours we arrived at the Rama Hotel in Janakpur, where the corridor to our room was also being cleaned, necessitating wading up to our ankles in soapy water to a depressingly brown room. But at least there was water. Janakpur is the city where Sita was born and later married to Ram (for details see the Ramayana), and is a Hindu pilgrimage city for Nepalis and Indians. We walked south to Kuwa village to the Janakpur Women’s Cooperative, where local women, previously confined to the home, are producing traditional Maithili art work; huge paintings of village life in vibrant colours, ceramics and textiles. The project is very successful, and many of the women have started their own small businesses since the project started 12 years ago. In the village, women were decorating the walls of their houses with mud relief work and painting them in traditional designs. Men were threshing rice with teams of cattle, children were playing among the rice stacks and buffaloes wallowed like hippos in the ponds.

On the morning of Tihar, huge banana plants were delivered to all the shops, erected, wrapped in brightly coloured paper and hung with decorations. We spent the day touring the ponds and temples with many gaudy statues of Ram and Sita, and visited the Big Monkey temple where a rhesus monkey is being fattened to emulate his 60kg father. As we returned to the hotel, mandalas in brightly coloured powder were being prepared outside all the shops and houses, and at dusk oil lamps were lit on every surface, from the roof tops to the streets. Beautiful. The effect was spoiled by the fireworks which are now also traditional and big on noise but not aesthetics. A combination of Christmas and bonfire night.

Saturday is the day cows are celebrated, and they were splendidly striped in shocking pink and turquoise; we watched a small girl dying her goat a vibrant green. We caught the last bus home, hoping to arrive before dark, but our progress was impeded by a puncture. Nepali buses do not carry spare wheels, so we limped backwards to the nearest town to get it repaired. We arrived home long after dark, our walk back from the bus stand lit by the Tihar lights of Biratnagar. Still no water. A promising brown trickle on Sunday morning was short-lived, so we use the outside tap like many of the other local people.

Friday (November 16), was Chhath, a huge festival in the Terai, celebrating sunset and sunrise the following morning. After work we followed the crowds to the river, where thousands of people were gathered along the banks. Every temple (there are several hundred) had its own appointed place, strung with garlands, coloured lights, tinsel and other decorations. Women in their best saris had brought huge baskets of puja offerings and tiny butter lamps were lit along the river and floated off at dusk. The women waded into the filthy water with their puja offerings and immersed themselves, while boys splashed in the shallows and emerged to let off more firecrackers. We followed the crowds back to where we had left our cycles, and eventually found our way home via a very dark, circuitous route. That seems to be the last of the festivals, and already there are strikes planned for Sunday, huge Maoist protest rallies, Madhesi bandhs called and inertia in Parliament.

We have just finished a 7 day ’training of trainers’ programme; no concession for weekends, so 12 days of real work without a break. Durga and Babaram attended a ‘master trainers’ course in Pokhara last month, and were promised a training package to deliver. This has not materialised. Durga had collected the powerpoint presentations given by the ‘experts’ and decided this should form the basis of the training. Forward planning is not a strength, but we did eventually meet to discuss the training the day before it started. I was in despair having seen the material; densely typed pages lifted from the internet, many inaccuracies and no practical application. My questions of “Do you understand this slide?” “Is it useful?” left with us with nothing after completing the exercise. Having decided what would be useful and relevant, we have had late nights preparing materials. Maybe next time we will start earlier………. We were working with 30 English and 30 secondary Science teachers from eastern Nepal – one female in each group, which is better than none. Sessions improved slowly during the week; I am trying to model what I think is good practice. I’m not sure Durga agrees. After a session with the scientists when we played at being molecules on the field, joined by goats and several stray children, I think he doubts my professional credentials. We started at 7am on the last morning so participants could catch heir buses home before an indefinite bandh started on Thursday. The week ended well, with many invitations for us to go and deliver training in the districts. Lalmani and his family prepared a feast (daal bhat) in the hostel at the end of the training. The ‘peons’ work so hard while training is on, carrying furniture and equipment, cycling to the photocopy shop, shopping for materials and looking after the hostel (a rather grim building with small 17 rooms and very basic sanitation). I’ve just finished summarising all the feedback forms and writing an evaluation, with many positive comments and a few lessons for next time.

Thursday was spent planning the next round of training; 60 primary teachers arrive on Sunday for 10 weeks, 25 for a week of Life Skills on Monday and 60 secondary teachers the following weekend for a month. Busy at last!

