NEPAL: THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE

Four main things come to mind when I think about Nepal: 1) Mt. Everest, 2) Sherpa guides, 3) they have an odd-shaped flag, and 4) the Bob Seger song “Katmandu,” named after the city Kathmandu. However, I’m fairly certain there’s more to the country than a rock song named after its capital and flag shaped like no other.  

The name Nepal is thought to have derived from a number of origins, including being named after a Hindu sage known as “Ne.” Others believe it’s related to the Newari people or of other Tibetan origins. 

Nepal is a landlocked country that lies in between the Tibetan region of China to the north and India to the south. Small areas of India separate Nepal from Bhutan and Bangladesh. The country is divided into three main areas: terai (plains region), hills (between the terai and the mountains), and the mountain region (part of the Himalayan Mountains). Eight of the worlds “eight-thousanders [8000m+]” are located in Nepal, including Mt. Everest. Nepal’s climate is generally linked to its altitude. It also experiences five seasons: the four traditional seasons along with a monsoon season. 

Sir Edmund Hillary (of New Zealand) and Nepalese Sherpa Tenzing Norgay

People have trekked through the Himalayas nearly 11,000 years ago, and various Indian and Tibetan people more than likely started living in the Nepali region about 2500 years ago. It was once under the Tibetan Empire, but later was ruled by the Chalukya Dynasty of South India who introduced Hinduism to the Buddhism that was already there. During the mid-18^th century, a Gorkha king by the name of Prithvi Narayan Shah worked to basically set up Nepal as we know it. There was quite a bit of negotiations and conflicts over borders, especially concerning a few of the northern Indian states that border Nepal. The British East India Company certainly wasn’t happy about giving up those states, and a war ensued. The British completely underestimated the Nepali fighters. Starting in the mid-1800s and lasting well into the beginning of the 20^th century, different factions in Nepal fought against each other over who should rule and how. Slavery was abolished in 1924, which led to certain social changes. In response to the tyrannical Rana government, pro-democracy groups popped up during the 1940s. Finally King Mahendra had had enough of it in 1959 and enacted a “partyless” system, which lasted until the people revolted in 1989 and forced a multiparty system in. In 1996, the Communist Party of Nepal decided to stir up the pot by trying to get rid of the parliamentary system in lieu of a people’s republic. This led to a civil war where 12,000 were killed. Nepal finally moved to becoming a federal republic and secular state in 2006, losing its notoriety as a Hindu Kingdom while abolishing the monarchy. In October 2015, Nepal chose Bidhya Devi Bhandari as its first female president.  

The capital city is Kathmandu, located in the Kathmandu Valley. The city itself has about 1.4 million people, but there’s about 5 million in the metro area. The city is a multiethnic community with a mix of Hindu and Buddhist populations. Kathmandu, as well as Nepal in general, depends on the tourism industry. It has a thriving arts scene, casinos, hotels, museums, restaurants, and shopping areas that attract millions of people each year. In April 2015, an earthquake that measured 7.8 on the Richter scale devastated the city of Kathmandu. 

Nepal’s economy is still highly dependant upon agriculture. In fact, it employs nearly three-quarters of the people in some aspect. They still have to contend with a large number of unemployed and underemployed, though. The service sector seems to be increasing. Through many reasons and causes, Nepal struggles with poverty and receives aid from several countries. Its currency is tied with the Indian rupee.

Traditionally, Nepal has been a Hindu country with a smaller number of Buddhist followers (it’s said that Buddha was born in Nepal). The country is the site of the Lord Shiva temple, an important pilgrimage destination for Hindus all over the world. There are actually smaller numbers of Muslims, Christians, indigenous beliefs, and other religions followed there as well. However, the government declared the country a secular state in 2006.

Although Nepali is the main language spoken in Nepal, there are a number of other languages spoken here, along with four different sign languages! Nepali is often used as a lingua franca among different ethnic groups and is commonly written in the Devanagari script (the same one used for Hindi and Sanskrit). Tibetan is spoken in the regions near Tibet, and many people in government and commerce use Maithili. In larger cities like Kathmandu, many people understand English as well. 

