Kathmandu

After a rather long hiatus I am back in Bangladesh and back to blogging. I have been here for about 6 weeks now, and I will try to post some new Bangladesh pictures soon, but first...Kathmandu. I took advantage of my Eid break and spent a few days in Nepal enjoying glorious tourist-aimed coffee shops (with no Nescafe in sight) and taking in the sights, putting my camera to good use and enjoying the perfect weather. 

Prayer Wheels, Swayambhunath

I absolutely loved Kathmandu! It was just easy to be there and easy to explore - exactly what I was looking for in a quick trip from Bangladesh. I didn't venture too far from the capitol this time around, both because it was a short visit and because trekking during the monsoon season is really not recommended. (Occasional downpours that make the air cool and breezy are welcome in the city but a wet and soggy trek is no fun. Also the views are a major reason to go trekking and apparently you can’t see much of anything during this time of year.)

Durbar Square, Kathmandu

I arrived midday on Wednesday, checked into my guesthouse in Thamel (an entire section of the city filled with backpackers’ guest houses, cafes and shops selling all manner of souvenirs) and then headed out towards the Durbar Square area to see the sights. Each of the former kingdoms of the Kathmandu valley (Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur) has a Durbar (Palace) Square complex with a palace and temples that forms the sort of heart of the city. The Durbar Square in Kathamndu was really chaotic and overwhelming, and despite having numerous digital tour books that describe each temple and its location and purpose, it is very difficult to stand in the square and understand what is what. This is definitely one reason to buy the paper tour book and tear out the relevant pages to carry with you each day – this was no place to be consulting my iPad. I enjoyed the palace itself, though, which had these peaceful internal courtyards. 

Patan Museum

The next day I headed to Patan, a formerly independent kingdom that is now part of Kathmandu, with another American I had met the previous evening. The palace there has been turned into a legitimate museum (not just a glorified gift shop) with detailed descriptions about the imagery and artistic techniques used in the various temples. It was really interesting and directly applicable to an afternoon spent exploring temples. I especially liked this mole, which is apparently the god Ganesh's "vehicle" (I think this translates more to sidekick and less to mode of transportation but I am not completely sure).

Durbar Square, Patan

Monkeys at the monkey temple, Swayambhunath

Friday I went to the “monkey temple” at Swayambuth. It was a ~20 minute walk from my guesthouse and then another ~20 minute climb up this crazy steep staircase to the temple. The temple was alright but the views of the valley were phenomenal. The highlight of the trip really was Fine Grains, a café that I stumbled upon at the base of the temple on my way back to Thamel with the most incredible fresh baked whole wheat bread served for brunch with eggs, lightly seasoned  roasted tomatoes and sauteed mushrooms and salad with homemade vinaigrette. I stopped in just to check out the bread (real whole grain bread is a rare find in this part of the world) and noticed this brunch arriving at a single table in the front of the bakery. The American couple receiving this platter assured me that they were there yesterday and had returned because this was by far the best meal in all of Kathmandu. I decided to stay and try it out and I definitely agree with their assessment.

365 very steep stairs to the
Swayambhunath temple

Swayambhunath Stupa

View of the Kathmandu valley

Bodnath

On my last day in Kathmandu, I did some perusing of the shops in Thamel in the morning and then headed to Bodnath in afternoon. Bodnath is a Tibetan Buddhist temple complex that was just lovely. I was feeling a little templed-out by this point but I was so glad that I decided to go. There is this massive stupa in the middle of the square and everyone just slowly circles it, spinning the prayer wheels. You can also sit on the first level of the stupa and go to the top floors of some of the monasteries on the outside of the square for a different view and some people watching.

Bodnath Stupa

A short walk from Bodnath is the Pashupatinath Hindu temple. The temple is located on the Bagnath river, a tributary of the Ganges and thus a major cremation site for Hindus in the Kathmandu valley. There is this huge temple complex, the inner portion of which is open to Hindus only, plus cremation ghats along the river and various small shrines along both banks. It was quite crowded and chaotic but a really interesting site to take in.

View of main temple from the opposite river bank, Pashupatinath

Bagnath River, Pashupatinath

Temples and Shrines, Pashupatinath

A sadhu dressed as the god
Hanuman, Pashupatinath

At sunset each night the priests do an aarti fire ceremony, but apparently the ceremony on Saturdays is especially grand. I snagged a front row seat about 45 minutes before it started and then stayed put and watched all the preparations as huge crowds of people arrived and filled in the entire area along both banks of the river. The ceremony was beautiful. It was done by three priests standing along the top of the ghat facing the temple and started out with these slow, synchronized gestures with incense, bells and candles. As the ceremony progressed, the music got faster and everyone gathered closer and clapped and danced and it turned into a whole party. It had been drizzling on and off all day, and almost perfectly in time with the upswing in energy in the ceremony, the rain picked up and everyone was dancing in the pouring rain.

It was also a major technical challenge that I have faced unsuccessfully before- photographing the moving priests and the extremes of light and dark with all of the fire at dusk and I am really pleased with how the pictures came out, so I have included several here. I don't think they quite capture the energy of the assembled crowd, though, and next time I would relocate part way through the ceremony to a vantage point with better views of the audience.

