Mount Everest, Tuesday, October 18, 2016

We had a 5:30 wake-up call and a 6:00 a.m. departure for a special flight to see the Himalayas, including Mt. Everest. Raaz to us to the airport on the bus, not to the large international terminal, but to the much smaller domestic terminal instead. Raaz would not be flying with us, so he turned us over to another man who led us through security. The list of departures for our flight simply listed “Mountain” as our destination. We boarded a Yeti Airlines Jetstream 41 turboprop for our one-hour flight to the roof of the world and back. Our flight attendant was bundled up against the cool October air as she greeted by the side of the steps.

The flight did not disappoint us. We got a good look at the dual peaks of Everest and Lohtse, and the other peaks of the Himalayas that are near Kathmandu. We were each invited to the cockpit to see them from the pilots’ point of view. We saw them first from the left side of the plane, then a bit closer from the right side. As the plane turned to head back to the airport, the flight attendant produced champagne, courtesy of Raaz, with which to toast our close look at the mountains. It was a lot easier than climbing!

After breakfast, Raaz took us to the Pashupatinath area along the sacred Bagmati River, sacred in part because it is a tributary of the Ganges. Pashupati is a manifestation of Shiva in which he is the Lord of the Beasts, which perhaps explains the cattle and rhesus macaques that roam freely along the river. Aside from its important temple, this area is best known for its funeral ghats, or steps, next to the river where the deceased are cremated. Raaz explained that not everyone is cremated in Nepal, but for those who are, this is the most sacred site. There were five fires burning when we got there, and an additional cremation that had just finished. We stood on the other side of the river from the cremations, so as to be less intrusive on the bereaved.

We watched one of the fire attendants push ashes into the river. At the ghat where the cremation had just finished, shirtless men with shaved heads got into the river and washed the ghat with a buckets of water. Their heads were shaved except for a small patch of hair at the back on top. The men, some of them dressed only in black underpants, then washed themselves in the river. Raaz said that it is traditional, though not required, for the sons of the deceased to do this.

We then drove past more semi-permanent housing for earthquake refugees to the Bouddhanath Stupa, referred to as Bodhnath or Boudha by Lonely Planet. To my surprise, Lonely Planet describes this as Asia’s largest stupa. I would have thought that Swayambunath was larger, perhaps because it sits on such a large hill. Bouddhanath is on flat ground. We noticed right away the scaffolding around the golden pinnacle. Buddhist faithful in Nepal and beyond had donated over 30 kilograms of gold to have the pinnacle repaired restored after the earthquake. The repairs are proceeding beautifully.

Raaz led us first into the Tushita Heaven Handicrafts Cooperative, a studio for Thangka painting, the traditional Tibetan Buddhist painting we had first learned about in Lhasa. The master stood next to a beautiful mandala and explained a bit of Buddhist philosophy to us in good English. In the Buddhist view of the world, daily life is called Samsara, a seemingly endless cycle in which we are born, suffer and die, only to be reborn and begin the process all over again. The only relief from this cycle of suffering is to achieve enlightenment, at which time a person can become a Buddha and enter Nirvana. A few of those in Nirvana come back to Samsara as Bodhisatvas to help others. Every one of us has Buddha within and can become a Bodhisatva.

The Thangka master then explained the mandala that he stood next to. A mandala is meant to be a microcosm of the universe and is full of symbolic meaning. This particular mandala is a representation of the Bouddhanath stupa when viewed from the air. A mandala is a sacred area that serves as a receptacle for deities and a collection point for universal forces. The four levels within the mandala represent loving-kindness, compassion, sympathy and equanimity. At the center of the mandala is the jewel that is within the lotus. Because it has no dimension, the very center of the mandala represents the seed or center of the universe.

We purchased a thangka painting of the mandala based on viewing the Bouddhanath stupa from the air. Our new purchase was tucked into a sturdy cardboard tube, and then we began to walk – clockwise – around the stupa. We passed monks talking next to a ceremonial bell. We passed a large, ornate balcony that faced the main entrance to the stupa.

After we had made it around the stupa one time, we met our group, crossed a very busy street to get to the bus, and then drove to the Kathmandu Hyatt Regency for a buffet lunch down a couple of flights of stairs from the lobby level. Abby and I both thought that the braised mutton was delicious. We sat at a four-top table with Dave and Shirley, and had a nice talk about things Minnesotan. On the way out of the hotel, we passed a traditional Nepali band that played a few bars for us before the hotel management asked them to pipe down.

In the evening we heard a presentation on the recent political history of Nepal. The country has been without an elected government for eight or nine years because the constitutional convention failed in its first attempt to draft a constitution. The three main political parties are the Congress party, the Communist party and the United Maoist party. However, so many additional factions were added to the convention that it had over 600 members and was unable to reach consensus, so the process had to be started over again. In the interim the government has been run by 82,000 bureaucrats and the police force. The earthquake of 2015 convinced the constitutional convention that it needed to conclude its business, and an election has at last been scheduled for April of next year. That will be one to watch.

We were then joined by four young people and we broke into four subgroups so that we could speak with them about the future of Nepal. In our group was a 22-year-old who hopes to take over her father’s clothing business based in the Kathmandu neighborhood of Thamel. She has three sisters and no brothers; none of her sisters are interested in the business. She had some ideas about how to expand the business into other parts of the region. It was good to see her interest and enthusiasm for being successful in the business world.