Nepal is certainly remote and rugged and has its own set of cool features (no pun intended). The Nepali word for Mt. Everest is Sagarmatha, meaning “forehead of the sky.” (Lovely name. I think I know a guy who could go by that name, too.) The Nepalis are actually years ahead of us: according to the Nepali calendar, it’s 2074. Roughly 20% of 13-15 year olds smoke tobacco, which is probably why (among other reasons) their life expectancy is only 59 years old. However, Nepal is the #1 producer of mustard seeds and #3 producer of ginger, which probably means I’m going to love their food.

Up next: art and literature

INDONESIA: THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE

When I was in elementary school, one of my favorite books was The Twenty-One Balloons by William Pène du Bois, published in 1947.  It centered around the eruption of Krakatau, and I was fascinated by the true story of the 1883 Eruption of this island. Years ago while I was a music major at Indiana State University, I was required to take a World Music course.  One of the topics we studied was the gamalan music of Indonesia. It was some of the most relaxing, beautiful music I’ve ever heard. It seems like there were little things popping up in my life that kept me interested in this island country. 

 

The name Indonesia came from the Greek word Indós, referring to the Indus River, and the word nésos, the word for islands. It’s also referred to as the “Indian archipelago.” The British were the first to call this island chain Indonesia, but when the Dutch took over this area, it was often referred to as part of the East Indies or Dutch East Indies. 

The country of Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country, is located in the south Pacific and is spread across thousands of islands. Actually, there are a little over 17,500 islands, of which only about 6000 of them are inhabited. This country straddles the Equator, giving it a tropical climate year round. There are several main islands and island chains in Indonesia including many that are well known: Sumatra, Java, Bali, Papua, Maluku Islands, Sulawesi, and Kalimantan (which is actually on the island of Borneo). It shares a border with Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, and East Timor (or Timor Leste), but it is also close to the islands of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (India), Christmas Island (Australia), the Cocos (Keeling) Islands (Australia), the Philippines, and Australia as well. Indonesia has one of the most diverse flora and fauna in the entire world. The islands are essentially the tops of underwater mountains and volcanoes; likewise, this area is highly susceptible to earthquakes and tsunamis as well. 

Bali

 

The Indonesian islands have shown evidence that it has been inhabited for nearly 45,000 years. Soon people learned how to cultivate rice here, and soon religions like Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam began to spread throughout the island chain. Muslim traders had been doing business with the native Indonesians for centuries before the Europeans got wind of the spices produced in the islands. The Portuguese were the first Europeans to regularly visit the islands, followed by the Dutch and the British. The Dutch founded the Dutch East India Company, which controlled the spice trade industry in what they called the Dutch East Indies. Even after the Dutch East India Company filed bankruptcy and dissolved, the Dutch government stayed in Indonesia. During WWII, the Japanese occupied the island nation.  After the war was over and the Japanese retreated from the island, the Dutch tried to take it back, but they were met with contempt and conflict from the Indonesian people. Indonesia was granted its independence in December of 1949. Sukarno was the first president of the country (apparently it is a common tradition in Javanese to only have one name). He slowly turned the country from a democratic society to one with an authoritarian government. A 1965 coup put General Suharto in control of the country; however, it was still more of the same corruption that they had earlier. Financial and political struggles eventually led to Suharto stepping down and East Timor breaking off to become its own country.  However, the country is on a general slow upswing financially and politically (although there are disruptions here and there). 

Jakarta is the capital of Indonesia. Situated on the island of Java, Jakarta is the largest city in the country – and in fact, the Jakarta urban area is the second largest urban area in the world. It’s considered a global city and modern in every sense (even though it doesn’t have a high-speed rail system yet due to budget contraints). The city is home to numerous museums, culinary traditions (both haute-cuisine and traditional), media center, government center, banking and financial center, luxury shopping and local markets, music and theatre, and sports arenas.  

Traditionally, agriculture has been one of the main economic drivers. Indonesia went through periods of economic instability and was hit hard during the financial crisis in Asia during the late 1990s as well as the numerous times of political instability. Today, there are many manufacturing companies that bring a lot of revenue to the country in the form of exports, and the country receives quite a bit of foreign investments as well, especially in export manufacturing companies. And of course, its oil reserves used to be fairly significant, and they were once the only OPEC member in Southeast Asia. (They left the organization in 2008). 

