Nepal Ho!: Tambuchet

When we arrived in Tambuchet, which is where the road ends, we were greeted by our hosts Rom, Sujita and their daughters Rosainy (20), Karma (16), and Kusum (4). Here's the whole gang (from left to right):
Craig, Heather, Karma, Clancy, Roshainy, me, Rom, Sujita and Kusum

The house was actually two structures with a yard in between. This is the structure where we slept:

This is one half of the room that Clancy and I shared, which seemed really small until I realized that because Clancy, Craig, Heather and I were occupying two of the three small rooms, the entire family: mom, dad, Rosainy, Karma and Kusum, were sharing the third, equally tiny room.

The second structure houses the kitchen, the dining room, and a tiny store that opens onto the road where they sell some dry goods and also bus tickets.

Here it is with Rom and Clancy in front to give you and idea how insanely short these buildings are. I banged my head leaving the bathroom more times than I care to remember.

On the backside of this structure is the bathroom sink, shower, kitchen sink and laundry room all in one (note the bits of color in between the rocks. This is where toothbrushes live):

This is the spider that lived in the bathroom/outhouse (technically I guess it wasn't really an outhouse since it was attached to the house, but you have to go outside and around the house to get there, and it is, er, "rustic.") None of us was about to put our hand up for scale, but this bad boy is about the size of my palm and out to my first knuckle.

In the yard is also a lovely vegetable garden with a lemon tree, an apple tree and a pomegranate tree as well as 5 bee hives. Rom had just cleaned 3 of the hives and was draining the honey from the wax.

Bucket full of honey:

After the honey is drained, he melts the comb in hot water and creates these blocks of wax that he will use to make candles later:

We arrived on the second night of Tihar, which is when Hindus celebrate Laxmi the Goddess of Prosperity and Wealth. As we were unloading the truck in the deepening twilight, about 4 men came walking down the road single file, holding candles, and laughing heartily one after another. We asked, but no one could explain to us what was going on. A few minutes later a big group of men and women gathered in the street in front of Rom and Sujita's storefront and began dancing and singing in a circle. We figured it had to do with Tihar and were watching quietly and reverently off to the side, but when we asked they told us that the town's team had just won the regional volleyball tournament and were celebrating their victory.

There were some activities at the house for Tihar. Rom and Sujita are unusual in a couple of ways. First, they have what is known here as a "love marriage," meaning that their marriage was not arranged. Second, Rom is from the Rasuwa District, which is about 5 miles from the Tibetan border. The people in this district are known as Tamang and are predominantly Buddhist (Nepal is about 90% Hindu). Sujita is from Kathmandu and is Newari and Hindu. So they and their daughters practice both religions.

For Laxmi, they had painted a circle by the front door of the house using a mixture of cow dung and red dye, then made a painting with colored powders on top of it.

From the circle, a trail of the dung mixture led into the main bedroom in the house, decorated with spots of colored powders. Inside the bedroom was a pretty shrine to Laxmi.