The Caterpillar Who Crossed The Road
September 3, 2012
Safe and sound in Nepal! First access to internet since arrival, so more to come soon, but here’s something for the moment.
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“This is a deeply Buddhist country,” Isabelle, our academic director, told us in her proper English accent. She casually breast fed her six-month-old daughter in what I would term a shock and assimilate orientation philosophy.
A few days later, rounding a bend in the road to Pharping[i], where we stayed in the Dakshin Kali Village Resort, I came face to face with a man in a motorcycle helmet urging a caterpillar onto the shoulder with a tattered plastic bag. Taking the life of any living creatures is painstakingly avoided by many here. He watched me defiantly, it seemed, through his tinted visor as I walked by. I heard the sound of an engine starting behind me as I moved away from the rescue scene.