The cyclone in Bangladesh has resulted in the arrival of cool air; colleagues arrive at the training centre each morning wrapped in jackets and scarves. 28^oC at midday today, but our cold shower (water now restored) is beginning to feel unpleasantly cold in the evenings. We have a new ‘friend’ in the shape of Amita’s mother, who is currently staying upstairs. She sent us many delicious Tihar snacks last week, and is obviously fascinated by bideshi living. David found her in the kitchen yesterday and she was standing at the foot of the bed when I woke up this morning!

Winter

Back to work. Glorious weather – sunny and dry with gentle breezes; the mud has dried and turned to all pervasive dust. The rice is being harvested. Colleagues are wearing socks, shoes and long sleeved shirts in recognition of the winter season. It’s a cool 30 - 32oC during the day. I’ve planted lettuces and herbs in a box on the terrace; they have germinated in 3 days. We’ve started working ‘winter hours’, as it starts it get dark soon after 5pm. The neighbours are shinning up their coconut palms to thin them, reinforcing one of the messages from the security conference that Terai volunteers are in more danger from falling coconuts than Maoist insurgency. There was an earthquake in Kathmandu on Monday, causing the temporary evacuation of parliament and the VSO offices.
Over the Dashain holiday, Durga has purchased a motorbike, Govind has acquired an unfortunate moustache, Tulsi has new trainers. A huge marquee has been erected on the school field for an international medical conference that will start ke samaya pacchi. The goats are missing – victims of Dashain. One of our new rooms is being used for some training for technical instructors by some ‘experts’ from Kathmandu. I was invited to watch their presentations and give feedback on Tuesday, with topics ranging from jam making and snake bite to castration and family planning (not related). On Wednesday I cycled with David through the countryside to Bokhari primary school so ‘his’ teachers could demonstrate their new skills. A lovely day, squashed on benches with grubby children desperate for us to mark their books. Outside the newly painted classrooms, women harvested rice while boys (who should have been in school) watched the grazing buffalo. The medical conference did start on Thursday, causing the PM to leave crucial talks to try and resolve the political stalemate to come and open it. I had to weave my way through many check points and armed police to get to work. During the day, the police use one of our training rooms to rest, parking their guns, taking off belt, shoes and shirt before turning on the fans and lying down on the tables to sleep.
Laura, our friend from the programme office in Kathmandu arrived on Friday for the weekend, so we could start to plan VSO’s project on action research. David had managed to find a reasonably priced mattress in town that arrived several hours after she did. It was good to have a visitor at last, and we had an enjoyable time introducing her to the delights of Biratnagar (not too time consuming), as well as producing a substantial proposal for VSO.
At last Bhakta has returned from his holiday so the rest of the books have been moved into the ‘library’. On Monday I was faced with 50 locked shelves and over 200 apparently identical keys entwined in string. I managed to unlock 46 shelves by the end of the first day. With Anil’s help, I completed it by day 3, and have now finished most of the sorting, reshelving and labelling. My attempts to relegate out of date curriculum books, broken books, books with covers missing, books of no relevance to anyone or anything to the store have thwarted, but I did manage to sneak some Jehovah’s Witness pamphlets into the cardboard rubbish box. I have now bought a bin. After my days of physical exertion, Tulsi decided I was looking very thin, so organised a weigh in for all the staff, followed by him taking our blood pressure with an ancient sphygmomanometer he found in the science store.
On November 5, after a late meeting at the ETC to discuss the Training for Trainers of English and Science that does not start for another 10 days (is this progress?), we cycled home through the acrid smoke and alarming bangs of firecrackers – not a Guy Fawkes memorial, but some of the many loud and enthusiastic preparations for Tihar that starts on Friday. Noisy nights all week with ferocious firecrackers. We have also been without water for 2 days, but the shower at the pool is functional and our almost buckets full.

