Mani Rimdu

The festival of Mani Rimdu at Tengboche, sometimes referred to that 'dancing monk' festival, takes place in the 9th Tibetan month, usually sometime in late October. The main festivities last three days - I believe right after the full moon, though preparations start much earlier. The 16th day is the most important day when the monks from the monastery perform a number of masked dances in the courtyard of the monastery.

The name 'Mani Rimbu' comes from the 'Mani', which forms part of the Avalokiteshvara (or Chenrezig in Tibetan) chant 'Om mani padme hum'. 'Rimdu' is from 'rildu', referring to the small red pills that are blessed and distributed at the main empowerment ceremony. (Note: I'm not sure how the alveolar lateral becomes a bilabial nasal here, not an alveolar nasal 'n', but it could just be one more step in the process of sound dissimilation.)

The Tengboche Monastery


It just so happened that the main festival day was taking place right in the middle of my short visit to Khumbu, so I decided to do the three hour hike from Khumjung to Tengboche (and back) to catch a glimpse of some of the festivities. It was a fun day, though I don't know if I would've liked to have spent the whole day and a night at the festival by myself (Sara had gone off trekking to the stunningly gorgeous area around Gokyo). In any case, I took her advice and got the little sheet of paper at the visitor centre which explained each dance.

While I arrived around 9.30am, the first dance I got to see was about an hour later (and after a piece of applie pie and pot of milk tea). The Ging-cham is performed by four dancers - two females with drums and two males with cymbals who act as the heralds of Dorje Trollo, the 'wrathful appearance' of the Rinpoche who established Buddhism in Tibet (I'm not quite sure why he would be wrathful), and a kind of patron of the monastery.

Ging-cham


Dorje Trollo appears


Nga-cham was my favourite dance, featuring a pair of 'skeleton' dancers with rather monkey-like movements.



At one point, the two skeletons take the ends of a rope, in the middle of which is tied a dough figure which represents evil. Two dancers in big black hats destroy this dough figure.





As a comic interlude, a monk appears as an old man, named 'Mi Tsering', who grabs an audience member, usually a poor unsuspecting tourist and drags them around the courtyard making them do silly things from exchanging hats to mixing flour and water throwing the mixture at people in the crowd. I'd heard the girl who got dragged along from the ride say earlier that she had to get to Machhermo - about 5 hours away - by nightfall. The poor thing...



Between dances, monks would come around and offer biscuits and milk tea. I'm not a big fan of hot drinks in small plastic cups, though it stop me from having my 6th cup of the morning.



There were a number of other dances, but I figured I needed to leave by early enough to get back to Khumjung by nightfall. Before I left, I was glad I managed to spot a monk with his digital camera filming some of the dancing - after all, why should the tourists get all the fun?

Wildlife of Khumbu

So while the brochures talk about musk deer, himalayan tahrs, wild yaks and the elusive snow leopard, the reality is that the most wildlife visitors to the Khumbu region are going to see are birds. Not that I'm complaining, since I've loved birdwatching from back when I lived in Singapore and I've trained my eyes to spot small things flitting through trees and bushes.

I only wish I had a book to help identify the birds I did see. A digital SLR with a big-ass lens would've been nice too...

Some small passerines (not terribly exciting for most)




Pheasants (the males are the colourful ones)




And raptors / birds of prey. This falcon was hovering directly over a single spot. Quite impressive given the winds looked pretty strong.


I originally hought this raptor was an eagle, but looking at its head, it could've been a vulture...


My favourite shot of the raptor with Everest, Lhotse and Ama Dablam in the background


Yup, a big-ass lens would've been nice.

Dog's Day

Before I keep posting about my recent trip to Solukhumbu to see Mt Everest, I should say that we're into the 3rd / 4th day of Tihar here in Nepal. I say 3rd / 4th because the days of Tihar don't necessarily equate with solar days - yesterday afternoon it was Lakshmi Puja, which falls on the 3rd day when people pray to Lakshmi the goddess of wealth to come visit their homes and people smash sweet things on pictures of her face and paint their floors (but more on this later).

Yesterday morning however, it was Kukur Puja, the day when dogs are worshipped and given cute little mallas (garlands, usually marigold) to wear around their cute little necks. They also get red tika on their cute little foreheads.



Dogs seem to be worshipped on this day for a number of reasons, mostly related to their role in people's afterlifes. Some say they are messengers of the god of death, some say they guard the entrance to the underworld (think Cerberus), some say they guide the souls of the dead.





Whatever the reason, it's a great day to take photos of the otherwise confused little canines who get treated like dirt the other 364 years of the year!





That's it for now. I'm off to eat more shel roti!

Lukla to Khumjung (II)

From Phakding, my porter Pemba and I climbed up to Namche Bazaar, where I spent the night to recover and acclimatise. I was half expecting to wake up in the middle of the night gasping for air, which some of my friends had warned me about. However, all I remember was waking up throughout the night and feeling really weak in the morning. It felt just like a bad flu, without nose-related symptoms - I did recall waking up in the middle of the night and realising that for the first time in weeks, my nostrils were clear!

Note that many travellers actually spend two nights in Namche, but I was trying to get to Khumjung as quickly as possible to see Sara at her field site before she headed off to Gokyo. At the time however, I really thought it was a flu bug, and the next morning I pushed on up the steep steps towards Khumjung.

