Taken for a ride
When I rise in the morning S is outside trampling on a circular pile of straw nearly as tall as himself. A much bigger pile is over by the field, where it has been left by the thresher after a bale or two of rice were threshed a few weeks ago. Now it's time to start packing the straw into a huge bullet-shaped bale of a type which litter the landscape, which will keep it fresh so that the buffalo has food for the year. The straw is being carried from the one pile to the other bundle by bundle: children are pulling out armfuls of straw, tying it up with a cord made from the spine of a banana leaf, carrying it over and throwing it up to S, who unties the cord and throws it back, and then sprinkles the straw around the top of the pile to distribute it evenly, trampling all the while. The nose of the bullet, which will be shaped last, will throw off rain, and the tightly-packed straw will not rot or decay all year.
Agricultural life in the Terai looks idyllic, but with most of the technology remaining much as it was in biblical times, it involves a lot of hard work. While a threshing machine now goes round the farms in turn, it is only a few years ago - as S remembers well - that threshing, too, had to be done by hand.
*
The work is presently put aside and we zoom off on the inevitable and somewhat scary motorcycle for a day of sightseeeing. From Urlabari we turn west onto the East-West Highway, which runs along the Terai the full 1000km length of Nepal. We had planned (or rather S had planned) to visit the town of Dharan, but he'd heard early in the morning that the town was closed.
'What do you mean, closed?'
'It's closed.'
'You can't close a whole town.'
'The roads are closed.'
'Did they say why?'
'Some political rally there.'
'I'd be quite interested to see a political rally.'
'Really?'
'Where shall we go instead?'
'Actually there are no sights in the east of Nepal.'
But it turns out there is at least one sight on the way to Itahari, the next major city on the highway, in the form of the Betana Wetland, a surprisingly large and well-kept wetland nature reserve. In the woods there are designated picnic areas where groups of young Nepalis have brought sound systems and loudspeakers, somewhat unlike my notion of a nature reserve, but there is plenty of space to get away from them and enjoy the woods, clean and well-constructed paths, lake and ducks.
'Let's go. We have a long way to go,' he says, even though we have no particular idea where we are going, so we set off again for Itahari where we have lunch in a canteen restaurant on the top floor of a tall department store. We discuss again whether to go to Dharan.
'It's a long way. Let's not go.'
'Why were we going there again?'
'I just wanted to show it to you. It's a very modern city, clean, nice architecture.'
'It sounds great. Let's go.'
So turning north off the East-West Highway we go 15km or so to Dharan, where there is no sign of the roads being closed, or a demonstration taking place, or the slightest disturbance of any kind. 'Fake news,' shrugs S, when I mention it.
At the entrance to the city there is a statue in some jet-black stone of a man looking noble while tied to a tree trunk with numerous arrows sticking out of his torso. When on the way back we stop to look, I learn from the inscription that he was a nationalist martyred by the wicked Buddhists ruling Sikkim in the 18th century for his efforts to record and preserve the Kirat language and culture.
If you have been led to expect a hypermodern city with interesting architecture, then riding pillion up the main street of Dharan - the city is at the foot of a hill and the road rises steeply - is at first something of a disappointment. You might be expecting gleaming glass and steel skyscrapers, but all you seem to see is the same old functional Nepali concrete shops obscured by impossible tangles of power cables. But look again, and read past the power cables, and you see something quite different from the grimy melee of Kathmandu: the streets are clean, the road well surfaced, there is a broad pavement for pedestrians, the rickshaws are electric and look new and smart, and you suddenly have an odd feeling that you have been here before. In your mind's eye you are riding up the Edgware Road or somewhere in the East End, lined with hip and slightly grungy Asian shops.
I assume we are going to stop in the centre but S drives on and up, till we seem to be passing out of the city altogether.
'I thought we were coming here to see Dharan?'
'So you've seen it now ...'
Near the top of the hill we stop at a 'hotel', which is to say a little grimy cafe or bar, with a terrace perched on the side of the mountain. We have coffee admiring the view over Dharan, which would be even better if it weren't for a thin film of fog.
