Consonant Aspirations - Archive

Two weeks ago I flew out twice of Kathmandu with Agni Air, each time on a Dornier 9N-AHE. The first one landed back in Kathmandu while the second made the rather scary landing in Lukla. This morning I flew back from Lukla in one of those. Considering that this happened 2 months ago, I was a little concerned, but aware that the authorities would probably be a little more cautious. It's a tiny plane that takes about 14 people at one time. There's even a flight attendant onboard who gives out cotton balls (for your ears) and sweets. It's great if you sit right in front, because you get to see everything in the cockpit. I wasn't quite sure what the GPS was meant to show. I assumed it worked only because I survived all three flights. I still got a kick out of the seat belt and no-smoking sign.

The nice thing about having a cancelled flight on bijaya dashami  (the 10th day of the festival of Dashain, which was last Sunday) was that I was able to go to L. and S.'s house for dinner that night. Not too surprisingly, there was quite a bit of meat, but what I was really looking for was receiving tika. Tika, also known as 'tilak' in India, is a mark - typically a red dot - placed on one's forehead and is meant to symbolise the 'third eye'. Unlike a bindi, a tika can be worn by men as well as women. Though primarily a Hindu practice, it has been widely adopted by Buddhists in this country. On bijaya dashami ,  it is common practice for elders to give tika to their juniors. The tika I received was made with a red paste - I'm not sure if it was sandalwood, or just clay (my olfactory senses are somewhat dampened when I'm in Kathmandu). In addition to the red paste, some leaves from a grass / herb / plant I did not recognise was placed behind my left ea...

Last night, an English guy at my guest house here in Namche mentioned that despite his attempts at speaking Nepalese (sic) with people on the trekking routes, he found quite a number of guides quite unfriendly, especially if he wasn't part of that guide's group (and since he didn't have a guide). He said this unfriendliness, bordering on hostility, was much more evident in areas past Namche, but people further down in the Dudh Kosi valley were much friendlier. I can't really say that has been my experience, although I've spent most of my time in Khumjung, where groups just tend to spend the day to acclimatise before heading back to Namche. I did notice one of two guides today on my walk to Thame were not particularly forthcoming with conversation at rest stops, but most of the guides (and porters) seemed quite keen to know where I was from and where I learnt Nepali. One porter even decided to lag behind his group to chat to me about his Bachelor degree in English ...

For the past week I've been here in the stunningly beautiful Khumbu (the region just south of Mount Everest), visting my friend Sara who's been doing her PhD research in the village of Khumjung (famous for its Hilary School and yeti scalp). I spent five nights in Khumjung and am now back in Namche Bazaar for another four, before heading back down to Lukla with Sara on Friday. Sara's went off to the Gokyo Valley on Saturday, while I stayed on so I could go to Tengboche on Sunday for the second last day of the Mani Rimbu festival where the monks wear masks and perform dances all day (but more on this later). One of the other reasons I'm up here is to help a professor back in Melbourne with some Sherpa data. The first task is to collect (and transcribe -ugh) a story about a Jackal and Crow that she'd first heard years ago when she was writing her thesis on Sherpa. I've collected 6 stories so far, and barely transcribed one, with the help of one of the girls at th...

More than a week ago, on Sunday 17 October 2010 (or Ashwin 31, 2067 by the Nepali calendar), I had the priviledge of facing the crush at Kathmandu domestic terminal, getting on a plane, getting to the Himalayas, before being told that the flight would be turning back to Kathmandu. The alternative would have been this . The landing at Lukla - my destination - is not the safest in the world. It's basically a runway facing a cliff. The weather had been bad all week and it was a small miracle that the weather cleared just enough for the two flights before mine to land. I was quite glad that we turned back, though I can't speak for the French trio I met who'd also been on a flight that had been turned back the day before. I was also glad that the pilots / airline didn't feel the pressure to land the plane, given that out of the previous 7 days, 5 days' worth of flights to Lukla had been cancelled. An aviation catastrophe of another kind. So I made my way back to t...

I've got a flight from Kathmandu to Lukla in the Solu-Khumbu region (the Everest region) tomorrow to visit Sara. Never mind that it's bijaya dashami  or the 'big day' (or more appropriately 'victory day'?) when families get together, businesses are mostly shut, and according to the people at my guesthouse, no taxis can be found on the roads of Kathmandu. Also never mind that the weather is meant to be absolutely shite tomorrow morning, meaning my flight might just get cancelled and I will have to find a non-existent taxi back from the airport to Pakanjol / Thamel! Oh the joys of travel. At least if my flight gets cancelled, I have an invitation to a friend's house where I will get yummy food and receive  tika . In any case, I'll see you all in two weeks!

