Could Yesterday Have Been Any Better?

Okay so, yesterday was another one of the best days of my life. For real. It was Saturday (the only day off in Nepal) and we had planned a trek,  a short one, but a trek none the less. Every intern living in the house, our host father, our host brother, and our program supervisor all went. We left the house around 10:30 am after a pancake for breakfast, which we get every Saturday morning, made by our lovely host mother.

We all had our back packs and best walking shoes and we took off towards the bus station. We squeezed onto a very crammed bus and rode until the city bus park just a ways down the road. There we met up with our program supervisor. We jumped on another bus and headed out of the valley to start our trek. We got off the bus and started walking. It was gorgeous views from the get go. We could barely get anywhere because we all kept stopping to take photos.

Beautiful old women, and kids who could reach the water spout filling up their bottles. Locals looking after their goats and cows, people bathing and doing laundry in rivers, could the day get any better? We saw farms and parks and before we headed down the road towards the small town we climbed a super steep path that led to no where but a gorgeous view. It was quite fun to climb and make it back down all while protecting the life of my camera. From there we set off down the path of a town. We saw an old man brush his teeth in the public water pump and some teens passing out pamphlets in Nepali on converting to Christianity. We saw and old woman sit outside and sort through seed as she watched her rooster. We stumbled on a mushroom farm and took some photos there. At one point I climbed this little dirt ledge cliff thing and full fledge leaned my body weight on my program supervisor and pressed the shutter of my camera held up in the air with my other hand. The things we do to get the shot.

We kept walking and saw workers on the side of the road using tools we see in museums back home. We then had to cross a bridge. I saw people swaying across. Swaying. The bridge was made out of metal and should not have been swaying, but was. I watched motorcycles cross it, and began to cross. I stopped to take photos while on the bridge as motorcycles passed me by. This bridge was narrow. Not wide. Not wide enough for people and motorcycles. As we reached the other side (praise to Shiva) little boys climbed the wires that held the bridge in place and slide down. As I shot photos they'd yell and flinch and begin to let themselves slide down the thick wires. My program supervisor told me they were pretending my camera was a gun and that they'd been shot and killed. The lives of the kids around here, I swear.

We kept walking and this little girl sitting next to her mother saw our cameras and started yelling "camera camera" "photo photo" and we would take a picture and then she'd yell "money money" as all the Nepali's do- she has learned fast. As we walked away her adorable young voice kept on "money money" "chocolate chocolate" "money money." We reached civilization again slowly but surely and stopped for lunch and the WindyHill Restaurant. I only remember that name because we were on a huge hill that had an amazing view and it was windy up there and it felt amazing. Amazing. I had Veggie Momos and Sprite. We sat around and looked through our photos that we had so far. Pretty decent compared to other days.

Here comes the high light of my day.

From lunch we walked down a massive hill to the rice paddy I shot at the other day. Walking there my program supervisor had turned around to run into a small shop to buy some chocolate, so my host dad was trying to lead but he had no idea where he was going. So he stopped when the path got twisty and turned around waiting for my program supervisor, I then butted in and said yep just follow that path around and down and he said "oh you know the way?" and in that moment I realized something- I realized that in the middle of nowhere Bungamati, Nepal, headed to a rice paddy- yes, I knew the way. So he took a step back and I led the whole way for the group. We crossed the same sheet of metal that acts as a bridge as last time and leaped over other puddles and streams and we got there, the same way as before. We walked up and I waited for my program coordinator since well ya know, I don't speak Nepali and the path only fits one person at a time. After a bit of Nepali and everyone else being so excited to be there our program coordinator said "okay now we take off our shoes and get in." We all looked at each other, quite hesitantly. Literally out loud we discussed, "okay is he kidding?" A kid even said "I can't tell if he's kidding, I'm waiting until he gets in to know if he's serious." He was. He offered the chocolates he'd just bought and they shared with us their local candy. It was hard and tasted a bit like caramel, I liked it though. Soon we all had our socks and shoes off as we slid down the hillside into the rice paddy. Passing the camera back and fourth as we got in so that it wouldn't catch a splash. Then the women started handing up handfuls of rice plant? Really though, what do you call the green stuff? I kept my camera in hand, knowing I couldn't miss the chance to shoot this. It was beyond beautiful and wayyy too good to be true. I shot as the others learned to press the root into the mud, pulling the small bundles apart piece by piece. It was hysterical to watch the women do it like nine times faster. Suddenly children started to toss mud. I could tell my program coordinator, behind me at the time, was yelling to the kids in Nepali "be careful of the camera!" Towards the end of the area I had to try myself so with a camera in one hand and some rice in another I too planted some rice.

