On flexibility (and the Mustang study tour)

First:


Banu + Banu's sunglasses + Leila's hat + double guns = best photo ever.


Jomsom is beautiful! Note the tiny people in the middle of the photo to get a better sense of how HUGE these mountains are.

Second:
I was planning on posting a bunch more Jomsom pictures, but blogger simply won't cooperate. So, as a Nepali person might say, "ke garne" (what to do)? Why, post my long, slightly boring study tour report for class! I mean, 1,000 words = one picture, right? Until I can get a few more photos up, this'll have to do:

After an uneventful plane ride from Kathmandu three weeks ago, we (seven American students, one Nepali student, two professors, Banu, and Manoj) disembarked in Pokhara and were immediately treated to an incredible view. The enormous snow-capped Annapurnas soared over our heads while a massive gorge slashed through the town at our feet. The array of activities available to us in Pokhara was equally impressive; over the course of our two-day stay, we found time for kayaking, biking, a hard uphill hike to the Peace Stupa, and of course shopping. At one point Emily and I had an interesting conversation with the owner of a trekking store, who had aspirations of going to America but said the politics around getting a visa were just too complicated.
After another brief plane ride, we stumbled onto the tarmac at Jomsom, overwhelmed both by the sudden cold due to our gain in altitude and by the 6500 massive meters of Milgiri peak towering over us. We managed to suppress our shock enough to settle into our rooms at the cozy and conveniently located Hotel Xanadu, however, and set off on a day tour of the area. After passing through the airport area of town and Jomsom proper, we crossed the river, looped through an old Thakali village where we learned that wealth is displayed in stacks of firewood on the roof, and headed out into the hills. We kept up a decent pace – until Bikram made his first snowball ever, that is. He was so excited about the old pile of snow he found in a shady area, and his enthusiasm so infectious, that several snow wars ensued. The less brave among us escaped to Dhumbe Lake, a sacred body of beautiful green water formed from glacial runoff. We noticed a secluded monastery nearby and decided to go up; the view of Jomsom was well worth the steep hike it took to get there.
The next morning we bade a temporary goodbye to Jomsom and set off for Kalopani. Our walk was long but pleasant, thanks to the beautiful sunny weather and stops for tasting local brandy – an industry which was founded as a way to preserve the remote region’s magnificent fruit, which cannot be brought to market quickly enough – and eating daal-bhaat. After seven or so hours of walking, we were more than happy to while away an evening at the Kalopani Guest House playing cards, warming our feet around the coal heater, enjoying a tasty dinner, and taking in more incredible views of the Annapurnas. I didn’t realize how isolated we were until I stepped out into the cold still of evening, where the faint tinkle of our horses’ bells in the distance was the only discernible sound. A friendly Tibetan mastiff approached me for a pat, and I happily obliged while admiring the brilliance of the stars in the dark, clear sky.
The next morning, after several large pots of fresh mint tea and a hearty breakfast of eggs and potatoes, we set off on the path to nearby Titi Lake. Along the way, however, being the good and flexible anthropologists we are, we took a detour to a local school after meeting a few students headed that way. We practiced our Nepali and the students practiced their English, we saw their classrooms and met their teachers, and they performed their morning exercises and songs while we watched. Most of the students’ families were too poor to send them to higher-quality boarding schools in Pokhara and Kathmandu, and some were quite old for their grade because they had left school to work at home for a while. It was interesting to learn more about rural education in Nepal, a topic about which I had previously known very little.
After an hour or so at the school, we said goodbye to our new friends and dragged ourselves up a steep, seemingly neverending hill. It did end eventually, however, leading us into a beautiful pine forest. We stopped in the village of Titi for chiya and many of us conducted our mini-research projects there too. Leila and I had an interesting conversation with the didi who prepared our chiya, whose children were all studying in Kathmandu or abroad. We also talked to a 19-year-old woman from Pokhara, who was married and had a two-year-old child. She was in the village because her husband’s family lived there. It was interesting to meet someone who moved from city to village in a time when most people are doing the opposite; several houses in the village were already abandoned because the occupants had gone to Pokhara or Kathmandu in search of educational or work opportunities. When we finally reached Titi Lake, it was disappointingly small because the snow in the mountains has yet to melt and run down into it. We still had a beautiful view of the Annapurnas, however, and learned from Dambar that many herders take their animals up and over the mountains during the summer in search of good pasture! Later that afternoon, Sky and I walked about 20 minutes out of Kalopani to see a glacial ice fall from the mountains. Even as an American Northerner who thrives in cold weather and snow, I was shocked by the size of the snowdrifts we saw. Between the glacier, the enormous mountain ranges, and the vast desolate valley we walked through on our way to Kalopani, I felt very small and insignificant.
Early the next morning, we set off from Kalopani for the long walk back to Jomsom. Just as we reached Tukche for morning daal-bhaat freezing rain began to fall, and by the time we embarked on the second half of our walk it had turned to a heavy snow. Many of us were ill-prepared for this weather, so we were all in a hurry to return to Jomsom. We allowed ourselves only a few minutes for hot apple juice in Marpha before setting off again, and I took a turn on the horse Leila had been riding because she wanted to stretch her legs for the last hour. Since riding at the walk is easy and therefore generates less heat than walking oneself, I nearly froze by the time we reached Jomsom and could barely bend my fingers enough to turn on the hot water in my room.
