I’ve just eaten for the second time at Raithaane in Saugal, Patan, and hope to do so again before long.
The restaurant is a little hard to find at first. It’s about 300 meters east of Patan Durbar Square. The best route there is a walk through small alleyways.
Raithaane serves tasty, inexpensive, local food from many regions of Nepal. It’s all fresh and organic. As our waiter explained they use tomatoes only where it’s appropriate to the particular dish, not tomato sauce on everything.
A friend here in Nepal asked whether I had eaten. When I said “no,” she replied that there were still people in the café up on the 6th floor.
I realized that I had been wondering whether there was still food. A person in Nepal might wonder that as well, but would think first about whether their friends would be there.
Without friends it’s not lunch, even if there is food.
Shortly after I arrived in Kathmandu, I developed a standard walk to work. It was relatively safe from traffic, utilizing UN Park and side streets. Making it more interesting were were two bridges, one over the Bagmati River and one over Dhoki Khola, a tributary.
Along the way there were shops, hiti with stone water spouts, Buddhist stupas and prayer flags, Hindu mandirs with temple bells, free range cows, goats, and poultry, wild dogs, schools, parks, snooker halls, motorbike repair shops, restaurants, tailor shops, soldiers, joggers, yoga and meditation practitioners, vegetable stands, young cricket players, roasted peanuts, and people of all ages, occupations, dress, and personalities.
This is just a small fraction of what I see, hear, taste, feel, and smell every day. There is a lot packed into one and a half miles. It’s impossible to summarize it all in a single blog post, much less with a label, such as “capital city,” “Himalayan country,” or “developing nation.”
During my walks, I came to know one family fairly well. We speak as I pass by in the morning and evening, but also when I go out for tea or a neighborhood walk.
A ten year-old girl in the family asked me when we first met:
What kind are you?
Her English was limited (although far ahead of my Nepali). Maybe she meant “what is your name?” or “where are you from?” She might have been thinking “how tall are you?’ or “how old are you?” which are questions I frequently hear in schools.
But her question as posed stuck with me. If I don’t self-identify with a proper noun, and I can’t answer with a number, what would I say?
It’s remarkably easy to apply a label to another person–an “entertainer,” a “jerk,” a “scholar,” a “homemaker,” a “fun-lover,” “a ten year-old girl,” and so on. But doing the same to ourselves, leads to a protest.
Yes, I am an “American.” Perhaps, that’s the type of answer my young friend expected. I have US citizenship and live permanently in the US. But that label alone is very incomplete.
At the moment, I’m American, but working and residing in Nepal, a country for which I feel a great affection and even identification. I’ve also lived in other countries and have a generally internationalist perspective. Even with respect to the US, “American” captures only one aspect of who I am. I don’t want to be reduced to a single word. Why would I do that to another?
So, I might grant myself the freedom to answer her question with several words. I recall giving her a facile answer at the time, a guess at what she must have meant. But if I really listen to what she said, and I have to answer in terms of what kind of person I am, or want to be, what would I say?
What kind am I?
Dhoki Khola in flood
A torrential rainstorm with angry winds woke us this morning. It appeared to be a day to hide under the covers.
But the rain soon stopped and revealed a Kathmandu that is not always seen. Both the Bagmati River and the smaller Dhoki Khola were full and rushing. I longed for a boat to launch into the waves.
Chandragiri Hills
Arriving at King’s College, I joined others up to the roof to look at the surrounding snow-capped hills. A friend, Arjun, said that he had never in his life seen it so clear.
Of course, the phone camera fails to show what it really looked like, but with a little imagination you can see the Chandragiri Hills to the southwest and the snow on top.
Sunrise out of the cabin
Ever since reading The Time Machine as a teenager, I, like most people, have wondered about time travel. And despite annoying naysaying from logicians and physicists, it still seems like an intriguing idea.
Wolf spider
Susan and I just spent a week in far west Texas, where we experienced something like time travel. We stayed in a cabin in a caldera near Fort Davis. Other than a barbed wire fence, a single electric line, and a narrow, rutted dirt road there were no signs of human habitation––no other buildings, no cell service, no flights overhead.
An astute rancher might have pointed out that the male cattle were steers, not bulls, and that the cattle and many turkeys around were probably being raised for market. Closer inspection would reveal that there were some planted trees, both for shade and for pecans, but on the whole the impression was of desert isolation.
In this land the people are hard to find, but we could see yucca, sotol, ocotillo, prickly pear, sagebrush, mesquite, live oak, and uncountable wildflowers. We saw buzzards, mockingbirds, huge spiders, whitetail and mule deer. These living friends were framed by gorgeous sunrises and sunsets, and unbelievable cloud formations.
