Nepali food.

Dal-bhaat literally means lentil-rice and is from what I gather the most common food that Nepali families eat. The meal is eaten for lunch and dinner at the approximate  hours of 10am and 8pm. To me, having lunch at 10am is the most bizarre thing, but I only eat it during my days off at the hospital because I usually leave around 8am every morning. So on most days I get to drink tea and have biscuits before leaving the house. They also give me a couple of cucumber slices (which are huuuuge, almost like a pineapple slice i size!) And recently I have also had porridge with either oatmeal or rice. The rice porridge my host mum made the other day had cardamom and coconut in it which was a nice variation of the norwegian "risengrynsgrøt".

Everything is so sweeeeeeet! I thought I had an unhealthy relationship with sucrose, but seriously, I cannot even expect my tea to be unsweetened before it gets poured into my cup around here. Even when I tell my host mum to NOT add sugar she will always add a little bit, probably hoping that I won't notice.!? At this point I have given up on making more remarks, it is not like she will stop the sneakiness- the same way she tries to add more food on my plate even before I have finished half of it and it is already too much. She is a sneaky but sweet woman. Pun intended.
And if something is supposed to be savoury it is usually coated with batter and fried in oil. The snacks people eat is usually crisps, crackers and biscuits, though I have also seen street vendors selling huge chunks of fresh cucumbers smeared with pickles... No wonder protein deficiency is a reality here.

Then you have the official (?) nepali dish which is quite popular among travellers, called mo:mo! Mo:mos are dumplings that are steamed, fried or in some type of soup. I have only tried the vegetable filling but they also make them with buffalo meat, pork, chicken and potatoes (?) Quite spicy, but I can now proudly say that my spice tolerance has gone sky high, so mo:mos and the super delicious tomato-garlic-ginger-peanut-chilli paste is simply a delight to have for lunch!

Due to the bird flu I have not had any chicken and I am trying to avoid eggs. Since meat is a bit expensive they hardly ever cook it at home except for the occasional mutton, so I have turned vegetarian without even noticing. Even when eating out I automatically choose the veg option. Actually at the moment I am craving home made whole wheat bread full of grains and fibre with Norvegia cheese way more than roast chicken.... Haven't felt horribly sick so far either, so I guess that dulcolax vaccine was a good investment.

Another observation I have made is that Nepal is not huge on salads. Only these new cool and hip places do salads, so it is not a very traditional thing I guess. They have all these fresh vegetables and fruits available but they prefer cooking them until they are soft, spice them up and make curries out of them instead... which is also nice by all means, but I miss having a side of fresh uncooked, or lightly steamed vegetables. Maybe the veg cooking is an attempt to kill germs? That would be a random guess though, for I am still puzzled by the abundance of squishy greens. Raw food enthusiasts should definitely travel elsewhere for a culinary experience to their liking ;)

Travelling solo.

It seems a little strange now to say that I am here in Nepal by myself because to some extent it isn't exactly the truth. That being said I had really mixed feelings about being in Kathmandu without having known any of my new acquaintances for more than 72 hours during week 1. I don't have any trust issues so making new friends is nice and all, but where was that one person I could point out all the odd new things to? I guess Instagram helped me out a little in that respect, but you know what I mean, yea? Where was that one person I could share my frustration with at the hospital when it seemed like all the time I was about to invest there was going to be a total waste? (luckily that sorted itself out, so no worries).
However now that week 3 is coming to an end I do not feel all that gutted for having come all the way by myself.

First of all I had no idea this would be outside my comfort zone! I kept telling myself that going on my own to Nepal would be just like going to a European capital for a long weekend, only multiply the days I would be gone by 10. Most of the time you don't even want to return from your holiday, so how could this extended vacation with some work experience be anything but an adventure? Well let me tell you, this being my first time in Asia I have never felt a more exotic vibe in my life (though writing this from a franchise coffee shop under the Starbucks Company Ltd does not exactly prove my point, but the world outside its four walls sure emphasise it). And why would the exoticness suggest that I found myself in a slightly uncomfortable and unfamiliar territory? I love exotic things! I enjoy exploring new sounds, scents, textures and spaces. Why did all these new experiences (that I am really enjoying by the way) make me miss my usual habitat?  I don't have a magnificent answer, but I guess it was the uncertainty of my stay at the beginning. The first meetings with the staff at the hospital made me wonder how I was going to stand four weeks of dull days at the hospital followed by wandering around on my own and going to sleep at 9pm every day. At that point I just wanted to catch the first flight home, but I gave it a few more days and once I made myself a weird daily routine things started to get bearable and finally greater than I could have imagined!