Indonesia is a multi-ethnic country with many religions. Although their constitution does state religious freedom, the country officially only recognizes six religions (so, I suppose you’re free to practice any religion you want as long as it’s one of these six): Hinduism, Buddhism, Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, Islam, and Confucianism. Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world. The government requires its people to prescribe to one of these six religions, regardless of what you actually believe, and it’s also against the law to marry someone with another religion, unless one person converts to the other’s religion.

Indonesia has more than 700 languages spoken among its islands. The official language is Indonesian, sometimes called Bahasa Indonesia, which is closely related to Malay (or Bahasa Melayu). Indonesian is the language in which education is taught in and official documents are written in, and essentially everyone uses Indonesian as a lingua franca. However, most people speak one other language; Javanese is the most spoken, followed by Sundanese and Madurese. Although Dutch was spoken here at one time, there are very few people who can speak Dutch today. There are actually a few codes of the law that are written in Dutch, so some people studying law find it advantageous to learn Dutch. 

Indonesia is quite a culinary country.  The big names in world cuisine TV shows almost always make a stop in Indonesia. One odd thing is that Indonesia exports nearly 3000 lbs of frog legs to France every year. (When I was a kid, I had no idea frog legs had bones in them. Frogs are squishy, why would they have bones? My mind wasn’t nearly as developed at age 12 as it is now apparently.) Indonesia is also known for the kopi luwak, the world’s most expensive coffee.  See, someone – how they figured this out is beyond me – thought to feed coffee beans to this cat-like animal called an Asian palm civit. When it poops out the coffee beans, it’s collected, washed, then made into coffee. It sounds absolutely, diabolically disgusting to me, but I’ve read that this unorthodox process takes out a lot of the bitterness of the coffee beans. I guess I’ll just have to take their word on it. I’ll just take my regular Sumatran blend. Although Indonesians have borrowed from many cultures in their cuisines, their customs, and their languages, there is one word we’ve borrowed from Indonesian into English: the phrase “run amok.” Originally from the word mengamuk, it means “to make a furious and desperate charge.” Today, it means closer to “behave uncontrollably and disruptively.”  But there will be no running amok once I serve the Indonesian dishes I picked out. I super can’t wait for this.

Up next: art and literature

INDIA: THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE

In my 10-year-old Midwestern mind, India was the representation of the word “exotic.” Its dusty land, spicy food, and trippy music surrounded in a whirl of color and animals I only saw in the zoo were almost the opposite of rural Indiana. I remember pouring through old issues of National Geographic at my grandmother’s house, mesmerized at how other people live. (I was also confused at the word Indian: did it refer to Native Americans, or did it refer to people from India? How do you make that distinction?) As a music major in college, I would have to study about Indian classical music and realized what I called “trippy” because of its influences on psychedelic rock of the 1960s and 1970s, was actually a system of slightly complicated rules and different tuning methods. 

 

India was named after the word Indus, the Persian word for the area based on the Sanskrit word for the Indus River.  Indians themselves refer to their country as Bharat.  The name Hindustan often refers to northern India and Pakistan.

  

India is often mentioned as its own subcontinent in Asia. It’s a large peninsula surrounded by the Arabian Sea on the western side, the Laccadive Sea off the southern coast, and the Bay of Bengal on the eastern side. On the northern side of the country, India shares borders with Pakistan, China (Tibet), Nepal, Bhutan, and Bangladesh as well as the Himalayan Mountains. This mountain range pretty much bars the cooler winds from northern Asia from reaching the Indian subcontinent, leaving this area warmer than other areas of the same latitude. The state of Jammu and Kashmir (which always reminds me of the Led Zeppelin song) has been disputed for many years among Pakistan, China, and India.  The island nation of Sri Lanka lies off the southeast tip of India and the Maldives, also an island nation, lie farther off the southwest corner. India also claims two archipelagos: the Lakshadweep island chain off the southwest coast, and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands set pretty far off in the Andaman Sea. 

