Category Archives: Nepal

Travel in Nepal

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I am long overdue for an entry and apologize for my virtual absence. In case I have not yet mentioned it, I will tell you now that the internet in Nepal, at least that which I have access to, is slower than the connection in the 90’s. It is so slow that I cannot access the twotiger web page because it takes such a long time to load that the connection times out. So maybe this entry will be the same as several others, or maybe it will be something new. It will be a surprise for all of us.

First and foremost, for those of you who do not know, I will be coming home early. I have changed my ticket to return to the US one week from now. Nepal is amazing and I have no doubt that I will come back someday, but the truth is that one and a half months is more than enough for me at this time. Perhaps it would be different if I were in the mountains this whole time –maybe with the company of nature I could sit in a cave for 3 years, 3 months and 3 days like the monks… probably not. Either way, Boudha is nothing like the mountains. It is polluted and dirty and every form of transportation is like a taste of death which brings me to the topic of this entry: travel in Nepal.

I did not know this before coming, but it takes courage to get inside of a car in Nepal. There are no rules here, or if there are, they are not obvious. There are no speed limits or traffic signs. There are speed bumps and pot holes, but the drivers have no problem swerving into oncoming traffic to avoid them. In fact it seems like they have no problem veering into oncoming traffic for any reason at all. There have been several times when the driver goes to pass someone and I think to myself, ‘we’re going to get into a head on collision for sure,’ and then to my surprise, not only do we fit between the cars, but somehow a motorbike will have also squeezed in to this tiny gap to pass us on the right (in general, cars drive on the left here).

It’s a trip. The most common form of transportation that I have experienced, aside from walking, is the microbus. Microbuses are usually Toyota vans that drive on a particular route. There are no formal stops, instead a boy hangs out the side door and repeats all of the towns on the route to people walking by. He speaks so fast that even the locals have to double check where the bus is going. If you want a ride, you wave one down, jump in and then tell them where you want to stop. The last time we took a microbus there were nearly 25 people crammed into what is normally a 9 passenger vehicle. I have not had the pleasure of riding with animals, but I’ve been told that its not an uncommon experience.

I like this picture because it shows the bicycle, the motor bikes, and the cars traveling together side by side (I also like it because we took it from a rickshaw). What it does not show is the pedestrians crossing the street. People walking from place to place will look both ways, see oncoming traffic and then stick out their hand and proceed to cross. If an oncoming car honks for a long period of time, it means they are not going to stop. The noise pollution is horrible here. Horns are the main source of communication. Often times they will let out frequent short beeps to signal that they are going to pass, long beeps to say, ‘me first,’ and numerous beeps when traveling around blind corners or when telling animals to get out of the road. And of course traffic jams offer even more reason to honk.

I haven’t told you about jeep rides yet, but this entry is getting too long so those stories will have to wait for a future entry.

My impressions of Nepal are mixed

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I live in Boudha just 5 minutes away from the stupa. When walking to the Stupa of Boudhananth one can smell many sweet incense burning, fragrant flowers, urine, decaying flesh and rotting food all in one breath. There are many spiritual people, wealthy and poor, who visit the stupa daily to deepen their understanding of themselves and their religion. On the path there are people begging for money, including people deformed from leprosy, mothers asking for milk for their babies, children who tap you on the back and hold out their hand while they follow you on your errands and stray dogs begging for food.

The spectrum of disease in the clinic also has a wide range. There are people who simply come for elbow pain and headaches, then others who are crippled from accidents, abuse or stroke. Most people here do not come to acupuncture for internal medicine. This is just as well as our pharmacy is somewhat limited and invites creativity. For my patient with staph, the best that I could offer was Pu Ji Xiao Du Yin granules with Zhi Zi and San Huang San for his swollen ankle.

I brought a couple bottles of Zheng Gu Shui, White Flower Oil, and Po Sum On. In three days I have had the opportunity to use all of them. There is also a great opportunity for different acupuncture techniques here. Thanks to starting my trip with GAHP, all of my needling is free hand, including scalp, butt and ear needles. Last week I mostly used channel theory, but for the stroke and the paralysis patient, I used scalp acupuncture, for severe pain I used auricular, and for one sensitive patient I used Japanese techniques. SIOM was not always an easy experience, but I feel like it gave me many tools to begin my practice.