I suppose it was partly to satisfy my morbid curiosity that I decided to venture out early this morning (or as early as I could) to Kathmandu's Durbar Square. Along the way, I saw people carrying their roosters and ducks (usually held by the leg and hanging upside down) with them - a common sight over the past few days. I also saw a few headless goat carcasses being skinned close to a little roadside shrine to Durga that had been erected some days ago. I quietly slipped into Durbar Square, playing with my mobile as I walked past the ticket office for foreigners and looking suitably disinterested in the festivities. Women were lining up outside a few smaller temples with  puja  plates in their hands. Families were lining up to worship / touch / rub their hands on other temples. But by far the longest line was to enter the Taleju Temple, which is only open once a year to the public. Of course, the main reason I'd come was to watch the goats being sacrificed. I had exp...

People who are familiar with Indic writing systems will know that unlike in alphabetic writing systems (like the Latin alphabet we use in English), consonants in such scripts have an inherent vowel associated with them, e.g. in Hindi, क represents 'ka' (pronounced more like [k ə ] with a schwa), while कि represents 'ki' [k ɪ ] and के 'ke' [ke], with the vowel symbol replacing the inherent vowel of क. (It is is this replacing of the inherent vowel that separates such scripts from syllabaries such as Japanese hiragana.) Having learnt some Hindi before attempting Nepali, I started by assuming the inherent vowel in Nepal was also pronounced as schwa [ ə ]. I quickly learnt from Lauren and from my own ears that it is not a schwa, but rather an open back vowel, closer to [ ʌ ] (like the vowel in 'hut'). This analysis was further substantiated by Khatiwada's 2009 phonological description of Nepali as part of the Journal of the International Phonetic Ass...

Going through the recently published Sherpa-English dictionary looking for volitional / non-volitional verb sets before next week's trip to Khumbu / Everest region, I found this nice little curse in Sherpa: རྨིག་དུང་རྐྱའུ། (mīkdung gy a u) The translation: 'May you be buried in a hole!' I suppose not all of us can get a decent sky burial.

The story goes something like this: Years ago, my professor's partner flew into Kathmandu to visit her. It was around the 9th day of Dashain. As he got off the plane, his first image was of a group of men furiously masturbating a goat, which they then proceeded to kill by slicing its head off, splattering its blood all over the plane. Lauren  recently told me this story about one of our professors - I assume it was just the wheels of the plane they splattered with blood. Today, my Nepali teacher informed me, Hindus would start sacrificing animals as part of the Dashain festivities. This BBC article from 3 years ago talks about the cruelty of the practice. While goats are the most common offerings, other animals such as ducks, chickens, pigs and water buffaloes are also sacrificed. The most important thing is that all sacrificed animals be male and uncastrated (so hooray if you're an animal eunuch). Male castrated goats are called खसी  khasi  in Nepali, while ...

4 boys. 2 motorbikes. An afternoon at Sundarijal. What better way to spend a Sunday in the Kathmandu Valley (bearing in mind that Sunday isn't exactly a day off here, but Dashain holidays have started). Sundarijal, meaning 'beautiful water' is about 15km northeast of Kathmandu and is one of the entry points for the Shivapuri National Park. It's meant to be incredibly rich in biodiversity, but I'm not going to talk about that, since my short visit late in the afternoon didn't allow me to see any first hand. Most travellers enter further to the west from Budhanilkantha, but my guides wanted to see the waterfalls and have a picnic at the reservoir further upstream (there's a reason why it's called 'beautiful water'). The area is also important because it provides water for people in the Kathmandu metropolitan area. Along the main hiking route is a large water pipe which carries water down to the valley. The sentry warned us not to swim in ...

Yesterday, P. took me on a motorbike ride with two of his friends to Sundarijal, about 15km north-east of Kathmandu, but more on that later. Here're some pictures from the road. Because there's not much else to do when you're waiting in traffic. Kathmandu Ring Road, turning onto the road that leads to Boudhanath and Sundarijal beyond. Note the old lady on the motorbike right in front of us. It's very common to see sari-wearing ladies sitting like this. Also, if you look closely at the truck on the right, you can see a man, legs stretched out, having a nap. Our route

I don't know how I missed it, or rather the first day of it. I had it in my diary as starting this Thursday, and didn't think to question it. Not even when the BBC was reporting the start of Dashain as they covered the fact that Nepal still has no government. Or when S. said she didn't have school because of Dashain. Or when my Nepali teacher had to cut our class on Thursday short to rush off to the tax office to get her taxes done before the government offices closed for the holiday. I just thought it was all part of the lead-up to the actual holiday. D'oh! So Dashain (as usual, 'sh' is more often pronounced like 's') started on Friday (8 October) this year. It's a 15 day Hindu festival that celebrates Durga's defeat of the asura / demon Mahishasur who had made a deal with Brahma that no man or (male) god could defeat him. The battle raged for 10 days, during which Durga and the Mahishasur transformed themselves into various forms to defeat ...

