I have spent these last few days (the weekend) at the Pagode de Vicennes. A friend of mine was leaving today, and before she left i absolutely wanted her to come see it, because it's such a beautiful place.
So we went, and to my suprise, the Cultural House of Nepal had organised activities there for the Nepalese diaspora and for people interested in their culture ( East-Asians do the same thing there).
It was great! I've seen traditional dances, costumes, objects, conferences on Nepalese Buddhist art (given by a "conservateur" from Guimet Museum and was trully excellent! the next day was a conference on the Neâlese Thangkas but i lost it sadly:(( ) and all sorts of diaporamas with their magnific sights. I even listened to a Franch alpinist who had climbed the Everest, and who showed us pictures of a friend of his, Marco Siffredi, whom, instead of descending the montain slopes like the rest of them, he went down on snowboard!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(Does anyone realise the insanity of that?! And the next year he tried it again, and was never seen again. This story gave me chicken skin.)
Just for the record, i was taken for an Indian as well as a Nepalese! (by natives!!)
There was also food!
I bought some fried thinggies made of onions and "pois chiche" flour. Really tasty! And some desert, cocconut balls. And i forced my friend to buy "momos", Nepalese traditional food (Tibetan as well i imagine), which consists of steamed bubles filled in ith chicken meat and some vegetables (now you understand why i couldn't get some). Alexandra David-Neel writes ever so often in her books about momos!It's always si amazing to actually see, "for real", what you read! and Nepalese tea, which was mainly made of black tea with milk and some spices, cardamone i'd say.
Oh! Yes, i've also listened to a conference on Nepalese Tea!
It was really instructive!
For example, i've learned that we Westerners sadly ignore Nepalese tea, which is just as good, if not betted than Darjeeling teas! Apparently, 80% of Darjeeling teas aren't really Darjeelings, and that even those great teas that i've already talked about, that they make, may actually be Nepalese!!! Why? Because the tea plants in Darjeeling have over 100 years old, and as they grow old, their quality drops, whereas, the nepalese plantation are quite young.
There are 75 districts in Nepal, and only 5 are producing tea. But they are hoping that by 2020, there would be 21 district producers of very high quality tea!!!
Vivement l'avenir!
Enfin, espérons-le.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment