October 7th, 2012 - Kathmandu, Nepal
Hello everyone!!!
My my it sure has been a long time. Hmmmm.. Where did we leave off... Ah yes! Pokhara.
So Pokhara... We ended up staying there for 3 weeks. 3 WEEKS! Even we were surprised when we realized how long it had been. What can we say? We found a good place and got sucked in! Perhaps it is part of our human nature to settle when we find comfort.
And we did find comfort! We had the BEST food (and cheapest) in all Pokhara, an amazing homely room, our own porch and front lawn with a view that took no trouble getting used to: a shimmering, crystal lake and towering, gleaming mountains. Every morning the cooler air would lift the monsoon clouds and the mountains would glow pink from the sunrise and we would just sit outside and feast our eyes. Then after our eye feast, we would feast our stomachs with Dal Bhat. Dal Bhat is the traditional Nepali meal that EVERYONE eats all the time. It is rice, dal (pressure cooked lentil soupy amazing thing), curried vegetables, and a raw vegetable salad of some sort. Our hotel owner, called Maila, made us amazing dal and curry, and supplied us with fresh sliced cucumbers and carrots and steamed juicy spinach, all freshly picked straight from his garden!!! Organic!! The spinach was so amazing.. when we ate it the juice would dribble down our chins.. YUMMMMMMMM. We still miss that meal everyday..
Anyway a few more things happened in Pokhara besides relaxing and eating, I swear. We were just healing up our fresh tattoos, and getting what most people with multiple tattoos seem to get: an addiction. Heh... We were brainstorming and imagining what ELSE we could get and where and we were all excited. And then, I will tell you a story to disprove any of you doubting in your believe of the Law of Attraction. So here we are talking about tattoos and getting super excited and wanting more SO BAD when we just happen to run into a group of people on the street with the sweetest freakin tattoos EVER. They were so awesome that we walked past them, then turned around and went back just to tell them how sweet their tattoos were. It was a group of 5 or 6 people and they had all tattoos that sort of matched and were actually the best we had ever seen. They said they had all got them done by the same guy! He was visiting Pokhara apparently and tattooing alot of people. "Well that's cool," we thought and continued on our way, and soon forgot all about it.
Then the next time we were in town we ran into some friends we had a met in Kathmandu. We were stoked to see them and they invited us to come to this open mic jammy blues bar with them that night, so we went. It turned out their group of friends were the same people with all the sweet tattoos, AND there were more of them. Probably like 10 or more people all hanging out in a group, all with the BEST TATTOOS EVER. One girl had this aaammaazziinnggg design up her whole back and then down one arm. I wanted one... We inquired to a few people about the tattoos. They said the artist was very specific in that he liked it to be HIS design and he was difficult to work with, as well as the fact that he didn't speak any English. They also said he used only 1 tiny needle in his tattoo gun which made it like 3x as painful. (Normal tattoo artists use needles with like 9 or more tiny needles on the end.) We decided that this mysterious man, although amazingly talented, was not for us.
That night at home I couldn't stop thinking about it! And I suddenly decided that I changed my mind and I did want a tattoo. We had no idea if he even had time to do us, and we only knew his hotel, but none the less we set out the next day to try and find him. Once I had a made up my mind that I wanted a tattoo, Orion realized that he too wanted one!!! He had a bit more of a plan than me, but we were both very open. We met with the artist and his family by sheer chance and they agreed to tattoo us in a couple days' time.
So that was that! I got a "smallish" henna design on my lower back. Its BEAUTIFUL. So beautiful in fact, that as soon as he finished and I looked in the mirror, I asked if he had another day's time and decided to get it extended up onto my shoulder! And now its done! I'm so happy with it! He did the whole thing free hand, just drawing out a few things to map on my back using a child's felt marker. And it hurt. SO MUCH. In total, my tattoo took almost 9 hours (split up in 2 days thankfully). When he did my upper back it was actually the most painful thing I've ever experienced, and I'm not even exaggerating!!! But as soon as I looked in the mirror, it was worth it! I can't wait to post some pictures to show everyone.