Adding to my list of cultural activities here was a trip to the local cinema to watch a Nepali film. Of course, being in Kathmandu, 8am on a Saturday morning is a perfectly reasonable time to go to the cinema. The film was called देश ( desh)  pronounced 'des' here and meaning 'country' - think of Bangladesh as being the 'land of the Banglas'. As expected, it was quite nationalistic in orientation. Lauren gives a much more detailed review of the film , although neither of us really managed to follow the film completely owing to our less than native Nepali language skills. The film stars Rajesh Hamal , who I gather is to Nepali cinema what Shah Rukh Khan is to Bollywood (especially with regards to playing characters half their real ages). He plays a journalism student at a local university who ends up forming a political party and eventually dies (because of his beliefs?). Well I must admit I understood a tiny fraction of the dialogue, though the on-scr...

A few days ago I arranged to meet Reg Naylor, a British expatriate who's been doing development work in Nepal for years (courtesy of a contact of my friend Sara's). I caught a taxi out to the Summit Hotel in Patan where Reg kindly picked me up in a blue jeep and drove us to the Language Development Centre office, also in Patan. As some of you may know, I'm looking at potential topics for a PhD in Linguistics. One of the main reasons I'm in Nepal is to look at ways of combining my linguistic training with development work. Of course, the aims of the two don't always overlap. Having finished the MA, I felt quite disillusioned that the work I had produced didn't seem to serve any other purpose apart from adding to a growing body of knowledge accessible only by a group of specialists. I don't think see anything wrong with people who aspire to do this sort of research, but I personally need to see my research produce something a little more concrete, and if I...

A week ago I got my first taste of being on a motorbike in Kathmandu. No helmet, no protective gear. Just blind faith in P. my driver, who thankfully never went above 40 km/h, and in the other road users (particularly big truck drivers) who could slam into us from behind any time. Since I'm helping  P. with a dictionary project, I suppose it was in his best interests to keep me alive too... It was pretty fun, if a little harrowing at the start. But it was a great relief to get out of the noise and dust of the city centre. P. took me to a place out of town he liked. It's still a district of Kathmandu, but it felt a world away. You might think me mad for sticking out my arm to take a video during the ride, but it had to be done. On our way back I asked P. how many lessons he'd taken before getting his licence. (I also asked if many people just paid for their licences here.)

In the past few days, articles have surfaced on news sites like  CNN  and Reuters  regarding the discovery of a new language in NE India - specifically in Arunachal Pradesh, a region which China claims as part of its territory too. The form of the articles seemed to follow the familiar structure used when talking about the discovery of a new species of animal (incidentally, close to 150 new species have been discovered in the Greater Mekong area ). Already knowing about the amount of diversity found among the world's languages and their plight, I couldn't help but find even the title a little sensationalist. Yeah sure, there's a new language, so what? Oh, it's on its way out? Again, what's new about that?  It also didn't help that according to  one language blog  I follow: The announcement this week of findings regarding a previously unknown language has shaken up the field of linguistics. Seriously? I'm pretty sure the field of linguist...

So for the 10th time since June this year, Nepal still hasn't formed a government . It reminded me of what L. said the other night: दाल भात तरकारी जिउ मेरो सरकारी  daal bhaat tarkaari, jio mero sarkaari ('lentil curry, rice and vegetables, my body my government') At least you can always count on your daal bhaat to feed you. (And for most people here, it's daal bhaat 2-3 times a day, everyday.) And we were complaining about the lack of government in Australia for 2 weeks.

Nepal has to got to be in the weirdest time zone I know. Even weirder than Adelaide. More importantly, I find it rather annoying that when setting one's time zone in online profiles (Blogger) included, Nepal's time zone isn't included. How often do you see (UTC+05:45) in a drop down menu anyway? So even though all my posts here are time-stamped according to standard India time, the time stamp is always 15 minutes late. If only things in the subcontinent were that reliably behind schedule! (But at least the time here makes sense when you consider when the sun rises and when it sets. When I was living in Xinjiang, most people observed Beijing time, but there was a local 'Xinjiang time' that was 2 hours behind. When I was in NE India, Delhi time was followed, even though the NE states are further east than Bangladesh, which is already half an hour ahead of Delhi.)

