The table of translators

Her job is to translate the news into the Sherpa language and then broadcast it live.  She job-shares with another Sherpa speaker and her hours are 11:30am – 6pm.  My tagalong day started with a scooter ride through downtown and into the government compound.  (The scooter ride itself was one of my Nepal highlights.) The compound encompasses the equivalent of all the major elements of Washington, D.C. and concentrates into about 5 acres of heavily-secured offices.  She showed her government I.D. badge and I brought along my passport and guest pass to the checkpoint.  Once inside, the Kathmandu hustle and bustle is replaced by quiet order, parking spaces and manicured office parks.

Government Office Park

Radio Nepal has three buildings, but Mingma and I went into just two of them.  In the first one, she sat at a table and took the salient news stories that were on half or full sheets of paper and translated the stories, by hand, from Nepali into Sherpa.  Her co-workers who shared the table were fluent in other minority languages and did the same.  They have some leeway into which stories are relevant to their respective geographical areas.  I was struck by the fact that half or more of the translators were female.  Most were dressed in punjabis of fantastically bright colors and there was lots of comeraderie and discussion amongst them.

Nepal has a literacy rate of 66%, making the radio a crucial avenue for Nepali people to get their news.  I never saw anyone reading a newspaper the whole two months I was there – probably most people read their news online these days.  So access to information is limited to those who are literate and own a computer.  Add to the mixture that there are twenty-one semi-official languages in Nepal.  No other country I can think of needs radio news like Nepal.

When Mingma’s allotted spot for Sherpa Radio was nearing air time, we walked into another building which housed the technical broadcast equipment and various sound studios.  This building was donated by the Japanese government and was specifically designed to withstand an earthquake up to 9.0.  And indeed the broadcast building was unharmed in the April, 2015 earthquake and Radio Nepal broadcast vital uninterrupted news and information during the earthquake and the months of subsequent aftershocks.

Mingma: Getting it done!

In the sound studio, we met the technicians who were also all female.  Again, there was no drab work clothes but bright fuchsia and turquoise outfits.  Mingma let me come into the actual sound studio and I stood stock-still while she delivered her news in Sherpa (willing myself not to sneeze or cough).  I imagined all those Sherpa people tuning in their radios up in SoluKhumbu to hear the day’s news.

Like modern women all over the world, there is that personal balance between home and career; so many women who do the essential work with, and without, pay to keep our countries running.  The 3/4-time positions with options for job sharing are coveted the world over and it was wonderful to be in these Nepali women’s presence.  One of the things I miss most of all in this year away is my girlfriends; I coveted my time with Mingma and loved learning more about her.

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Nepal is not a very big country. In fact, the state of Colorado is bigger than the country of Nepal. But, Colorado does not feel very big to me, because I’ve driven around a lot of it. But, to me, Nepal feels much bigger, because I’ve walked across a lot of it. And, to walk across it, you have to walk up, up, up, cross a pass, then walk down, down, down. One day we walked over a twelve thousand-foot pass, and slept at four thousand feet. I personally think that’s kind of depressing. You feel so amazing for climbing over this pass, then you sleep lower then you started.  Here is a post about trekking with kids and another about our Sherpa homestays.

Nepal is an amazing country in a lot of ways:

• Nepal is sandwiched between two giants, and has been for more than two hundred years. It’s still its own country, somehow, without a stable government.
• No matter what Nepali people have to give, they give it.
• On one side of Nepal, you have the Terai at sea level: jungle, tigers, like India. On the other side, at nine thousand feet and up, you have villagers who are extremely lucky to go to school, mountains, yaks, suspension bridges, (I can say a lot more about this area cause I went here.) But these two extremely different places are within two hundred miles of each other.
  

  We spent five nights here in Khumjung at 12,000 ft.

• Somehow the villagers live with no fruit and very little veggies. To the extent that once we get back to Kathmandu, we eat all their fruit, all their fruit juice, and all their veggies.
• the average Nepali knows 4 languages. 1)their ethnic group language,2) Nepali,3) English,4) Hindi. (For TV.)
• Somehow doctors are allowed to go on strike.
• The clothing is so colorful! Who cares about matching?
• It has a ton of World Heritage Sites!
•  It has so many cultures within its borders, all of which are celebrated with gusto ( that sounds really dumb, but I don’t know how else to say it)

We travel to China in 5 days. Nepal went by fast!! I loved it here, and now have some weird recommendations. (If you go to Namche Bazaar, stay at Nirvana Home Guest House.)

These are dzo’s (a cross between a yak and a cow). They carry the really heavy stuff to the market.

I REALLY miss friends, and things that are anything like home, but I’ve been so busy I haven’t had much time to think about it. My birthday is coming up. I’ll have it in China. Somehow I don’t think it’s gonna be anything like previous birthdays… I got to go paragliding in Pokhara as an early birthday present! That was awesome! Ive never had a birthday present quite like that before.

I’m ready to travel to China, and exited to see Kai and Lucy’s reaction to the fish market that neither of them remembers. You can also read about my first impressions of Nepal.

This monkey grabbed my drink right out of my hands and then bit a hole into the bottom to drink it!

The post Lorna’s Nepal: Travel Insights appeared first on Travels With Paradise.

