everest and the toenail

I’ve seen a lot of blogs about Nepal, but this is one of the very best: http://everestandthetoenail.wordpress.com/

BTW, Marc J. is posting some really good pictures.

The Levitating Monk

Magician Dan White travels to Nepal to learn some of the magical secrets of the Mysterious East. Beautiful exotic landscapes. Folkloric story elements with people fooling each other over power, mystery, magic and  illusion. Completely unbelievable, as the narrator ironically speaks – for he is a professional magician – yet still completely delightful.

Certainly you could watch this only for the flavour of the selected views of easily accessible Bhaktapur, and the romantic colour of the mountains and trails and be still very well entertained. The story elements are extra, and just too much fun. Lamont Cranston would be proud.

Discovery Channel’s “The Supernaturalist” is Super Stupid at The Skeptical Teacher has opinions.

A Day off to Explore Old Kathmandu …

“Nepal” is a tag in my tag surfer. I do like hearing about the place. Just walking about the streets is magical. Some of that happens here:

A Day off About twenty days (hard to believe) since I landed,  nearly a quarter of the time has gone by. I spent a lot of time doing the administrative work to get my program off the ground, and have really had only a few  days "off" – Saturday being one of them.  Even then I picked up some photocopying. Tomorrow begins a six-day marathon. Gird about my loins with strength O Lord! Took a microbus to Ratna Park for 15 hrs, pleasant little ride and … Read More

via Kathmandu Critical Care 2011

His book, Hospital at the End of the World
Joe’s YouTube page

Nepal Hills painting

I’m ready to sign this one.

The chariot for Bisket Jatra

Just moments ago we received an email from Narayan Chitrikar, the Thangka artist living in Bhaktapur, who is visiting his children in Michigan. He included this photo of the great chariot rolled out for Bisket Jatra. Sunny’s Guest house is to the left of this great temple in the background. The wheels for the chariot were stored across the road from the guest house, just behind the temple. Happy New Year 2065!

Some Bloggers in Nepal right now

http://sundayshines.wordpress.com

and

http://frankrankin.wordpress.com

Expect amazing pictures and touching stories. 

Nepal in Time photo essay

Here is that five tiered roofed temple again in a Time Photo Essay.

The sloping road says it is outside of the main part of old Bhaktapur, and the definite lack of cars and motorbikes says it is still inside the old historic city. Compare to: 

Baraka. Images from Nepal

Nepal keeps popping up as a topic here. This site, Spirit of Baraka features still shots from Baraka – a film by Ron Fricke. Here, an image from Bhaktapur’s Durbar Square. In the background, the Siddhi Lakshmi with the guardian statues; in the foreground left Vatsala Durga with the “gate” on one corner of the step.

Trekking Yeti

My friends Yam Gurung and Samantha Schuster have put together their trekking company. Here’s the site:  The Trekking Yeti.

Have I talked enough yet about this wonderful beautiful country?

 From their site:

Our vision is to share the spirit and beauty of the Himalayan Kingdom of Nepal with travellers seeking a safe adventure and renewed energy. Yam Gurung was born in a small and remote village in the Annapurna region where his parents still live today. In addition to being an accomplished trekking guide, porter and organizer, Yam is an experienced chef, father of two and husband of Canadian born Samantha Schuster. As well as being an experienced nurse in the Canadian North and a registered midwife Samantha has traveled widely in Asia, Africa, and Europe. Including, of course, numerous sojourns to Nepal where she and Yam first met in 1998. When they are not in Nepal, Yam and Samantha live in London, Ontario with their two children Charlotte Maya and Kam Lama.   

Our family recently returned from Nepal, and Karen has put up some pictures at http://web.mac.com/karencu which cover many of the sites Trekking Yeti offer on their tours.

A Little Digital Archaeology

 More from The Secret Museum of Mankind

WHERE THE NEWAR CRAFTSMAN’S FANCY IS CUT IN IMMORTAL STONE

Nepal has not unjustly been called a museum of archaeology and arts. In this time-worn street of Bhatgaon structures of great architectural merit, with handsome ornamentation of Oriental design, are to be seen on all sides. The entrances of many of the important buildings are guarded by large stone animals which stand on each step in pairs and are reputed to have great strength.

This photo above on Secret Museum scanned as it from the book, and sourced from somewhere around the turn of the century, is actually flipped left to right. Someone was making a compositional choice, conscious or unconscious, and figured that the viewers wouldn’t know any better anyway.

Not surprisingly, I found a photo of the same set of buildings surprisingly from a very similar position, through a Google search for Bhatgoan Nepal in this Flickr Stream from east med wanderer from 1998.

There are a few well known temples in Bhaktapur’s Durbar Square and Taumadhi Tole, and the larger ones all have a series of guardian statues along the main entrance. But these ones match. As much as I tried to space myself around in my head, I couldn’t set out a position where that scene could have been seen, until I flipped the old photo. So, here is the flipped image, , and east med wanderer’s photo from roughly the same place.

Cross referencing with memory, guessing, and with Lonely Planet’s Nepal, the temple with the statues on tiers is most certainly Vatsala Temple Siddhi Lakshmi in the Northeast corner  of the Square… which isn’t square. Centrally, the vaguely pyramidal shape belongs to the water tank, and the with the octagonal roof is Chyasalin Mandap, destroyed in 1934 by an earthquake, rebuilt in 1990. The temple on the left with the open archways is , I suspect, Siddhi Lakshmi Temple a corner arcade. The octagonal roof belongs to Vatsala Durga temple. The whitish tower seems to be Vatsala Durga. The white building on the right with the vertical windows is, I suspect, the 55 Window Palace.

Taumadhi Tole is a hub of business activity, whereas Durbar Square is much quieter. Here is one of my own photos of the temple with the octagonal roof – oh, so cleverly cropped so as to exclude the distractions of context or place – and my family strolling through the Durbar Square – from the opposite side of the other photos – in late October of 2008, that whitish pointed temple, which I believe is either Krishna Jagarnath temple or Shiva Kedarnath Temple in the background.  I deserve a through beating for being such a poor reporter. Please correct me.

Yet  more: The street in the picture below is still just as busy with trade and shops as you see it in this older photo. But imagine it with cars and motorbikes in both directions

STREET MARKET SCENE IN A DECORATIVE OLD WORLD SETTING

Among a prolific display of quaintly carved houses, topped here and there by a red tiled pagoda roof, the marketers of Bhatgoan peddle their wares, while coolies parade the street carrying bamboo poles from which depend baskets of tasty meats, and ghurras filled with “dhye” (sour milk) or toddy, the juice drawn from palm trees which soon becomes highly fermented and intoxicating.

As compared to this photo where if you look carefully, you can see that same temple set in a small square (Nasamana Square?), but enclosed by taller buildings. On the right side of the older photo you see a set of steps. These lead up to a smaller altar which is, no doubt, still there today. The Squares are the hubs of commercial activity.

If anyone has more accurate information, please!

UPDATE: Monday, February 23, 2009

The Daily Explorer posts an essay of their correspondent’s recent trip, with a couple of pictures of interest to this historical continuity.
The first, from a point slightly farther back than the previous view, with our ancient photographer probably up on the wall behind that leftmost lion, if not on the lion itself, and the other, I swear, from exactly the same rooftop restaurant table from which I took mine.

and

UPDATE: Oct 14 2001; Another blogger’s tour of Bhaktapur’s Durbar Square