Living in the clinic is also a unique experience. I live here with three other volunteers who all come from France. We spend about 60% of our time together, more now that I am locked out of my room and sleeping in the boys ‘dorm’. My room is just above my friend Sudan’s room. He is 5 years old and lives in the hospice so that the nurses can take care of him while he undergoes chemo to treat his cancer. He is my pal. The day that I returned from the mountains, he followed me everywhere, helped me to carry my bags, showed me around the clinic and introduced me to the residence here. He does not speak English and I do not speak Nepali, but we get by just fine.

Despite his illness, he has more energy than any little kid I have ever met. He has his hands in everything and can travel from one side of the clinic to the other in a fraction of the time as the rest of us. The nights that he screams from the pain are difficult. Not because it is inconvenient but because it is hard to be so helpless in terms of relieving his suffering.

Living here is not always easy but, thus far, it is an enlightening experience.

Day 1

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I am in the kitchen with two of the French volunteers discussing whether or not snails are delicious. There is no shortage of company or entertainment here.

Today work at Shechen was very smooth. I work in the clinic with a woman named Sonam who helps to translate. It is very nice, she is studying acupuncture and very interested in helping to pull needles, or to do moxa, anything really. It’s like being able to be in two places at once.

The cases that we saw were very typical of the things I have seen thus far. Three of the patients complained of arthritis in their knees, three of back pain, one sciatica patient, several people complained of headaches, one low energy, one patient with shoulder pain, one case of ankle pain due to a staph infection and one wen dan tang case.

I am interested to follow up with all of them, but I am most curious about the wen dan tang fellow. He is in his mid thirties, complained of a left sided headache that started two years ago with a sharp ringing in his ears. At that time and since then, it is very easy for him to get startled and to have palpitations. He is fatigued and has poor sleep with lots of dreams, sometimes nightmares. Every time I went to needle him, before the needle would touch his skin, he would jump, make a squeaking noise as though he was in pain. We only have pills and granules in the clinic, so I gave him a weeks worth of herbal capsules.

We will see.

Returning to Kathmandu

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Since coming back from the mountains, I have been on ‘holiday’. It is extremely different in Kathmandu than in the mountains. In the mountains it was very quiet, I spent most evenings alone meditating or writing. Here at the Shechen clinic, it is quite the opposite. Every day I have breakfast, lunch and dinner with the other volunteers. There are three nurses and a physical therapist volunteering from France. It is far from quiet, there are dogs barking, people talking, horns beeping and occasionally someone rings the bell at the stupa down the street.

We have gone to a festival, a wedding and dinner parties together, it has been quite a lot of fun, but not very restful. We went to a festival in a nearby town that was for Hindu women to celebrate their husbands and to pray for them to have long and healthy lives, and for unmarried women to pray that they will find a good husband. The night before, all of the women partied and danced, then the day of the festival, they fasted and stood in line for hours to go to the temple. The line of women was so long that it wrapped many times around the city. There must have been thousands of women dressed in red praying for a good husband. There were also people dancing and singing in the street. It was a very crowded, but beautiful experience.

The people who work at the clinic are very kind. They come to my room and ask if I would like to go do this or that. Yesterday one of the employees asked me if i wanted to go with him to buy plants for the clinic. “Sure,” I thought, that sounded nice. After shopping for plants, having lunch in a nearby town and going to visit the sleeping Buddha statue, we returned 5 hours later. Just in time to leave for one of the employees weddings.

It was a very different experience than I expected. Everyone said the wedding would be like a party. “There will be music, food and dancing” they said. When we arrived, the families of the couple were sitting in a circle and the bride was saying goodbye to her old family and introducing herself to her new family. Many people were crying. There was food, but no dancing or music. It was very different than the wedding we witnessed at the sleeping Vishnu only hours earlier. At the other wedding, the women were dressed in red and they were laughing and smiling and everyone seemed very happy. It is a mystery to me.

