Jiri

Store in Phidim with Chilis drying on the roof and the ubiquitous playing children hanging around the shop. These places are usually the equivalent of a 5 and dime and in larger towns sells practically nothing but packaged sweet treats and tobacco.
 

Thursday, January 25, 2001

Evening. This town is a bedraggled end-of-the road bazar town filled with touts working to herd you in to the under-occupied hotels. People just stay here on the way in and out of hikes in the region. It is only me and a strange older French nun staying at my hotel. She is praying in her room with a bell and sash while I write here. Dinner will be ready in two hours.

In the several days that have passed since my last journal entry I spent good time with the group visiting some temples (Bouddnath with it's 147 and 108 niches, Pashupati with its' 'foreigners are banned'large city and huge bull mount of Shiva).

I visited the village of Sanku at the end of one of the roads out of Kathmandu and walked back. I explored Kathmandu (exciting and varied) and settled my affairs there. Sadly, it seems that hemp cloth is not to be found in Kathmandu. I will have to wait until I get to Pokhara to see what's what.

I learned by email of my father's impending retirement from the firm. This was unexpected so soon. Mom wrote that the terms of this retirement are being negotiated. I tried vainly for one whole night and day to call and email them without success (I should have tried even a few more times by phone than I did).

I finally left Kathmandu yesterday by making the 7 Am to 3 PM bus ride (215 Rupees or US $3) to Jiri at the end of another road. Jiri is for now the gateway to the Solu Khumbu range (which houses Everest) other than a $140 chopper ride from Kathmandu to Lukla.

I am trying vainly to finish my massive copy of War and Peace-before I begin trekking. Tolstoy is a true genius. God, how he knows us. I cannot, however, understand how he died alone in a train station -perhaps his death was a not-understood rapture or enlightenment? He writes many things of two characters Sonya and Princess Mary which make me understand Jessica (my ex-girlfriend) better. Of Sonya he comments through the reading of the gospels by another character Natasha: 'to him that hath, shall be given, and to him that hath not shall be taken away. She is the one that hath not. Why? I don't know, perhaps she lacks egotism. Sometimes I am dreadfully sorry for her - she was always ready to render some small services for which she had a gift and all this was unconciously accepted from her with insufficient gratitude by those around her.'

Also: Princess Mary and her berothed Nicholas speaking to one another: She (Princess Mary) again inquired whether everything was going well on the farm. Her unnatural tone made Nicholas wince unpleasantly and he replied hastily.- Tolstoy also shows general wisdom on Eurocentrism when he writes 'The welfare and civilization of humanity in general by which is usually meant that of the peoples occupying a small north-westerly portion of a large continent.'

I need to go back in (perhaps at home) and ID all of the descriptions Tolstoy gives of holy love/god/energy. His descriptions are amazingly New Age in character. That is, New Age with a Christian veneer as spoken through the characters of Pierre and Prince Andrew.

Tomorrow I will begin trekking to the first village as soon as I have finished War and Peace -I cannot take that monster with me on my back. This does not help me in my efforts to catch up with the French and Americans who are one day ahead on the same trail.