Orion got an amazing sun on his shoulder with "prana" (life force) in sanskrit in the centre. The sun is completely made up of geometric designs and patterns and it's so complex and detailed and AMAZING. I shall explain a bit about Mau (pronounced like Mow) and his art.
His calls his business "Spiritual Tattoo," and every pattern and shape he incorporates into his designs is from some ancient culture or other and has a spiritual significance. Geometry tattoos, like Orion's, are full of detailed and tiny shapes and patterns. Every single pattern has a meaning and an explanation and a place it is from. Some are protection symbols for self or family, some represent different aspects of evolution, some tell a story, and more. A geometric tattoo, therefore, does not only LOOK like it's from some ancient tribal culture, it IS! And that makes the art that much more special. In order to gain knowledge about all these different symbols, Mau, who is originally from Chile, traveled the world and studied different peoples of the past and present. For example, Orion has these cave symbols in his tattoo that tell a story and offer protection. They are from an ancient tribe on Easter Island. In order to learn how to write with these characters, Mau literally hiked out to the caves and copied the symbols off the walls that he found, until he was able to read it, like a language. HOW COOL.
He has a wife named Maria from Sweden, and they have two kids together. Though Mau only speaks Spanish, Maria speaks Swedish, Spanish, AND English, and she translates very efficiently. That way it wasn't actually that hard to communicate what we wanted. Mau has two epic dreadlocks for a beard on his chin that are so long they reach his hips!! CRAZY. Their kids are only about 5 and 8 and they're fluent in English and Spanish and know a fair bit of Swedish. Genius children! The whole family lives in Pai, Thailand where Mau has set up his business. They lived in Goa, India as well for around 6 years with a business set up there. They travel to other countries sometimes (like they did to Nepal) to explore a bit and spread the business. Its so easy for them, because as soon as anyone sees one of Mau's tattoos, they ask, "WHERE DID YOU GET THAT?!?!" followed by, "How can I get one?" Hence us being convinced to get tattoos after seeing all those people with the amazing tattoos at the bar! Maria likes to jam and play music and we hung out with their family a bit when we weren't getting tattoos by going to little restaurants and bars to jam. Mau is the quiet artist type and prefers to sit with the kids. All in all they are AWESOME people and we enjoyed getting to know them. We are SO HAPPY with our new tattoos!!
So after that, we retreated back up to our hotel again to heal yet AGAIN. But FIRST we found out a certain event and bought tickets, not knowing at ALL what to expect. The event was called "Psychedelic Travelers Gathering!" It appeared to be a RAVE for travelers!! See, if this was back home, as soon as I saw that, I would know it was amazing, and wouldn't hesitate to buy tickets. But this isn't home, this is Nepal. And who KNOWS if they even understand what a rave should be like. And who knows if I could even be free enough to dance without pressure from creepy local men. But the thing I miss most about home that never gets satisfied from traveling is dancing at hippie gatherings, and I just couldn't bear to pass up a potential chance for that, even if it could all turn out to be nothing.
