The Langtang Trek & Other Adventures

January has passed in a blur of activity, with the highlight being a visit from my college friend, John Sandri, for the past couple weeks. We had more fun than I can put words to as we trekked up alongside the Langtang River in a narrow, deep valley full of frolicking monkeys that eventually opened up to high alpine yak pastures and panoramic views of the snowy white himalayan peaks, and then spent some time exploring the hills and ridges surrounding Kathmandu on our mountain bikes. As a farmer back home (a brilliant, passionate, revolutionary one that the world could use a few more of: www.farmerjohnsplot.com), winter is his slower season, and my students had a few weeks off for "cold month" break, so it was really good timing for both of us. Some of the feature moments for me were:

• Rolling into the mountains on the top of the bus, which we decided could easily be made into an Olympic sport
• Climbing up to our highest point of about 4500m surrounded by glorious 360 degree views of some of the world's highest mountains and then running back down the steep hillside
• Spending a free afternoon doing some rock hopping and a little bouldering down by the clear blue rushing glacier-fed river
• Bushwhacking through bamboo groves to make our way back up to the trail after what later became known as "Near Death Experience #2"
• Evenings spent around the woodstoves with the Nepali families at various lodges along the trek
• Searching for (and finding) exciting new trails to ride bikes on within close proximity to my house, though they felt considerably farther on the day we forgot our money and had to ride all across the valley and back to pay off our debt of 50 rupees (75 cents) for tea and snacks
• Seeing the way my nephew immediately took a liking to "John Uncle", who as a role model for a young kid has got to be one of the very best

In general, getting the chance to see more of this beautiful country and share my part of it with a friend from home was great, and again my host family seems to feel they know me all the better for having met someone else from my North American life. Here are the comments I managed to collect from Sandri before he left:

"Nepal has been a wonderful place full of wonderful people! If I had to eat the same food every meal I think I would choose dal bhat. The flora of the country was particularly intriguing to me. I think that I was rather obsessed with pointing out all the different flowers, trees and shrubs to Sarah (Sarah's patience with me was zen like). It was awesome to see Nepalis' winter agriculture and their varieties of brassicas, like mustards and cauliflower (which we also feasted upon daily). My favorite part had to be a combination of biking / agriculture which presented itself in the form of irrigation ditches. Along these ditches we found a network of long and very narrow single track to ride on for hours. The intense concentration to stay on the foot wide trails was addictive; as we maneuvered to keep from falling to one side into the muddy water or off the other side down ten feet abruptly into peoples' rice paddies. It has been two weeks to remember for a lifetime; thank you to Sarah and all the wonderful Nepalis I met along the way!"

As you can see, his passion for agriculture was prevalent throughout the trip, which was, in fact, great news for me as I was able to pump him for information on the subject. I had sort of been assigned the task, by the head teacher at my school, of learning up on the farming situation within Nepal. He had read that agriculture in Canada is a major contributor to the economy and wanted me to look into why that's not the case in Nepal where over 80% of the people are farmers. Sandri, having spent 2 years in the Peace Corps in Moldova (another of the world's very poorest nations) working on an agriculture project, is possibly the very best expert I could have brought in for advice on the topic. And luckily, pumping him for information was not at all difficult as he's very engaged in the subject and loves to talk about it. He gave me some really good insights into the issues and I think I've got a good feel now for solutions or ideas for improvements that I can look into more.

Aside from the past couple weeks of holiday, I'd been going to the school each day to work with class 10, who will have to write their School Leaving Certificate exams in a few months and are studying through the break to become better prepared. They seem to be starting to feel the pressure as they've been somewhat nervously paying much closer attention than usual. And of course, there's still lots of work to be done in the library, which has been easier to get through without as many curious students milling around and trying to de-organize the books any chance they get. I also have a few other projects on the go with the head teacher where I'm helping him to write some teacher training materials and that sort of thing. All of these projects have been moving along well. It was nice to have lots of extra hours in the day to get some substantial progress made especially on the book we're trying to write, but I'm also looking forward to regular classes starting back up on Monday and seeing all the students back at school again.