We were then invited to try their homemade Raksi. Raksi means alcohol in Nepali but Raksi is also used for Nepali rice wine. There were two kinds. I knew this wasn't about to be good, but how often are you offered Raksi while at a rice paddy, well quite honestly probably every time you go to a rice paddy in Nepal. Rice paddies are infamous for their Raksi, and for drinking a lot of it. The first kind looks like dirt and sand mixed together with some water. It tasted that way too with just a touch of sour. The next was clear and watery with pieces of rice floating around. It tasted like rice water, sour rice water. After the tiniest sips possible I felt like, well I felt like I could forevermore say that I tried local Raksi in a rice paddy in Bungamati, Nepal. I also felt like that might be my last local Raksi ever tasted.

We then followed a path down to the local showers. Right at the foot of the paddies is a bunch of rocks, and out of a tube in some rocks some cold water spurts out. "You can wash your feet off there" and then we put our shoes on said our "dhanyabads'" and "namastes'" ("thank yous'" and "goodbyes'" and headed off back on a trail towards civilization. We walked along side a river were people bathed and fished. We saw pigs running free along with goats, chickens, buffalo, and cows. We walked pretty much through locals' backyards' and stumbled on a field where boys were playing soccer on pretty much a cliff. You could see tons of tiny buildings far off with nothing blocking the cliff but some goats and cows.

Background story: Last week I simply posed the question "What would happen if I tried to pet a cow? Is that rude? Do the locals touch the cows? Would it even react?" This quickly got changed by one of the interns, as a joke I might add, into me having a desire to spank a cow. A) I've never had a desire to spank a cow. B) That would probably be disrespectful in a place that believes cows to be holy. Well anyway, last week some time, walking home at night from Thamel with two other interns I slowly began to walk towards a cow, I'm really a scardy cat at heart and I wouldn't have actually touched the thing, but as I came closer, a long with another intern, the cow suddenly became quite enraged. He made eye contact with me that believe you me said "get away from me now or I will buck you so hard in the rear with my horn, watch me." Yes his eye contact said all of that. I wanted to run but I realized he'd just chase after me and so the rest of the way home the other interns kept yelling "Cow!" and I was just that afraid to flinch every time. Any who- In this soccer field there were buffalo, and I touched it. It was calm and let me but, I don't know man they are just some freaky looking animals. I then got a lecture from my program coordinator about how they have good hearts and mean well no matter what they look like and all I could think was how I was the last person that needed that lecture. Jokes then came about every time we passed an animal they were trying to say my name. My program coordinator, the funny guy he is, couldn't stop laughing the rest of the walk and he kept saying "Brianna" like a cow or a goat.

Then once in civilization again it began to rain. We were ready to hop on a bus at that point anyway but we didn't want to stand in the rain waiting for one. The perfect solution you ask? A Tuk-Tuk. Yes, a Tuk-Tuk, just like in 19 Kids and Counting (TLC show). I've been dying to take a Tuk-Tuk and even made an intern take my photo inside. It was amazing. Everything I could've imagined it to be. Crammed in the Tuk-Tuk, 13 people at once, the man on the end dropped his phone out the back, in the rain and traffic. To make a Tuk-Tuk stop you simply bang on the metal roof. He banged and jumped out grabbed his phone and made a running dash back to the Tuk-Tuk. I was dying laughing the whole time. Only in Nepal man, only in Nepal. From the Tuk-Tuk we got on a micro bus to head back to the big grocery store near our house which we then walked home from, luckily it'd stopped raining.

We got home to our host mother asking us if we wanted dinner. And what did we get?... NOT dhal bhat! Can you believe it?! She made noodles and they were delicious.

After dinner my roommate (sort of) and I did laundry together. My first time doing laundry here. In the pitch black dark might I add. How does one do laundry in Nepal you may ask? You take your clothes, put them in a bucket, add some soap, add some water, and you take those weird tools that exist on the ends of your forearms and you squeeze and you press and you scrub. You then let them soak for a bit, and you rinse and repeat. Then everything gets hung up on the clothes line to dry. Not sure if my clothes are dirtier or cleaner after that experience. Oh well.

I then took a shower, which felt amazing, and drifted off to sleep.

It was seriously an amazing day. I got home thinking oh my gosh I didn't go into the office today, I have so much to do tomorrow, etc. Then, I realized, I had been shooting all day, I filled 64 GB of memory cards. I'd worked all day. I love the places that photojournalism can take me. I love my career choice. I love story telling and I love the art of photography, and melding the two together to make everyones' story a piece of art? I know I'm in the right career path.

Here is the down side to taking so long to tell you my story of yesterday... I still have to catch up now and tell the story of today, yet again another great day here in Kathmandu, Nepal. But, for now I'll save those stories!

Namaste :)