1854 Fort Davis (reconstructed)
This all made me think of my early days in Fort Worth. We lived then in the new suburbs on the edge of ranchland. In our childhood explorations we could find tarantulas and horned toads, tumbleweeds and cockleburs, scorpions and butterflies. The land seemed to stretch forever into remoteness and romance. When we looked up we could see the Milky Way and thousands of stars.
Fort Davis felt like that Fort Worth of long ago. The contentious Presidential race was irrelevant. The old cashier at the local market wanted to share interesting stories rather than to ring up grocery items. The buildings and houses looked like stage props for an old Western, until you realized that they were still in use, probably by the same family that settled here a century or two ago.
Rhyolite porphyry in fantastic shapes from volcanoes 35 million years ago
Fort Davis itself lies at the base of a rhyolite cliff, the south side of the caldera, or box canyon, that held our cabin. With just a few steps we could reach the path to climb the cliff shown above. Without realizing it, we zoomed even further back in time, to an era of intense volcanic activity, which created the Davis Mountains. The rhyolite columns, tuff and pumice, volcanic peaks and domes, took us entirely away from the human world.
The Hobby-Eberly Telescope at the UT McDonald Observatory (from mcdonaldobservatory.org)
But not long after that we learned what time travel could really be. We went to the nearby University of Texas McDonald Observatory, which takes advantage of the clear mountain air.
Among many projects at McDonald is the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX). This seeks to uncover the secrets of dark energy, using the large Hobby-Eberly Telescope and to survey the sky 10x faster than other facilities can do. It will eventually create the largest map of the Universe ever, with over a million galaxies. In doing so, HETDEX will look back in time 10 billion years.
If there is anything more amazing than the mind-stretching that Fort Davis does, it is that the area is so little visited. In addition to the sites mentioned above, there is a state park with numerous hiking trails, the Chihuahuan Desert Nature Center and Botanical Gardens, interesting towns such as Alpine and Marfa, and the world’s largest spring-fed swimming pool, under the trees at Balmorhea State Park, which takes one back to the wonderful CCC projects of the 1930s.
York Harbour
I had intended to write a Newfoundland diary, but the onslaught of beautiful rocky coasts, wildflowers and butterflies, fragrant forests of balsam fir, moose and caribou, seabirds, icebergs, quaint fishing villages, lighthouses, Paleoeskimo archeology, world renowned geological sites, challenging hikes with gorgeous views, tundra, friendly people, widely divergent regional dialects, and more has distracted me.
This is beginning to look more like a five-day report, maybe a quinquery? Even now, I feel that I’m just highlighting a few of many rich experiences.
Bottle Cove
It wasn’t just the overload of rich experiences. The problem began on the first full day. We had arranged to stay in a cabin in York Harbour, on the central west coast, not far from Corner Brook. The cabin was on the seacoast, with a view of mountains and islands. That would have been difficulty enough.
However, the next day we ventured to Bottle Cove. It’s a fishing village with a population of just 10 people, but deservedly has its own Wikipedia entry. Two of those ten were very good friends who welcomed us with treats, including cheeses and homemade beer.
Trail’s End, named by Captain Cook
The cove is aptly named, given its narrow mouth, but apparently it’s actually an Anglicization of the French bateau, from its days as a French fishing village.
The surrounding terrain is part of the Appalachian Mountains. That’s the justification for including the trails in the area in the International Appalachian Trail system.
We had a beautiful walk to the headland named Trail’s End by Captain Cook, when he first explored the area. The trails are suffused with wildflowers, beautiful mushrooms, and interesting rock formations.
The rocks are mostly ophiolites, meaning they came from the oceanic crust and the upper mantle of ancient seas. They were uplifted and exposed above sea level, often on top of shale and other continental crustal rocks. A prevalent and striking example are the green serpentinites. We saw them in walks around Bottle Cove and also at the nearby Cedar Cove, another beautiful, but quite different formation.
View from the headland
After a day in the Bottle Cove area I was in a mixed state, exhilarated from the beauty and good experiences, but depressed by the thought that everything to come would be a let-down.
Lake Silvaplana
In Die Götzen-Dämmerung (Twilight of the Idols), Friedrich Nietzsche writes that his best ideas come from walking:
On ne peut penser et ecrire qu’assis [One cannot think and write except when seated] (G. Flaubert). There I have caught you, nihilist! The sedentary life is the very sin against the Holy Spirit. Only thoughts reached by walking have value.
