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Across Nepal, Thousands Demonstrate Against Maoist Demand for Provinces Based on Ethnicity
Blog: Hole In The Donut - 27 May 2012
Today is the day Nepal’s new constitution is finally supposed to be promulgated. It has been four long years in the making and over the past several weeks I have ping-ponged from despair that it would be impossible to meet the deadline once again this year, to riding a wave of optimism as I joined [...]
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The Re-making of a Country Is Never Smooth
Blog: Hole In The Donut - 22 May 2012
Fourteen people, including an 8-month old baby, were hospitalized yesterday as a result of injuries sustained during clashes between ethnic groups in Pokhara, Nepal, just a few miles from where I am staying. Yesterday was the second day of a three day bandh (general strike), called by the Nepal Federation of Indigenous Nationalities (NEFIN) to [...]
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11 months of travel, 4 minutes of video
Blog: Around The World On The Toilet - 23 March 2012
We’ve been back home for a while now, and are back into an everyday routine. Having both found employment, there are no immediate plans for another multi-month trip, but we do find ourselves constantly looking back on the last year with no regrets and memories which will surely last our lifetime. Its been an amazing [...]
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A New Way of Thinking About Trash
Blog: Hole In The Donut - 11 April 2011
Some years ago an elfin man approached me as I walked along a boulevard in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. He could see I was puzzled and wanted to help. What did I need? Holding out my handfull of trash, I pantomimed dumping it, then shrugged my shoulders and swept my hand in a semicircle [...]
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Street Kids in Nepal Drum Their Way to Self Esteem
Blog: Hole In The Donut - 26 February 2011
TweetThe dangerously handsome man sitting at an adjacent table in the Pokhara coffee shop nodded as I wrapped up my interview with two young girls who’s had an abhorrent experience with a local volunteer operator. A jumble of dreadlocks peeked from beneath Hugo Caminero’s rainbow knitted skullcap as he leaned across the aisle and admitted [...]
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Paid Volunteering and Voluntouring – Scams or Legitimate Social Programs?
Blog: Hole In The Donut - 21 February 2011
TweetMy life changed for the better when I deserted corporate America to pursue my true passions of travel, writing and photography but over the past few years I’ve often felt there was still a piece of the puzzle missing. There was something more I was meant to do; I just wasn’t sure what it was. [...]
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Handbook for Travelers to Pokhara, Nepal
Blog: Hole In The Donut - 17 February 2011
TweetThis is not the normal type of article I write. It’s not a story about my adventures. But it is designed to help anyone who wants to visit the place on this planet that has most captured my heart, Pokhara, Nepal. Having spent three months in Nepal in late 2010, much of the time in [...]
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The Making of a Tibetan Carpet
Blog: Hole In The Donut - 8 February 2011
TweetAt the Tashiling Tibetan Refugee Settlement in Pokhara, Nepal, women card and spin wool, which is then dyed in rainbow colors and painstakingly woven into intricate carpet designs on huge wooden looms. The carpet being woven in the video is approximately eight feet long and will take about two months to complete, after which it [...]
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The Art of Tseten Tsering
Blog: Hole In The Donut - 4 February 2011
TweetAs I waited to fill my plate during the International Human Rights Day celebration at Tashiling Tibetan refugee settlement in Pokhara, kids darted back and forth through the dinner line, playing tag. When one of them unexpectedly scooted in front of me, I reflexively took a step back and bumped into Tseten Tsering. He laughed, [...]
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Two Tibetan Refugees – A Freedom Fighter and a Simple Farm Girl – Share Their Stories of Survival
Blog: Hole In The Donut - 1 February 2011
TweetJampa Chodok is 83 years old but he remembers his days as freedom fighter in Tibet as if they happened last week. He joined our small tour group just as we were finishing lunch at the Jampaling Tibetan refugee settlement, located about 12 miles east of Pokhara, Nepal. He sat in the sun, as old [...]
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Is the Sleeping Dragon Roaring to Life?
Blog: Hole In The Donut - 28 January 2011
TweetOn my first full day in Pokhara, Nepal, a petite woman strolled down the sidewalk and stopped in front of my table at the open-air restaurant where I was enjoying lunch. Her muted, horizontal striped apron was cinched around an ankle-length gray dress and long, glistening black braids wound around her head. A wide smile [...]
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How to Buy a Tibetan Thangka in Nepal
Blog: GoBackpacking - 19 January 2011
Thangkas are traditional Tibetan cloth paintings, framed with embroidered silk.---------Join Travel Blog Success today and learn to build a better travel blog.Membership includes 12 lessons, community forum, audio interviews, and a blog.
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Healed By A Tibetan Shaman
Blog: Hole In The Donut - 19 January 2011
TweetChime led me down a narrow grass pathway at Tarshi Palkhiel, the Tibetan refugee settlement on the outskirts of Pokhara, Nepal where he’d grown up. Midway down the lane he stopped before a diminutive man with a long gray ponytail and gleaming onyx eyes. The elder Tibetan grasped my translator’s hands between his own as [...]