During dinner at L. and S.'s, L. shared a proverb / saying that according to him was popular with soldiers (he used to be in the army, though it's not clear to me which army): दाल भात तरकारी जिउ मेरो सरकारी  daal bhaat tarkaari, jio mero sarkaari (which seems to translate into something like 'lentil curry, rice and vegetables, my body my government') I'm not sure what it's supposed to mean exactly - apart from expressing one's love for (and loyalty towards) the dish. The closest saying in another language I could think of comes from Russian (and this one was apparently also popular with soldiers and it rhymes as well): щи да каша пиша наша shchi  da  kasha pisha nasha ('Cabbage soup and buckwheat porridge, that's our fare')

For maybe the 4th time (I'm losing track) in a week and a half, Lauren and I were treated to dinner at L. and S.'s house. As usual, the menu consisted of Nepal's 'national dish' - दाल भात तरकारी daal bhaat tarkaari (lentil curry, rice and vegetables), followed by the best दहि dahi (curd) I've ever had. S. decided it was time I learned to be a good modern Nepali house husband and help with the preparation of dinner. So after Lauren and I broke up the सिमी  simi (beans), I got to peel and chop the लसुन  l asun (garlic), प्याज  pyaaz (onion) and अदुवा aduwaa (ginger), as well as the गोलभेंडा  golbhenDaa (tomatoes) and धनियँ  dhaniyan (coriander). After putting some तेल tel (oil) and खुर्सानी khursaani  (chillis) in the wok (now the details start getting sketchy), the beans, onions, garlic, half of the ginger and some काउली  kauli (cauliflower) were thrown in, along with some बेसार besaar (turmeric), and given a g...

So while there's a Nepali rock music video being filmed at the guest house this afternoon, I caught the filming of another more Bollywood-esque music video at the amusement park (aka 'fun park') near the Ratna Park bus station more than a week ago, on my second day in Kathmandu.

According to this article from the Nepal-based blog 'Weird and Funny World', cybercafes here are supposed to now check clients' ID before allowing them to surf the net. This practice is something I'm quite familiar with from my time in China and India (at least in Kolkata). None of the cybercafes I've visited over the past few days have asked for my ID, and it's pretty clear that the free wifi offered by most of the cafes in Thamel aren't too fussed about who uses their wifi, provided they can afford the prices - Or2K doesn't even have a password for its wifi network! Considering that a compulsory helmet law for motorbike riders had to be withdrawn recently because it was too hard to enforce, I wonder if the 'ID requirement' at cybercafes will stick here. I'm also sure there are better ways to track 'cyber-criminals' on the web than to work out which cybercafes they frequent.

I often count it as a blessing when I can blend in with the local population (like when I was in China and Nagaland), yet still assert my position as a tourist when I start to speak English. Earlier that day I had purposely taken to wearing shorts and thongs to make it clear I was a tourist, just to experience all the repeated offers for 'Taxi?', 'Trekking?', 'Hashish?' you get in Thamel that can drive many a foreigner insane (I do get asked if I want these sometimes - especially hash - though not to the extent that other foreigners seem to be hassled.) However, last night as Lauren  and I were walking back to the guest house, we were verbally abused in English by a crazy Nepali man. Most of the abuse was directed at me and it seemed he was most upset that I had taken a foreign wife! Now, to set the scene, Lauren - with her less than diminutive stature, straw-coloured hair and blue eyes - was wearing her gorgeous new kurta sulwar , often a sign of a foreign ...

Found a few of Invader's  installations here in Kathmandu. Here's one from the old town area.

The other day I had to catch a taxi out of town to a place called Thecho just to the south of Kathmandu. The great thing about being in a taxi in Nepal is that I get to unleash my basic Nepali on the poor unsuspecting taxi driver. A situation where both parties are stuck in one-on-one situation for about 30-40 minutes tends to breed patience, at least for the duration of the taxi ride (one can also bond easily over stupid drivers on the road and complain about the amount of traffic and cows on the roads). But to my credit, after a week of 1 hour one-on-one classes I've actually gotten quite good at introducing myself, talking about where I'm from, where I live, how many people are in my family, where they live, what they do etc. I can also ask other people about these same things, though I may only understand 50% of what they tell me. Now, one thing you should know about Nepali, is that it uses numeral classifiers, similar to languages like Mandarin and Malay, where you alm...