Evolution

Evolution by Ilya von Zhavoronkoff http://im-possible.info/english/art/montage/ilya-zhavoronkoff.html

Trekking In The Himalayas Can, If You'd Like It To, Bring You More Than Just Awesome Vistas

Yesterday we published a guest post by Jeffrey Rasley on safety in Nepal. Today we'll look at a more personal reminiscence by Jeff on his complex and exhilarating relationship to this relatively mysterious and inaccessible country. His new book, Bringing Progress to Paradise, combines adventure travel with service work in Himalayan villages and if anyone is interested in contacting him about either his e-mail address is jrasley@juno.com/.

A Resting Place in Nepal
by Jeff Rasley

I first went to the Himalayan Mountains in Nepal as an adventurer and mountain climber in 1995. After four Himalayan expeditions in five years I’d had enough. In 1999 my climbing team barely escaped an avalanche that killed three Nepalese porters. Even though there was nothing I could have done to help these men, I was plagued by guilt over their deaths.

The men who staffed our Himalayan expeditions as guides and porters were the strongest and kindest people I had ever known. They emanated a beautiful spirituality and displayed almost super-human strength. After seeing those three men swept away in a tsunami of ice, snow and rock, I resolved not to go back to Nepal. There were other places to go adventuring, which would put only me in danger, not others.

But a call to return to Nepal in May 2003 was too strong to resist. It was the Jubilee celebration of the 50th anniversary of the first recorded summit of Mt. Everest by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. The country was suffering through a civil war and needed tourist Dollars. The King of Nepal and Sir Edmund Hillary made a joint appeal to mountaineers throughout the world to come join in the celebration.

So in the spring of 2003 I trekked through the Khumbu region of Nepal and up to Mt. Everest Base Camp at 18,000 feet. I trekked with twenty members of the Hillary family for two days along the Base Camp trail. They were making a pilgrimage led by Sir Edmund’s older sister June, who was 86. I learned much about Sir Edmund’s devotion to the Sherpa people. After he became rich and world-famous, Hillary devoted much of the rest of his life to philanthropy for the Sherpa people. He greatly admired the unique character of strength and Buddhist gentleness he found in the high mountain people of Nepal.

The Jubilee experience had a profound effect on me. I felt the pull of Nepal again, but it was more than just the mountains, the culture, and the need for adventure. My encounter with the Hillary family compelled me to think about what I could do for Nepal and then to act. I’m not rich or famous, like Hillary. I don’t have the time or inclination to own and operate an expedition company, like Peter Hillary, Sir Edmund’s son. But I decided I would try in my own small way to help make a meaningful connection between the high mountain people of Nepal and friends from the West.

My plan was put into action the year after the Jubilee. I organized a three-member expedition. We raised $1,000 for a water project in the Dolpo region of Nepal and delivered 65 pounds of children’s clothes and school supplies. Since then, I have returned each year with a new group. Our trekking groups and related fundraising efforts have helped to finish construction of a village school, employed two teachers, connected a village school with two American schools in pen pal relationships, and distributed hundreds of pounds of school and medical supplies, clothing and toys. In 2009 our group included seventeen members and more than 90 people have made cash donations.

So here I am again. It’s just after sundown on December 1, 2010 and I’m sitting with Ganesh Rai and Buddiraj Rai by a campfire on the Ratnagi Danda, a 10,000 foot high ridge in the Nepal Himalayas. Everyone else is asleep in their tents. We are on our way out of the mountains trekking back to the airstrip at Paphlu village to fly to Katmandu. Our trekking group delivered a hydroelectric generator and the equipment to create electricity for Buddi and Ganesh’s little village, called Basa, which means “resting place.” The villagers have lived for hundreds of years in Basa without any source of power except burning wood. Now the village will have electricity.

Sitting by the campfire with Ganesh and Buddi I hoped to gain a deeper understanding of the unique spirit of the high mountain people. They had promised to share with me the traditional stories and rituals of the Rai people of Basa. Because I had helped finish the village school and had helped to provide employment for villagers by bringing trekking groups to Basa, the villagers called me “dhai” (elder brother).

Ganesh and Buddi knew that I had written a book about the special relationship I have developed with Basa village. They had requested permission from Kumar Rai, the senior porter of our staff and son of the village shaman, to tell me the ancient stories and rituals. Kumar had granted permission and told them he hoped I would write another book and bring more “white people” to Basa.

But working with the village is not a one-way street of Westerners bringing our money and higher material standard of living to Basa village. Yes, my friends gave Basa the capital to build a hydroelectric power station. But “the resting place” can give my friends and me a different power-- the power of spiritual contentment.

I will try to fulfill Kumar’s hope. What I learned from Ganesh Rai and Buddiraj Rai that night high on the Ratnagi Danda will be the beginning of my next book.