So fast forward a week and its time for the festival weekend. We show up at the meeting point and are pleasantly surprised to find a lot of other hippie type travelers waiting, as well as our same friends from Kathmandu. We hopped on the buses, and after a very carsick ride, they dumped us at a random gas station in the middle of nowhere. We were very confused. Then some jeeps showed up and it was clear we were supposed to get on them, so we did. The jeeps took off, and next thing we knew we were turning off the highway onto a dirt road. Then we started off-roading... So we were all clinging on for dear life and driving straight up a mountain, when we reached a random Hindu temple built in the middle of nowhere really, surrounding by a ton of locals and screaming children. There was no stage, no tents, no field, no nothing. We unloaded none the less, and they told us to set up camp on this random plateau next to a stinky swamp. So we started taking out our tents that we had rented for the occasion, but suddenly they yelled at us to stop. So we were NOT supposed to set up camp here... We were so confused, but we put our tents away again. FINALLY a random traveler who happened to speak Nepali got a somewhat clear story. This was the "chill stage" (though there was no stage) and the "Main Stage" where we were going to be camping and where everything else would be was at the TOP of the mountain. Like actually at the TOP, and apparently it was a 2 hour hike away. We were supposed to wait down here for "only a hour" for them to get set up, and then jeeps would drive us up the rest of the way. We became almost MORE confused. Why was there a separate stage if it was TWO HOURS away from the campsite and main stage?!? Who the HELL would hike down there? And why couldn't we just go up there now and set up camp? Why did we need to wait down HERE? Some people got frustrated and impatient and decided to hike up the hill anyway. The locals promptly chased the down yelling "HEY! STOP!" or something similar in Nepali if they spoke no English. Most of the travelers were rounded up and forced to return but some escaped. In the mean time they had set up a very thorough beer tent with a freezer and SO MUCH BEER. We became more confused. If we were camping so far away, who would want to walk that far just to buy a beer?? We let it slide for now, and decided to go with the flow. FOUR HOURS LATER we were still waiting, spread out in the shade reading or sleeping or some people pulling out the drugs already. Some of the travelers who had escaped and made it up the mountain returned and told us there was nothing up there at all, so they had decided to come back down.
EVENTUALLY after who knows how long, the first jeep took the first group of people up the mountain. We got on the second. The ride was terrifying. If I thought the way to the first camp was off-roading, then I don't know what one would call the second stretch. It was switch back after switch back, and they were sooo narrow that the jeep couldn't make the turn in one go. Often 3 point turns were necessary, which was terrifying because an inch further and we'd be falling off a cliff. At one point we got stuck mid turn and the jeep ALMOST tipped. We were stuck at like a 45 degree angle for a moment of terror and then we accelerated to relative safety. When we finally reached the top, we were short of breath and white knuckled. A couple people applauded the driver, haha. So we set out to look for a spot to camp.
Unfortunately the mountain had to be carved out to make room for the festival. We went to the camping site which used to be jungle until someone had gone through it with a machete to hack it to pieces. It didn't make it any more campable stupidly. It just made it a jungle with alot of short trees. TERRIBLE planning #2. We managed to find a little cliff with bumps that were only huge instead of ridiculously huge with thorns. We put the tent up and shuffled it around trying to find a flat spot. We didn't, and gave up, choosing a huge lump in the lower back rather than a huger lump in the neck. Then came the dancing!
DANCING. Oh how I love Thee and give thanks for Thine existance! Oh how Thou dost fill mine soul yearnings with joy!! But actually. Within the first SECONDS of dancing, the music pounding and crazy lights flashing, all the craziness and disorganization of the festival fell away and it was GLORIOUS. After my complaints of restraint in the rigid Muslim city of Srinagar, there I was wearing a TANK TOP and a flowy skirt and spinning around and feeling wonderful. I was and still am truly grateful. :)
All that said, and my gratitude expressed, I will offer a few complaints, mostly for comedy's sake
.
First of all, the music was all trance. Trance is pretty good actually, but there is a fine line and I find, for my taste, it can be overstepped easily. Trance music is a continual throbbing bass 1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4, etc that continues constantly without ceasing for the entire song (or entire night for this occasion). That is all fine and dandy as long as the rest of the song is interesting enough with enough changes and breakdowns and what have you. But often, the darker side of trance is expressed, which I find slightly soul sucking. The thumping duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh on every beat continues but with NOTHING else added on top of it except a few terrifying sounds. Sometimes demons talking, or weird echoing and screeching and creaking, like a typical haunted house soundtrack, even a few screams! We fled to our tent to escape these songs. SENDING LOVE to the AMAZING DJs we have become so used to back home. GRATITUDE. And that said, we were grateful for the music. At least it wasn't the screeching, shreeking voices and wailing terrible synthesizers of the low budget "traditional" music of India and Nepal, or the horrid repetitiveness of the soul-less cover bands of Kathmandu and Pokhara.