At first Kancha Sherpa impressed me because he is the last surviving member of the 1953 Hillary-Norgay summit of Everest.  (Around the Khumbu, you can’t swing a cat without a statue or reference to Sir Edmund Hillary and THE expedition that started it all.) Kancha waited with one other guy on the South Summit, just out of view of the tippy-top, for the two headliners to return.

At 85 years old, he is a bit of a local legend.  We gathered around the dining room’s “chimney” to warm up with some story time from grandfather.  The kids were into it.  This was road schooling at its best: learning from the source something that cannot be taught in a classroom.

Namche Bazaar in 2017.

When Kancha was a child, there were just six houses in Namche and they would all band together, for fear of bears, to walk down to the stream for water.  When asked what other animals were plentiful back then, he said the yeti.  A “yeti” is like a extra-hairy big foot and many people in the Khumbu know someone who has seen one or been attacked by one.  Down in Kathmandu the yeti is more of a mascot – the symbol of airlines and silly tourist T-shirts.  But up high, he’s more real. There is even a yeti scalp you can see at a local monastery (for a fee).

police sketch of a mischief-making yeti

As a young man Kancha Sherpa ran away from home to Darjeeling, India, in search of  work and an adventure.  Once in India, Kancha found his old Khumbu friend Tenzing Norgay, who hooked him up with a temporary job and eventually got him named on the Hillary Expedition.  The expedition walked with their gear from India, across Nepal and up toward Everest Base Camp – nothing like today’s quick flight to Lukla followed by a seven day walk.

His first impression of Hillary was: TALL, very tall.  But mostly, people revere Hillary because he never forgot the Sherpa people and spent the rest of his life as an ambassador of Nepal and, more specifically, the Sherpa ethnic group.  He funded the first school in the area, the hospital, most major building projects and more. (By the way, “Sherpa” refers to an ethnic group, not people who carry bags.  Those people prefer to be called “porters”.)

Lorna with Kancha Sherpa

The girls and I stayed in a triple room up on the third floor of Nirvana and I thought we were the only ones staying up there… until the blowing of the conch shell down the hall on the first morning.  Then there was a drum.  Then there was someone pacing the floor with a mumble.  As I put my ear to the door, it was a low, “om mani padme om.”  I cracked my door to see him shuffle along counting his prayers on his prayer beads.  Over the five nights we stayed there, he did this ritual each morning and each evening.  He walked in a sacred circle around the town each day, praying for the freedom from suffering for all sentient beings.  Kancha showed the kids and I his prayer room, let us try out the drum and admire the letters from the Queen of England and the Nepali dignataries that were pinned to his wall.  Above and below the royal letters were the many photos of his wife, and some of his kids.  His daily routine included special prayers for his wife who passed just two years before.  He prayed for her safety and welcome in the spiritual realm.  He daily changed the water of seventeen bowls as an offering.  He had a tall daily to-do list and it was all truly for others.

Soon, he will spend the cold months with his son in Kathmandu and I wondered that he could still make the walk.  But no, he just tells the helicopter companies that he needs a lift and they get him the next free seat heading down.  His reputation (or all the good karma?) has earned him a VIP frequent flyer status.  Sometimes logistics can be that simple.

One of the posters in the Nirvana Home Guesthouse

Just meeting a human, like Kancha Sherpa with one humble foot in the past and a mind so focused on the spiritual future, I was just as “roadschooled” as my kids.  The elderly here have a purpose – not a token value – but a true purpose.  They have the time and inclination to slow down and pray for us all, to remind us what it is all about from the perspective of age.

The post Kancha Sherpa: The Spirit of Namche Bazaar appeared first on Travels With Paradise.

The ingenious door mat is fragrant, compostable and locally made.

Sherpa homes have some distinctive qualities: colorful window frames, potato fields and blue or green roofs.  Some of my favorite touches were the gray cats curled up on the earthen stoves, the fantastic meals cooked from the simplest kitchens, the hired monks to bless the fresh-monthly prayer flags, the daily incense, the fragrant door mats but the absolute tell-tale sign is the tall Sherpa flags in the front yards.

View down the valley from the front door. The defining Sherpa flag pole out front and the detached bathroom.

Pasang’s father’s family lived in Thumbuk which is a small village with a gompa, monastery and a small K-4 school.  There is no wifi, no road, nor store to buy staples, but they do have wild pepper tress, pines and herb gardens making any walk through the village an aromatic adventure.  The 2015 earthquake caused significant damage here and our adoptive grandparents in Thumbuk spent a year living under a tarp and wood shed until their house could be rebuilt.

Our cozy upstairs quarters.

Most meals are farm-to-table at their finest.  We helped grandmother dig some potatoes and had them boiled up with chili-pepper sauce for dinner.  Garlic chives, cilantro and wild pepper season just about every meal. (These local peppers are a mix of our black pepper and spicy pepper and more than a quarter teaspoon with make your mouth totally numb for about five minutes.  Will and I were slightly obsessed and urged each other on with the pepper sauce.)  The whole wheat flour is grown locally, milled locally, and helped make our chapatis, momo’s and dumplings for Sherpa stew.  Bring on the gluten!

Chimi, the cat, always staying warm by the stove.

All this time without connectivity, mirrors, stores or roads is some of what Will and I were hoping from this gift of a year away.  The daily simplicity of our Sherpa home is what so many Americans crave.  There’s an excuse to be unresponsive on email and the only to-do list is taking care of what’s important: food, family, friends and maintaining health.

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