Leisurely Activities

The Magic of Harry Potter

  • On 21 July, I knew some of the book shops had specially arranged to bring the last part of Harry Potter series to Kathmandu – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
  • On 22, I read news about it that Kathmandu natives –especially youth and children – were thronging to get a copy. Until the afternoon of 23, I resisted the lure but then gave away and tried to get a copy in the evening but I couldn’t.
  • On 24, I got a copy and immediately start reading and what a great fun it was.

britain-harry-potterI do not call myself a big fan of Harry Potter though I have read all seven parts and seen all the films and frequently visit a few sites about it. People have looked at me with wide eyes when I told them that I love to read Harry Potter and most of them often asked ‘aren’t they meant for the children?’

‘Ya, but I too love reading them,’ my answer. After finishing the seventh and sadly the final part, I sat satisfied the boy wizard at the end won the battle and it was a happy satisfying conclusion. Then I started recalling what had happened in the story and asked myself, ‘how on the hell can I believe all that thrash?’

I just looked at the collection of seven Harry Potter books – each new version bigger than earlier and asked myself why I enjoyed the books so much. I turned the first page of the first book – Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and read a few lines:

Mrs Dursley was thin and blonde and had nearly twice the usual amount of neck, which came in very useful as she spent so much of her time craning over garden fences, spying on the neighbours.

I smiled! The humour in those gripping lines is so simple yet powerful and I understand why I enjoyed the unbelievable story so much. JK Rowling, I see, has not only given the gripping suspense that makes me turn each page as soon as possible but has also put a huge amount of simple humour that keeps me smiling and satisfies me like nothing else.

The childish story with all usual message – good will win over evil and courage is everything needed for success – got the largest audience ever, earned Rowling a fortune and there are many fans like me who would never call themselves a big fan of her but will always read/see the Potter Magic with intense interest.

I don’t know if I would get another such series in my lifetime but I don’t see that coming in near future, sadly!

***

It was not Harry Potter that kept me away from blogging for more than a month rather it was a series of events and illness that surrounded me in the last few weeks. I broke my ring finger in a cricket match keeping me away from keyboard, then my wife was ill, then I was ill myself with severe cold.

In between I was kept busy with my master’s thesis, which thankfully has now completed, reporting of women’s cricket, the inauguration of Nepal Photo Agency from my photojournalist friends and I helped them in a few matters and then preparation for the Players of the Year Awards from my association – Nepal Sports Journalists Forum.

Blogging at the same speed is not possible – a bitter truth I had already experienced yet hopefully now on I will try not to be absent from it for so long.

August 2, 2007 by Leisurely Activities Uzz Update

Amazing Experience of Paragliding

Friday, May 11, 2007 at 10:30 AM: I jumped off a slope at Sarangkot, Pokhara to glide freely on air. As I jumped off the slope, I was on air, flying freely. After a few minutes, as I looked down, I could see the whole city of Pokhara and famous Fewa Lake under my feet.

I looked up, afraid that I may fall down the long way and my stomach twitched. ‘Are you alright?’ my pilot Damodar Parajuli asked me. ‘Ya’. Why should I tell him that I was little afraid and my stomach was kind of twisting.

‘No twitch on stomach?’ Either this man is a devil or knows all about paragliding. ‘Little bit,’ I answered as he swirled around the Sarangkot hill making cold air pass through my body. It was really an experience worth life-long cherish because although I was in a tandem flight with pilot controlling the flight and everything else and I was just hanging to him looking around for hills and city.

‘Are you enjoying?’ What an absurd question? ‘Surely, it’s a big fun and I have never imagined that paragliding was such an amazing experience.’ He chuckled for he has been flying like this for five years – first two years solo and then piloting enthusiatics like me through air. As one of the few Nepali pilots working for Blue Sky Paragliding of Pokhara, Damodar had heard such answers for many times.

‘Mostly foreigners, Nepalis are increasing,’ he said adding that more females are interested in paragliding than males. [I thought maybe that’s true or maybe he is using his position in his office to allocate females to his flights]. The half-an-hour flight costs Rs 4500 for Nepali and US$ 75 for others.

I wasn’t flying in the season and my off-season flight costed me the view of the beautiful Ananpurna range. ‘You should have come during September-October,’ he said and I consoled myself thinking that I wanted the experience of paragliding, not seeing moutains from paraglide.

