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