Pokhara, Vipassana and Holi...

I arrived by bus into Pokhara main bus terminal at around 4 am...the town was fully asleep and I had absolutely no clue about its infrastructure and lay out. I didn't know that the actual interesting neighborhood was called Lake Side and that it was 7 km down the road. So I started walking...as usual. (Taxis were absurd with their prices).

After some wandering around in the dark streets and finding a small bus to take me to the right direction of Lake Side, I finally made it it there. Walked some more around scouting for a guest house that was open at such hour of the night. Bumped into a baker with a big basket of fresh pastries, bought a yummy chocolate roll. And finally ended up in a beautiful guest house called Butterfly. Little did I know that it actually was the place where Angelina stayed when she arrived in Pokhara as well. Interesting coincidence...or not. ,:-)

Ah! At last I could resat and get some sleep. That public bus ride was no walk in the the park.

The next day, one full day of laziness, walking around in the rain scouting for cheap places to eat, and lots of napping, time passed quickly, and soon I was back in bed and sleeping, dreaming about the Vipassana course I was about to take.

My first course was so magical that I expected the second one to be similar. Like I have said before, expectation is my biggest enemy. Anyhow, I must admit that when I saw that 95% of the students were all foreigners, I was quite shocked and disappointed. Big mistake. What would that have to do with my experience? Nothing.

But the most incredible thing of my arrival at the center was to bump into Javier (who had ridden all over India with his Enfield Bike), the Mexican that we befriended with Angelina back in Kerala at Amma's ashram, months before. Such a small world, but made me so happy. So catching with him, we also quickly became good friend with an Argentine named Pablo (who had been bicycling 25,000km from Europe to Asia via Africa for the past year and a half). Funny how I have the habit and tendency to befriend Latinos before any other culture wherever i go. Even though there were quite a few French in the group.

This course was to be very different, not only because of the composition and size of the student body, but also because it was VERY cold!

Anyhow, I won't go over the whole course here as it is more personal and something that words of a page cannot convey without facial and bodily expressions. Just one little funny thing though: the very first nighty after diner, when we all gathered in the meditation hall for the course instruction and a first short meditation session, as soon as i heard the first tone of the voice of Goenkaji coming from the speakers, my very first thought was: "oh gosh! Am i really putting myself through this again!?".

Though I grew a lot of negativity during the course due to various factors, the last day, when we were finally able to talk to one another, in some magical way all the negativity got instantaneously transformed into feelings of such deep and intense joy and happiness. Seeing of everyone was impacted by the course made me so happy and made me vibrate so much that it was like a mini rush of adrenaline.

The next day, the last day of the course, was to be March 12th...my 34th, so perhaps that also had to do with it...having overcome yet another intensely challenging course and symbolically, ending it the day of my birthday.

My first course in Yangon, I met Angelina in front of the gates of the center. Magical moment! This time, I made lots of friends. Very good friends. Magical again!

So we all headed back to Pokhara, and to my favorite pizzeria to celebrate my birthday. It was incredible to see how everyone was still "high" from the impact the course had had on them. We all spent the entire evening talking about our experiences during the course. It was fascinating and so filled with passion. And the most incredible part was that though the diner was a birthday celebration, not a drop of alcohol was consumed, not even from the Latinos. Crazy!

The next few days were spent building up a strong friendship with Javier and Pablo, waiting for Holi to happen.

The day before Holi, I did do a paragliding flight...a little flirting with the heavens, like my 30's celebration in Puerto Rico. Interesting experience but far from being as exhilarating as skydiving or hangliding. And definitely overpriced.

Anyhow...holi finally arrived. Javier had already taken off to bike up to Jomson to check out Thorong La on a short and quick trekk. So it was Pablo and I, and to some degree the French gang from the Vipassana course.

For a first holi it was quite a crazy and colorful experience. Pretty close to what I expected. So no disappointment there. Hahahahaha! But it did give me an idea of how grand and spectacular it must be in bigger or more cultural cities in India. Next trip I guess...

The day after holi was when I had planned to start my trekk of the Annapurna circuit and when Pablo was to take off and head west to cross over back to India. But the atmosphere over Pokhara was so funny...all these people surfacing half drunk and half showered with color dies in their hair or on their skin. Quite funny. Pablo and I didn't want to join in on the different techno/house/rave parties organized the night before so we were quite fresh. Lol

And so as planned we both departed for our next adventure...both wondering what Javier was doing and how he had managed to celebrate Holi.

Hopefully I will get to see Javier and Pablo again soon. I really wish all three of us had gone for the circuit together. Could have been such an interesting adventure.

Welcome to Nepal and to Katmandu!

Nepal had always been high up on my dream list. Being the roof of the world can only inspire and let you imagine such incredible adventures ahead.