An important example of this for Nietzsche was his concept of the eternal recurrence of the same events. It occurred to him while he was walking in Switzerland in the woods around Lake Silvaplana, when he was inspired by the sight of a large, pyramidal rock. His inner life as writer and philosopher could not be separated from his embodied life as a person who spent hours walking in beautiful spots in Europe.
Why does it require the direct connection reached through walking to embrace an idea like eternal recurrence? Why not just use a map? Reading a book, map, diagram, photo, movie, etc. can be a powerful experience. Why can’t we have the same insights without being there? And what is the relation between reading a text about a phenomenon and experiencing it more directly?
John Dewey addresses this dichotomy in The Child and the Curriculum:
The map is not a substitute for a personal experience. The map does not take the place of an actual journey…But the map, a summary, an arranged and orderly view of previous experiences, serves as a guide to future experience; it gives direction; it facilitates control; it economizes effort, preventing useless wandering, and pointing out the paths which lead most quickly and most certainly to a desired result. Through the map every new traveler may get for his own journey the benefits of the results of others’ explorations without the waste of energy and loss of time involved in their wanderings–wanderings which he himself would be obliged to repeat were it not for just the assistance of the objective and generalized record of their performances.
Sunset on the Dardanelles
By walking, you escape from the very idea of identity, the temptation to be someone, to have a name and a history … The freedom in walking lies in not being anyone; for the walking body has no history, it is just an eddy in the stream of immemorial life.
Curiously, the anomia and ahistory of walking, its “freedom,” is what allows the walker to connect to a greater degree with history, geography, and ideas in general. This has become even more evident to me during our stay in Turkey.
To be continued…
Yalikavak, Turkey
Anyone writing a blog post owes a debt to the “Father of History,” Herodotus.
He was the first to show how write narrative history. And despite his additional appellation as the “Father of Lies,” he did show how to collect information systematically and to assess its validity. It’s noteworthy that his ἱστορία (historía, history), also means inquiry. The delivery channels have changed since the 5th century BCE, but we could still learn from his advocacy of careful methods.
Herodotus lived in Halicarnassus, the site of the famous Mausoleum, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, as well as an ancient stadium and castle. It’s now Bodrum, the booming town and resort area of southwestern Turkey.
We’re staying not far from Halicarnassus/Bodrum, near Yalikavak. Of course much has changed. Our stone cottage has a smaller doorway than he would have wanted, or is it possible that people today are taller?
There are still beautiful views of a landscape convoluted by millennia of volcanic activity and earthquakes, and of a limpid Aegean Sea. The vegetation is still of the maquis type, which is found throughout coastal regions in the Mediterranean–dense scrub, with evergreen shrubs, live oak, bay trees, olive trees, lavender, and rosemary. However, the hillsides are now coated with swaths of white block houses, reflecting the rapid development experienced here.
We have photovoltaic cells to heat our water, whereas his solar heating was entirely passive. I imagine a goatskin bag filled with water and hanging in the sun. But I’m not sure we’ve advanced much. A morning shower here leads to abstruse discussions along the lines of “Was the water hot?” “What do you mean by hot?”
We have amphoras in our cottage, just as Herodotus must have had.They’re still made and used locally. However, I’m not aware that the amphoras gather for symposia, as shown here in the Bodrum Kale (castle). That exhibit is part of the underwater archaeology museum, the world’s largest.
At the end of the day yesterday, we stopped to buy some vegetables for dinner. Although Herodotus wouldn’t have used the Turkish lirasi as we do, it’s not hard to envision him or someone in his household selecting beans, carrots, or onions as we did. Even the measuring device would have been similar, a crude balance with old, battered weights.
I’d always imagined Herodotus as an old man with a long white beard, as he’s portrayed in statues. But thinking of his life here, I now wonder: Would a young Herodotus be writing blog posts from his stone cottage? And when he was younger still, how much would he look like the young boy we see today?
Gesa Kirsch recently pointed me to John R. Stilgoe’s, Outside lies magic: Regaining history and awareness in everyday places. It’s a refreshing call for becoming more aware of the ordinary world around us. Stilgoe urges us not only to walk or cycle more, but also to use the advantages of those modes of transport to see the world that we usually ignore.
I finished the book, and am writing now, in the antipode of his call to walk and observe. I’m cramped in an airplane seat near the end of a four and a half hour flight. Stilgoe would say that I should still take the opportunity to observe, to learn, and to make sense of my surrounding, but instead I’m counting down the minutes until we land.
The chapters—Beginnings, Lines, Mall, Strips, Interstate, Enclosures, Main Street, Stops, Endings—lie somewhere between prose poems, history lessons, and sermons about the everyday. They remind me of John McDermott’s summary that John Dewey “believed that ordinary experience is seeded with possibilities for surprises and possibilities for enhancement if we but allow it to bathe over us in its own terms” (1973/1981, p. x).
