Om Mane Padme... Home
So, I'm sure you've all been waiting with bated breath for my pictures from Nepal.
*waits*
*looks around expectantly*
Someone?
Anyone?
Well, you're getting them anyway, and you'll LIKE it. So there. :P
It's a long way to Tipperary. And an even longer way to Kathmandu. Most flights change somewhere in the Middle East; I picked Doha, although unfortunately I didn't get to see any of it, beyond a low, splendidly lit city in the distance. (And a giant water tank garishly painted with palm trees that said, "Welcome to Doha", but I'm willing to skim over that.) Doha International Airport, by the way, is rather small and, no offense, EXTREMELY dull if you have to spend ten hours there. It contains a gift shop full of pseudo-Qatari tat (models of camels, candied dates, hookahs, pretty carved boxes, and, for some bizarre reason, Bedouin matryoshka dolls :)) and British DVD box sets, outlets of every fast food joint that was popular in New Jersey in the 1980s and later disappeared from our fair shores (A&W Root Beer! TCBY!), a little nameless curry joint at the back, and extensive duty free shops where you can buy any Western product you desire, from bottles of Jack Daniel's and Gordon's Gin to crates of Milka and Lindor to, I kid you not, GIANT TINS OF TANG. However, there is also a coffee shop that serves absurdly good hot chocolate, so all was, if not right with the world, then not that far wrong, either.
Around five in the morning we were all herded downstairs to be driven across the tarmac to our plane. It was an interesting group; the flight to Qatar had been full of Westerners, mostly Americans, but the flight to Kathmandu was almost entirely Nepali people, divided into two very obvious groups: the ones toting giant cardboard boxes mummy-wrapped in tape, and the ones who only had backpacks (almost all young men). In other words, the ones moving back home and the ones who periodically worked abroad. It stuck in my mind mainly because of my brother, who started a bike shop/bike repair training programme in Kathmandu in the hopes that a few more Nepalis would be able to make a living there, and wouldn't have to leave. There's going to be more about Wrench Nepal later on - a LOT more, with pictures - so stay tuned.
And then around noon, I landed in Nepal.
I'd never been to Asia before. I'd never been to the developing world before. I'd never been on a trip where I'd previously publicly freaked out about it on my blog like the overprivileged Westerner I am before. So obviously this was big on all three counts. :)
I think I had two first impressions of Nepal: one, that there is some kind of sixth sense that twinges when you first land, that tells you that even if the mountains look a bit familiar (it was too hazy to see the taller peaks, and the lower, grasser hills do look a bit like the Appalachians) or the air feels a bit like a Jersey summer (a weird sensation that was probably amplified by seeing my brother, looking simultaneously so out of place and so at home in the crowd by the arrivals gate, with his backpack and deep tan), you are very, very far from where you were born. Two, that it looked exactly - unnervingly - the way I'd pictured it. When you go somewhere you've heard of but never seen, it usually screws with your expectations at least a little bit. Sure, there may be the odd moment when you turn the corner and see the Eiffel Tower or the Colossieum, looking just like a postcard, and it takes you aback that it's real, but the actual streets of Paris or Rome are often quite different than you'd imagined. But (at least at first) Kathmandu... well, wasn't. You know those spreads in magazines like National Geographic? Crowded streets where cattle jostle with minibuses, lush green fields and trash-strewn riverbanks where people are washing their clothes, a woman in a bright orange sari moving like a dignified ghost through the dust of the road? Yeah. It's like that.
And I'd kind of wanted to be able to say, "Yeah, I was really shocked by the poverty/beauty/warmth of the people/exotic culture, you have no idea!", but ultimately, the things that surprised me along the way were much smaller and more unexpected, and it took longer to see them.
After I'd started my trip by having an Authentic Nepali Experience with the bloke taking passport photos for entry visas (in other words, he asked where I was from, inquired warmly how I liked Nepal, tried to teach me a little bit of Nepali, and ripped me off - if that's not the Authentic Nepali Experience, it is at least the Catilinarian Repetitive Nepali Experience :)), Tom and I caught a taxi to his flat in the posh district of Lazimpat.
It was so, so good to see my brother. I mean, I've gone longer without seeing him in person (he and I caught up in Boston last August as well), but getting to see his flat, and the bike shop, and the life he'd built for himself in Kathmandu - it was really cool.
And this is the front door of Tom's GINORMOUS and rather lovely flat. I was jealous, considering that it costs a fraction of what I pay in London, but it could basically eat my London flat for lunch and still have room for a snack.
We also explored Lazimpat a bit, I made friends with the local doggies (Tom kept saying, "This is my favourite street dog - No, THIS is my favourite street dog!" about all of them :)), and Tom introduced me to the world's best tea-shop, with a gregarious owner who knows everything imaginable about where the tea is grown and how it's processed, and who will sit you down and feed you free, delicious caffeine until you're forced to beg for mercy. I brought back a LOT of Nepali tea (which is the lighter China tea you may have had in a Chinese restaurant, not the smokier Indian kind we usually drink in the US and UK, for you fellow tea freaks out there).