Secondly, although the festival was 90% travellers, and our hippie festival culture strongly overwhelmed their conservative opressed feminism culture, there was still a few crowds of Nepali men ready to creep hard. The cultural barrier. Women expressing themselves freely through dance is something quite foreign to most Nepali men (and to ALL Indian men I swear.. Nepal is muccchhhh better in that respect than India). Many a time I would have my eyes closed, lost in the dancing trance and moving freely to the music, only to open my eyes and find a literal WALL of Nepali men surrounding me, a beer in one hand, the other hand in a fist and pumping the sky (and often holding a cigarette), all watching with that terribly creepy smile on their faces. YUCK. A slight buzz kill. In those cases I was infinitely grateful for Orion, who would let me drag him to dance in whatever spot he was most needed to act as a barrier between me and the creepy men. And he would stare and them and dance uncomfortably close at them and they would be scared away. VICTORY! What a guy!
So it was no Komasket or Fandango or whatever, but it was FUN and we had a really FUN time. We met a super sweet Canadian guy from Quebec named Philippe, who told us about, and showed us pictures of, this AMAZINGLY sweet week long music festival on the border of Quebec and Ontario in August. So we want to be there for it next year. :) It's called Open Mind Festival.
Anyway so after the festival we hopped on the roof of a ridiculously full jeep and somehow made it safely down the mountain and onto the local bus back to Pokhara. The ride down the mountain on the jeep was sooooo fun! I got to lounge so epicly on this towering pile of bags, and duck when branches whipped by and cling on when we almost tipped on every switchback, and hold on to other people's bag to keep them from flying off the jeep. FUN. So back in Pokhara we retreated to our favorite home for 2 nights and then headed off to Kathmandu where we are now.
I forgot to mention one thing! I've been giving a lot of thought to what I want to do with my life. YES! Music is definitely one thing! Fear not, lovely people. But I also have a lot of interest in energy healing, natural medicine, those types things, and randomly, WHALES. I LOVE whales. Not sure of any careers that incorporate all those things, so I decided to focus only on the first two first. So I read a book on Reiki and decided I wanted to get it. Yet another attribute to the powers of the Law of Attraction, after finishing the book, I just so happened to meet a Reiki "Master" (the name for someone who has been initiated into all 3 levels of Reiki.. Does not mean they're enlightened or a guru or anything silly.. It just means they can initiate other people) and got initiated to Reiki Level 1! So now I can successfully channel the Reiki energy for healing of myself and others and even objects like broken electronics or sad plants or whatever. I've done a few treatments on Orion who said he can feel the energy and everything, which is sweet because it means I'm not just imagining it, and who promptly gets so relaxed as to start snoring. The whole thing seems very relaxing! When we get home I hope to have Reiki 2 and a few other courses and things under my belt. My DREAM is to be able to get a job doing these things and be done with the world of crappy low paying jobs FOREVER! I'm thinking of getting my Yoga Teacher Training right now, but it is very expensive, so it depends on my some school funds being available or not. We shall see!!
Anyway so we are now we're back in Kathmandu, getting our Indian visa sorted out for our re-entrance to India in November. Exciting! After this, if there is time we hope to do some sort of trek in the Annapurnas. But we've begun to accept there may not be time because apparently you have to wait quite a bit for the visas to get sorted out, and I want to take a course or two at this Naturopathy centre we found, but we shall see. Who knows what will happen. :)
So we are sending love and gratitude to all you brilliant beings shining your lights back home. And on this Thanksgiving we urge you all to think of things that you are grateful for!! We tend to overlook this, yet when we do it, it makes our life TEN TIMES BETTER. So here's a challenge: Grab a pen and paper. Write down, without stopping, for 10 minutes, things that you are grateful for. It can be the smallest things or the biggest things, it doesn't matter. Then reread your list and feel how HAPPY it makes you feel. Then smile!! That's it. :)
PEACE, LOVE, OM,
Marina (and Orion)
Hello everyone!!!
