Fives Days and 25 Cups of Tea Into the Journey

Please excuse the run-on sentences that follow. Proper sentence structure and semi-colon usage can bite my ass, just like the mosquitoes here; however, I will not abandon my penchant for correct spelling and wily diction. Now then, let's get on with it shall we. I'm not really sure how many days it has been since I arrived in the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, née Kingdom. Technically I got here on 31 August (using the local date format is my way of fitting in) and since it is 4 September (at least where I am at the time of writing this), that would mean I've been in Nepal for roughly five days, but here, time seems to be a wholly irrelevant commodity. I suppose when everything one experiences is new and unfathomably exciting, time--which serves as the root of all perception, real and false, and is thereby the sense that is most difficult to transcend--no longer follows standard operating procedure. To give a mundane example, bus rides can feel like an eternity or a snap depending on how likely the next abrupt turn on a mountain road will cause the expulsion of my stomach contents. On the other end of the spectrum of suffering, climbing up 700 meter hills draped in Tibetan prayer flags, a physically exhausting but remarkably enjoyable task which takes about half an hour when moving at a brisk pace, seems to come and go as quick as the afternoon rains. This isn't really anything mindblowlingly new; time flies when you're having fun is a rather old cliche.

An aside: the smiles here are so full and blissful. When I smile at someone and they smile back, they radiate an emotional sincerity that is almost entirely lacking in the lands of white people. There are no feigned grins, no reluctant half smiles, no condescending smirks, only beaming contentedness reflected in the gleeful laugh of a little Nepali boy or the weathered but compassionate face of an old Tibetan woman whose wrinkles are as much from a life of hard work as they are from constantly smiling. That is not to say everyone smiles at you, because they don't, not by a long shot. There is great pain and suffering in many of these faces, be they human or not. It is just when someone returns the almost ignorantly jovial grin that invariably commandeers my face, they do so with such a genuine integrity that our two souls, otherwise divided by seemingly impassable gulfs of culture, language, and numerous other societal constructs, realize for a fleeting moment a connection so luminous as to dispel all the darkness in the world.

Sorry about that, I should've probably mentioned earlier, be prepared for some pretty lengthy asides. I still have so much more to discuss but I have been in this internet cafe for at least an hour and a half; there goes time again, being all moody and inconsistent. Given that there is free wi-fi in our guest house, I'll post again later today about all the amazing places I've been going, people I've been meeting, things I've been doing, and how my karma is far too corrupted to deserve any of it. Jeyla Jey-lyong (goodbye in Tibetan).


The Frequency is Courage!
-Doug B.