On the ride back S takes us through back streets and residential neighbourhoods, and it is here that I finally see the real beauty of Dharan. The houses are handsome, well-built, in style distinct but harmonious, the neighbourhoods clean and inviting. Nestling between the Terai and the hills, Dharan also has mild temperate weather all year round; and only about as far again as Itahari is Biratnagar on the Indian border, Nepal's second city with an international airport. No wonder Dharan is, apparently, an expensive place to live. There are a large number of former Gurkhas living in the town. Serving in the British army is one of the few ways in Nepal of becoming comfortably well-off. I remember coming across the breathtaking and unexpected beauty of Ghandruk, a stone-built Gurkha town in the hills near Pokhara, on a short trek there in 2006.
*
There was another reason we did our sightseeing in this direction today: a birthday party for a relative of S's wife, where, perhaps because he has the bike, he will be representing her. I ask if we should take a present. It turns out S's present has been arranged for him - he doesn't know what it is but it is at the house wrapped up waiting for him to hand it over - and he suggests that I should just give some money, 1000 rupees or so. Then he has a change of heart and we stop again at the supermarket in Itahari, but there is nothing I feel it meaningful to give a child (only children celebrate their birthdays, S says) of uncertain age and gender and interests, least of all the horrible things on the 'gifts' floor.
After Itahari we take various back roads and short cuts along paths across fields with children coming home from school ('They're all looking at you', says S) and arrive at his in-laws' home, where we stop for the usual tea on the verandah. It may be different in the hills where it gets properly cold, but here in the south, where to the uninformed traveller it can still seem pretty darned chilly on a January evening, the only communal space in a house is outside. (Everyone also persists in going around barefoot indoors, with sandals for the outside environs of the house, which at this time of year is silly. But it is only this cold for a few weeks.)
We have done around 100km on the bike today. Not a bad haul considering that riding on the back of a motorbike, along Nepali roads full of life-threatening ruts and unpainted speed bumps, with no safety gear, is completely terrifying.
The birthday is of some kind of cousin who lives round the corner, where we presently troop round. There are adults smiling and children in tall conical party hats. With her two younger sisters and assorted other friends, the birthday girl (for such she turns out to be) stands sedately, apart from the hat, on the balloon-festooned verandah, behind a table decorated with vases of flowers and a cake. We have arrived in time for the important ceremony: she duly cuts the cake. Then all the adults line up in front of the table to transact some business; S is looking carefully to make out exactly what is happening, which is more than I can do; but he tells me to put aside 50 rupees for the two sisters. Finally it is our turn. The birthday girl by now has an enormous red tika, or agglomeration of tikas, on her forehead, the size of an old half-crown. S picks up a large petal from a bowl, waves it over the three sisters while incanting something, then dips his fingers into a bowl of tiny red petals and adds his own tika to the girl's forehead. Then he solemnly hands over his unknown gift to her and a small-denomination note to each of her sisters. In return he is given a small square of cake. (No-one has ovens, so the cake is some odd synthetic cake-like substance.) From this he breaks off an even smaller part and puts it in the girl's mouth, and eats the rest. I copy as much of the procedure as I can remember.
Afterwards we are given dinner, which we eat though we are not hungry, and then various giggling young women want their pictures taken with me, and presently we return to the first house, where it turns out we are to stay for the night. I am tired and S, who has done all the driving, is shattered. So we do not return later to the birthday house, where apparently there is dancing.
Agricultural life in the Terai looks idyllic, but with most of the technology remaining much as it was in biblical times, it involves a lot of hard work. While a threshing machine now goes round the farms in turn, it is only a few years ago - as S remembers well - that threshing, too, had to be done by hand.
*
The work is presently put aside and we zoom off on the inevitable and somewhat scary motorcycle for a day of sightseeeing. From Urlabari we turn west onto the East-West Highway, which runs along the Terai the full 1000km length of Nepal. We had planned (or rather S had planned) to visit the town of Dharan, but he'd heard early in the morning that the town was closed.