The Indian subcontinent is one of the oldest inhabited areas in the world, spanning back around 30,000 years. The Indus Valley Civilization is one of the oldest in the world, and just after this time, the implementation of the rigid and unfair caste system was put in place. At the same time, the most important Hindu work, the Vedas, were also composed. Buddhism was established during the 6^th century BCE as was Jainism. Indian civilization was booming with advancements in literature, medicine, science, mathematics, and astronomy. During the Medieval times, India underwent a massive urbanization: towns and cities were being developed, reorganized, and strengthened. India engaged in several skirmishes and fought off invasions from the Mongols and other regions in what is now India. The British East India Company set up its trading posts during the 18^th century, and eventually just took over the entire land. The British did introduce a variety of technological advances to the Indian people such as the railroad system (which are often depicted as being overcrowded -- definitely no "capacity" signs there) and the telegraph, but it wasn’t enough to quell the other problems with their occupation, and the Indians revolted. Eventually, the British East India Company was dissolved; however, the British remained in the picture until India completely gained independence in 1947, resulting in two states: India and Pakistan. These two countries would have several periods of unrest between themselves, and they are still in dispute, along with China, over territories in northern India. 

The India Gate, New Delhi

The capital of the country is New Delhi. As the center of India’s government, this bustling city has roughly 21.7 million people in the metro area. The capital lies in the midst of several fault lines, making it vulnerable to earthquakes, although most of them are fairly moderate. New Delhi suffers very hot summers with mild winters and is also susceptible to dust storms during the dry season. However, it typically ranks as one of the worst cities for air pollution, so if you’re asthmatic, you might want to head to the coast perhaps. New Delhi is every bit of a modern city, yet it has preserved many pieces of its ancient history throughout the city. Museums, restaurants (ranging from local, traditional food to world-class cuisine), shopping districts and markets, sports arenas, theatres, clubs, and parks dot the city, showing off the best of its culture. 

 

India has one of the world’s fastest growing economies. They have a large agricultural sector where major products include rice, cotton, wheat, potatoes, teas, sugarcane, jute, and oilseed. They also have highly-skilled industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, textiles, telecommunications, software, food processing, and other products and skilled industries. They also have the world’s second-fastest growing automobile industry.  And of course, India is known for its IT industry that includes creating popular websites and tech products as well as supplying call centers and help desks (the inspiration of the short-run sit-com Outsourced, and much chagrin to many people). India’s film industry produces some of the world’s most-watched cinematic films. Even Netflix has an entire section just for Indian films (available in streaming and in DVD format – we just watched the movie Dhoom: 3 tonight, and it was great!). However, there is still a very serious problem with income inequality in this country, especially along gender lines. India has more than a million people who are listed as millionaires, yet most people live off of less than $2/day. 

 

Four religions began in Indian lands: Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism.  Hinduism is the third largest religion, and Buddhism is the fourth largest one in the world. Because of India’s multicultural history, there are also followers of several other religions in India as well: Muslims, Christians, Zoroastrians, Jews, Bahá’ís, atheists, and agnostics. 

Yes, yoga is a physical and mental practice with a basis in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism.

 

Sanskrit, one of the oldest languages in the world, stems from this area and is part of the basis of the Indo-European family of languages. Hindi, one of two official languages, is the most widely spoken language in India and is mutually intelligible with Urdu (which is spoken in Pakistan and northern India); English is the other official language. Because this country is very much a poly-linguistic society, there are several languages that are listed as regionally recognized languages: Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu. Of these 22 major languages spoken in India, they are also written in 13 different scripts. It’s also estimated that there are between 720-2000 dialects spoken in this country alone.

India is the second-most populated country in the world with about 1.2 billion people, yet the land is only about 1/3 the size of the United States, making it also the largest democracy. Many Indians never eat with their left hand because the left hand is used for bathroom purposes. Cows are sacred in the Hindu religion because of the symbolism between cows and good fortune. They are therefore allowed to wander freely in many areas. Although India has the largest postal network in the world with over 150,000 post offices, it’s pretty common for a letter to take nearly two weeks to go 30 miles (I’ll stop complaining about the US postal system now). One of the world’s most iconic buildings, the Taj Mahal (not to be confused with the blues musician), is located in Agra. Chai tea originated in India and is one of the most popular beverages in India – and one of my favorites as well. I’ve already found my recipes and absolutely can’t wait to make these. In the meantime, I think I’ll go drink some chai and look through more Indian films.

Up next: art and literature