I’m Not Asking For A Week, I’m Not Asking For A Month, I’m Not Asking For A Year. Just One More Day (In Nepal)
Ashwyn k -
Welcome back, readers, to my first blog post in four weeks!.. I can’t say that I’m proud of it, but it truly has been a struggle to get a decent internet connection from the other side of the planet, and I won’t lie that since I’ve come back to Arizona I’ve been hit hard by jet lag and I struggle to get up at a reasonable time in the morning. I still miss Nepal and wish I could have stayed for a little bit longer, thus my blog post title, but sadly, nothing lasts forever.
Many things have happened since I last updated my blog, and, most notably, I made it to both EBC (5364m) and Kala Patthar (5545m)! It was a surreal experience, and it wasn’t easy, but I could tell that all my training had paid off. I also had my Bratabandha, and as you can guess, was bald for a few weeks. My hair has been growing back, however, so I’m no longer shiny as an egg (thankfully).
The trek was 12 days long, and we were hiking every day. Some days we stayed in the same location for acclimatization, but most days we kept moving to different locations. As you all know, my project was going to revolve around interviewing the porters and/or guides on how tourism has affected both the environment and their own lifestyles. But I was unable to talk to the porter a lot, and our guide didn’t know too much about the environmental side of things (which I don’t blame him for). Luckily, on our first acclimatization day in Namche, we visited the Sagarmatha (Nepali name for Everest) Museum and a non-profit organization’s building called Sagarmatha Next, but that’s a story for my next blog post.
I will be splitting my experiences in Nepal into four different blog posts, so I’ll explain more about my Everest trek in my next post. This blog post will be specifically about my first week in Nepal and all the preparations we made for my Bratabandha ceremony, as well as what happened during the ceremony itself. So buckle up, because this is going to be a long one.
A Bratabandha or Bartaman (both equally accurate) is a Hindu coming-of-age ceremony/ritual in Nepal that represents a boy’s transition into adulthood as they go through the necessary pujas and rituals. Usually, boys have their Bratabandha when they are around 10 years old, but since we live so far from Nepal, it took a while to be able to get mine done. When I was born, I was assigned my legal name (Ashwyn) and also my own cultural/religious name (I don’t remember what it was…). My second name was based on the month I was born, the alignment of the moon, and many other factors; similarly, the date of my Bratabandha was scheduled based on when the moon would align best, as well as whether it would align favorably with the day I was born. Most of this work was done by my grandma (I love her so much, she’s such a sweet person), but in short, it was a long process to even be able to start preparing for the big day itself. If you want to learn more about what Bratabandhas are, you can read this article.
We landed in Nepal in the evening of March 24, and since we were tired, we went to sleep soon after making it home. I wasn’t hungry enough for dinner, which I would end up regretting since it’d be the only time I would be able to eat meat until after my Bratabandha ended. The following day, we woke up, and fairly early in the morning, we started with our first puja. It was fairly short, but long enough to make standing back up a difficult task since my legs were in criss-cross for an hour or so. This puja was actually a pre-puja. Something I’ve yet to explain is that in Hindu and Nepali culture, if a blood relative becomes pregnant or passes away, they are to refrain from attending social gatherings until the mourning rituals and ceremonies are completed. The pre-puja that we had was to ensure that even if a pregnancy or unexpected death does happen, we will be able to continue with my Bratabandha without fail. This puja also marked the start of my temporary vegetarian lifestyle, at least until the day of my Bratabandha, which made me very, very sad… my one wish was to eat lots of meat while I was in Nepal, but alas, I wasn’t even allowed to.
Anyways, after the puja we quickly ate lunch and headed over to the venue for the post-Bratabandha party, which was surprisingly big, and after that we went to a nearby mini-mall to grab some items for the later pujas, and we saw a doggy :D. In Nepal, stray dogs are extremely common, and around every corner, you’re guaranteed to see at least one or two of them. In a way, I feel bad because they are pretty dirty due to the massive amount of pollution in the city, but locals usually feed them leftovers like chicken or rice, so they end up eating pretty well! That’s not always the case, but it’s rare to see an unfed dog on the streets of Kathmandu.
Over the next few days, I started working on editing my first vlog video for my Instagram account, which turned out to be extremely hard because I didn’t have any prior editing experience. I had a borrowed Premiere Pro account, a few YouTube tutorials, and a dream. I ended up posting my struggles on my Instagram story, and by lucky chance, a friend of mine texted me after seeing my stories and offered to help me out! He was in the Philippines at the time, so we had similar time zones, which ended up working great because he was able to walk me through a majority of the big editing tools on Premiere Pro. That’s when I first figured out that Premiere Pro has a terrible UI for beginners. Da Vinci Resolve is usually considered more beginner-friendly since it shows you the edits you’re making more clearly on the timeline. For example, when rippling or rolling your clips on the timeline in Da Vinci, you can see the frame in the clip that you are editing, but in Premiere Pro, the timeline is completely blank, leaving you to replay the clips over and over until you find the perfect edit.
A few days later, I posted my first vlog video and it did great!.. But I haven’t posted a vlog since… I can’t excuse my laziness with any real excuses, but new vlogs will be coming soon!
For the few days I had remaining until my Bratabandha, I did a mixture of hanging out with family, having different pujas, and finishing preparations for the post-Bratabandha party. A major time consumer during the few days before the Bratabandha was getting the right suit and pant sizes for the party day. Kathmandu isn’t a terribly huge city, but it’s dense with a high population. That alone makes driving around, even when in a taxi, a long process. Traffic is almost always congested, but we didn’t have too much to do so we were never out too late.
Thanks for reading this very, very long post and look out for three more posts soon!
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