You walk in its streets as if you were in an open museum of cities that prevailed and then perished
Ashraf Aboul-Yazid
A small country, its right hand holds the palm of China, and its left hand rests on the shoulder of India, so that between them appears a nut in the jaws of a giant crusher… It has Mount Everest; the tallest peak in the world, continuously visited by travelers and adventurers, and Buddha, the boy who is deified by millions around the world.
You walk in its streets as if you were in an open museum of cities that prevailed and then perished, and you pass through its temples as if you were in a fireplace whose candles are still glowing, and you sit with its people, and then you are in an Arab countryside, but beauty in the eyes does not hide much of the pain of the heart, and between pain and hope Nepal was born and the Nepalese lived.
It is rare for me to go to a country where I do not have a ticket to leave, but the trip to the Nepalese capital; Kathmandu was one of those rare times. I traveled from the South Korean capital, Seoul; Country of Quiet Morning, heading to the land of gods and legends; Nepal, I only carry a ticket whose destination ends there, and between the modernity in which the Korean Incheon Airport was drowning, and the innate sense that the Nepalese Kathmandu Airport receives you, travelers will discover that the issue is not the hours that the plane took, but rather the time machine that brought you back to the heart of ancient history.
In Nepal, the gods live with humans, and even embody them sometimes. Why not, and most of the people of Nepal bear sacred names! Despite this apparent innateness, the people of the country will assume that their visitors know the technology, as they have installed machines in which you fill in your data electronically, digitally photograph your passport, and face the lens of the automated robot to take a picture of your face, before you press a button with it to print the papers that you will submit to an employee to review. And you pay the fees to officers in foreign currency, and they give you a receipt for the visa fees, and you will take all of that to the entry counter, to pass simply, calmly, and without complication, triumphing over the crowds and apprehension, and you do not have the return flight data and you do not know the hotel of residence!
But the government of Nepal depends on you and the millions of tourists who come to it every year, to help its economy, restore its ruins that were destroyed by the 2017 earthquake, and implement its long-term plans to develop its infrastructure.
150 Bishnu and Bishnu
Awaiting me was Bishnu Nisthuri, a brilliant journalist, friend and fellow of Asia Journalist Association. Common name Bishnu has a secret. Naming a Nepalese child with one of the Hindu gods is common because of the religious nature of the daily life in the Nepalese society. Thus, the name of the Hindu god Bishnu or Vishnu, and 150 of its vocabulary index, some of which are also known as Hafiz, is given to boys, and Bishnu is a god with four arms that indicate his strength and power.
In accordance with the ritual of welcome, Bishnu Nisthuri would carry a silk shawl with the color of golden sun, embossed with Nepalese alphabet and symbols, to make it a scarf for me, in front of the airport gate, before the car he had rented to take us to the hotel where I would be staying in the heart of the capital. For a moment, after the sun had set, I felt that I was entering the heart of an ancient Indian city, perhaps the sense of similarity between the alphabets, and perhaps the feeling that the features were drawn from a sub-continent in the heart of Asia, but in the following days I will discover those differences that make you realize that the Nepalese have their distinctive faces with their deep features and characteristics, men or women.
As a gift for a first-time visitor to Nepal, Bishnu was in store for a pleasant surprise. He booked me a flight for the early morning of the next day, in which the plane would circle its passengers over the Himalayas, and circle the most famous of them; Everest. The plane bears an emblem of a giant foot, representing the foot of the Ice Man (Yeti).
Everest certificate above the clouds
Yeti flew us over Kanchenkunga (8586 meters), Makalu (8463 meters), Chamlang (07319 meters), Amadalbam (6812 meters), Lhotse (8516 meters), Sagarmata (Everest) (8848 meters), Noptse (7855 meters), Pomorie (7161 meters) and Jiachungang (Jyachu – 6637 meters), Dorji-Lakpa (6966 meters), Shisha Bangma (Josian Tan) (8013 meters), Ganesh Himal Manaslu Anpurina Dalguri (8588 meters) and Langtang Lirong (7234 meters).
We had the opportunity to witness the topography of the country, between valleys, desert, mountains and forests. The houses are distributed and paths are branching out, on the edges of which mud and stone buildings looked like grains of fruit in the process of ripening.
The legend of the Ice Man (Yeti) is believed by the public in Nepal, India, Siberia (Russia) and Tibet (China), and new films have confirmed its giant size and ape-like appearance, although science confirms that there is no evidence of (his) existence.
In the sky, the hospitality crew began to explain what we see to the right and left of the small plane, and one hostess escorted us one after the other to enter the cabin of the two pilots, or more accurately the male pilot and the female pilot while the other hostess began distributing drinks in crystal glasses, for everyone to drink to the Lord of the Mountains; Everest.
We were nearing the end of the flight when our hostess began handing out certificates of completion of flight over Everest, signed by the pilots, stamped by the airline, and everyone began celebrating as if they had just won a college degree.
But with my adventurous friend Chakra Karky, an Everest climber and one of his lovers, there was another story, no less amazing than climbing the mountain, a story higher than Everest, where he and a group of lovers of their immortal teacher decided to organize a campaign to clean the mountain from the waste of climbers who exceed thousands. Of them, annually the peak is only reached by dozens.