After a pleasant 20 minutes flight around the hill [of course letting photojournalist Chandra Shekhar Karki click a few photographs on flight], we were ready to decend. On the smooth decending flight, Damodar showed me the his village, his house and other things of Pokhara.

Once we were above the Phewa Lake and just about a few minutes away from landing, he asked me ‘if you are not afraid, I can show you some tricks.’ Why would I be afraid. He somehow manageed to slant the paraglide and then swished giving me the feeling of freefall of bungee jumping.

He did it twice and I was enjoying. On the third try, my stomach twitched and I told him so. He just instructed me to vomit on my left if I feel like and on the fourth swing, I vomited a little.

Then he instructed me how to land and I did that well, ran to the lake water, washed my face and sat on the ground thinking how pleasant the flight was.

May 15, 2007 by Leisurely Activities Travelogues

Top 5 Joys Nepal Offers

I am going to Pokhara once again! Hopefully, this time I will be able to do paragliding. For me, the biggest attraction in Pokhara apart from usual scenic beauty and lakes is paragliding.

Nepal, though more known for its beautiful mountains, lovely people and cultural heritages, offers more. Rather than going through the usual things tourist guides usually recommend in Nepal, I have here my top five list of the things that a little bit adventurous people should do in Nepal.

Some of them, I have already experienced; some other I dream about.

Trek to Everest Base Camp
Not easy, but this is something you will cherish lifelong if you accomplish. The routine: fly to Lukla (usual dangerous looking hilly airport), trek two days to reach Namche – the gateway to Everest, and leave behind the usual life to embark a trek of a week to reach Everest Base Camp and return.

You will not only see mountain tops so near that you feel like you can just casually walk on the top of it, but also will have time to think about what life exactly is (that thinking comes as you see the hard lives of the people living happily in the remotest areas). I have done that and here is my diary of it.

Bungee Jump
This is something, that looked daring! The second highest bungee jump of the world, 500 feet drop, from a suspension bridge. My experience says, once you are on the jumping deck, you see all white (nothing else) and when you jump, you feel like everything inside your body is bundled, then there is the feel of the rope and you have that exciting feeling never to forget again.

Paragliding
I don’t know how it feels but its something that I believe is a fun. From Sarangkot, the view point of Annapurna range, you are with a pilot thrown into air flying like a bird. A good view of Pokhara city. Here is more.

Rafting
Nepal’s rivers flow quick in mountain and hilly regions, turning and twisting making a lot of rapids for rafting. Rafting in the natural rivers that offers the joy of rapids is something everybody shouldn’t miss. I had rafted in Trishuli and found it more exciting than anything else. Within a short time, the joy you get from rafting – the cool water hitting you and the raft that twists and turns creating a kind of feeling mixed with excitement and fear, is unforgettable.

Visit a Temple
This is somewhat weird looking for quite interesting as far as I am concerned. The best time to visit any popular temple of Nepal is in the morning because I am asking you to witness the people visiting temples and their faces more than the temple or the art in it. I love visiting Pashupatinath temple, not because I want to pray but I love roaming around amidst the sounds of pray and looking at the people – most of them happily chatting, with tikas on forehead and flowers on head.

Have to done any of them? Share your experience!

May 10, 2007 by Featured Leisurely Activities

Delightful Reading

My friend Deepak Adhikari has written an article about blogging in NepalMonitor.com titled (Some) Thoughts from Nepal on Blogging.

An unprecedented numbers of visitors logged on to the blog and demanded more up-to-the-minute updates on events unfolding in Nepal. That was the time when I actually realized the power of the medium called blog. At times, I was exhausted, but I did not give up in that. I thought continuous update was critical in this technology-driven world. Amid curfew and massacres in the street, I gathered the nuggets of information and posted it instantaneously. It was painstaking. I could see how the Internet transforms the way we communicate.

And of course, there is a bitter truth for me and probably all the bloggers.

We bloggers in Nepal need to talk to each other and share our experiences. I must say this is what is lacking in Nepali blogosphere. We at Kantipur Complex regularly discuss blogs but that is a rather confined effort. The idea of Blog Association Nepal (BLOGAN) was proposed but it has not made much headway. One good example of a collective forum for bloggers is Nepali Voices, started in October 2006.

And, let me take this opportunity to congratulate him in advance for his marriage. May the poetry of your life be the best ever piece of poetry of the world.