Namche Bazaar from above


The terrifying steps leading up (or down) from Namche.


On the way up, I saw a few people skydiving from of a small aircraft. The same aircraft landed soon right above the steps we were climbing.





I was later told that there's only a small window of opportunity to skydive from one of the highest dropzones in the world - the highest is if you jump out of a helicopter at Gorak Shep according to the Everest Skydive website. They only do jumps for a week or two in October and May every year.

We soon reached Syangboche (though I wasn't feeling great and needed to stop every few minutes), where one of the world's highest airstrips -if not the highest- is located. According to the website, guests at the nearby Everest View Hotel can fly directly to Syangboche, so they don't need to make the trek from Lukla. Other websites however suggest that this is no longer the case, as too many people would suffer from altitude sickness and the supplementary oxygen provided in the hotel's rooms didn't help much.







In any case, after leaving the landing strip, we climbed a small ridge, and once over that ridge found ourselves in Khumjung. By this time, I was absolutely exhausted and felt like crap. I don't remember much from then, apart from having a cup of milk tea, taking a photo with Pemba, my porter / guide, and downing a bowl of garlic soup before crashing in bed till dinnertime some six hours later.

Me with Pemba


Next time, I would probably spend an extra night in Namche. But at least I started feeling better my second day in Khumjung.

Lukla to Khumjung (I)

After landing in Lukla, it then took me three days to get to Khumjung, the village where Sara was doing her PhD fieldwork. Even though I landed at 7am, and had a porter, I could've made it to Khumjung by nightfall on foot. Of course, there's the issue of altitude sickness / acute mountain sickness (AMS) - the risk of it developing into something much worse than a headache and nausea was enough reason to take it slow.

Day 1 was pretty easy going. I got in early on the first Agni Air flight at 7. Found a young porter named Pemba (he said he was 17, though that changed to 16 on the third day) from Lukla. I had a quick morning tea in Lukla, before setting off for Phakding. We could've easily made it to Monjo, which is much closer to Namche and Khumjung, but Pemba reckoned it would be cheaper in Phakding and he seemed happier to spend the night there because he had friends and family in Phakding.

(A note on pronunciation, aspirated 'ph' in Nepali is in free variation with 'f', so 'phakding' can be pronounced either as 'puck-ding' or 'fuck-ding'.)

On the way to Phakding


The village of Phakding


Where I stayed in Phakding - neither the Yeti Cyber Cafe nor the 'Herman' Bakery Cafe were open though.


By 10am, we had arrived in Phakding, which meant I had a lot of time to kill. Thankfully, there were a few short walks / climbs around to do. I decided to cross over a bridge few tourists heading up to Namche would've crossed, since it only led to a few villages on the other side of the Dudh Koshi (literally 'Milk River').

The Dudh Koshi


The bridge was a little more rusty than the other bridges on the main path.


Most suspension bridges on the main path between Lukla and Namche looked like this.


On my walk past the small village of Sano Gumela (incidentally sano means 'small' in Nepali), I met an old Sherpa lady and a young Tamang girl carrying a basket, with the strap around her forehead, as is the fashion across much of the region. The girl was quite shy, but the old lady was quite happy to share her thoughts on a number of things. Sadly, much of what she said was lost on me. She did say in Nepali that she was going to the nearby monastery. I tried asking her if children were still speaking Sherpa at home in her village, but I'm really not sure what the response was. I think she did say that there were many non-Sherpa people in the village, including the young Tamang girl who was with us.

She was quite a fearsome woman, stopping every so often to pick up a large rock in the middle of the path and throw it to one side. Yet, when a train of dzopkyo (a yak-cow hybrid found at lower altitudes) came up the narrow path, bells aringing, it was so funny to see her running back in my direction like a little girl, getting us to find higher ground so that the train could pass us.

The old Sherpa woman, who kindly posed for a photo after she saw me stopping to take pictures of the landscape.


Suffice to say, it was an interesting little side trip I had around Phakding, though the next time I go up, I'd probably want to stay at Monjo - the next morning's climb was pretty hard...

Volitionality and passing gas

In Sherpa, like in other Tibetic languages, a distinction is made between volitional and non-volitional verbs, meaning that when you describe an action in Sherpa you usually need to specify if it is either 'on purpose', or accidental. In English this distinction is sometimes made lexically with verbs of perception, as in the difference between 'seeing' and 'looking' (or 'watching') as well as 'hearing' and 'listening'. However, in Tibetic languages, this distinction extends to most other verbs as well.

While there are some interesting pairs, my favourite one so far from the Sherpa-English dictionary is:

སླེན་ཤོར་ pen shor (v.inv) = to fart (involuntarily)

སྤེན་གཏོང་ pen tong (v.vol) = to fart

How volitionally can one fart?

Yuan

This is not a Nepal-related post, but just a little comment about this page from Johnson, featuring puns on the name of the Chinese currency, the yuan 元.

It has surprised me that even people on BBC World News (no link available unfortunately) pronounce it as 'you-ahn', rhyming with 'one', like all the puns suggest. In fact, it should be pronounced closer to 'U-N', but as a single syllable, i.e. /ɥɛn/ or /yɛn/. It's surprising because the BBC employ people trained in phonetics to research these things, so that they pronounce names as close to the native language as possible if there is no standard English pronunciation.

And it's even more frustrating for me to hear yuan being mispronounced - it's in my Chinese name.