Idrinkmypee.com & other Nepal stories

I got back from Nepal in November, but I have hundreds of photos I still haven't gone through yet. I'm putting these online now - just a few more from my collection. These are actually for an editor, but since I'm putting them online, I may as well tell you all a little about them. And I also wanted to let you know I'm in the process of typing up my journal entries to give a day-to-day account so you can make a bit more sense of the random jumble of photos. However paid work must come first! :) And FYI those who haven't seen the rest of the Nepal pics, my best and favorite photos are here.

I'll post a link here when I get the travelogue up. There is some funny stuff in there!! Like the fact that one of the travelers, no joke, drinks his pee every day. For "health" reasons. I kid you not! And he was not ashamed of it, and said I could blog about it. We had this dialogue when he told the group, and he was like, "It's healthy for you. It's well known." And I was like, "Where do you go to find that info"? One of the other guys, Chuckles - ever the witty one - immediately pipes up "IDrinkMyPee.com" Needless to say I laughed so hard at that and still do every time I think of it!! And no, there is not really an Idrinkmypee.com because when I got home, I checked!! (To find information, according to my pee devotee friend, google "urine therapy" not "drink pee"). I am laughing!! Hey if Bear Grylls does it... A view from one of our campsites. This really exemplifies a couple of things. First, in Nepal there is a lot of deforestation. All of this used to be forest, even within the time Brian Williams, The Red Panda Project Director, has worked there over the past 10 years. Second, it shows the clouds that are constantly rolling in and out and over the top of you. Literally they would enshroud you as you walked along the trail, and then pass on and leave the scenery open again. It would get cold when they covered the ground, and sometimes rainy or snowy, and it got hot - or warm - when they went back away.

This is a photo of a home in the town of Ilam. It could be southern California! The homes mostly used these colors of earthy blue and red, and everyone grows marogolds because they are used in their religious ceremonies. Ilam is one of the better off towns in Nepal. Not everywhere is as well maintained and it had its own flair and style.

A neat shot of flowers growing near a wall at the home of the Conlons, who own the company Above the Clouds. They have homes in both Nepal and the U.S..

Another home in Ilam. Everyone has lots of flowers around their home, which I think is pretty cool.
This is a rustic fence on a misty day, as we hiked and climbed around looking for red panda in the forest - which was down the hill. You can't see the forest from this shot because the hlils are pretty steep and we had already climbed way back up by this point - plus it's kind of obscured in the photo by fog. We didn't find any red panda that day. Not yet.

This house on the hill so reminds me of the description of the "tipsy house" in the book, Memoirs of a Geisha! That house was overlooking the ocean though.

Dhurbar Square in the Patan region of Kathmandu. This place had amazing architecture!

A close-up of an intricate door in Dhurbar Square. Dhurbar means The King's square, and there are several Dhurbar squares in Kathmandu. This one is in the Patan region.
A carving of the Hindu god Ganesh at a restaurant in Patan where we had some tea.
Nepali soldiers patrolling, I guess, in Dhurbar Square in Patan. I only saw soldiers in Kathmandu, not outside of the city anywhere.

A photo of a bunch of kids in a town where they were having a market day. I can't remember the town but they must not have seen many foreigners because of all the kids and people in various towns we went through, these kids and people stared at us like none other - like they'd never seen outsiders! I mean they STARED! But when I'd interact with the kids, and say hello, they were so interested and I'd take their photo and show it to them and they loved it. They were really cute.

Langur monkeys grooming at the Monkey Temple, aka Swayambunath, in Kathmandu.

A shot of the long staircase going up to the top of the monkey temple, with Buddhas lining either side, and Tibetan prayer flags visible. This is just a fraction of the staircase. There are probably 1,000 stairs, or more!!

The Himalayas. This shot was taken near the India border.

Another view of the Himalayas. I initially thought this was Mount Everest (Sagarmatha in Nepali) but it's Mount Kanchenjunga, the world's 3rd highest mountain - the broad mountain in the center. To the left is Mount Jannu (aka Khumbukarna). I'm still verifying this, but this is according to my sources!

Mount Jannu (aka Khumbukarna) close up.

Tim Gorski, Producer of It's Your World with the Cultural Film Fund looking off, with Mount Everest in the far distance and Tibetan prayer flags nearby.

A pony in the snow. This was taken just around the hill from Santapur, on the Nepal-India border.