Jan 28 is the auspicious day of wedding and her name is Kavita, the poetry of my life. Poetry apart, the joys and sorrows, I believe will be halved and shared. You need someone to care, more importantly you need to be loved and I feel fortunate to be worthy of this bond.

Some more reading on Citizen Journalism:

January 22, 2007 by Leisurely Activities

Thoughts on The Royal Ghosts

Samrat without sex is better than Samrat with sex! (That is of course in what he writes.)

0618517499-3919173That was my first thought after reading more than half of Samrat Upadhyay’s new story collection, The Royal Ghosts. At that time I was really looking forward reading the title story that was the last piece on the book and it’s really a pity that I put down a good book with a disappointment.

The Royal Ghosts, the story is something that I feel is nothing more than a marketing ploy. The title itself, since it was carried as the title of the book, is more to serve the marketing purpose (huh, since the Royal of Nepal is so on the buzz these days) than the story under it. And it was again, Samrat with sex – the story on homosexuality. I would have probably liked the story if it has been treated differently in a different backdrop.

The other stories however are very good. I felt like I am reading the stories of my neighborhood. I loved the flow of the story and the build-ups (and also Samrat’s ability to pick up simple ideas and putting them into words brilliantly).

I loved the Father Daughter, Wedding Hero, Chintamani’s Women, The Weight of the Gun and the Refugee more than others after finishing the collection in less than 24 hours after it landed in my hand for Rs. 295 (it’s the cover price and you may be lucky as me to receive a little discount if you ask with the bookseller).

Samrat’s earlier story collection Arresting God in Kathmandu was a hit earning him Whiting Award and novel, The Guru of Love, too was a good piece. I didn’t read the first one until I finished the novel which I liked with some reservations despite many of my friends believing it’s not that good. Arresting God in Kathmandu was a bit of disappointment for me after the Guru of Love.

Both his earlier books earned him fame (and defame) as a Nepali writer living in US and writing about Nepali society (and sex) without ever trying to go to the depth. But The Royal Ghosts is a better and I recommend everyone get hold of it to read the stories of neighborhood and some as for me may carry a little story of your own.

Here is my friend Deepak Adhikari’s pre-release piece on The Royal Ghosts.

May 12, 2006 by Leisurely Activities

A Walk Into the Clouds

Heaven! They say it’s a beautiful place above the clouds. There is no one and will be no one who will describe the mythical place to the world but the hearsays sometimes gives us an opportunity to feel like we are in the heaven. No wonder, Syed Farhan Ali exclaimed ‘I’m in heaven’ when I was with a group of South Asian journalists at Nagarkot, the place where the above photo was taken, and all other agreed by heart. Nagarkot, a place just an hour from Kathmandu, was so beautiful for a few minutes that we were all dumbfounded. Continue reading…

August 27, 2005 by Leisurely Activities Travelogues

Reading Palpasa Cafe: An Experience

While buying a copy of Narayan Wagle’s debut novel Palpasa Cafe and asking him to sign it, I didn’t thought I would be reading the novel within next 12 hours. This is possibly because I rarely read his column ‘coffee guff’ not because I don’t like it but I don’t like to read something serialized in a newspaper. But once I started the novel’s preface out of curiosity, it started gripping me and I couldn’t put the book aside before I finish it. Continue reading…

July 19, 2005 by Leisurely Activities

Beholding the Beauties

Last night, I was at the Regal Hall of Hotel Yak & Yeti to watch the proceedings of the Miss Tourism International Nepal 2005 contest. I wouldn’t have gone if my beloved wife hadn’t designed a piece of dress of one among 13 contestants. Cecilia Gurung won the title, congratulations for her, but the proceeding gave me, an amateur in the field, pretty wrong feelings about the beauty contests. Continue reading…

May 21, 2005 by Leisurely Activities

Enjoying Performance of World Record Drum Beater

“I want to take the warm hearts of people of the birthplace of Lord Buddha with me.” This statement came from Hiromi Ishioka, a Japanese drummer who had written his name in the Guinness Book of World Records for building the world’s biggest drum and playing it. The World Peace Drum, 4.8m in diameter, 5m in length and 2 tons in weight, is in Japan, but the 51-year-old has showed his performance for Nepalis four times in a small replica. I was one of the spectators of his team’s performance on Tuesday evening. Continue reading…

March 30, 2005 by Leisurely Activities

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