Glimpses of Nepal

Travel to Nepal is eye-opening in many ways.

Nepal is poor.

People earn around $200 to $300 a month in professional jobs. So about 5 million men have gone to other countries to try to earn more money. They’re primarily in Dubai, Japan and Korea.

They Skype and FaceTime with their families in Nepal. Some won’t see them in person for years at a time. The money they send home is a big pillar of the economy. 
Nepal has low taxes but high custom duties and tariffs. 

A car made in India will cost $10,000 there, but $25,000 in Nepal after the import duty costs.

Nepal was a Hindu Kingdom, but in 2001, the crown prince got really drunk and angry that his family wouldn’t accept the woman he wanted to marry.

So he shot the king and queen and a bunch of other family members, then himself. He survived three days, during which they made him king.

After he died, his uncle became king. 

But in 2008, he abdicated his authority to allow Nepal to become a federal secular parliamentary republic. The thing is, most of the political parties are communist or some close variant. But people can vote for their choice, so they got that going for them.

Another thing they’ve got is the parties are required to meet a female candidate quota, particularly for women in the lowest castes. 

When these women are elected, they are given training. I think this is fantastic because it allows these lowest members of society – women other castes won’t even physically touch – to have a voice in how money is spent.

Nepal has a female president now. I just read a headline saying 60 percent of American Republicans won’t support a female president in their lifetimes. 

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Female friends, they’ve got these men called Gurkhas here. These guys are what I fondly like to call “big hunks of men.”

Adam is also impressed with them, but not for the same reasons. He says they are bad asses. They are famous for their skills with knives that feature a distinctly curved blade.

These uber-elite soldiers have fought with incredible skill and bravery all over the world. They worked with the British in WWII and made a significant impact. They’re still recruited by Great Britain, India and others, including the UN Peacekeeping Force.

They’re internationally renowned to this day for being the fiercest fighters. 

Their refrain is: “Better to die than be a coward.”

An Indian official once said, “If a man says he is not afraid of dying, he is either lying or he is a Gurkha.”

We see them running up mountains in full sweat gear, carrying heavy equipment, in dripping humidity. We see their training facilities.

We see them, these men who seem to have an aura about them.

Big hunks of men.

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We were ushered into a small ornate courtyard of a palace in the center of Kathmandu.
No pictures!

We stood among a crowd of maybe 30 people, all staring up at a second-floor window.
A hush and awe overcame the crowd as a four-year-old girl, in red and gold silk and her eyes painted with long thick black upper liner to her temples suddenly appeared.

She gazed down at us with utter blankness, then she turned and was gone.

Turns out, we had been blessed by the Royal Kumari.

She is believed to be a living goddess and is selected from a particular caste, or social class.

When her first menstruation begins, Hindus believe that the goddess vacates her body. So they will choose the next Kumari. The search for her reincarnation is compared to that of the Dalai Lama.

She must also have these qualities: a neck like a conch shell, a body like a banyan tree, eyelashes like a cow, thighs like a deer, chest like a lion, and voice soft and clear as a duck’s.

And I saw a little baby doll of a girl.