Nepal

When Kristen and Kaitlin reached high school and started skiing with their friends, they stopped skiing with me, but they still needed a ride. Fortunately, I had no problem spending time in Himalayan Restaurant in Big Bear doing homework, reading, and eating great food from Nepal. I can’t remember exactly what I ate, so for this blog I returned to Tibet Nepal House Restaurant in Pasadena. The first time I was there, I had Tibetan food. This time I went with Heidi and Linda, and we shared the sampling platter with potato pickle, Himalayan tandoor chicken, vegetable momo, and cheese pakoda as well as each having the Nepali set menu (thali) with vegetables, lentil soup, naan, and rice. The vegetables we sampled were baigoon aloo (eggplant and potato with Nepali spices - this was mildly sweet and my favorite), mushroom peas, baby eggplant, and spinach. Heidi told stories about visiting Nepal as a child and playing badminton there.

There are more Nepali restaurants around California – I found several in Berkeley when double checking that the one Kristen and I tried on University Avenue was Himalayan Flavors. I also enjoyed Himalaya on a work trip to Ventura where I ate the aloo tama bodi (soup with potatoes, bamboo shoots and black eyed peas) with Nepali noodles. Even if I never make it to Nepal, I want to make it to Monsoon Himalayan Cuisine in Half Moon Bay. Looking for recipes by a Nepali person, I found this page: http://www.weallnepali.com/recipe

Moving from eating to reading, the Los Angeles County Library has Arresting God in Kathmandu by Samrat Upadhyay both in hard copy and online through Hoopla. I appreciated the short stories about relationships in Nepal’s capital city. I enjoyed even more:

· A survey of Nepali literature with links to short stories and poetry: https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/article/nepals-many-voices

· An interview with Nepali writer Manjushree Thapa about Kathmandu: https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/dispatches/article/nathalie-nepal-1

Besides these Nepal based films (https://theculturetrip.com/asia/nepal/articles/10-nepal-based-films-you-need-to-watch/), Netflix has Pahuna and it is such a sweet movie!

Other online ways to travel to Nepal while staying at home include:

· National Geographic: Secrets of Shangri La: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6idE9w3fHY

· The River Monsters episode filmed on the border between Nepal and India: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFj4BqQjjU4

· Asia's Monarchies: “Nepal: Fall of the House of Shah” on Amazon Prime.

· Quite a few videos on Kanopy including Nepal: The Roads of Progress, Tashi's Turbine, and Even When I Fall.

· “Secrets of the Stupa” from the Khan Academy: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-asia/himalayas/nepal/v/secrets-of-the-stupa

· Elephant Polo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s96JrPFj6mA

Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, the first people to summit Mount Everest, came from the Tibetan side. Nepal opened its borders shortly after, and now one can choose which side to climb from. Jon Krakauer’s book Into Thin Air is one of the more famous accounts. The movie is on Amazon Prime and I enjoyed Krakauer’s talk and slide show about the experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5LtdIwZF50

I won’t be climbing Mt. Everest, but I would do everything else on this list of things to do in Nepal: https://www.bookmundi.com/t/top-12-best-things-to-do-in-nepal. I would love to go! I look forward to that time when we can travel broadly again. In the meantime, I’m hoping we all survive, thrive, recognize our mutual humanity, learn to deal with our conflicts, and allow peace, health, and safety to flourish in the Nepal and throughout the world.

Photo Credit: dewashish thapa https://unsplash.com/photos/x8MoEvf5VNY