Slideshows for Taulihawa, where we visited friends and joined in celebration of Tihar, and Lumbini, Kapilavastu and other Buddhist sites are at: Taulihawa http://www.flickr.com/photos/11790404@N02/sets/72157622519956599/show/ Lumbini http://www.flickr.com/photos/11790404@N02/sets/72157622519998463/show/ Kapilavastu http://www.flickr.com/photos/11790404@N02/sets/72157622520033869/show/ Kusinagara http://www.flickr.com/photos/11790404@N02/sets/72157622520043169/show/
David
Kapilavastu
Kapilavastu is a district in southwestern Nepal in which there was a kingdom ruled by the Sakya dynasty during the 8th century BCE. Kapilavastu gets its name from the sage Kapila whose hermitage was here. The Sakyas were a people who had settled in a forest of saka trees south of Himalayas and between the […]
Lumbini
Lumbini was identified in the late 1800’s as the birthplace of Buddha and now there is strong archaeological evidence to support this. There are also many nearby sites that are important to understanding the life and teaching of Gautama Buddha. Most have not yet been investigated by archaeologists. The key points of interest at Lumbini […]
Personal Encounters in Nepal
Encounters with people along the trail in Western Nepal We come across a middle aged Nepali couple in the Humla District. The woman has a large goiter on her neck. I wonder whether they were heading down to Simikot to get some medical attention. I know that goiters are due to an iodine deficiency. In […]
David’s Report on Taulihawa
It’s been 38 years since I first came to Taulihawa, assigned here as a Peace Corps volunteer to teach science and math in the village school. While there are more people and more buildings and the town has grown in all directions, it feels not that different from when I first arrived. The population has […]
Cynthia’s Report on Taulihawa
It felt like time to leave Kathmandu though it was sad to say farewell to Deepak and his wonderful family. After a 2-hour wait, we caught our flight to Bhairhawa, a very short 35-minute flight. The taxi from the airport to Lumbini dropped us in a very dusty street next to a “rustic” Garden Hotel. […]
more photos of Bhutan
I’ve uploaded more photos to our Bhutan slideshow, at http://www.flickr.com/photos/11790404@N02/sets/72157622449743440/show/ Enjoy! David
Gross National Happiness
Since the 1970s, the king of Bhutan has been advocating the concept of “Gross National Happiness” (GNH) as measure of societal well-being. He has often contrasted this idea with the widely used measure of economic development, the “Gross Domestic Product” (GDP). Computation of a country’s GNH uses a “methodology of multidimensional poverty” developed by Alkire […]
Visit to Taktsang Hermitage
[Written by David Oct 8, 2009] The Taktsang (Tiber’s Lair) hermitage is located on the face of a sheer 3,000 ft cliff above the Paro valley. The trail up to the hermitage is steep and requires a lot of knee action, so Cynthia decided wisely to sit this one out. Sangay and I set out […]
Farewell Thoughts of Bhutan
[Written by Cynthia Oct 8th, 2009] In some ways Bhutan seems like a much larger country than it actually is. In this small country there are 14 dialects and 16 different ethnic groups. It seems surprising that it developed a national identity centuries ago. It is likely that the strong spiritual practice of Buddhism is […]