We are settled in Boudhanath in the Girls’ Hostel (student residence) of the local Medical College. We live directly behind the Stupa Community Hospital. Other than the guard dog barking, the quiet is only interrupted by the very occasional loud bus horn, heard from the street, and our Tibetan neighbour chanting from 6 am to 9 am, and then again in the evening. We have three monkeys who live on our roof but avoid us with disinterest and not fear. We live on the second floor, and they climb past our window on their assent to the roof after gathering food. Like the monkeys, most free time at home is spent on the roof.
It has a great view and is it warm throughout the day-compared to the concrete rooms, that never warm up. We sleep in our down sleeping bags, and are cosy but in the morning we can see our breath-though the leftover tea from the night before has never frozen (maybe because is has 3 tablespoons of sugar in it!).
We eat at the student canteen about a 10 minute walk from the residence and adjacent to the College. We vary our diet with daalh bhaat (lentils and rice) (served with varied curried vegetables and varied spicey pickles, for variation), roti and daalh (flat bread and daalh), and Tibetan momos (spicey dumplings in an even spicier sauce). Then we supplement this with chai tea, and an illicit stash of peanut butter, crackers, hot chocolate and Toblerone chocolate-all purchased, much to my embarrassment, at the department store in Kathmandu that carries imported everything…I really have to get it under control though. Our garbage is taken from our hostel floor to the street and left on the curb-I tried to pretend that I didn’t notice this but I have to step over it on my way to the chai latte shop-and my tell-tale Toblerlone wrapper was there perched on the pile (no one else in our neighbourhood would have a Toblerone chocolate simply because it’s cost is the equivalent of a days wage, and most Nepalis do not have a taste for chocolate). The dogs and cattle, and I presume the rats at night, scour through the garbage eating all the organic waste. Then the rag-pickers come through-children and women, who pick out the plastic bottles, containers, and cloth. At the same time, the paper-pickers come through, and pick out cardboard and paper. Then, the shopkeepers light a fire at the curb, and on our way back home, we walk past two or three fires that light up the area and illuminate the market (not to mention choke everyone). Then, I think about once a week or maybe twice a week, all the leftovers from the fire are shovelled into a pile and a truck comes to be loaded by men with shovels. It seems efficient enough, and neighbourhood doesn’t seem very dirty.
On our floor, there are 9 only students, most from outside the Kathmandu Valley, all enjoying the kids. They have graciously adopted us. Other families have been very hospitable. They pity that we exist on canteen food though we like it, and I haven’t confessed about the peanut butter to any of them. Saturdays are spent visiting families here in Boudhanath (Boudha for short), or out in the country-which is a five minute drive from here.
We spent one afternoon at the house of the Stupa Lama. The Stupa is the big dome with eyes painted on the box perched on top. Prayer flags are draped from the peak to the base, and on special nights, tiny butter candles are lit (about 100 000) and light the whole square up. One can walk around the Stupa clockwise while meditating. Though it is a major tourist attraction in the Kathmandu Valley, and on the request list as a UNESCO heritage site, it is also a neighbourhood to Hindus and Buddhist, and the major landing site for the Tibetan refugees who came after China annexed/invaded Tibet in the ‘50s. The Stupa Lama is the communities spiritual leader, presiding over births, deaths, marriages, and other things-my ignorance to it all making me unable to give you the full account of his role.
