Teej!

Last week we celebrated the woman's festival "Teej". It was a full weekend party all across Nepal. During Teej the women fast for 24 hours with no water or food. They all dress in red saris, with a red tikka and red glass bangles. Red is the color married women wear and the whole idea of the festival is that the women fast to wish for the long lives of their husbands, so they can provide for them or to wish for a good husband for all the single ladies. Unfortunately the volunteers couldn't cope with the fasting aspect so we will probably all have crap husbands, who will die early and produce only baby girls (sigh).
The night before the 24 hour fasting there is the "stuffing of the face ceremony", which all volunteers happily took part in. It was like a midnight feast. The families here never buy food from the shop but on this occasion they bought fruit and nuts and made us hot oily prawn crackers. We also had an array of Nepali sweets, my favorite was these doughnut type balls soaked in syrup and ginger and were sickly sweet.

Getting dressed for Teej was the most fun, the sister spent a good half an hour putting on our Saris. Then the aama squeezed tiny glass bangles onto our wrists. About 30% of the bangles broke in the process leaving our hands bloody but also sparkly, which was nice. We're pretty sure aama dislocated Mellisa's thumb as well because it's swollen quite a significant amount since the event.

Today we went on a trek, which was amazing! When we got to the top we had buffalo chow mien and Mountain Dew  drink, which we a pretty sure has been banned from the UK because of its dangerously high caffeine content. On the way back I got seriously leached. I didn't see the culprit but it has left me with a very bloody foot, which keeps sticking to my flip flop.


My body is definitely on Nepali time at the moment. I'm up at 5 AM to lube and milk the cow. Then a bit of clothes washing or corn shedding. Before a mountain walk with the mountain walk crew. Tara brought a yoga book here and I've been appointed yogi of the group. Tomorrow we plan to walk to the mountain top cafe, perform our sun salutations to the Himalayas before tucking into a bowl  of muesli. Perhaps a tad ambitious but I think a lot of the volunteers are determined to come back fit after our unforgiving diet of samosas, pakoras and buffalo. If it's not greasy and its not spicy its not getting served here in Nepal.

Ferri Bitula

Mariam

xxx