The snow continued to fall throughout the night and into the next morning, so we cancelled our trekking plans and decided to stay in Jomsom for the day and do another mini-research project. We learned a lot about the culture and history of Thakalis and Gurungs, two of the predominant ethnic groups in the area. I also interviewed a woman shopkeeper about her thoughts on Nepali body image, and Emily asked her how the construction of a new road in the area would affect her business. After a lecture from Professors David and Dambar, we spent the rest of the evening playing cards via the light from our headlamps, and later from a generator, because the snow had knocked out Jomsom’s electricity.
The following day we packed up our things and headed out into seemingly benign weather. As we reached the edge of Jomsom town, however, a massive snowstorm overtook us and we were forced to take refuge in a chiya shop for a while before heading back to our hotel for another snow day of food, tea, and cards.
We made it to Kagbeni, a small town about four hours from Muktinath temple, the next day. Along the way we met a Tibetan girl working in her parents’ hotel and had a really interesting conversation with her, between her excellent English and our broken Nepali. She said she had just returned from India, where she runs a clothing store every winter because it’s too cold to stay in Kagbeni during the snowy months. Apparently many Mustang-area businesspeople migrate to India in this way. Our friend was in her late twenties and had a married sister, but had not yet married herself. She said to us, “I want to have fun first, and then maybe when I am 35 or 36 I will get married”. I was surprised; to me this seemed like a strikingly Western attitude coming from this rural Tibetan woman! Our conversation with her reminded me how careful I will have to be about keeping my preconceived notions from affecting my research.
The next morning we had to make a difficult decision regarding Muktinath. Kagbeni is fairly close to Muktinath, about a 3-hour walk, but we needed to return to Jomsom by that evening for our flight home the following day, for a total of 9 or 10 hours walking. Phebe and Bikram bravely decided to attempt the entire trip, leaving Kagbeni around 7 AM and returning to Jomsom around 6:30 PM. The rest of us walked to Kinga, about 2 hours away from Muktinath but within sight of it, and stopped at the Romeo and Juliet Inn there for kajaa. The innkeeper had several interesting contraptions in the yard, including two large solar-powered cooking devices, which she said were quite expensive but worth the investment. Each cooker had a large half-sphere made of reflective material angled to catch the sun’s rays, with a cooking surface suspended over it. Sky and Katherine held a match inside and it caught fire from the heat alone! The innkeepers also had a traditional loom in their yard for weaving beautiful striped scarves; I bought a few for gifts. When I went into the kitchen to pay for my purchases, Dambar pointed out their highly efficient clay kitchen stove, which simultaneously cooks food, heats the room, warms water upstairs for washing, and vents away toxic wood smoke. Several hours of walking later, we made it back to Jomsom, tired but satisfied.
We awoke at 5 AM the next morning to prepare for our 6:30 AM flight back to Pokhara, but the weather had other plans. Flights were cancelled due to high winds, so we spent most of the day playing cards and other games. Banu and David ordered a traditional Thakali meal for us that evening, and I really enjoyed it. Everything was fairly similar to a Nepali daal-bhaat – egg curry, greens, lentil soup, vegetables – except for the absence of rice. Instead, we ate the traditional accompaniment of bland squishy buckwheat dough, which is far tastier than it may sound when paired with spicy side dishes.
The next morning we awoke early again, packed again…and our flight was cancelled again. David compared our situation to the movie “Groundhog Day”, in which Bill Murray is forced to repeat the same day of his life over and over, and we agreed at first. That afternoon, however, we came up with some new and creative ways to enjoy our extra time in Jomsom. First, Phebe and Beth constructed an ambitious 15-question scavenger hunt with a 2-hour time limit. The students split into two teams and searched high and low all over Jomsom for such exciting objects as shaligrams, ram’s horns, traditional Thakali dress, local recipes, and Tibetan herbal remedies for diarrhea. Later that evening, we all headed to the edge of town for a game of kickball (finding and purchasing a good playing ball was another scavenger hunt task). We were worried because there were only four or five of us per team, but within half an hour what seemed like the entire village had turned out to play and/or watch. It was absolute chaos – little children kept running through the outfield and across the baseline with toys, oblivious to the game – and incredible fun. We gave the ball to a group of boys when we finished and headed home for dinner, cards, and sleep.
Our flight was cancelled for a third time the next morning, so we ate daal-bhaat and settled back into our hotel yet again. Many religious pilgrims from India were stranded in Jomsom with us after visiting Muktinath, so we had interesting conversations with them too. One man told us that there are 108 holy sites Hindus are supposed to visit – 105 are in India, number 106 is Muktinath in Nepal, and the final two sites cannot be visited by any living person because they are in heaven. In the early afternoon, however, the airport decided to run flights after all, and we were even lucky enough to get one directly back to Kathmandu instead of going through Pokhara. I have never been so sick as I was during that 50-minute plane ride – my body really can’t tolerate the movements of small planes, it seems – but it was worth it for the innumerable exhilarating and educational moments I experienced during this study tour.

FYI: this is only a (bad) rough draft, so feel free to tell me if anything is unclear. Thanks in advance!

-Rani