I'm very happy to say that there aren't any mosquitoes in my room, though, despite there being a bunch of mosquitoes outside, especially in the morning and at night.
When we were exploring the Bouddhanath stupa, on one side of the stupa we saw an area filled to the brim with pigeons. A few were sitting, but many were slightly hovering over the ground. They seemed to move as a unit, flowing through the wind like a wave. With a big gust of wind, they all flocked in one direction. Soon afterwards they all flocked back in the other direction and gently floated back to their original area. I asked why all of the pigeons were around, and there seem to be two ideas. One reason is because people really enjoy watching and feeding the birds. The second reason is that people believe that if the birds poop on the wooden structures, then termites won’t eat the wood. In that case, it’s a bit of a symbiotic relationship. The birds get fed and in return, their poop keeps the wood from rotting out.
First, I’ve noticed the crop season is beginning to change again! When we first arrived, the mango season was ending and all of the corn fields were up and waiting to be harvested. Now all of the corn has been harvested, and we’ve been eating slightly different vegetables with our meals. For example, many news types of saag, or spinach, have been on my plate recently, though it seems that saag is a very general term that could mean any leafy green. Similarly, the word for vegetable is tarkaari, but it includes things like tofu, so it seems anything that’s not meat, candy, or fruit can be called a vegetable.
