OM MANI PADME HUNG

I've been in Kathmandu for a series of Groundhog Day-feeling days that are making me feel a little crazy.

So today I made my first minor break from the gravitational/time warping fields of Kathmandu that rival any co-op living room I've ever wasted hours of my life in. Just as I was ready to give up on deciphering which of the buses flying by, maniacly wailing on their horns, was the one I wanted to flag down, somebody helped poor little illiterate me aboard a bus bound for Bodhnath, a Tibetan enclave about thirty minutes away. Since it seems like the entry to Tibet for Americans in Nepal isn't just expensive but really, really expensive, Bodhnath is probably as close to Tibet as I'm going to come. I loaded a photo of the main stupa below. I'm still trying to process my thoughts so I can't really speak to the experience except to say that it was every bit as beautiful as I had been promised.

Tomorrow I'm going to wake up to the same '''om mani padme hung''' chanting music in the streets, the honking of motorcycle horns and another round of battle with my stomache demons and attempt my fourth trip to Swayambunath Stupa, the "Monkey Temple." Then I'm putting a package in the mail, trying to figure out how to pay for a library book I forgot to return (if you want to help me I'll love you forever! -- it's mostly just a time zone problem for me.. 14hrs makes phone conversations with Berkeley really hard) and then I'm finally skipping town.

That's not to say that Kathmandu isn't a lovely place. At times it borders on magical. Everybody has been so friendly, etc. The pollution I had been warned about isn't anywhere near as bad as all the hype -- think any South American city. Definitely not worse than Delhi. The skies here are blue, in Delhi they're perma-gray. And I can certainly imagine worse wake ups than walking into a 1960s hippy flashback on Freak St. (named for all the hippies that hung around there in the 70s) with chanting and clouds of incense wafting by. It's just that I feel like I'm being sucked into a black hole and if I don't leave Kathmandu immediately it'll be at least another week or two before I can pull myself out, which I don't think is something I'm quite yet ready for.

The Tower of Power -- a pyramid of lightbulbs in a temple. You may ask yourself why?

Kissing Cowsins - I found these two tramping around in a square full of thousands of rock doves (vulgarly/commonly called 'pigeons')

Bodhnath is the largest Tibetan exile community in Nepal. This stupa is right in the center of it all. So many prayer flags and kaleidoscopic painted walls that it'll make the cones in your eyes bleed all kinds of psychedelic and leave you hopelessly colorblind for a minimum of two weeks. I'm not exagerating.

Stacks of butter lamps - always a spooky favorite!

Hope everyone is peachy. I miss you all!

If you want to phone up the Berk. Library and be my angel, I need to buy this book that I didn't return before the fines on it add up over six months and totally bankrupt me. I'll bring you back your own sacred Indian cow if you help me! Promise! Just send me an email asap and we'll figure something out... It may require fronting me a little cash -- but maybe not? BUT I'll love and honor you for _ever_.. and you get a cow!

And finally... If you've got time left to troll around on the web, you should go check out the beginings of ravenfacts.org -- this really made my day. If you already know about ravenfacts.org but haven't checked it out, it's worth it. If you don't, it'll probably be really confusing --- but still worth it.