Holiday

Back to Biratnagar airport, where a furtive leap onto the baggage scales reveals either that they are grossly inaccurate or that we have lost more weight. From the traffic congested roads, department stores and supermarkets of Kathmandu, we ventured 10km south and arrived at the dusty, rusty bus stop of Bungamati, where we entered an almost mediaeval world. A walk up into the hills through terraced rice paddy and stands of bamboo gave a dramatic view of wooded hills leading up to the Himalaya. Small groups of women, bent double under huge loads of firewood and animal fodder trudged barefoot back to town. The many streets are lined with traditional three storey brick built Newari houses with intricately carved wooden balconies and windows, festooned with drying maize cobs. Ducks, chickens, dogs and cats with new families roamed everywhere. No motorised transport and few bicycles. Courtyards led into more courtyards lush with tropical plants, drying mats of chillies, small Hindu shrines, and children flying kites. The main square has a magnificent Sikhari temple, accessed through a huge gateway guarded by enormous stone lions, and leading down to narrow streets where women were sorting grain and making clay pots while many men were engaged in traditional wood carving. There were no outward signs of tourism – or indeed modern civilisation, inspite of the proximity to Kathmandu.
On Tuesday we arrived at the bus station at 7am for the “5 hour scenic journey by luxury coach” to Pokhara. The coach is comfortable, the weather is grim and the journey lasts for 11 hours. We spent the first hour stuck in Kathmandu traffic and the next 3 hours getting out of the valley around 3 horrendous accidents that had blocked the road and stopped the traffic. After more than 6 hours we reached the halfway (100km) lunch stop. The last kilometer was blocked by yet another accident, so the driver attempted a back route along a track that eventually petered out into a swamp and the bus got stuck under the branches of a huge tree. We walked the last 200 meters through steady rain and thick mud, while the driver extricated the bus from the swamp/tree. Spirits were revived by daal bhat, arrival of bus, clearance of road, lifting of cloud and stunning views of Annapurna and Machupuchhare as we eventually sped towards Pokhara. We arrived at our hotel as the sun was setting, with apricot tinged mountains reflected in Phewa Lake.
The next morning we set off for Naya Pul and the start of our trek, with a sprightly Dutti (the guide) and Baburam weighed down under our bag. We had to negotiate huge herds of woolly legged mountain sheep and goats with gaily painted horns being driven into Pokhara to be sold for Dashain (and slaughtered). We learn quickly that there is no flat in the Himalaya; a gentle ascent led to a steep descent to a valley with a bubbling milky white river over sparkling granite rocks, then up through forest dripping with epiphytes and singing with insects. Butterflies from tiny lilacs to velvet blues the size of bats fluttered in and out of the sunlight. After 5 hours we began the final punishing ascent up nearly 4000 stone ‘steps’ to Ulleri, where we were rewarded by stunning views of Annapurna South, a hot shower, large amounts of carbohydrate and a comfortable bed.
Day 2 was a steady uphill for nearly 5 hours, with the weather getting noticeably cooler and the forests becoming quiet and darker. We crossed many thundering rivers on stout iron bridges, different from the rather alarming bundles of twigs I remember from my last trek here. We overtake and are overtaken by many mule trains, transporting goods (mostly to feed tourists) up into the mountains. By the time we arrive at ‘The Sunny Hotel’ in Ghorepani, the sun has disappeared and it is cold. The rooms are named after international sports people. We are in ‘Tiger Woods’, with breathtaking views from Dhaulgiri to Annapurna. There is a warm dining room and extensive menu, with hot soup, lots of Tibetan bread and tasty yak cheese. The next day we climbed Poon Hill (3210m), avoiding those who rose at 4:30am to get to the summit for the sunrise. The view was just as good at 8am and it was silent and sunny. We were told that the next day would be downhill. It started with a rapid ascent of Gurung Hill before plunging into a deep valley and up the other side. This pattern continued for several exhausting hours until we arrived in Tadopani, shrouded in mist, with light rain falling. What seemed likely to be a very long afternoon and evening was enlivened by hot bowls of soup on a charcoal heated table surrounded by Tibetan carpets in which to wrap one’s legs and the lifting of the cloud to reveal the sunset over Machupuchhare. In the evening we were invited to a spontaneous singing and dancing Nepali Dashain party. The descent through the forest to the interesting Gurung village of Gharnruk was lovely, especially when we reached the butterfly and langur monkey belt. All the villages have erected huge bamboo swings for the children to play on over the holiday. Our last full day took us to Biretanthi; some very steep downhill was difficult for David’s collapsing knee, necessitating crossing the bamboo poles over a raging river and a landslide on his bottom.
Back in Pokhara, I had my first hot bath for 7 months, and we had a relaxing day by the lake, although disappointed by no mountain views, before flying back to Kathmandu. After a day in Kathmandu, spent mostly in the beautifully restored neo-classical ‘Garden of Dreams’ and eating dinner with friends in a traditional Newari house, we returned to Biratnagar. The security woman at the airport was bemused by the bottles of olives, pesto and balsamic vinegar that she discovered rolled in the dirty T-shirts at the bottom of my rucksack.