Morning Running

Yesterday, the oldest daughter Manisha, her cousin and I went "running" (it was really more light jogging and mostly a walk) at 4:30 in the morning. When she asked me the night before if I wanted to go, I was ecstatic---I was under the impression that people just didn't exercise or go for a run here. First of all, there's no room. Second of all, you can't breathe. This is really true for the city at least. Another huge concern for me is that I'm a Westerner and really I can't do anything anywhere at anytime of the day without everyone staring. That will be so nice to come home to anonymity. Add me running down the street in Kathmandu to the equation and people I really think would be beside themselves. There's also no way that I would be able to run down the street in shorts either. The list kind of goes on and on why it would definitely not be wise for me to go for a run in Nepal.

Luckily I wear long shorts to begin with, but I really have tried to limit how much I even wear those. Shoulders and cleavage are pretty taboo, but strangely enough, it is appropriate for a woman in traditional Nepali dress (with the draped flowing material scarves, etc. . . think India) to show her stomach and back.

However, going running with a native who actually brought up the idea. . . that's a whole other story. I have despised morning running and exercise of all kinds for as long as I can remember and I was thrilled to go! Nepali peoples' routine really parallels that of the sun: when the sun is up, they're up, and they really don't stay up too late either. I'm falling into the same routine. I'm totally exhausted if it's like 10 pm and I can wake up easily at 4:30, 5 or 6 without an alarm clock and I feel really good. This whole Nepal experience is going to revolutionize my life, tell you what.

The air was clean and refreshing, but even more refreshing was the lack of people and animals, and of those people who were out, many of them were exercising and running too! I'm laughing right now at how surprised I was. It was really nice to see groups of women out together and doing something other working. The women work SO hard here. I look at the mom of my host family and she's just such a good mom: she really loves her kids and helps them with their homework, she cooks for them, she works in the garden and in the fields, she works in the shop, she washes the clothes.

Nepal is a VERY male dominated society (and I actually have some pretty surprising things to write about that later) and so when one "goes out," like down the street to do errands, you're bombarded with men everywhere and it can be so nervewracking and sometimes downright scary. I remember that this was one of the very first impressions I got when I arrived at the airport in Kathmandu and was trying to stay calm (with a Coke naturally) when my bags didn't arrive with me and I had to wait around the airport by myself for about an hour because my ride forgot to pick me up. (True story, and I did eventually get my bags even though I really thought they were gone forever when I looked around that tiny backwards airport.) There were absolutely no women around---just men everywhere hanging around talking and smoking cigarettes.

Probably the highlight of the morning outing, though, was that the sky was finally clear enough of clouds for me to see a silhouette of the Himalayas on the skyline. It completely took my breath away. Because it is the monsoon season, the sky is usually some shade of purple or gray and it totally obscures any hope of seeing the amazing mountains. The mountains rise SO high into the skyline. . . I think that it's so crazy that I should be so impressed, especially since I'm no stranger to mountains living in Utah. That's how spectacular they are. (I was very lucky too right before I arrived at my project, I had the opportunity to catch a glimpse of some mountains from a little retreat some friends and I took up to the hills.) We were so lucky, because even within 20 minutes of seeing the horizon with the sunrise, it was totally gone and you couldn't see anything.

We walked for awhile and it was about 5:30 and the sun was up and so were most people, a lot of them already milling around on the streets, busy to get to work or already working. I couldn't believe that already so early all these little mom and pop type shops were open and ready to go. I went back home and went to sleep for 2 and a half more hours.