My my it sure has been a long time. Hmmmm.. Where did we leave off... Ah yes! Pokhara.
So Pokhara... We ended up staying there for 3 weeks. 3 WEEKS! Even we were surprised when we realized how long it had been. What can we say? We found a good place and got sucked in! Perhaps it is part of our human nature to settle when we find comfort.
And we did find comfort! We had the BEST food (and cheapest) in all Pokhara, an amazing homely room, our own porch and front lawn with a view that took no trouble getting used to: a shimmering, crystal lake and towering, gleaming mountains. Every morning the cooler air would lift the monsoon clouds and the mountains would glow pink from the sunrise and we would just sit outside and feast our eyes. Then after our eye feast, we would feast our stomachs with Dal Bhat. Dal Bhat is the traditional Nepali meal that EVERYONE eats all the time. It is rice, dal (pressure cooked lentil soupy amazing thing), curried vegetables, and a raw vegetable salad of some sort. Our hotel owner, called Maila, made us amazing dal and curry, and supplied us with fresh sliced cucumbers and carrots and steamed juicy spinach, all freshly picked straight from his garden!!! Organic!! The spinach was so amazing.. when we ate it the juice would dribble down our chins.. YUMMMMMMMM. We still miss that meal everyday..
Anyway a few more things happened in Pokhara besides relaxing and eating, I swear. We were just healing up our fresh tattoos, and getting what most people with multiple tattoos seem to get: an addiction. Heh... We were brainstorming and imagining what ELSE we could get and where and we were all excited. And then, I will tell you a story to disprove any of you doubting in your believe of the Law of Attraction. So here we are talking about tattoos and getting super excited and wanting more SO BAD when we just happen to run into a group of people on the street with the sweetest freakin tattoos EVER. They were so awesome that we walked past them, then turned around and went back just to tell them how sweet their tattoos were. It was a group of 5 or 6 people and they had all tattoos that sort of matched and were actually the best we had ever seen. They said they had all got them done by the same guy! He was visiting Pokhara apparently and tattooing alot of people. "Well that's cool," we thought and continued on our way, and soon forgot all about it.
Then the next time we were in town we ran into some friends we had a met in Kathmandu. We were stoked to see them and they invited us to come to this open mic jammy blues bar with them that night, so we went. It turned out their group of friends were the same people with all the sweet tattoos, AND there were more of them. Probably like 10 or more people all hanging out in a group, all with the BEST TATTOOS EVER. One girl had this aaammaazziinnggg design up her whole back and then down one arm. I wanted one... We inquired to a few people about the tattoos. They said the artist was very specific in that he liked it to be HIS design and he was difficult to work with, as well as the fact that he didn't speak any English. They also said he used only 1 tiny needle in his tattoo gun which made it like 3x as painful. (Normal tattoo artists use needles with like 9 or more tiny needles on the end.) We decided that this mysterious man, although amazingly talented, was not for us.
That night at home I couldn't stop thinking about it! And I suddenly decided that I changed my mind and I did want a tattoo. We had no idea if he even had time to do us, and we only knew his hotel, but none the less we set out the next day to try and find him. Once I had a made up my mind that I wanted a tattoo, Orion realized that he too wanted one!!! He had a bit more of a plan than me, but we were both very open. We met with the artist and his family by sheer chance and they agreed to tattoo us in a couple days' time.
So that was that! I got a "smallish" henna design on my lower back. Its BEAUTIFUL. So beautiful in fact, that as soon as he finished and I looked in the mirror, I asked if he had another day's time and decided to get it extended up onto my shoulder! And now its done! I'm so happy with it! He did the whole thing free hand, just drawing out a few things to map on my back using a child's felt marker. And it hurt. SO MUCH. In total, my tattoo took almost 9 hours (split up in 2 days thankfully). When he did my upper back it was actually the most painful thing I've ever experienced, and I'm not even exaggerating!!! But as soon as I looked in the mirror, it was worth it! I can't wait to post some pictures to show everyone.
