Birganj to Kolkata, November 26–30, 2003
If I said that my Thanksgiving plans for this year were made by my friends while trekking around Kalimpong and Darjeeling with the US Consulate to India, I might sound a little over the top, as if I was trying to impress whoever might stumble across these scribblings.
Actually, that’s about [...]
I remember how my host family explained Maha Shivaratri to me a year ago when I was living in Gaidankot.
I asked how they would celebrate and they just shook her hand, grimaced, and non-verbally said, We don’t.
It’s a gesture that might mean alcoholic or tipsy in America. Basically, the hand is extended vertically and shaken, [...]
Way back in July it was hot—really hot. The hot that you can’t escape, that makes you uncomfortable in your skin.
Since it was July it was also the thick of the monsoon. Since it was July I still wasn’t half sure why or what I was doing in Nepal or if I’d even be here [...]
Public transportation is the best way to meet people. It’s also the near equivalent of putting a revolver in your mouth with a hundred chambers and one bullet and playing Russian roulette; I am not dead.
On my last bus trip to Kathmandu I saw one head-on collision, two buses that had fallen off the side [...]
