Mail-order Nepalese husband available

On the sunny terrace above the kitchen, the nuns are bathing. Uppal strips down to her backbrace and underwear and squats to have her head shaved. A Chinese tourist wanders up the stairs and asks if she can take a picture. Uppal gives her a withering look. She’s a formidable woman, with big breasts and belly and a voice like a storm.

There are two little nuns—they look about eight and ten. The smallest one’s legs spreadeagled, an oldfashioned petticoat dangling from her waist, squealing with laughter while she’s lathered up and rinsed by an older nun.

Diki Kunzum, one of the young nuns, tells me she’s 18 and she’s been a nun for six years. Before that she lived in Jharkot, the next village over.

The nuns keep calling me lazy, which I don’t think they mean as an insult. They say to me quite cheerfully, “You lazy?” I’ve no idea what they think it means.

A mysterious letter from the Maoist party makes the rounds tonight at dinner. Everyone takes turns reading it. Long discussion.

Before I arrived in Muktinath, I was hoping for hot showers and western toilets, but now I'm relishing the contact with the outdoors. Washed my clothes in one of the streams that flows out of the mountain, scraping and lathering on the shiny grey rock. They were frozen next morning. The nuns have given me a bedroom just opposite the gompa. Yesterday night I dreamed I'd been shot in leg—woke up, realized it was true. Found it was only the cold seeping in like knife.

Went to the mandir, the temple with 108 water spouts, to run an errand with one of the nuns. Long conversation with Rudri, the mandir gatekeeper. He’s trying to convince me to bring him an American girl to marry so he can make a lot of money in America. I told him that a lot of money in Nepali terms doesn’t go as far in America because everything is so expensive there. He explained, “Ah, but we live with economy, then bring money to Kathmandu, build house!” He promises to share cooking and cleaning, says she should be medium-pretty, but poor is fine (since you’ll make plenty of money together). Please send me an email if you’re interested in Rudri’s offer. He is the one on the right as you're looking at the photo. (Only serious inquiries please.)

The police officers, whose headquarters are at the mandir, got a huge kick out of the conversation. I'm a little afraid of them, but the nuns seem to know them all, and even slap and shout at them.

The two child nuns behave with a maturity I've never seen in children before. Watching them dig up roots from what looked to me like barren soil and heft huge pots of boiling water, it occurs to me that these children could survive quite well on their own if they had to. But of course, they will never have to. The community which supports them is so widespread and selfsustaining and flexible that although they may sometimes be cold or even hungry, they will never be alone. The function served by these women seems to be entirely different from that served by, say, Western Catholic nuns. Catholic nuns could be wiped off the face of America and nobody would notice—they serve no important function in the everyday lives of ordinary American citizens. To wipe out Tibetan Buddhist nuns would be to rip a hole in the fabric of Nepalese culture.

Two young nuns standing in the doorway, the sunlight fading behind them, arms twined around each others waists, picking their noses with great absorption.