Orion got an amazing sun on his shoulder with "prana" (life force) in sanskrit in the centre. The sun is completely made up of geometric designs and patterns and it's so complex and detailed and AMAZING. I shall explain a bit about Mau (pronounced like Mow) and his art.
His calls his business "Spiritual Tattoo," and every pattern and shape he incorporates into his designs is from some ancient culture or other and has a spiritual significance. Geometry tattoos, like Orion's, are full of detailed and tiny shapes and patterns. Every single pattern has a meaning and an explanation and a place it is from. Some are protection symbols for self or family, some represent different aspects of evolution, some tell a story, and more. A geometric tattoo, therefore, does not only LOOK like it's from some ancient tribal culture, it IS! And that makes the art that much more special. In order to gain knowledge about all these different symbols, Mau, who is originally from Chile, traveled the world and studied different peoples of the past and present. For example, Orion has these cave symbols in his tattoo that tell a story and offer protection. They are from an ancient tribe on Easter Island. In order to learn how to write with these characters, Mau literally hiked out to the caves and copied the symbols off the walls that he found, until he was able to read it, like a language. HOW COOL.
He has a wife named Maria from Sweden, and they have two kids together. Though Mau only speaks Spanish, Maria speaks Swedish, Spanish, AND English, and she translates very efficiently. That way it wasn't actually that hard to communicate what we wanted. Mau has two epic dreadlocks for a beard on his chin that are so long they reach his hips!! CRAZY. Their kids are only about 5 and 8 and they're fluent in English and Spanish and know a fair bit of Swedish. Genius children! The whole family lives in Pai, Thailand where Mau has set up his business. They lived in Goa, India as well for around 6 years with a business set up there. They travel to other countries sometimes (like they did to Nepal) to explore a bit and spread the business. Its so easy for them, because as soon as anyone sees one of Mau's tattoos, they ask, "WHERE DID YOU GET THAT?!?!" followed by, "How can I get one?" Hence us being convinced to get tattoos after seeing all those people with the amazing tattoos at the bar! Maria likes to jam and play music and we hung out with their family a bit when we weren't getting tattoos by going to little restaurants and bars to jam. Mau is the quiet artist type and prefers to sit with the kids. All in all they are AWESOME people and we enjoyed getting to know them. We are SO HAPPY with our new tattoos!!
So after that, we retreated back up to our hotel again to heal yet AGAIN. But FIRST we found out a certain event and bought tickets, not knowing at ALL what to expect. The event was called "Psychedelic Travelers Gathering!" It appeared to be a RAVE for travelers!! See, if this was back home, as soon as I saw that, I would know it was amazing, and wouldn't hesitate to buy tickets. But this isn't home, this is Nepal. And who KNOWS if they even understand what a rave should be like. And who knows if I could even be free enough to dance without pressure from creepy local men. But the thing I miss most about home that never gets satisfied from traveling is dancing at hippie gatherings, and I just couldn't bear to pass up a potential chance for that, even if it could all turn out to be nothing.
