All Systems Go

Today we paid some guys a whole bunch of money to take us through Tibet on a bus. We leave Kathmandu on the 22nd. There was some vacillation before the final decision was made, but we kindof put ourselves in a box here - it was either pay a lot of money to go through Tibet, pay a lot of money to fly into China, or tuck our shit-smeared tails between our legs and head back into India. I feel that given the circumstances, it's good to go into Tibet - something I've dreamed of since I was in the 9th grade, doing a report on Tibet and trying to imagine what Rancid Yak Butter Tea could possibly have going for it. In a few short days I will know the answer to that question. My excitement and anticipation are barely containable.

In response to all of your wonderful comments - yes I do read them, with great joy. This particular *free* blog I chose back in September after approximately 3.7 seconds of web searching does not allow me, so far as I can tell, to answer your comments personally. But please know that I love to read them and they make me very happy.

I seem to have developed the inevitable Kathmandu Sinusitis. The pollution here is bad. It seems like everyone is sick, coughing, sneezing, snotty. Not sure if it's the smog or if it's just that time of year. Hopefully it reached its peak for me last night (no sleep) and will get a little better before we have to ascend the heavenly Himalayas in a few days.

Speaking of which, we got our first peek at the mountains the other day when we were on our way to the monkey temple on the west side of the city. We were crossing a bridge over an unspeakably filthy river (if you thought that garbage was bad in Jon's Facebook picture, this would make you burst into tears) when I looked up and saw...sharp white peaks! I pointed them out to Jon, who was amazed that we could see them from the valley. Since then, we have spotted them poking up over the valley edges several times. It rained the other night, all night, which I think cleared the smog enough to see things like Himalayas, and blue sky.

Speaking of the monkey temple! What a lot of fun that was! It was a dreadful lot of stairs up to the top, where they sneakily charged us 200 rupees each to go in to the main temple (after climbing all those stairs, it was hard to say no and go down again). We saw a couple monkeys then - Jon fed one some donut - and we went in and walked all around the temple, which as far as I can tell is just a big pointed heap of brick painted white and gold, no insides, with some Buddha eyes painted very large on the outside and prayer flags stretching all over from the pinnacle. It was interesting watching the faithful go through their little rituals of spinning the prayer wheels, touching the gold lions, crossing themselves (or whatever it was), and tossing marigold petals on their own heads. I guess it wasn't any weirder than a Catholic Mass.

But Then! When we were descending the stairs! It turned into Monkey Heaven. First one - then two - then dozens of monkeys were all around us, leaping from thing to thing, scuffling, climbing, coming near for treats, moms nursing babies, big ones slapping small ones...I couldn't get enough. I was afraid to get near enough to them to feed one, but Jon talked me into it, and a great big male came and took a couple pieces of donut very nicely from my big pink hand with his smaller black hand. It's disconcerting being around monkeys because they are so human - and so animal. There's nothing like them back at home. I wonder what it's like to grow up with monkeys.

We took a taxicab this morning to the Nepal Immigration Bureau to get our visas extended. For a government transaction, it was relatively painless. We had a couple hours to kill while we waited for the official papers and stamps, so we walked into a new part of town and ended up in a pool hall called "Busted Boyz Pool and Snooker Hall". It was a little ways down an extremely dubious-looking alley, and I wasn't at all sure about it at first, but it turned out to be a good time. They had full size pool tables, and we played a couple games (naturally I got my ass kicked by Jon, the master of the agonizingly slow and accurate shots) and then he played one of the local boyz, and lost. It's kindof far away from the part of town we are staying in, or I bet we'd go back there every night.