Happiness Guest House

March 9 2014

We decided to remove ourselves from Thamel and seek higher ground and hopefully cleaner air. I could buy a face mask which many wear, and I still may. After agonizing about our next location, asking advice and getting a consensus, we have settled in the Happiness Guest House in Boudhanath, or Bouda for short. This mini city centers around a Buddist stupa, the largest in Nepal. I remember being here before, fascinated by all the prayer wheels that encircle the temple - you spin them as you walk clockwise around the temple, supposedly setting in motion the prayers written on pieces of paper in each wheel- a lazy believer's dream. Do not quote me on the pieces of paper, it's a kid memory.

We hang on for dear life over crumbling roads and potholes, our taxi vying for right of way and dodging vehicles which run the gamut from pink buses and white vans stuffed with bodies to rickshaws and millions of motorbikes. Policeman control the traffic at major intersections and our 20 minute stop and go gives me time to take photos of the teeming street life. (still having trouble transferring photos from IPhone to IPad so pics will follow.) 

We are happy entering the guest house grounds at the end of a street away from the central area. A couple of tables and chairs sit outside where we can catch some sun and I hear birds. Not quite country but peaceful. We enter a cool dim interior, very dim. No electricity until 6pm. We are on the 3rd floor and can see the top of the stupa and intend to watch the sunset from the roof top two floors up. 

After buying a bar of soap and bottles of water down the street, we have vegetable soup and cheese naan for lunch at the Garden Kitchen restaurant next door. Five monks eat at the table next to us, two Asian women spoon up rice nearby, and a European-looking couple hold hands and drink glasses of white stuff which must be lassi. Everywhere we go we are in the minority - an interesting feeling, not a bad one.

Tomorrow morning at 8, I am due at Lincoln School to meet with the sophomore and senior classes. We are going to share our stories. I am a little nervous, but will have some of those open-ended questions in reserve if our conversation flags. I bet it won't. After that I intend to find Round House where my family lived for four years. I know it's near by, up Kalimati Road because I used to ride my blue bicycle to school. Sometimes my brother and I used to take a shortcut through the trees. No trees now. The road is big and busy, not the narrow one lined with small houses and make-shift shops, women cooking over open fires or drying chilies. I ran over a chicken once on my bike, and kept going, afraid to look back. She must have lived-now maybe she's in another form. I hope hens don't hold a grudge.