To appreciate the book, you need to follow Stilgoe as he discovers nature, history, urban planning, ethics, social class, and more through cracks in the pavement, vegetation, telephone poles, roadside motels, angle parking, and other seemingly forgettable objects. The real point is not his own findings, but the demonstration that slowing down to look can open up worlds of understanding.
He shows the value of a camera, despite the lament that “ordinary American landscape strikes almost no one as photogenic” (p. 179). He recognizes the dread of causal photography (‘why are you photographing that vacant lot?’), but ties it to “deepening ignorance” (p. 181). This ignorance makes asking directions dangerous: People question us back, ‘Why do you want to know?’
Stilgoe says, “discovering the bits and pieces of peculiar, idiosyncratic importance in ordinary metropolitan landscape scrapes away the deep veneer of programmed learning” (p. 184). Unprogrammed exercise and discovery leads to a unified whole that reorients the mind and the body together. Someone else may own the real estate, but “the explorer owns the landscape” (p. 187).
Stilgoe’s prescription is simple:
Exploration encourages creativity, serendipity, invention.
So read this book, then go.
Go without purpose.
Go for the going.
See Outside lies magic, Part 2.
I had shoulder surgery on August 18, so my days of paddling through rapids or hoisting a canoe on my shoulders need to be postponed. As a substitute, I’ve been reading A thousand miles in the Rob Roy canoe on rivers and lakes of Europe (1866), by John Macgregor (1825-1892).
MacGregor himself led a life that sounds like an overdone adventure yarn. At the age of three months, he was rescued from a burning ship whil een route to India with his parents. At the age of 12, he helped launch a rescue boat for a ship in distress off Belfast, then slipped aboard secretly a the last moment to help out. He grew up sailing, boat-building, riding, reading, and experimenting with home-made steam engines, batteries, and chemicals that led to several major explosions. He attended seven schools before graduating from Trinity College, Dublin in mathematics. He traveled throughout the world, fighting Greek pirates and crocodiles, climbing Mont Blanc, Etna, and Vesuvius. He won awards for sharpshooting, drew for Punch and illustrated books, and wrote his own books on marine propulsion, patent law, travel, and transcriptions of Syrian and Egyptian melodies he had heard in his travels.
MacGregor built a hybrid canoe / kayak with a sail and a double-bladed, kayak paddle which he named the “Rob Roy”. He then paddled through the rivers, lakes and canals of Germany, France and Switzerland, portaging between waterways on a cart or on trains. His account of the journey became a best seller and was the beginning of the recreational canoeing movement. His trip inspired many, including Robert Louis Stevenson, who made his own voyage in a Rob Roy, and then wrote about it in his first published book, An inland voyage.
MacGregor’s account portrays a Europe with only distant resonance to today. Instead of shopping centers and freeways, there were people cutting hay with hand tools. Instead of the Web, there were newspapers, 3241 in Germany alone.
A thousand miles displays a buoyant optimism and refreshing sense of discovery. MacGregor talks of “a strange feeling of freedom and novelty which lasted to the end of the tour,” (p. 15), and throughout, of a reverence for the canoe, which I share:
Something like it is felt when you first march off with a knapsack ready to walk anywhere, or when you start alone in a sailing-boat for a long cruise.
But then in walking you are bounded by every sea and river, and in a common sailing-boat you are bounded by every shallow and shore; whereas, I was in a canoe, which could be paddled or sailed, hauled, or carried over land or water to Rome, if I liked, or to Hong-Kong. (p. 15)
I also like his descriptions of wildlife, for example of herons “wading about with that look of injured innocence they put on when you dare to disturb them.” (p. 35) Later, he refers to a gathering including the
long-necked, long-winged, long-legged heron, that seems to have forgotten to get a body, flocks by scores with ducks of the various wild breeds, while pretty painted butterflies and fierce- looking dragon-flies float, as it were, on the summer sunbeams, and simmer in the air. (p. 71)
At the village of Geisingen it was discovered that the boiler of my engine needed some fuel, or, in plain terms, I must breakfast. (p. 59)
MacGregor’s challenges along the way become not discouragements, but the very stuff of the journey. He reminds me that a broken shoulder is just a toss on the billows, one that can be an opportunity to learn:
It is, as in the voyage of life, that our cares and hardships are our very Mentors of living. Our minds would only vegetate if all life were like a straight canal, and we in a boat being towed along it. The afflictions that agitate the soul are as its shallows, rocks, and whirlpools, and the bark that has not been tossed on billows knows not half the sweetness of the harbour of rest. (p. 37)
Chip's journey 