chang*

… on a saturday afternoon.

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me and me ahmad are in the midst of working on a microsite for a feature that we recently completed on an up-and-coming restaurant area in kathmandu comprising of jhamsikhel, jawalakhel and pulchowk. this area is poised to dethrone thamel, the de-facto haven for fine dining.

it is great to see weeks of hard work (interviewing restaurant owners, shooting pictures, etc.) coming to fruition and i will be sure to update as soon as the microsite is ready.

for the abridged version published on nepali times, click here.

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drivers in nepal are known for their recklessness and blatant disdain for traffic rules. it would seem as though those same rules were written and destined only to be run over by the chaotic hordes on the roads. i tried to envision what being a traffic police here must be like – if a road maniac or the carcinogens don’t kill you, the frustration will.

just yesterday i witnessed a manifestation of the above while on my way to work – a bus driven off the road and hanging precariously off the side of a drop. good thing the driver was traveling uphill when that happened or the result might have been a lot worse. he was no longer around when i reached the scene but i didn’t see any trace of blood in the driver’s cab when i looked.

me and ahmad have taken to calling this particular stretch along satdobato-godavari road “the killer slope” (it took us a few tries before we conquered it on our bikes). that has now taken on a new meaning, of course.

better slow down when going downhill.

some of the passers-by trying to tow the bus back onto solid ground. i am not sure if it was wise for that man to go on the side (which is now the top) of the bus like that.

i initially thought this man was the driver. he was walking around the scene and tearing up a little. i asked him (mostly with hand gestures) if he was the driver and he said no. since no one around could really explain to me what happened, i assumed he was somehow hurt in the accident and got patched up on the spot.

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my rss feeds have been swamped with photos and stories coming out of the destruction in haiti. the pictures present a horrifying visual narrative of the earthquake’s aftermath, while some of the stories are especially outrageous  – from how the lack of preparedness magnified the impact of the disaster, to how haitians, “who have been known to spend more money on their burial crypts than on their own homes“, are not being properly honoured and buried.

all the above aggregated and presented to eyes thousands of miles away, and yet how close the realisation should strike home – that nepal, especially kathmandu valley, is another haiti just waiting to happen, as hauntingly predicted by kunda dixit on the nepali times blog. the tune is the same: a long overdue earthquake, a dense and haphazard urban layout, with no concerted plan of action when the “big one” comes.

links galore –

for those interested in following developments in haiti, the new york times is a great resource for breaking news as well as human interest stories in general. the lens blog has been interspersing photo slideshows of scenes from haiti’s past and present. the new yorker has an article on “earthquakes and journalism” the wall street journal’s photo journal blog features dominic nahr’s coverage, which i am particularly impressed by. the boston globe’s big picture, with its plus-sized pictures, drives it home all the more.

more importantly, buy a print or a magazine to support the efforts in haiti.

for more on my thoughts, click here.

i visited boudha 2 days ago, about 5km northeast of kathmandu, hoping to shoot the partial solar eclipse there. the solar eclipse, sad to say, was unspectacular but i was enthralled with the magnificence of the stupa.

boudha is home to a tibetan community numbering about 16000, most of whom fled china in the late 50′s. the area is an important centre of tibetan buddhism in nepal, with locals and foreigners alike visiting the monasteries and the stupa itself, as pictured below.

in the days leading up to losar, the tibetan new year, workers can be seen hauling tins of yellow paint up the side of the hemispherical dome. the paint will then be splayed over the dome, as pictured below, to create a pattern that represents the lotus.

monks, devotees, tourists, and everyone else in between, circling the stupa in a clockwise direction.

as devotees circle the stupa, some of them spin the prayer wheels set into the 147 niches in the outer wall.

scenes of prayer below. note the prayer beads which are used to keep track of the repetitions.

a man crossing underneath a line of prayer flags and not stepping over them – the considerate thing to do if one sees the flags lying on the ground.

butter lamps are lit by devotees to gain merit as well as to aid in meditation, as they help focus the mind. i entered one of the stone enclosures to shoot and nearly melted thanks to the heat.

one more of the stupa for the road.

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