Puja, Paneer, and Prisoners

Cathy, the other volunteer working here, and I finally made it out of our guesthouse to our monk's morning prayer session (called puja). Getting up at 5 was quite a struggle, but it was definitely worth it once we got to the temple. We were allowed to actually sit on the floor cushions with the monks while they chanted their Tibetan prayers. The people who walked in and out of the temple to pray and make offerings of money to the monks couldn't stop staring at the two of us! It was clear that our presence was typically not allowed, but no one made us feel uncomfortable. A man that was offering each monk 5 rupees even gave us some money after some brief hesitation, of course. The puja was two hours long, with a break for breakfast. I don't know how it's possible for them to sit with their legs crossed for that long! Cathy and I were fidgeting after about 30 minutes. The experience of sitting in the temple, surrounded by huge, ornate statues of Buddha, detailed paintings, and the flicker of butter candles while listening to the Tibetan chants was unforgettable. Hopefully our guesthouse will be unlocked more often so I can go again.

The monks get half of Friday and all of Saturday off as a holiday, so Cathy and I had a bit of free time this weekend to do our own sightseeing. We went to New Road, which is an Indian-dominated shopping road. We quickly found that most of the clothing stores were very male-oriented, which is because the women here typically wear traditional Indian, Nepali, or Tibetan clothes rather than "Western" clothing. We ended up giving up on the shopping and going to the 5th floor of a nearby hotel for lunch. It was SO GOOD! I had paneer (a type of Indian cheese) masala curry with rice and garlic naan. I can't even articulate how much I love Indian food now, especially since it's so delicious here. The best part about eating here is how inexpensive everything is. A coke is usually 30 rupees, a meal at a nice restaurant is around 350, and a meal at an inexpensive restaurant is usually about 80 rupees. One dollar is about 76 rupees, so you can have lunch at a very nice restaurant for the price of a McDonald's combo meal. I'm definitely going to miss all the inexpensive food when I leave.

After our rooftop lunch, we perused through Cathy's Nepal guidebook to find something to do. We ended up finding an interesting section about the prisons of Nepal, and how many Westerners are held without trial for years in terrible conditions. The Nepal government expects the family members of prisoners to essentially pay for their release with no trial, but this is obviously quite difficult for Western prisoners, as their families aren't here to help. The guidebook suggested that we bring some food, toiletries, clothes, or money and visit a prisoner in one of the three jails in Kathmandu. We went and bought some food and went on our way to the prison, only to realize that the guidebook was written a few years ago, and things have changed very much. There is no longer a list of the current detainees on the wall, and in order to sign in we have to say the name of a specific prisoner. The main office was closed, so there was no way for us to know the names of any English-speaking prisoners, if there were any at all. We resolved to check online to see if we could get a name, but no such luck. It was pretty interesting to see the compound though, despite the bizarre looks we received for guards and visitors alike. It is clear that the prisons are in terrible conditions. The buildings look far too small to house all the prisoners that we know are in there, and most of the walls are crumbling anyway. We may try to go back to the administrative offices to see if there are any prisoners we can talk to, or at the very least, leave the food and soap we bought so that they can be donated to one of the detainees. I read up on the Nepali prisons, and found that people are held 50 to a room with no clothes, bedding, or toiletries provided. They eat black rice (fermented rice) and daal (lentil soup) everyday and are given a few rupees to buy vegetables at the prison stores. There are several human rights organizations here working to fix the poor conditions of the jails, but change is slow here.

But on the bright side, I found a post box and sent of the postcards, but mail takes at least 10 days, and, unfortunately, they may never make it to their destination.