Boudhanath is one of the main tourist sites in Kathmandu. Is the biggest stupa in the world, a beautiful and outstanding white temple with Buddha's eyes near the top with dozens of colorful prayer flags hanging from the top to the buildings surrounding it. Once a month, when the full moon rises, hundreds of people gather to worship, pay their respects and entertain many of the tourist that come to witness this beautiful event. Bhuddists, Hindus and even tourists will clockwise walk around the stupa, while some other devoted monks gather on one side of the stupa to sing/pray and play simple instruments around a HUGE pile of food that keeps growing throughout the night thanks to donations from hundreds of people. Most importantly, there are another few dozen people around lighting candles or offering visitors to pay a small amount to light a candle. Thousands of candles are lit throughout the night and later, under the full beauty and splendor of the full moon, they are placed on the stupa.
The ultimate scene is something like this:
We then proceeded to find a rooftop cafe where we manage to gather about 15 people to enjoy the view, the full moon, good momos and the fantastic Everest beer. Oh, forgot to mention Linden. The one and only Linden Mallory '07, another Dartmouth alumnus, has joined us in Nepal this week. He will be working with a mountaineering guiding company and spending about 3 weeks in Nepal. Just another friend to share the nostalgia of Hanover food with.
Among other events in the week were a few work related occurrences. Work has been very productive the past few days, after days of testing data collection we've discarded the possibility of reproducing a commercial cell phone charger that can work off 6V due to input-out differential limitations. A couple of step-down switching regulators were made, similar to the one shown below, and found inapplicable in our case. Our next approach, which has been giving very good results so far is to simply connect the cell phone to our 6V battery with a 5ohm resistor and a simple Low Voltage Disconnect (LVD) circuit. I happen to be very excited for this LVD circuit, because it seems that can be easily and cheaply manufactured and could be directly applicable to our micro-hydro efforts in Rwanda. (see related blog for more information)
Step-down switching regulator I was trying to reproduce this week
Gathering circuit components in Asson, central Kathmandu, has happened a couple of times this week. However, it is never an entirely successful trip because we can't ever get exactly what we want, so our work turns into working with what we can get. On this particular day though, as I sweat and suffer to get the shop owners to understand what I'm looking for, Mike is chats to a guy that owns a shop that repairs and sells guitars. The final product is the guitar you see below, played by a young child who seemed very interested in learning how to play while I discussed with another shop owner whether he could order a specific voltage regulator for me. After hearing that he could order any components but they would take a month to get to Kathmandu, I turn around to see Mike receiving bubble gum from this 10year old kid.
I have chosen to interpret the purchase of this guitar as Mike's way to reduce the 95% of our time that we spend together, especially now that Brendan has gone back to the states for 3 weeks. I have responded to these acts tonight by buying a book about a Australian criminal so that I have something to do with the extra lonesome time that this guitar will bring into my life.
Diana and I standing by a table full of candles at Boudhanath
Other highlights of the week include our ice cream + bananas + melted chocolate gathering late at night and the realization that some of the UN cars that drive around have signs that say "NO AK-47s", or at least that's how we interpreted it. Both events are photographed below.
Diana, Rosie and me attacking the vanilla ice cream with bananas and melted chocolate
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