Thanks to the support of a local bank, an excavation campaign began under the snow that covered the debris and waste of the years, which global warming began to reveal its remnants, and the team included 31 volunteers to clean up this mess in this very dangerous area and at a high altitude. And he happily told me about the documentary they had to record this unique expedition to clear the waste from the face of Everest. It is a film that has become the best call to encourage people to keep the environment clean, especially among school children.
The crescent of Ramadan appeared in Nepal
The next day, I had a meeting with a new Bishnu, Bishnu Gautam, a journalist for the newspaper (Rising Nepal), after his driver drove us to a field near the newspaper building, where we stopped to show me the way on foot, as if we were walking in an open gallery. Many ancient buildings have been turned into restaurants and shops, in addition to being inhabited by new residents who may have rented them, in order to reuse them.
After its publication in Nepali in 1901, the Bishnu Gautam newspaper launched its English sister newspaper, The Rising Nepal, in 1965. The funny thing is that the one in charge of the supplements told me that the old Nepali newspaper publishes its most important supplement on Fridays, as it records the most sales as well!
In the newspaper office, I was surprised, as we were going to survey the crescent of Ramadan after a few days, to find a picture of the reception of the holy month in Egypt on the last page of one of the newspapers issued in English where a picture is published of an orange seller sitting on a cart in the middle of a market filled with goods, nuts and lanterns, under the title “The Traveling Merchant”, and the funny thing is that the word traveler is also pronounced in Nepali and means the traveler, in Arabic, one of many words that I transmitted from Arabic, just as it was transmitted from Hindi and Urdu.
Helicopter receiving roses
I agreed with Bishnu Gautam to visit the historical sites, and chose to mention here between the excursion of the Pashupatinath Temple in Kathmandu where my guide told me about those who come to the annual celebration of Lord Shiva; lord of the three major Hindu gods; Brahma, Vishnu and Maheshwar, he is the giver of energy, the patron saint of yoga, the guardian of time, the lover of art and dance, and also the god of destruction. The temple is located on the bank of the Bagmati River, and it has been a center of affection for all Hindus since ancient times.
More than 900,000 devotees come to it from India and Nepali regions to stand for about eight hours in wavy lines, before entering the main temple. The most exciting scenes can be captured of about four thousand naked hermits who smoke and are called Sadhus in the local Nepali language, hinting at foreigners who spread their carpets and raise their wet hands. You will see readers of religious texts mumbling aloud, hats beside them, waiting for alms. Most alms givers come from Malaysia. During the middle of the day, a Nepalese army helicopter hovered overhead and dropped flowers on the temple and cheered the crowds, who are celebrating seeing the temple for once in their lives. Some of them came from China via an international road built by China at its expense to serve those coming from its minorities to visit the homeland of Buddha.
A thousand faces of Nepalese women
It is not strange to find a saleswoman in the store, a dancer in the restaurant, and a waiter in the café, but the woman here is also a driver, a teacher, a journalist, a traffic policewoman, a doctor, and a pilot atop of the list. Trafficking in women and girls and supplying sex markets in India and other countries with them remained one of Nepal’s major social problems, especially after the development of other destinations by attracting them to work in Asia and Africa.
In this regard, the most important meeting of my trip was with Mrs. Anuradha Koirala, Founder and President of Maiti Nepal; an organization established to rescue and rehabilitate trafficked women and girls, whose number is estimated to be around 300,000. Thanks to her effort and dedication, the 70 year old lady (born April 14, 1949) was elected as the first Governor of District No. 3 by the Government of Nepal.
In her office, Onurduha pointed to a map of the provinces, and how her organization, which retrieves women from border posts before they are trafficked, has outposts. Maiti Nepal operates its own rescue offices at 11 different entry points of the Nepal-India border. After meeting the social activist – who won the Courageous Conscience Award (Massachusetts, 2006), the CNN Hero of the Year award in 2010, as well as the prestigious Korean Manhae Award for Community – Onurdaha gave us a tour of her foundation where children born to trafficking victims, being cared for and taught, gathered around her, calling her Grandma. (Maiti Nepal means “mother’s house” in Nepali).
Here is a sanctuary for the rescued women where they can stay in the homes run by Maiti Nepal until they can go back to their homes, or if parents and the community do not accept they can stay until they can live on their own.
Within a decade, Mighty Nepal has helped rescue and rehabilitate more than 12,000 women and girls. It also reunited the rescued women with their families, and participated in patrolling the Indo-Nepalese border with the police and other law enforcement authorities.
In the farewell evening, and after buying the return ticket, Bishnu Nisthuri was invited to a company in a musical atmosphere, in which we had dinner, in which vegetarian dishes were mixed with chicken dishes buried in the fire, cooked with hot sauce, with folk dances and singing, and the Nepalese woman appeared again, But this evening she was singing with her colleague dressed as a peacock. We bid farewell to friends, and promise them another visit, to continue listening to the rest of Nepal’s songs.
________________
Ashraf Aboul-Yazid is an eminent poet, novelist, travelogue writer of Egypt who has authored over three dozen books. His poetry has been translated into over a dozen languages. He is Editor-in-Chief of Silk Road Literature Series.