So fast forward a week and its time for the festival weekend. We show up at the meeting point and are pleasantly surprised to find a lot of other hippie type travelers waiting, as well as our same friends from Kathmandu. We hopped on the buses, and after a very carsick ride, they dumped us at a random gas station in the middle of nowhere. We were very confused. Then some jeeps showed up and it was clear we were supposed to get on them, so we did. The jeeps took off, and next thing we knew we were turning off the highway onto a dirt road. Then we started off-roading... So we were all clinging on for dear life and driving straight up a mountain, when we reached a random Hindu temple built in the middle of nowhere really, surrounding by a ton of locals and screaming children. There was no stage, no tents, no field, no nothing. We unloaded none the less, and they told us to set up camp on this random plateau next to a stinky swamp. So we started taking out our tents that we had rented for the occasion, but suddenly they yelled at us to stop. So we were NOT supposed to set up camp here... We were so confused, but we put our tents away again. FINALLY a random traveler who happened to speak Nepali got a somewhat clear story. This was the "chill stage" (though there was no stage) and the "Main Stage" where we were going to be camping and where everything else would be was at the TOP of the mountain. Like actually at the TOP, and apparently it was a 2 hour hike away. We were supposed to wait down here for "only a hour" for them to get set up, and then jeeps would drive us up the rest of the way. We became almost MORE confused. Why was there a separate stage if it was TWO HOURS away from the campsite and main stage?!? Who the HELL would hike down there? And why couldn't we just go up there now and set up camp? Why did we need to wait down HERE? Some people got frustrated and impatient and decided to hike up the hill anyway. The locals promptly chased the down yelling "HEY! STOP!" or something similar in Nepali if they spoke no English. Most of the travelers were rounded up and forced to return but some escaped. In the mean time they had set up a very thorough beer tent with a freezer and SO MUCH BEER. We became more confused. If we were camping so far away, who would want to walk that far just to buy a beer?? We let it slide for now, and decided to go with the flow. FOUR HOURS LATER we were still waiting, spread out in the shade reading or sleeping or some people pulling out the drugs already. Some of the travelers who had escaped and made it up the mountain returned and told us there was nothing up there at all, so they had decided to come back down.
EVENTUALLY after who knows how long, the first jeep took the first group of people up the mountain. We got on the second. The ride was terrifying. If I thought the way to the first camp was off-roading, then I don't know what one would call the second stretch. It was switch back after switch back, and they were sooo narrow that the jeep couldn't make the turn in one go. Often 3 point turns were necessary, which was terrifying because an inch further and we'd be falling off a cliff. At one point we got stuck mid turn and the jeep ALMOST tipped. We were stuck at like a 45 degree angle for a moment of terror and then we accelerated to relative safety. When we finally reached the top, we were short of breath and white knuckled. A couple people applauded the driver, haha. So we set out to look for a spot to camp.
Unfortunately the mountain had to be carved out to make room for the festival. We went to the camping site which used to be jungle until someone had gone through it with a machete to hack it to pieces. It didn't make it any more campable stupidly. It just made it a jungle with alot of short trees. TERRIBLE planning #2. We managed to find a little cliff with bumps that were only huge instead of ridiculously huge with thorns. We put the tent up and shuffled it around trying to find a flat spot. We didn't, and gave up, choosing a huge lump in the lower back rather than a huger lump in the neck. Then came the dancing!
DANCING. Oh how I love Thee and give thanks for Thine existance! Oh how Thou dost fill mine soul yearnings with joy!! But actually. Within the first SECONDS of dancing, the music pounding and crazy lights flashing, all the craziness and disorganization of the festival fell away and it was GLORIOUS. After my complaints of restraint in the rigid Muslim city of Srinagar, there I was wearing a TANK TOP and a flowy skirt and spinning around and feeling wonderful. I was and still am truly grateful. :)
All that said, and my gratitude expressed, I will offer a few complaints, mostly for comedy's sake
.
First of all, the music was all trance. Trance is pretty good actually, but there is a fine line and I find, for my taste, it can be overstepped easily. Trance music is a continual throbbing bass 1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4, etc that continues constantly without ceasing for the entire song (or entire night for this occasion). That is all fine and dandy as long as the rest of the song is interesting enough with enough changes and breakdowns and what have you. But often, the darker side of trance is expressed, which I find slightly soul sucking. The thumping duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh on every beat continues but with NOTHING else added on top of it except a few terrifying sounds. Sometimes demons talking, or weird echoing and screeching and creaking, like a typical haunted house soundtrack, even a few screams! We fled to our tent to escape these songs. SENDING LOVE to the AMAZING DJs we have become so used to back home. GRATITUDE. And that said, we were grateful for the music. At least it wasn't the screeching, shreeking voices and wailing terrible synthesizers of the low budget "traditional" music of India and Nepal, or the horrid repetitiveness of the soul-less cover bands of Kathmandu and Pokhara.
