Didi

Ladies of Nepal are your "Didi" (elder sister). That's the ubiquitous polite way of addressing a Nepali lady. You'll see them running grocery stores, tea stalls, restaurants, working in fields, carrying big loads across mountainous Nepali landscape and may be managing the hotel you're staying at.

Ongma Didi, busy maintaining business correspondence on a snowy morning in Manang. Ongma manages a hotel in Manang with her husband, Tashi.

Picking Up Nepali Language

Picking up a language is fun. It's like putting together a jigsaw puzzle, except that the pieces are words, phrases and grammatical structure of the language you're trying to learn. If written form of the language has a different script, that adds a new layer of challenge and fun.

Nepali Beer

Beer comes in big 750ml bottles in Nepal and they cost only 200NRP (less than 2 Euros). There are several options too. Nepal Ice, Everest and Gorkha are the ones I liked. Nepal Ice being the lightest one. But these are the options for average tourists. For the more adventurous ones I recommend trying things brewed at home.

The culture of Nepal is quite accepting of drinking and almost every house in a village brew their own booze. The home made beer is called 'Chhang'. Depending on the village of origin, it tastes and smells between strange to horribly repulsive. In some parts you may also find home made spirit, called 'raxi' (also spelled 'ragsi' on hotel menu). Same applies to 'raxi' regarding smell and taste.

Nepali men usually lose control when they drink, so be careful. Most start talking really loud. Some would start singing or dancing - I liked the ones of that kind. Have mixed feelings about another kind I found who start speaking English after a few a shots and believe alcohol improves ones English language skills.

SAARC

SAARC stands for South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. It was envisioned by a Bangladeshi gentleman* and was founded in 1985 with seven member countries e.g. Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Later, Afganistan joined SAARC in 2005.

I knew most of this from my education in Bangladeshi public schools. What school did not teach is the more important part, the dormant potential of unity and growth for South Asia that lies in SAARC. This realization came to me during my first visit to Nepal in August 2011.

Through out the week long trip I observed similarities and differences in our languages, culture, problems and possibilities. The Nepalis and Bangalis are same and at the same time different on many levels. This intrigued me a lot. After contemplating over things I became convinced about the potential of a greater South Asian unity some day. I shared my thoughts with my travel partner who was working at the Danish embassy of Dhaka at the moment. He provided a thought through analysis of the situation in SAARC, drawing parallels to EU 50 years ago. To conclude it, he said that Europe is not just a geographic entity; it's a concept and it's growing. That was one of the best comments I've heard about future potentials of human unity anywhere in the world. I'm sure something like that can be done about South Asia too. But it's going to take a while.


*sadly enough I cannot agree with his political ideology of "Bangladeshi Nationalism"

Asian misconceptions : Cold Europeans

Clearing misconceptions between cultures is an important prerequisite for a racism free world. Being born and brought up in the orient, I'm quite familiar with the misconceptions most Asians hold about Europeans (or Westerners in general). In this series I'll try to address these misconceptions.

One such misconception is that Europeans are cold. They lack emotions and don't "connect like we do". I've seen many South Asians and South-East Asians holding this misconception. Many also tend to think that the western way of maintaining individual boundaries are inferior to the oriental way of maintaining no boundaries, hence the use of the word "cold". I don't agree with the idea of drawing us-and-them boundaries to begin with. Do you really know who "they" are, who you are ? Aren't these distinctions very superfluous ?