So so happy and so so angry!

Grrrwwww!!!! Sometimes Nepali attitudes can be so brutal!

Today was by far the best day of flying I've had. In fact in my log book I wrote that this was my first day of flying. The rest were just controlled glides. But today after a flat day or two, (yesterdays flights were free because of the weather) today was bright, clear, sunny and by 1pm it was pumping thermals for my second flight. I did my second reverse takeoff, nice and smooth into great wind, then joined the house thermal and stayed up for 45 minutes ridge soaring, thermalling and exploring, getting great height and having the time of my life. It is really the first flight where I've been free to do what I want, and at the same time have the right weather and the skill to utilize it, so I was stoked! Eventually I decided to come down and leave on a good note. It is pretty busy up there and I think the longer I stayed up the more confident I got and I don't want to over do it.

So I landed, and even caught a nice little thermal over a dark shallow swamp just next to the landing which was a nice bit of icing on top. At this point I wished I wasn't traveling alone, so I could jump up and down, squeal stupidly and hug everyone. But I made do by packing up my wing and walking back to town with yet another stupid grin. But it wasn't to last.

As I approach the paragliding shop I saw a small crowd gathered on the road. As I neared I saw that there was a dog on its side on the road and it was the nice cream coloured bitch that had shared our couch every morning for coffee while we did our theory. A real gentle dog and almost part of the furniture, always there like the shoe shining guy, the mandarin sellers and the sacred cow that likes to eat our paper. At first I though it was hit by a car but it looked ok. It wasn't foaming at the foam so I didn't think it was rabies, it was just twitching on it's side. Everyone was just watching and not doing anything! About the same time, another pilot, Leigh approached and I ran off to find something to put under the dog to lift it off the road. When I returned with a bed roll this Nepali guy was trying to stop up from helping it!? Leigh and David, the owner of the paragliding shop and the dogs adopted dad, carried it into the back office where it died about two minutes later. Nothing is certain in the chaos that is Nepal but it seems that somebody poisoned the dog on purpose. It make me so so angry.

I just feel angry. I remember back a few days ago to the 100th time I said no to some beggar, and I was trying to figure out for myself whether it was morally better to de-humanise a beggar or to anthropomorphise an animal. This was just after I'd come back from Chitwan and been quite saddened at how the Elephants in the breeding centre there lived their lives. It is so sad to see such intelligent and happy animals living in chains and beaten and worked so much. To watch a baby elephant walking forwards until it draws it chains tawt then rocks back and repeating as it hasn't got used to the idea of being in chains is heart breaking.

Another example is a cow, supposedly sacred as all cows are, that was stuck in a drain on the side of the road on the way up to the takeoff. I saw it yesterday and pointed it out but nobody seemed to care. Today it was dead and bloated on the road but outside the drain. As it turns out it was Leigh and friends who actually stopped to help and hauled it out but it must have had internal injuries from its fall. But the local attitude is that it is hurt and it will die and thats it. No attempt to help or even to drag it off the road afterwards - after all it is sacred! And then when you start to look the dogs seems mangy, the buffulo underfed and horses almost skeletons. But that seems to just be the way it is. I am sure tommorow everything will seem nicer again. At least I am not in India!