Crowds waiting for the aarti ceremony, Pashupatinath 

Check out more photos from my Kathmandu trip here and check back soon for an update from Bangladesh.

Lunch

The other day Roshid, the cook at the office, was in a particularly good mood and I took the opportunity to take pictures of how our meals are made.

This is the kitchen at the office. Roshid is on the right and an assistant is on the left. The curved iron things are what they use to chop all of the vegetables. I know that the edge facing up is sharp, but beyond that I do not understand how they manage to use it to chop everything into even little pieces.

Yes, they prepare all of the food on the floor and, yes, they are barefoot! (I am pretty sure they are instructed to cook barefoot so that they don't get street crud on the floor where they are going to put the food). Here is Roshid displaying the fish he is going to cook (he was really enthusiastic about the photo shoot).

And here is the final product:

There was rice, daal (lentils), homemade mango chutney, laal shak (a red "leafy green vegetable"),

mishti comra (pumpkin),

mach (fish),

and shorsha (cucumber).

It was delicious!

Anthropometry

In an exciting turn of events, I was taken along to the field the other day as the photographer for an anthropometry training session. Anthropometry is the measurement of people, and doing it in a way that is accurate and standardized is a key piece of measuring growth as part of a study. This session involved our  interviewers practicing all of the different measurements on volunteer kids. I promised at the outset that I would not post pictures from the training online, because they are confidential and study property and such. Still, I thought I would write about it briefly because I really am trying to keep my blog updated with what goes on here and because it was a fun and extremely demanding day of photography. The office where the training took place was small with dim lighting and kids move constantly, especially when you are trying to measure them, so I have hundreds of  blurry pictures of children. Still, the 30-some pictures where I managed to get the focus and shutter speed right are tremendously exciting and the whole day gave me the push I needed to take off the training wheels and switch to using full manual mode.

To keep the post from being too dull, here is a picture I really like from the training session day of a kid who had nothing to do with the study.

Walks in Gaibandha

This is just a quick post to share some of the photos I have taken over the last few weeks. Things have gotten quite busy here, which has cut into my photography time and my blogging time. Still, I have taken my camera on a few walks around Gaibandha and managed to catch pictures of some interesting things. There is a new album called "Gaibandha Walks" in Picasa that has more pictures from the last few weeks.

To begin with, these are my walking buddies, the other ladies who live in the faculty house.

The pack of spectators following us is pretty typical. As we walk we tend to have a group of 10-20 kids walking with us that turns over as some kids reach what I assume is the boundary of their play area and other kids notice the bideshis and join the parade.

Here are a few pictures of the scenery.

These are baris (households) that are pretty typical of our study area and the region.

This is a brick factory, which is a really common sight in the parts of the country I have seen.

This is a kid using a tubewell, a manual water pump that pumps from below the surface water and  is responsible for the reasonably low rate of water-borne illness here.

These are my absolute favorite. This man was selling fish by the side of the road. When he realized I was taking pictures he posed like this, displaying the fish.

I am optimistic that this weekend will include time for more photography, perhaps in the main Gaibandha City market, so check back soon for new posts.

Bee

This is just a quick post to share a picture of this crazy-looking bee that I saw in the stairwell the other day. Check out the shape of it and the amazing pattern on it's body! (Thanks to my 18-135 mm lens I was able to keep a safe distance from the thing while I took the picture).

Gaibandha City

Saturday morning I took a long walk through Gaibandha City with my camera. It was nice and cool out that day because it had just rained. Short bursts of rain here leave the air unbearably humid, but prolonged rain actually leaves the air cooler and dryer. It rained all Friday night so Saturday morning when I woke up it was still wonderfully cool out.

Unfortunately the rain also created huge puddles along the sides of the main road, constricting the available travel space for the cars, buses, trucks, bicycles, rickshaw, animals and pedestrians that share the two-lane road. This made for a somewhat stressful walk, without much time for framing pictures and thinking about all the little buttons I have to work with, but I still managed to capture some of the interesting things one sees on a daily basis in Gaibandha. Here are a few and there are more in the Picasa album titled "Gaibandha City".

The local bus station. Men are continuing to board this bus 

as it drives away.

Men traveling on the roof and hanging 

out of the door of a bus.

A vehicle made from the ubiquitous 

Chinese diesel engine. A single engine 

will be used for plowing, harvesting, 

irrigation and transportation.

A group of photocopy shops near the faculty house. As it 

was early in the day, only two of the shops were open, but 

in the evening there are easily 6 or 8 copy machines set up 

in front of shops along this block.

A man transporting bushels of bananas 

by bicycle cart.

A small shop along the main road built on stilts. The color 

of this man's hair is quite common here, as older men will 

continue to color their hair with henna after it has turned 

gray or white, leaving it this wild orange color.

Two men painting a house suspended from bamboo scaffolding

Finally, I turned off the main road and walked through a more peaceful residential section of Gaibandha before taking a rickshaw home. Here are a couple of pictures from the less chaotic part of the city. To see more pictures from the day, click on the albums link in the right panel.

A man constructing a tin roof.

A man and his grandson sitting in front 

of their house.