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Officially Adopted by My Yoga Guru and his Nepali Family
Blog: Hole In The Donut - 5 January 2011
TweetVery few things in life frighten me, but by the time I arrived in Pokhara, I was scared. My left hip and knee had never fully healed from an injury sustained in Mexico earlier in the year and as a result even an easy trek to Nagarkot and day hikes around the mountain village of [...]
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Sarangi, the Heart of Traditional Nepali Folk Music
Blog: Hole In The Donut - 28 December 2010
TweetStanding on street corners amidst clamorous horns and revving engines in Kathmandu and Pokhara, young musicians play sarangis, a traditional handmade wooden Nepali folk instrument that resembles a small fiddle. Although the sarangi is today used by many, it was traditionally played only by people of Gandarva, or Gaine caste, as they are commonly known. [...]
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Connecting with my Buddha Nature at a Lama Puja in Pokhara, Nepal
Blog: Hole In The Donut - 24 December 2010
TweetCrimson and saffron robed Tibetan monks shuffled into Shree Gaden Dhargay Ling Monastery and sat cross-legged on brocade cushions stretched in a double row down the center of the hall. Adolescent monks-in-training slid giant drums down the polished parquet floor to their older counterparts, while others took up ancient-looking metal horns that telescoped out to [...]
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Three Views of Pokhara, Nepal Capture My Heart
Blog: Hole In The Donut - 18 December 2010
By the time I came down from the mountaintop in Puma, the energy of my journey around Asia had shifted. With more clarity of mind than I’d had in a long time, I realized that in large part, I had been responsible for the frustrations of my recent travel in China. Having been in the [...]
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Puma’s Mother Group Bids Me Farewell
Blog: Hole In The Donut - 30 November 2010
Puma’s Mother Group is normally on hand to greet the few visitors who make it to this remote mountaintop but on the day I arrived they were performing traditional songs and dances of the Gurung caste in southern Nepal. Instead, on the morning of my departure the mothers trickled into Aama’s compound and climbed over [...]
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Travel Back in Time to the Tiny Mountain Village of Puma, Nepal
Blog: Hole In The Donut - 16 November 2010
It was the 6th of Karthik in the year 2067 by the Nepali calendar but despite the future-sounding date, I had been thrust back in time. I sat cross-legged on a carpet rolled out over the chilled concrete porch of Aama Gurung’s mountain home, sipping tea sweetened with milk from the buffalo, gazing out over [...]
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Photo of the Week – Annapurna Circuit Nepal
Blog: Ottsworld - 22 October 2010
October is the busy season for trekking in Nepal. The weather is perfect, the locals are out harvesting, and there are no monsoon rains! One year ago I was hiking the Annapurna Circuit with my father; having one of my most memorable travel experiences. We met a myriad of local children and adults along the [...]
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Where to find Shangri La? – Comparing 3 Himalayan Kingdoms
Blog: Around The World On The Toilet - 4 September 2010
It might be one of the most overused cliches in the travel universe but the idea of a kingdom deep in the Himalaya’s inspired by James Hilton’s classic Lost Horizon has thousands of backpackers and jet setters alike grabbing their warm coats and hiking boots in search of this mystical kingdom. The sheer remoteness of [...]
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Toy Story
Blog: Ottsworld - 3 August 2010
Last week I wrote about how brave kids can be when it comes to travel; somehow when we grow up we grow scared. This got me thinking about some of my travels and the kids I meet along my journeys. My recent hiking trip to Nepal came to mind. As my father and I hiked [...]
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Tiger Balm Tales E-book – Annapurna Circuit with my Father
Blog: Ottsworld - 24 June 2010
Father’s Day was last Sunday; what better time to reflect upon my recent travels with my father. Last October I traveled to Nepal to hike the Annapurna Circuit with my 73 year old father. We hiked for 21 days with many ups and downs…quite literally. I blogged about each step of that journey here on my [...]
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A Little Reflection…Monday Travel Memories: Peaceful Vipassana Days
Blog: A Little Adrift - A RTW Travelogue - 21 June 2010
Monday Travel Memories: Peaceful Vipassana Days Begnas Lake outside of Pokhara, Nepal will forever in my memory be associated with my 10 Day Vipassana meditation class. This peaceful lake was my one source of company over the 10 days of complete silence and I stared at this lake for a full 9 days as the moody and shifty weather passed over the reflective surface of the lake – the clouds only occasionally allowing light to peak through- before I discovered that the Himalayan mountains are directly behind this cloud ...
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Photo of the Week – Barbot, Nepal
Blog: Ottsworld - 23 April 2010
Who’s Back There? – Barbot, Nepal Going to villages that are off the tourist trail in Nepal are the most rewarding to me. So when the principle of the school I was volunteer teaching at invited me on a 4 hour hike (actually it took 7 hrs) to his village of Barbot for the weekend – [...]
