A lot of people have been questioning me about Nepal lately. After more than six months back at home, It's easier to tell the story. Here are some journal entries from my time in Nepal and one from post-Nepal.

January 27, 2007
This is hard--the hardest place ever. I have a feeling that it will only get harder. The internet situation is awful, but I have absolutely nothing to complain about because we are better off than most.

March 12, 2007
We were snowed in at Jomsom today. I'm kind of glad because I'd like to do something of a hope to get my life back into perspective. Last night, I wondered if I was even supposed to come, but I am here for a purpose...I haven't washed my hair for four days. It's kind of funny to see that I can handle it.

March 13, 2007
The generator just clicked off. It's about 10pm, and the 3 hours of electricity we had today is no more. I'm glad for my headlamp. The mountains of Jomsom are cold tonight. I'm in my sleeping blanket with my hat, 2 pairs of pants and 6 layers of shirts, and hand warmer heaters soved in my socks. I was left behind today from the trek to Multinath. My ankle is still bruised and sore, and the wind, sleet, rain, and snow mix made the thought of riding a horse for over 4 hours painful.

March 22, 2007
There's something comforting in a dark room with only the light of your headlamp. There's something comforting in having such a big fly in your room that it is easy to smack dead with a flip flop. There's something comforting about the words: "Indeed, we felt we received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us..." 2 Cor. 1:9. This is the longest period of finding life in a place so hard to bear. And I can't even tell exactly why. I don't like that it feels so good to be asleep. At least there are 8 hours a day of peace.

April 4, 2007
Today was my best day yet in Nepal. Sunita and I went to Saathi, where she immediately said I should go to their drop-in center. Then, we went to the Ministry of Women, Children, and Social Welfare, and the guy there was more than willing to talk. After that, I went to Peace Rehab Center, finished the proposal. Then, I cam back home and watched a movie with Kat and Sky.

August 28, 2007
I'm still getting over Nepal. It's kind of weird to come back where things are mostly the same as they always have been, but I've changed so much inside. I learned like no other about how weak I am. And now I'm at Cornell again, and I wonder if I'll be accepted with my differences.

The River Styx--An account of my visit to a Nepali temple for burning the dead
The Dalits, or untouchable caste of people, were raking in the knee-deep river of black sludge created by the ashes of dead burned bodies. Cows mucked through the murky river, unstopped and unstopping.

An ambualance pulled up to the long stone platform. Two men hopped out, grabbed a stretcher with a dead person on it, covered by a white cloth. They plopped the stretcher on the ground and left as quickly as they came. The only part of the body that could be seen from under the white cloth were the feet sticking out. Meanwhile, a group of men surrounded a puppy on the stone platform. They kicked it back and forth. It shrieked with the horror of a near-death experience, the painful shrieks echoing a wave of terror through me.

Other bodies were burning on funeral pyres along the stone walkway above the river. Tourists took pictures, while children and painted and dry-tanned Hindu holy men begged. And the fires burned. The smoke rose, along with the smell of burning flesh, incense, and the sounds of Buddhist ceremony in the temple above, and the murmur of people talking.

Yet, all was silent, tense. The feeling of death never felt so apparent. Hell was made real to me that day. I walked by the Hindu temples and shrines to the top lookout point, watching, waiting, listening. The realization that this was hell: the everyday impoverishment of the poor in Nepal, the commonness of death, the countless to die without knowing Jesus, the trafficking and buying and selling of men, women, and children. Even the victims would burn there in death.

By now, the group of men killing the puppy had turned their attention to the body on the platform. They palced it on the pyre, poured liquid over it, and lit a corner of the white sheet on fire. The feet, immovable, still showed that a person once alive, was now gone. The Hindu/Buddhist priests with shaved heads and only white skirts performed death rites, shoving the burned ashes of others into the river to be sorted and sifted by the Dalits and their children, who were trying to find today's life out of death: the money left with the dead and not consumed with the fire.