Playing flutes at Guheshwori

On 20 January 2017, we went hiking to Guheshwori. Till Pashupati we went in a van then we started  our hike from there. We crossed all the graveyards. They were very dirty. We came across many hollow trees. We enjoyed crawling inside and out the hollow trees. After some fun there we went to visit the Guheswori temple. Then we rested for a while in a chautari. While sitting there we took flute out of our bags and started playing the flute. We were asked to play 5 songs and we started with the nepali song , “Kalilo tama”. But later we realized that we should have just started with random music in the beginning to attract people as people started gathering at the end of the song only. So how we wished we could  make many people listen to our music.

The second song we played was resham firiri which is a fomous nepali song these days. We were excited to paly the flute as more than twenty people were listening to us playing. The crowd of people encouraged us to play. As it was outdoors, due to the noise and very low sound I don’t think many people did hear our music properly. After we were done with the flute the whole crowd clapped. The mass of people included forigners too and they were really impressed.

Our third number was Fulko aakhama, while singing this song some of the members from crowd took video of us. It gave us more encouragement to perform even in a better way. It felt so good to see people enjoying the song with smile on their faces and clapping for us.

One of my personal favourite is Chyanba hoi Chyanba which is a really nice song. We ended our musical program by playing Bhupali raag. I think that they had not heard the rag before so they must be bored and left when we played that tune.

When we were done with playing the raag we were told to play our own composition. We were very tired so rather than pleasing the mass with the tune we just wanted to wrap it up quickly.

So, we played the composition very fast and went ahead for more adventure.

Great taste of lapsi

On 15 January, 2017 we made pickle of lapsi fruit. A couple of days ago, some of my friends had gone on a hike to Champadevi and brought back many lapsis. The lapsis they had brought weighed more than 2 kg. Today we made pickle of those lapsis as we were afraid they would get spoiled soon. Half of my friends were making orange marmalade so only half of us made the pickle. Kusma, Sheelu and I were told to help Sabita didi make the pickle.

First we boiled the lapsis. Then we peeled their outer cover. After that we grinded the peels of the lapsis. After we were done with grinding we put some oil in the cooking pot. We waited for it to get hot and then we put some methi on the pot. After sometime we put the lapsis inside the pot and mixed it with the oil. When it was completely mixed we put the grinded pickle in the pot. Then we added salt, sugar, spices and chili powder inside the pot. We used four cups of chili powder which is supposed to be spicy but when we tasted the pickle it was not spicy. It was sweet so we added more chili powder and sugar. This time it tasted good and our work was done. The lapsi pickle tasted better than the last time we had made it.

by Shaswat Badal