Buddha fest, Amazing Race, and Holi War

Buddha Fest
Yet another festival took place recently. No, it's not actually called Buddha fest, but I forget the actual name. We all (including the 3 new volunteers: Amy, Lauren and Paige) went with Rajiv to Patan to watch this festival, wherein people craft and decorate giant buddha puppets and then wear them around Durbar square. It's a competition between neighbourhoods to see who has the best Buddha. It was pretty crazy, but very beautiful.

There's a dude under there, struggling to keep upright under

all the weight.

Amazing Race: Kathmandu

This is an activity that normally closes orientation week for the new volunteers. Essentially it's a scavenger hunt around Kathmandu where you practice your Nepali and test your knowledge of the city and culture. However, the arrival of the 3 aforementioned volunteers meant that there were enough volunteers to do it for the first time since we got here. And it was hard! Even for me, a seasoned veteran. Fun though, except for the part where I was force-fed daal bhaat and almost choked.

That's me, wearing a doko basket as part of the race. You

wouldn't believe how blatantly people laughed at the silly foreigner.

Holi

I've been looking forward to Holi (the colour festival) since I first started researching Nepal for this placement. Essentially it's a festival, where people douse each other in coloured water and powder. What no one told me was that for a whole week leading up to Holi, little boys throw water balloons at girls and women. And sure, it's funny at first. And then you're on your way to your volunteer placement first thing in the morning and a balloon smacks you in the side of the face rather hard. Or hits you in the boob as you're headed out to dinner. I swear I developed mini Gulf War syndrome, scanning the balconies wherever I went and ducking when birds flew overhead!

But the festival day itself was super fun. We were in a rooftop water balloon war with at least 5 other buildings, and got slammed by people on the street with coloured paste. It was the craziest thing I've seen since I've been here, and that's saying something.

Me, battling the neighbours

Then, Neer (of course) had the hookup for this great outdoor Holi party in town, where we danced and people sprayed water and colour over everyone and it was sweet glorious chaos!

Holi par-tay!


And by the end of the day, we all looked like this.
That's me with Ronnie and Amy, btw.

Canyoning, beer pong and naked babas

A few more happenings that have taken place recently:

Shiva Ratri
This is an annual festival to worship the god Shiva (the destroyer). Because he is the destroyer, this involves big fires. In order to get wood for these fires, children block the roads in the mornings and won't let people pass without giving them money for wood. No one warned me this holiday involved extortion! Anyways, we went to the Pashupatinath temple, where literally tens of thousands of Hindus and hundreds of Sadhus (sometimes naked) gathered to chant, hang out, and smoke massive amounts of ganja. It was pretty awesome to witness, though I almost got trampled by a bull, and Ronnie had to remove a potential thief's hand from his pocket.

One small section of the 'devotees' at Pashiputinath

Rajiv's birthday
To celebrate darling Rajiv's 28th we had our own little momo-mania in the house, where we made and ate about a million momos. Then we had an impromptu dance party. Then Ronnie introduced Nepal to the game of beer pong. And let me tell you: Nepal loved it. Until you've seen 5 drunk Nepali guys arguing in Nepalglish over the fairness of a particular toss, you cannot understand how hilarious it is. Anyways, super fun evening.

Badri, inexplicably blue-steeling for his shot (with Neer)

Last Resort

Last weekend Karen, Jesi, Ronnie and I headed up near the Tibet border to this resort called (cleverly) Last Resort. It's kind of an adventure resort. Getting there was a particular adventure. The roads, as always, were very twisty, and a Nepali guy on the bus got sick more times than I would have thought the human body was capable of. There's not always room to pull the bus over, so at one point he leaned right over Jesi to puke out the window. Once we did get there, Jesi and Ronnie bungeed into this huge canyon, which Karen and I flatly refused to do. Then Karen and Ronnie and I went canyoning down a series of waterfalls, totalling 210 vertical metres. The longest abseil was 45 metres! Karen and Ronnie, being rock climbers, took to it immediately. I, however, slipped and slid and banged my way down all the falls, at one point falling completely upside down, but was always caught by my belayors. It was really fun though. The next day Karen, Ronnie and Jesi went for a 4 hour mountain bike to the Tibet border. I opted out (again, biking uphill for 3 hours is not my idea of a good time) and instead made friends with a British couple and a college group from Montana.

That's me, in one of the brief moments I wasn't slipping

and smashing into the cliff face

Chitwan!

Hello sports fans, I'm back. Sorry for my long absence, but our internet was being bitchy. Anyways, the weekend before last we did the funnest (and cheapest) thing we've done so far: visited Chitwan national park. If anyone out there is planning on travelling to Nepal, I highly recommend it. For a 3 day, 2 night stay in a nice place, all food, and all activities, it was 85 bucks each. Yepper, I love this country.

So Chitwan is a national jungle preserve, and houses pretty much all of Nepal's remaining wildlife, including endangered tigers (but those are pretty rare, and I was actually glad we didn't see any, cause: scary!). A rundown of our activities:

Day 1: Getting there
So everyone's aware of how Nepal's all mountainous, right? Good. This makes for some very twisty roads, and quite a few prayers to the god that is Gravol. Poor Rajiv hurled a couple of times, and Brian wasn't doing so good either. We made it in one piece, and in time to see a hilarious Nepali commercial shoot for cement that was filming at our hotel. We also got to see a Tharu (local ethnic group) cultural program, which involved yet another dude dressed as a peacock dancing around.

Day 2: Crazy amounts of activities
So our day started at an ungodly hour (all the better to catch wildlife) with a jungle safari on elephant back. This was super fun, until our elephants started throwing a tantrum, growling (I swear, elephants growl), pushing trees over, and running. If you've never been on a running elephant, let me tell you: it's both painful and scary.

Our elephant, pre-tantrum

But it did let us get up close to some wildlife, like these

white rhinos.

Then we got to go down to the river to participate in elephant baths! This is seriously one of the funnest things I have ever done you guys! You climb up onto the elephant (quite the feat), and then he sprays you with water from his trunk. Then he shakes you off. Then you climb back up. Repeat 5 or 6 times. Then, because Karen, Ronnie and I were pretty excited at the first water we'd seen in Nepal, we went swimming for awhile. And we tried to teach Rajiv and DC how to swim. Let me tell you, the sight of two men in their late 20's frantically dog-paddling like little kids in about 2 feet of water? Priceless. Then Karen got sick all night because it's hard not to swallow some river water when you're being hurled from an elephant's back, but even she agrees it was worth it.

Ronnie and I getting bathed, elephant-style.

That's some serious trunk-strength, right there.

Then (yes, this is still day 2), after lunch, we took a canoe-ride down the crocodile infested rivers while Brian screamed like a girl every time the canoe rocked 3 inches.

Front to back: Brian (freaking out), Karen, DC, random

Japanese girl, Ronnie, Me, Rajiv and Ram (our guide)

Marsh mugger: they actually do kill quite a few locals, so

maybe Brian was justified.

We followed up the canoe ride with a very hot and tiring jungle walk, where we saw a few giant deer and got bit by many mosquitoes. The walk ended at the elephant breeding center, which was awesome.

1 day old elephant baby omg!!!

After that day we were exhausted, as you can imagine. We went down to a river-side café and chilled out, and then fell into bed.

Day 3: Chilling and driving

The last day was spent wandering around the town and taking photographs. I managed to hold a puppy, a kitten, and a baby goat all in one morning. These incidents were in no way related, but it seems Chitwan is a baby animal paradise. Then we managed a puke-free ride back to Kathmandu. All in all, a freaking amazing time.