You, You, You & You

We're up to about maybe 75 hours a week of power cuts now, which is quite a bit better than expected for this time of year. The monsoon lasted a little longer than usual, so the rivers are a bit fuller and therefore there's a little more power to go around. But it still feels like there's hardly ever any power, or certainly not at any time when you feel like you'd want it. But it's surprisingly easy to get used to living without it. There are only the occasions where it's gone out and I've forgotten to turn off the lightswitch that can later be somewhat unpleasant. It's always quite the jolt to be woken up in a flash of brightness when it kicks back in in the dead of night. And then quite difficult to get myself out of my warm cocoon to switch it back off, especially seeing the way my breath reacts to the cold air. But recently I've become a whole lot smarter about this, and in any case the days and nights are getting noticeably warmer already.

In fact, I don't think I can complain about the weather at all these days. The beauty of winter in Nepal, or at least around Kathmandu Valley, is that there's never any precipitation whatsoever. Every single day for the past 2 months straight has been bright and sunny and dry. This makes for ideal mountain biking conditions and I've found myself out on my bike more and more often lately taking advantage of it. There are so many great places to ride, as even lots of the "main roads" are just rough dirt tracks. I'm constantly on the hunt for singletrack, of which there is lots, but it's often quite broken up so I'll get on a promising stretch one moment only to find myself right on someone's doorstep the next. Remarkably, nobody seems to mind this sort of intrusion. People here are not very protective of their property, so almost all the villagers I meet seem mostly curious and not perturbed at all even as I cut along the sides of their fields or right past their homes. They're usually very helpful and want to ask where I am going so they can point me in the right direction. But since I'm usually just out exploring and have no particular destination, they wonder what on earth I'm doing out there. Riding up and down all these big and steep hills is supposed to be somehow fun?? Yes, very much so!

Being in this country makes me really notice the difference I've always thought existed at times between people showing respect and them actually feeling it. The culture is very much built around having people at different levels and everybody knowing exactly what they are. I find that in any given room, even if it's just a group of friends getting together to play cards, every person in the room will be aware of precisely where everyone ranks on the totem pole. Where people line up amongst each other is determined mostly by caste and then afterwards sometimes by age or gender. Of course, within the 4 main castes there are thousands of sub-castes, so a person's last name is usually enough to tell you how much respect should be shown. Lots of times people will say things like "he's 'bigger' than me" or something along those lines to explain why the relationship is the way it is.

There are 4 different words in Nepali that all mean "you" but with different amounts of respect involved (actually there are 5, but the highest is reserved for royalty and not used in everyday life). From highest to lowest, the words are hajur, tapai, timi and ta. Tapai and timi are the most common. Tapai is used for anyone "bigger" than you that needs to be shown respect or between two adults who may be just meeting and don't know each other very well. Timi is used for children or amongst close friends. It's sort of a neutral level of respect. It doesn't imply any respect, but it's also not necessarily demeaning. It's often used in a friendly, affectionate sort of way. So, tapai is used by students and children toward their teachers and parents and timi is used in return. But sometimes even with close friends tapai is used if there is a strong caste difference. So, it's possible, as with some people I know, to have a 30 yr old of higher caste address his 45 yr old best friend as timi, but be addressed as tapai in return. And often a wife will address her husband as tapai and he'll use timi in return. Hajur is then used to add on an extra degree of respect. It's used by servants for their masters and also when addressing particularly high caste members of the community. You'll also sometimes hear it from shopkeepers wanting to tack on a little extra respect, or sometimes some of the lower caste students at my school have used it to address me. This makes me uncomfortable, knowing that they feel somehow lesser than their peers who easily use tapai for their teachers. And ta is a very dominant form of the word you. It's mostly used for people much lower, or in arguments, or if you're trying to give orders.

So with all those different ways to say "you", people must choose in every conversation exactly how much respect they want to show other people. Not only is this difficult for foreigners to figure out, but also very much against my nature. When in doubt I show as much respect as possible here to avoid offending anyone, but at home I think I work more in an inverse sort of way. The people I respect the most are generally the ones I'm outwardly least respectful to (if you were ever my father, mother, coach, someone I worked for or an exceptionally good teacher I'm sure you know exactly what I mean by that). But even here, where people are constantly going out of their way to show respect to people that are "bigger" than them, it's become apparent to me lately that even though you can culturally force those behaviours, you can't force a person to actually feel respect if it isn't deserved. What I mean by that is if the way a higher caste person acts isn't worthy of much respect, they will still be addressed with all the most respectful words, but people won't necessarily think highly of them at all. Even within a very structured, hierarchical society, there's nothing that can be done to stop people from making up their own minds about others. People are still constantly judged by their words and actions. This is why at home I try to show as little respect as possible. That way no one needs to wonder whether it's fake or not.