Beautiful Boudha

Boudhanath, Nepal

August 19

My jetlagged eyes burst open at 6:36am. I wake up this morning to the bright rays of a Himalayan sun beaming through translucent gold window curtains. The warmth of the new day and noisy ruckus of chirping birds and local Nepalis, barking stray dogs, honking buses and motorcycles fills me with radiant joy. How blessed and lucky am I to be waking up in a horizon of endless possibilities in a culture I have only read about in textbooks and seen in pictures and movies, a culture woven with Nepali Hindu and Tibetan Buddhist threads, something I have only experienced a small glimpse of while studying for a month last summer in an ashram outside of Bangalore, India.

It is bright and early on this fine Tuesday morning where find myself on the fourth floor of the Green Hotel, a quaint oasis in the hustle and bustle of main street Boudha (a village within the larger Kathmandu city). I cannot believe this Tibetan pagoda style palace is my first glimpse of Nepali-Tibetan culture. The red and gold hand-painted floral Tibetan night table sends me right back to New Rochelle, to the ethnic antique shop I worked in these last few weeks of summer. The Buddha shrine and serene terrace lounge greet Green Hotel guests as they enter the gates of this remote hotel squeezed in between a Sari fabric shop and rows of local Nepali vendors. This pocket of the world, this crescent valley in the vast Himalayan mountains has a unique aroma of incense, a national smell that greeted my eager nostrils at the Nepali Airport a short 24 hours ago.

I embraced my dad in a hug for the last time outside of the JFK Qatar Terminal. The wrinkles of my forehead lifted and eyes widened as I waved goodbye and lugged my trekking pack, EMS duffle, and navy Kipling carry-on from the last memento of home imprinted in my memory. A combination of excitement, fear, and anxiousness nerves coursed through my veins, as airports always make me feel a bit antsy and the daunting prospect of leaving my comfort zone entirely was starting to kick in. I was sure that the JFK luggage porters could hear the African drumming of my pounding heart deep within my chest cavity as I made my way through security. Relieved and happy to see two of my new BC travel buddies, Dylan and Andrew, we exchanged our nervous and eager excitement for the travel ahead and our journey across borders of time and culture to our future home in the Himalayas. The adrenaline cascading through every bone and joint of my body prevented me from getting a good sleep on that ten-and-a-half our flight to Doha in the Middle East, but at least I got to skim through a few movies of Qatar’s enormous selection. Talking with Joel, the friendly Indian teenager next to me, and hearing about his family visits to Kerala, the southwestern coast of India put me at ease, as I knew I was about to enter an entirely different world of curious Nepali, Hindu, and Tibetan faces with questions about my American life and culture.

During our seven hour layover in Doha airport, Dylan, Andrew, and I knew we were very far from home. The modern Middle Eastern airport was flowing with an eclectic mix of people from all ends of the color spectrum and dressed in the most wide variety of outfits we had ever seen. Mysterious dark eyes of Islamic women caught much of our attention behind the black fabric of their burqas. Their husbands sported the chic Middle Eastern garb of white linen pants and white sultan like shirts with heads covered in similar fashion. Hellooo Aladdin!! The sleeping Chinese women in surgeon masks seated next to us, the granola crunch hippies with dreadlocks draping over their trekking packs, the colorful assortment of Saris on Indian women with their young children and husbands, the British colonial looking gentlemen with his leather luggage looking quite dated for this day and age, a pirate of a man wearing studded leather gloves and gladiator sandals that tied up to his knees, and the worn wrinkled faces of old South Asian couples tending their crying grandkids. After chatting with Dylan and Andrew and getting to know each other better for about 6 hours, the deliriousness washed over our tired eyes just as we heard the boarding call for our 4 hour flight to Kathmandu. The wake of deliriousness continued onto that mystical plane ride into the Himalayan mountains… we boarded that plane only to step foot into a steam room—the entire body of the flying metal bird was exuding foggy steam from all its crevices. Puffs of condensed air filled the aisles like a smokey exhale of a cigarette. Maybe rational science could explain the natural phenomenon we experienced on that flight, the density of the air particles in relation to the outside humidity, but the mysticism of it all seemed so fitting for where we were headed.

One Indian meal of paneer and masala chicken, a few selfies insisted by the Nepali man sitting next to me, and a heart wrenching Bollywood movie that left me bawling and laughing in my seat, the clouds of high altitude were beginning to dissipate enough for us to see the vast expanse of Himalayan mountains from our bird’s eye view. The lush mountain range was like none I had ever seen before. They made Mount McKinley of Alaska’s Denali Park look like a hilly pasture in comparison to their grandeur and greatness. My jaw dropped as my iPhone heightened the whole experience by whispering yogi Om chanting in my ears. Some of the Himalayan peaks reached taller than our plane and the villages that sprinkled certain crescents showed how proportionally sublime and enormous those mountains really were. Everywhere around me people were hogging window views to steal a video with their cameras and phones, but nothing can really capture the extent of natural beauty all around us. The vibrations of my Om playlist soon turned to vibrations from the earth as our plane landed safely in Nepali airport. After avoiding the nice Nepali man who gave me his home address and asked if I had ‘man at home,’ I realized the cultural differences would definitely include a lack of understanding of personal space and borders. Dylan, Andrew and I were greeted by a ‘Welcome to Nepal’ sign hanging above a large golden Buddha statue. Already in love with this place, I thought. A combination of smells permeated the airport grounds, a nice mixture of incense, muskiness, and the sweet odor of B.O I had grown used to back in India. As a Tibetan monastic teacher would later tell us, “Welcome to Nepal, where anything can happen.”

More to come

xoxo Julia