What was I expecting, right!? Of course it seems obvious now that your mental state is going to have a bad time if you are used to organised institutions, guidelines, having things at least vaguely planned out, knowing that what you planned is usually executed the way you thought it out in the first place etc etc... I actually generally have very low expectations when it comes to most things in life- not because I have had oh so many bad experiences in the past that I have to watch out for (I'd rather say the opposite), but because it gives me a lower threshold at which to experience happiness. Thus I am pretty sure that I would have felt even more miserable with a slightly different attitude the past few weeks.

So now that I feel very content and enjoying the Nepali ways, I have merged another state of being into what I regard as my comfort zone. I tried convincing everyone before leaving that I would be fine coming here on my own, and truth is it has indeed worked out really well. I have learned a few things about myself that I never would have realised if I was accompanied by a friend, which is intriguing to think about, because there are a few people in particular I wish could have been here to experience it all with me. Some paradoxical truth right there!

I hope you are enjoying what I hear are the last days of summer in the northern parts of the hemisphere while I am still here in the monsoon-infested land of yaks and rice-fields! 

My host family.

 It has indeed been a while since my last post... though mostly I have been at the hospital and only went for a trip outside Kathmandu for a few days. Will make a separate post about that shortly. 
I just have to say that my host family is really lovely and they deserve much more than a lousy blog post and the bars of Melkesjokolade I brought them from Norway! So do read on....!

So my family lives in an area of Kathmandu called Mhepi, which is also the name of the temple which is closeby on top of a hill surrounded by woods..! It is a nice neighbourhood, lots of small shops, butchers, a supermarket, tailors etc just a short walk away. It is nice to get back from a busy day in the tourist area Thamel, to a place that is slightly calmer with only the children, dogs and roosters next door making most of the noise!

I live with my host mother Sarita, father Krishna and their son Satish. They also have another son who studies in the US who they Skype with every now and then.  Krishna is a retired government officer and Sarita is a housewife- who takes especially good care of everyone, including me! Satish is currently studying for some university entrance exams and is busy revising physics and solving papers most of the day.

Satish speaks excellent English which was my biggest relief when the driver dropped me off at the house on my first day. He translates everything that his mum and dad say when I am around which is not only nice of him to do but it has also made it possible for me to have indirect conversations with his parents in a surprisingly natural way.

These people seem to be quite content with life. They always manage to lurk out a smile in me and I have never seen either of them being particularly upset about anything. Ever! There was only one time when Sarita was telling off Satish for spilling some seeds on the floor, but obviously that does not mean anything in the greater context...

My own mum was obviously a little hesitant at the idea of me going away to the other side of the world, but we Skyped a few times at the beginning and when she saw my host family and how genuinely sweet they are I think she also felt just as relieved as I was when I arrived at their house. Having a new Nepali family is super awesome!

My host mum has a strictly food-related english vocabulary, but I have to say that it has even improved a little while I have been here :) it consists of:
.thirsty
.hungry
.sugar
.eating
.food
.little bit
.too much
.spicy
.porridge
.tea
.biscuit
.banana
.dinner
.rice
.potato
.mosquito
.hospital
.tomorrow
.going
.leaving
Well, at least these are essential words we use to communicate, in addition to a looooot of body language. Most of the time she just laughs and I laugh back when I have no idea what she is saying... to be fair, she knows much more english than I know nepali! All I can say is namaste (hello/goodbye) and dhanyabad (thank you).

I did not know whether it would be rude to decline food around here, but my family seems to be okay with me eating half of the rice that they have per meal nowadays. At first they were like "do you not like our food? You are going to get thin" and I kept saying that I did not want to waste the food that would be left on my plate. But now they seem to have accepted that I simply cannot eat the size of my dinner plate back home full of rice with the additional curries, pickles, veg, mutton, paneer cheese, lentils or potatoes and whatnot that they also have on the side. And I still quite enjoy the food, which I'm really hoping they have realised by now!

The other day was Satish' 20th birthday, so I got him some cake from a pastry shop aafter looking around for half an eternity among all the cashmere shops and wholesalers in Thamel. I have never seen somebody be so happy, thankful and humble about a piece of cake before- it really was the least I could do...!

So I feel that it really is true what they say about Nepali people being good in every way. Satish especially has helped me out with everything from finding my bearings, telling me what not to do, what acceptable prices for random things are, even driving me around on his motorcycle and staying up to let me in through the gate to the house when I come back late in the evening when everyone else has gone to sleep (they sure go to bed early around here!)

And while I think my host family is some of the nicest people I have met here I have to say that people on the street are also very helpful and genuine. So far I do not feel like anyone has tricked me or screwed me over in any way. The taxi drivers always try, but my bargaining skills seem to have improved so I usually find them to be quite nice in the end as well.

I guess I will have to pay my new family another visit some day. Asian backpacking trip in a couple of years, anyone?!