Well, I must say that the reality hasn't let down any of my expectations!

From the moment I boarded the plane in Dhaka things already got incredible.

I had booked a window seat in order to stick my face against it and watch the landing in Katmandu. Ha! It so happened that my neighbor was this 50yr old Italian very unusual business man with whom I chatted during the entire flight. His line of work: fishing string. Can't get anymore niche than that. Such a fascinating man. He has traveled all around the world for business, and is passion ate about Asian culture and religions, and even collects books about it. He told me he owns thousands of them back home!

Anyway, Nicola and I would keep on chatting so much that we ended up sharing a cab to downtown.

Katmandu is quite a fascinating and vibrating city. Despite its air pollution, the city has something so mysterious and ancient to it. I didn't stay enough to fully grasp it,  but I shall be back there mid April.

My first day there I spent most of it walking from the downtown core all the way to the outskirt of the city and to the public bus terminal to buy my ticket to Pokhara for the next evening. (Tight schedule due to the Vipassana course I signed up for).

This walk allowed me to see the back side of the city, the part unseen by foreigners as it is mostly where locals live and shop. And the bus terminal area was so interesting. Somehow chaotic (not compared to Dhaka though), very lively, partially urbanized, and very polluted. I bought my bus ticket to Pokhara for the next day and wandering back to my guest house...looking out for a place to eat.

When I got back to the touristy yet interesting area of Thamel, I found this cute hole in the wall of a place and took a seat and ordered a simple diner. Funny enough, out of all the people and foreigners in this huge city, I met three people there, an American girl, a Mexican guy, and this girl Anais from Belgium. And in a fee minutes discovered that Anais was also to take the vipassana course I signed up for. Small world.

Anyhow, the next morning, I managed to have breakfast with Nicola and tag along to check out this big mask dance festival at one of the main Buddhist temple on the outskirts of the city. It was fantastic being with Nicola as he explained the whole ceremony to me. Finally I could get it.

At noon I am took off to check out the biggest Hindu event of the year. I can't remember the name now, but according to the papers, more than 700,000 people attended. So yes, quite a crowd, which made the event even more spectacular.

There were babas everywhere. Some dressed, some naked. All most definitely high. Such a festival of colors and cultures to watch these thousands of devout Hindus lining up of hours and hours to enter this gigantic temple and pay their respect to their gods, while the foreigners simply had to show up to the guards to be immediately let in without having to make any line nor wait a single minute. Very unfair, but hey, why not?!

Unfortunately, the place was so immense, the crowd so dense, and the police check points so numerous that it took me hours to just get to the front door and ticket counter of the temple. And I was way to worried (rightfully so) about making it back to the guest house on time to bother buying an overpriced ticket ($10!) to enter the temple, so I turned around. And boy was I right. It took me almost two hours to get out of the crowd and to the place to catch a micro van back to Thamel.

Tight! But I made it all on time and to the bus terminal. So off to Pokhara and through the night I went...

Last 4 days in Bangladesh...

Thanks to Jim Louttit. With whom I worked at Scotiabank before, I managed to connect with BRAC, probably the largest NGO in Bangladesh, and definitely one of the best ones I have seen thus far in my life.

So, my plan to end such amazing journey through (part of) Bangladesh, was to dedicate my last few days with BRAC. Little did I know how amazing they were.

BRAC ' director of the Ultra Poor program had generously invited me to spend three days with them touring some villages to see their work from closer. Ha! How amazing!!!???

So after coming back to Dhaka (from Khulna), I had a whole afternoon to kill till the next day where i was to meet with BRAC, so I dropped my bags in a hotel near their office, and spent the whole day walking through Dhaka center, to discover the tanneries as it is apparently such a huge industry in the country. Ha! They even have a Leather Engineering and Technology university!!! So quite a fascinating day of leather and A LOT of walking! Though I must say, these tanneries do have the charm of the ones in Marrakesh.

That evening went I got home, I was dead. Two days without really any sleep and a whole day of urban walking knocked me down. So in bed by 9pm. O:-)

The following three days I spent with Wazeedul, who in some ways looks like a shorter and less bulky version of Mohammad Ali and who is the manager of the Ultra Poor program and has been with BRAC for more than 10 years.

Those three days were magical. Yes I know, I use that strong word often. But in all honesty, all these moments truly are magical in so many ways, especially compared to the life I had back in the corporate superficial and materialistic world.

