India...India...India...

Well... India challenges me emotionally this time... It questions my vision of people, value of life, destiny or karma, whatever one may believe in...

Is it 'cause I'm more sensitive to it? Is it the North India?
To be fair to India, Varanasi is a unique and challenging place. Because of its importance for Hindu and so many pilgrims, there are also a lot of beggars: crippled people without hands or feet, old widows who have no place anywhere, mentally ill who pretend to be sadhus, sadhus (wise men who renounced everything) themselves, children with their entangled hair and too big clothes... I have their hands sticking toward me all day long. Will a rupee or two make a difference? I can't feed them all... There is sooo many of them.
This feels like an intrusion. The impression extends to people on the street shouting at me constantly "hello, hello", asking hundreds of times where you are from, do you want a boat/ postcards/ offering flowers, come to my shop, etc. They don't take "no" for an answer...
The violence. Starting from invasive penetrating your ear honking, through people pushing without consideration for others, through parents slapping their children on the head when they wiggle, to finally a man beating a deaf and mute woman in my guest house (his wife? It doesn't matter the relationship) and a policemen hitting with a fist my rickshaw driver 'cause we couldn't agree on a price....
A Hindi man, when I told him about the 2 last events, responded: "M'am, doesn't it happen  in your country as well?" Yes, I know it does. But it is not considered normal or acceptable...

To add to the list of horrors - yesterday I witnessed a scene: a man was waving a 2 rupees coin to a begging old woman. She, quite distrustfully, approached him. As she was stretching out her hand to get the coin, he put it back into his pocket and had a great laugh with his pal next to him...

I feel like prince Siddhartha (pre-Buddha) when he finally left the palace and was confronted with the misery of this world. He saw natural coarse of life: illness, ageing, death. I'm seeing what people do to people... It's shocking...

street dentist... what a horror!

Welcome to India

    Wow! I've forgotten already how India can be tough...

As soon as I crossed the border I was confronted with more rubbish, more dirt, more people, more poverty screaming in your face....
Bus ride was more than extreem sport - the bus was clearly old and should be retired long time ago, the roads...as they are in India. The journey was supposed to take up to 8 hours took...13 hours... At noon I wanted to stop and buy a bite to eat (samosas!!!) but the driver gesticulating informed me that we will stop in one minute. He didn't specify - Indian time...we stoped after 4 hours! The bus finally broke down 5 km from Varanassi... I arrived in to a guest house after 11p.
Just remind me again: why do I travel? :-)

I don't know how I had fallen in love with India 6 or 7 years ago when I first came here. Varanassi is the toughest face of India! Narrow, dirty, smoky from burnign garbage streets, crowds of people hussling you all the time with their small talk that finish always with "come and see my"...whatever. Hot, hot, hot...

To top it up, I have been screwed over today in very classical way by a very classical crook. The guy took me to "his father's lassi shop". After a ceremony of showing me pics on the wall, requesting lassi etc he took from me 100 Rps "to get a change" and dissapeard with it...
I was shocked - during the 6 months in India and all these times I have been here, that has never happen to me... My faith in Hindi is lost.
But I was happy that it took only 100 Rps (1,5euro) to teach me a lesson :-)

Nepal and its people

So what about Nepal and its People?

Nepal is a funny combination of a poor and modern country. If you look around there is a lot of the West here: clothes, food (they love Italian cuisine), music, the look, especially of the young people! It's funny to see that the young people are all over the world the same: picking up the style from MTV: having funky hairstyle, mobile ploughed in their ears and the cool attitude of "I so don't care".
In many ways they are so advanced here. For example, the WiFi is in any cafe around tourist ghettos in Pokhara and KTM. And at the same time they can't handle their constant and unpredictable power cuts. There is still poverty, lack of basic facilities.
The country has such a potential given the water supply and the mountains, that they could be the biggest producer of power for China and India. But they are not.
They receive incredible amount of help from the Occident - both financial and hands-on. You wouldn't believe how many NGOs exists here, fed with the money from the West and, more importantly, staffed with skilled, enthusiastic and dedicated people from the West who fell in love with Nepal and its people.
And I can't help myself thinking: if that amount of support has been given to a state in India of a comparable size and population to Nepal, the Indians would take it on and make it flourish. Why the Nepalese can't get the wind in their sails...? Maybe too much help?
The corruption is incredibly nasty! Police, admins, politics. They have such frequent strikes in KTM that it is normal to check news before travelling to see if it is even possible. Maoist did a lot of damage, of course. Now they got into the parliament - that keeps them calmer. There is so many little parties that they are not able to creat a strong coalition to lead the country. And still no constitution... Election in November. But the people don't have much trust nor hope.

The people are kind gentle beautiful. I like their very own soft way of being. The smile is brighting up the face with this dark deep almond shaped eyes.
They are so sweet when they put the hands in a prayer on their chests as they greet you with "namaste". Imagine the little ones that hardly have the coordination to put their hands together and they scream namaste with all their might, giving you a huge banana smile. Often it is followed by "chocolate?Balloon?Pen?". Oh well, they try their luck, spoiled by some bloody tourists...
Nepalese are very respectful. When they hand you whatever, they do it with both hands: the left hand supports the right forearm that hands you the money. It feels sooo respectful.
With all their kindness and respect, I feel them reserved. It takes a moment to break the ice. Unlike with the Hindi who would return your smile with the illumination all over his/her face. But I admit: I'm not objective at all in this comparison. My heart is too much in India... :-)
Especially concerning the cuisine. Nepalese kitchen is not very sophisticated...I needed a lot of ketchup...
Nepal is undeniably very unique and beautiful country. And I wish the Nepalese that they pick up their acts wisely and quickly before the biggest richness of their land, the nature and the culture, will be destroyed.

Lumbini

Lumbini it's a birth place of Siddhartha Gautama, friendly called the Buddha. Excavation done here about 20 years ago confirmed that without any doubt Maya Devi gave a birth to her son right here.
And what a weird town it is!!! It feels like a ghost town. Apparently it had been deserted by unknown cathaclisme about year 250BC!
Lumbini is in the middle of nowhere, planked in the flat fields and woods. There is the site itself  (the World Heritage) and plenty of temples in Monastic Zone. The last one feels like exclusive villa quarter - nice peaceful area, with huge constructions going on, smooth driveways and nice roads all around... It looks surrealistic compare to what I have seen and experienced in Nepal. Where am I?!!!

















The highlight of my day was a rescue action - getting a rat out of a pond... A boy was running around this pond frantically. There was so much concern in his face, his eyes almost bagging me to help, find a way. We struggled for more than an hour. Every time we got closer to the beast, he would swim toward the middle of the pond to get away from us. We saw him growing more and more exhausted with the effort and stress. He would stop swimming, dissapear under the water then get the strength from somewhere and carry on to the wall where he could rest.

Rats give me creeps on my back. But when I looked at him I saw just another being that struggles to keep what is the most precious for him - his life. Don't we all? Alone in the water, helpless, maybe hopeless, with two monsters chasing him around...
Finally Suna, the boy, jumped in a water and got the screaming and terrified rat in my scarf. In the grass he was not able to move for a long time. I hope he picked up his energy and went back to his pals.
That's me taking about a rat...