Bird Forest

Last night I went to meet Claire after her teaching was finished. On the way I found a footpath through the jungle right in the middle of town, next to the busiest intersection. I was attracted into it by the sheer green and quiet, but then discovered that it was filled with birds, these white birds that look like egrets that we had been seeing high in the sky in Kathmandu. Here they were roosting in the trees, flying in and out of them, making quite a racket. As I was taking pictures of the birds a group of children began gathering who I am sure were wondering why I was aiming the camera into the trees when I could be taking pictures of them. So they too posed for a few pictures.

After the woods we went on to the downtown area and went from shop to shop. We visited several shoe stores. Claire is a pickier shopper than I am, so I got a pair of shoes, two curtas (they need to be sewn, but they sell the fabric for the tunic and pants together, along with the matching scarf), and bangles and tikkas (the forehead jewelry) for the wedding. She got nothing but a lot of nice conversations with shop keepers who were very taken with her Nepali language skills. We rode home in the dark in a bicycle rickshaw. The economy here is so different—about a ten-minute ride, human powered, for sixty cents. We overpaid because it felt so strange. We are stimulating the economy more here than we do at home.

We have a young guy here who likes to check on me about every hour or two while Claire is gone. “What do you need? Are you hungry? Would you like Coke, Fanta? Is the AC working okay? What can I bring you?” I had just come up from breakfast, but he just now came anyway to see if I was hungry. All the teenagers who are here for their workshop are in their last day. The first evening they mobbed Claire and took us on a walk around town. Now they have calmed down and merely stopped by our table to “namaste” us and exchange pleasantries. They are so sweet. Tomorrow we plan to leave for Ilan in the tea country close to Darjeeling, India. We don’t know where we are staying so it will be an adventure, probably not one with internet, but with plenty of pictures to share when we return to Kathmandu.