Secondly, although the festival was 90% travellers, and our hippie festival culture strongly overwhelmed their conservative opressed feminism culture, there was still a few crowds of Nepali men ready to creep hard. The cultural barrier. Women expressing themselves freely through dance is something quite foreign to most Nepali men (and to ALL Indian men I swear.. Nepal is muccchhhh better in that respect than India). Many a time I would have my eyes closed, lost in the dancing trance and moving freely to the music, only to open my eyes and find a literal WALL of Nepali men surrounding me, a beer in one hand, the other hand in a fist and pumping the sky (and often holding a cigarette), all watching with that terribly creepy smile on their faces. YUCK. A slight buzz kill. In those cases I was infinitely grateful for Orion, who would let me drag him to dance in whatever spot he was most needed to act as a barrier between me and the creepy men. And he would stare and them and dance uncomfortably close at them and they would be scared away. VICTORY! What a guy!
So it was no Komasket or Fandango or whatever, but it was FUN and we had a really FUN time. We met a super sweet Canadian guy from Quebec named Philippe, who told us about, and showed us pictures of, this AMAZINGLY sweet week long music festival on the border of Quebec and Ontario in August. So we want to be there for it next year. :) It's called Open Mind Festival.
Anyway so after the festival we hopped on the roof of a ridiculously full jeep and somehow made it safely down the mountain and onto the local bus back to Pokhara. The ride down the mountain on the jeep was sooooo fun! I got to lounge so epicly on this towering pile of bags, and duck when branches whipped by and cling on when we almost tipped on every switchback, and hold on to other people's bag to keep them from flying off the jeep. FUN. So back in Pokhara we retreated to our favorite home for 2 nights and then headed off to Kathmandu where we are now.
I forgot to mention one thing! I've been giving a lot of thought to what I want to do with my life. YES! Music is definitely one thing! Fear not, lovely people. But I also have a lot of interest in energy healing, natural medicine, those types things, and randomly, WHALES. I LOVE whales. Not sure of any careers that incorporate all those things, so I decided to focus only on the first two first. So I read a book on Reiki and decided I wanted to get it. Yet another attribute to the powers of the Law of Attraction, after finishing the book, I just so happened to meet a Reiki "Master" (the name for someone who has been initiated into all 3 levels of Reiki.. Does not mean they're enlightened or a guru or anything silly.. It just means they can initiate other people) and got initiated to Reiki Level 1! So now I can successfully channel the Reiki energy for healing of myself and others and even objects like broken electronics or sad plants or whatever. I've done a few treatments on Orion who said he can feel the energy and everything, which is sweet because it means I'm not just imagining it, and who promptly gets so relaxed as to start snoring. The whole thing seems very relaxing! When we get home I hope to have Reiki 2 and a few other courses and things under my belt. My DREAM is to be able to get a job doing these things and be done with the world of crappy low paying jobs FOREVER! I'm thinking of getting my Yoga Teacher Training right now, but it is very expensive, so it depends on my some school funds being available or not. We shall see!!
Anyway so we are now we're back in Kathmandu, getting our Indian visa sorted out for our re-entrance to India in November. Exciting! After this, if there is time we hope to do some sort of trek in the Annapurnas. But we've begun to accept there may not be time because apparently you have to wait quite a bit for the visas to get sorted out, and I want to take a course or two at this Naturopathy centre we found, but we shall see. Who knows what will happen. :)
So we are sending love and gratitude to all you brilliant beings shining your lights back home. And on this Thanksgiving we urge you all to think of things that you are grateful for!! We tend to overlook this, yet when we do it, it makes our life TEN TIMES BETTER. So here's a challenge: Grab a pen and paper. Write down, without stopping, for 10 minutes, things that you are grateful for. It can be the smallest things or the biggest things, it doesn't matter. Then reread your list and feel how HAPPY it makes you feel. Then smile!! That's it. :)
PEACE, LOVE, OM,
Marina (and Orion)
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