Tomorrow I will start working in the clinic. When I asked Manoj if I will be busy or not, he said, “I don’t know, people call and ask about acupuncture, and I tell them to come on Wednesday.” I think it will be interesting. The acupuncturist who was here before me was seeing 25-35 patients a day, but he was not prescribing herbs. So we will see. I will try to post more on the topic in a week or so.

I hope that you are all well. Much love from Nepal, Tuesday.

Best Buy Saves the Day!

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So here’s the story. Last week I graduated from Acupuncture school and my fiancee’s parents bought me a camera from Best Buy so that I could document my trip to Nepal. It’s a jaunty little red camera that takes double A batteries, a big plus for me in Nepal where the power will be intermittent and I don’t know how often I’ll be able to charge the batteries. After graduation, we went to Colorado to visit my family and investigate wedding locations. While visiting the Denver Botanic Gardens, disaster struck.

There I was, minding my own business and taking a picture of a nearby pond when all of a sudden there was liquid fire running down my arm. A bee had stung me! (For the first time in my life) In the blink of an eye, acting by pure reflex, I swatted at my arm and threw my brand new camera at the ground. In a dazzling feat of acrobatics, my camera bounced off the ground and flipped. While flipping, the battery door opened and one of my batteries did a perfect swan dive into the pond. The camera itself followed the battery, but landed on the edge of the pond, teetering precariously.

Fortunately, the camera was not destroyed. When we got home later that evening, we were able to add a new battery and the camera was capable of powering up and we did not lose any images. Unfortunately, the camera was damaged. There was a little tiny piece of plastic on the inside of the camera that allowed the battery door to latch closed. In the midst of the acrobatics, this little piece broke off, which had the effect of making the battery door extremely susceptible to opening at the slightest touch. Because of the way that I like to hold cameras, this meant that whenever I tried to take a picture with the camera, there was a 50/50 chance that the battery door would open up and the camera would lose all power. Hardly, a usable camera.

Several Minutes after the attack

I was quite upset that my brand new camera was broken after having it for less than a week. At this point, I’m in Colorado with the camera, while the box for the camera is in Seattle and the receipt for the camera is in New York. I’m also leaving the country for four months in less than a week. Needless to say, I felt like my options were limited.

My fiancee attempted to repair the camera by super gluing the tiny plastic piece back in place, however the super glue proved to not be strong enough to withstand the pressure of the battery door. My family suggested using a rubber band or tape keep the battery door closed. This idea was upgraded to getting some velcro to hold the door closed, but none of these options felt satisfying.

After spending a few days mulling it over, we decided to go to Best Buy and purchase another camera for my trip. When we got to Best Buy, we decided to visit customer service to see if they could do anything for us, but our hopes were low seeing as how the camera was damaged entirely through my own fault. We went to the Westminster, CO Best Buy (#209) and spoke with a really nice customer service representative, whose name I did not catch. I explained to her exactly how I had thrown the camera to the ground after being stung by a bee and asked if there was anything she could do to help.

She tried to look up the receipt on the computer, but was unable to find it, so we called my fiancee’s parents and got the necessary info. After a few minutes, she told us that because we had not purchased insurance, they would have to send the camera back to the manufacturer to be repaired or replaced at their discretion. I then told her that I was leaving the country in three days and she went into the back to speak to her manager.

She emerged a few minutes later and told us that her manager had approved an exchange for a brand new camera!

We were in shock. We walked in with a broken camera, which we had thrown at the ground, no box, no receipt and the intention to purchase another camera. Instead, Best Buy opted to exchange the broken camera for a brand new one, in the box with all of the accessories at no cost to us.

Best Buy saved the day. Now, instead of trying to figure out how to get the camera repaired and how to ship it to Nepal, we have a brand new camera that is fully functional and can spend our time worrying about what to pack for a four month journey. Best Buy had no obligation to replace our camera, but they did, and in so doing, they have gained a loyal customer who will certainly buy from them again in the future. And best of all, I can take lovely photos of my journey to share on the blog here.

Thank you Best Buy.