The political situation was starting to quiet down a bit while I was there - the deadline for the participation of the Madhesh ethnic minority in the general elections came and went surprisingly peacefully, even though they didn't end up putting forward delegates. It had been worse before I arrived; Tom showed me the spot along the main road where he and his girlfriend watched a crowd charge the riot police a few weeks earlier. There were still fuel blockades in the south of the country (the Terai) while I was there, though, which meant rolling eight-hour blackouts across the city (also called load-shedding, or, in the beautiful and expressive tongue of the Nepali people, "fucking load shedding") and hours-long petrol queues. Between emergency generators, candles, and really, REALLY long extension cords, most businesses coped with aplomb, and a few were so good-humoured about it that the blackouts felt kind of fun, like being a kid and having to do your homework by candlelight because a nor'easter has knocked out the power.
The next couple of days I spent getting my bearings and exploring Kathmandu. Those of you who've travelled with me know that this translates as "getting lost" - getting desperately, hopelessly, spectacularly lost in the way only I can, where I either end up in a different STATE than I intended (Delaware, in fact) or find out I've circled the same block fifteen times. Despite having a map, very clear directions, and the experience of walking the same route with Tom the night before to go to dinner, I managed to aim for the centre of the city (almost directly to the south) and wind up stranded in the dirt tracks north of the Kathmandu ring road, also known as Where the Streets Have No White People Names. (To be fair, I ended up down alleys staring at tiny, much-used shrines I never would have seen otherwise. It was kind of cool.) I finally got my bearings, and spent a lot of time in the narrow medieval streets of Thamel, where a lot of the traditional architecture (elaborate pitched roofs, upper stories that hang over the street, and windows with ornate wooden screens in place of glass) is beautifully preserved. Thamel, being one of the most sought-after parts of the city, is also the most touristy, so the downside was that I had to struggle not to bob the next person to offer me a tour/taxi/rickshaw/pashmina/trekking holiday squarely on the nose. The upside, besides the architecture, is that it's full of truly AMAZING restaurants, it's a fascinating place to wander, and you can't chuck a teabag without hitting six little shops that will sell you a fantastic cup of masala tea for about 40p and let you chill while you take it all in (and write it all down obsessively - I filled an entire, admittedly small, journal while I was there).
Welcome to Thamel. Apparently, it's homely!
Street in Thamel. I actually really like this picture.
"Barnes & Noble". Knock-off stores are a peculiar feature of Thamel; there's a "Shop-Right", too, and they put their American counterparts to shame by actually spelling it right. :)
I found this Buddhist stupa down a side street my first day, and I sort of... kept... coming back to it. (In a fascinated way, not in my usual "I HAVE ALREADY BEEN HERE FIFTEEN TIMES, YOU STUPID MAP!" kind of way. :)) It's surrounded by shrines, including one to the Buddha of Compassion.
One thing I loved about Nepal is that very ancient shrines are still used in a very run-of-the-mill, everyday way. You'd pass countless little shrines and statues and small temples by the side of the road, and each one would probably have a few offerings of fruit or flowers in front of it, and possibly a clothesline tied to it, and a little old lady walking clockwise around it and ringing its bell. Certainly, aspects of both Hinduism and Buddhism have gotten tied up with the tourist trade, but most Nepali religion is still something that takes place, publicly and privately, as a genuine, unregarded part of people's lives, and not as a performance. (A lot of other parts of what we think of as "traditional" or "genuine" Nepali culture now only exist in museums and tourist attractions. One night I commented on the soap in the loo at a fancy Indian restaurant - it was black, and smelled of cloves and anise - saying that you don't always think of little cultural differences like the scents people use; Tom pointed out that the anise soap was probably there because that was what the Nepali proprietors imagined the Western clientele would expect Asia to smell like. Meanwhile, typical Nepalis wash with imported Imperial Leather, if they can afford it. It's an odd swap - the richest Westerners want the "genuine" Nepali things, and the richest Nepalis want the "genuine" Western things, neither of which is actually very genuine. But I'm rambling.)
Shrines around the stupa:
Lonely Planet had a great walking tour through the untouristed parts of town. This is what I mean about how the medieval shrines are integrated into every part of the city, from the most carefully preserved to the most modern.
Fifth-century Buddha statue. Perfectly preserved. Still used for worship (look at the colour, or tikka, that supplicants put on their foreheads for good luck after making an offering). STUCK IN THE WALL BELOW THE DOOR TO A DENTIST'S OFFICE.
Btw, that poem in my last post? This was the stupa. It's in the middle of a traffic roundabout, which rather appealed to me - there's so much roundness and movement in the stupa itself and in the act of circling it while turning the prayer wheel that the roundabout kind of adds an extra layer.
A shrine to the god of toothaches. (Those are coins nailed to it.)
Whew! There are more, there are SO MANY MORE, but I think I've blown your bandwith enough for one day. Next time: Durbar Square! Living goddesses, royal palaces, military underwear, and Cat fulfills her mission to bring the wonders of literary boysex to entirely new continents!