SWP critique of autonomism doesn't cut it

Very embarrassing article from the SWP.I am not an autonomist and obviously see a role for political parties but its so didactic and over simplified, we can straw man or women any alternative as a means of foolishly just insisting on support for our own particular perspective. No one on the left has a recipe that works, a certain modesty, plurality and self-criticism are all needed rather than '

No U-turn as Con Dem government sells off NHS

Even before the government’s Health and Social Care Bill has passed through the House of Commons, private healthcare companies are increasing their influence within the NHS. Pulse magazine reported last week that private company bosses are set to be handed seats on the new NHS Commissioning Board, which, come June, will oversee commissioning of all primary care services and allocate budgets to GP

New image by Oscar Reutersvärd

http://im-possible.info/english/art/reutersvard/reut10.html#124

Hommage aan Arcimboldo - herfst

Hommage aan Arcimboldo - herfstby Jos de Meyhttp://im-possible.info/english/art/mey/mey11.html#94

Is Nepal A Safe Place To Visit? Guest Post By Jeffrey Rasley

Author and Himalayan Mountains expedition organizer Jeffrey Rasley is one of America's foremost experts on Nepal. Since I'm getting ready for my third trip to that country, I was happy to find out he's releasing his second book about the country, Bringing Progress To Paradise. I was even happier when he agreed to do a guest post for the blog.

A Change To Violence

-by Jeffrey Rasley

In the 1980s and ’90s, the trekking-tourist industry grew rapidly. Many Nepalese were lifted out of poverty in the tourist destination areas such as the Katmandu Valley, the Khumbu along the Base Camp Trail, Langtang, Pokhara, and around the Annapurna Circuit Trail. But the boom was short-lived and busted by the end of the ’90s. The 2003 Jubilee celebrations caused an uptick, but the truce between the government and the Maoist rebels ended after the celebrations, and the return to violence again scared off the tourists, particularly Americans, because President Bush declared the Maoists an international terrorist organization.

In October 2004, while I was mucking around in Tribhuvan International Airport dealing with lost bags, friend Elliot was waiting for me outside the airport when he saw an explosion in downtown Katmandu. The Maoists had rolled three hand grenades into an office building. That was the closest anyone in my trekking groups came to experiencing violence or being directly affected by the civil war in Nepal. But fear of violence and the political instability of Nepal frightened some friends away from joining my expeditions.

Beginning in the late 1990s, the Maoists claimed territorial rights over certain trekking trails. These trekking trails became revenue sources for the Maoists. Armed bands would block trails and require trekkers to pay a fee to use the trail. The leader of the band would give the trekkers a lecture about politics in Nepal and then issue each trekker a certificate declaring the fee had been paid so other Maoist bands would not collect the fee a second time. If a trekker didn’t have enough money to pay the fee, the Maoists would take a camera, climbing gear, down jackets, or other valuable possessions. The fee was generally around $100, but after the U.S. government declared the Maoists international terrorists, Americans were required to pay double the amount of all other nationals. When the Maoist insurgency was at its worst, I wrote “Canada” on my trekking duffel with a Sharpie, just in case.

The Maoists were unsuccessful in penetrating Sherpa communities in the Khumbu, so, happily, I never had an encounter with one of their armed bands. Every Westerner I met in Nepal who hiked the Annapurna Circuit from the mid-90s through 2006 had a Maoist encounter. In the Khumbu, what we encountered was an ever-increasing military presence. Each year, we passed more government soldiers on the trails and had to cross through additional military checkpoints.

In Katmandu, the king would periodically impose a curfew on citizens, which usually didn’t apply to tourists. Walking back to our hotel in 2004 after a night out with Nepalese friends, Briggie, Elliot, and I had to endure the hard stares of young soldiers with loaded carbines. They were understandably resentful that we were allowed to walk the streets of Katmandu freely, while our Nepalese friends had to skulk down alleys and hide from the soldiers, or risk arrest or a beating. Most of the army recruits during the civil war were young uneducated village boys. Their training was poor, evidenced by the fact that they lost most of the pitched battles against the Maoists, and the allegiance of the Nepalese people eroded and eventually swung in favor of the Maoists. So it sent a little shiver down my spine when that young soldier stepped out in front of us, pointing his rifle at us, while intently eyeballing Briggie, a tall, slim, blond, blue-eyed South African. But with a sneer and jerk of his head, he let us pass.

****

I have never been the victim or even seen any real violence in Nepal, but what I did experience was amazement and disbelief at the change in the Nepalese attitude toward violence as the Maoist Rebellion became a full-fledged civil war. Just before my first visit to Nepal in 1995, a Nepalese guy killed a European in a bar fight in Katmandu. The entire nation was in mourning when we arrived because of the felt national disgrace and sorrow over a guest of Nepal being killed. In the ten-year civil war, from 1996 to 2006, an estimated 12,800 Nepalis died. I found it unbelievable that the Maoists and the government could have brought such a degree of fear, death, and destruction to a nation that mourned so soulfully over the death of one person two years before the war began.

In 2006, as the war reached its climax, a friend was brutally beaten in Katmandu. Raaj is a native Nepali, but grew up in India, has long hair, owned a tea shop in Katmandu, and is the leader of a rock band. He looks like a dissident, but he was not a Maoist, just a guy who loves Western rock music. One night when walking home after a gig in Thamel, Raaj and his band mates were jumped and beaten by “royalists.” Raaj’s arm and nose were broken. When I saw him a month or so after the beating, of course I was upset for him, but I also found it hard to accept that such a thing could happen in this country that had been a beacon of peace in a violent world just a few years before.



More on Jeffrey's Nepali observations tomorrow.