BRAC is so interesting as it fully integrates the whole value chain of poverty alleviation. It first targets the poorests of the poorests by giving them (selected groups per village) a 18-months training hand holding on livelihoods, skills, income generation, basic financial literacy, and even transfers over to them some assets (cows, goats, poultry,...) so that these trainees can actually start generating some income for themselves. They even receive a small stipend to compensate for the potential time consuming income loss of managing the new assets until they can actually start generating some income. Then based on their evolution over the 18 months period, BRAC graduates them and transitions them over to the micro credit program where they now take more responsibilities and have the opportunity to tremendously increase their assets for a small interest rate. But they are still coached and closely monitored by BRAC's team. And ultimately, they can move up to create some social enterprises hand in hand with BRAC. Social enterprise from which profits are generated and then used to finance 75% of the grant based other programs of BRAC. Simply brilliant how this actually huge 75% social enterprise (though more categorized as an NGO) is addressing all the issues of poverty alleviation and is almost self sufficient in doing so.

So for three days I got to meet with many of these poor women, some from the very first phase and some from the micro credit phase. If at first, when witnessing the tears of desperation yet of hope as well from the ultra poor women I got so moved and disturbed inside because of such human nature inequality and unfairness, (Ha! Yet another proof to me that if there really was a loving God he would not have created such inequalities. What would be the point? How would that be a sign of love and care?!) when I the saw how transformed and proud the women from the micro credit phase were, I felt so much better and so grateful for the work BRAC is doing.

Their model is just inspiringly brilliant! Really, check them out online. They don't scream all over the world about their work about what they have created. They just do it. Piece by piece, but they do it.

During my journey through Bangladesh, one of my concern was to check this global hype about Yunus and his Grameen Bank for the poor.
All over the world people see him as the savior of the poor. Then one who has transformed the solution model to alleviating poverty.

Well let me tell you that after doing a lot of fact checking and asking in cities and villages, inside of Bangladesh, Grameen is actually seen as a big scam. A purely profit maximizing corporation who does not care a bit about the poor. Yes, perhaps when Yunus started he was close to the poor and genuinely cared to provide a full solution. And perhaps he did to some degree and for a very short period of time. But when Grameen because the empire that it is today, the Grameen and Yunus you read about in books and the ones you hear about from the mouths of the actual poor and the Bangladeshi, are entirely different.

Grameen bank is a bank, and a bank is here to generate cash. Period.

Grameen is priding itself for providing loans without any collateral. A big lie apparently. If a villager is unable to make one weekly payment, Grameen will force him/her to sell his/her assets (house or livestock) to make the payment. Angelina and I had actually heard that from the mouth of one of the Grameen collection agent in Kanchanpur, but we had a hard time believing it. Now I am convinced,

However, it is true that Yunus and his books have spread a lot of inspiration all over the world. But it is clear that neither the concept of micro credit nor social business have been created by Yunus and Grameen. Not at all. Many organizations, grassroots for the most part, had been doing this for decades before Grameen even made its first loan. It was just not being publicized.

Anyhow, I don't want to go on and on about this as it won't solve anything. Do, however, read Yunus books, not as a successful example of what he has done, but rather as an inspiration of what you could do.

But in a nutshell, the concept of social business (which now I am a huge fan off, and much more than micro credit) consists in helping people in need make money while you also at the same time generate some revenue for yourself. And the surplus profit generated from the business then gets all or in part re-injected into the business to make it grow. Simple but so impactful.

There are no set of strict rules as long as you are respecting the law and human rights and having a positive impact on the lives of others who need help, you are on the right track.

So now, after three days of high inspiration from a successful and impactful model I can't wait to find how I want to replicate a similar integrated approach and help the poor get out of poverty and not contribute anymore in helping the rich get richer.

Hehe! Sorry for the messy post and the absence of story telling. Though the wonders I have seen in those villages with Wazeedul are with me forever, the impact they have had on my inspiration and ambitions is more what I wanted to share.

So voila!

Oh, and I could not bid farewell to Bangladesh without mentioning the amazingly insightful and also inspiring last diner I had in the country.
A friend of Angelina (Mariana from Brazil) whom I had met two weeks before with Angelina, and who works for MSF had invited me to the MSF house for diner. Hmmm...how to not say a giant YES to such invite?! So we (a French, a Philipino, an American, a Brazilian, and a Ugandan) spent the whole evening, eating delicious food and sharing stories about our many trips and about our frustrations about the world. Gosh, I wish that diner never stopped. It was so interesting and insightful. The stories of a backpacker (me) vs the ones of MSF workers. Huge contrasts. And well, all of them had spent quite a lot of time in Africa, so ha! Here we go everyone: I am definitely going to Africa this year, and so far, strongly considering Mali, Burkina, Niger, Guinee, Ethiopia, and Uganda.

My objective or deadline as Sebastian would call it is to be in Brazil before the end of the year. :-)

Ok, bye bye Bangladesh. You have definitely given me way more than I could ever have imagined. I hope that the jewel of a country that you are does not get spoiled by tourism and consumerism like so many south east Asian countries have been going trough for years now. Stay true to who you are: beautiful sceneries with people with gigantic hearts and smiles.