'What do you mean, closed?'
'It's closed.'
'You can't close a whole town.'
'The roads are closed.'
'Did they say why?'
'Some political rally there.'
'I'd be quite interested to see a political rally.'
'Really?'
'Where shall we go instead?'
'Actually there are no sights in the east of Nepal.'
But it turns out there is at least one sight on the way to Itahari, the next major city on the highway, in the form of the Betana Wetland, a surprisingly large and well-kept wetland nature reserve. In the woods there are designated picnic areas where groups of young Nepalis have brought sound systems and loudspeakers, somewhat unlike my notion of a nature reserve, but there is plenty of space to get away from them and enjoy the woods, clean and well-constructed paths, lake and ducks.
'Let's go. We have a long way to go,' he says, even though we have no particular idea where we are going, so we set off again for Itahari where we have lunch in a canteen restaurant on the top floor of a tall department store. We discuss again whether to go to Dharan.
'It's a long way. Let's not go.'
'Why were we going there again?'
'I just wanted to show it to you. It's a very modern city, clean, nice architecture.'
'It sounds great. Let's go.'
So turning north off the East-West Highway we go 15km or so to Dharan, where there is no sign of the roads being closed, or a demonstration taking place, or the slightest disturbance of any kind. 'Fake news,' shrugs S, when I mention it.
At the entrance to the city there is a statue in some jet-black stone of a man looking noble while tied to a tree trunk with numerous arrows sticking out of his torso. When on the way back we stop to look, I learn from the inscription that he was a nationalist martyred by the wicked Buddhists ruling Sikkim in the 18th century for his efforts to record and preserve the Kirat language and culture.
If you have been led to expect a hypermodern city with interesting architecture, then riding pillion up the main street of Dharan - the city is at the foot of a hill and the road rises steeply - is at first something of a disappointment. You might be expecting gleaming glass and steel skyscrapers, but all you seem to see is the same old functional Nepali concrete shops obscured by impossible tangles of power cables. But look again, and read past the power cables, and you see something quite different from the grimy melee of Kathmandu: the streets are clean, the road well surfaced, there is a broad pavement for pedestrians, the rickshaws are electric and look new and smart, and you suddenly have an odd feeling that you have been here before. In your mind's eye you are riding up the Edgware Road or somewhere in the East End, lined with hip and slightly grungy Asian shops.
I assume we are going to stop in the centre but S drives on and up, till we seem to be passing out of the city altogether.
'I thought we were coming here to see Dharan?'
'So you've seen it now ...'
Near the top of the hill we stop at a 'hotel', which is to say a little grimy cafe or bar, with a terrace perched on the side of the mountain. We have coffee admiring the view over Dharan, which would be even better if it weren't for a thin film of fog.
On the ride back S takes us through back streets and residential neighbourhoods, and it is here that I finally see the real beauty of Dharan. The houses are handsome, well-built, in style distinct but harmonious, the neighbourhoods clean and inviting. Nestling between the Terai and the hills, Dharan also has mild temperate weather all year round; and only about as far again as Itahari is Biratnagar on the Indian border, Nepal's second city with an international airport. No wonder Dharan is, apparently, an expensive place to live. There are a large number of former Gurkhas living in the town. Serving in the British army is one of the few ways in Nepal of becoming comfortably well-off. I remember coming across the breathtaking and unexpected beauty of Ghandruk, a stone-built Gurkha town in the hills near Pokhara, on a short trek there in 2006.
*
There was another reason we did our sightseeing in this direction today: a birthday party for a relative of S's wife, where, perhaps because he has the bike, he will be representing her. I ask if we should take a present. It turns out S's present has been arranged for him - he doesn't know what it is but it is at the house wrapped up waiting for him to hand it over - and he suggests that I should just give some money, 1000 rupees or so. Then he has a change of heart and we stop again at the supermarket in Itahari, but there is nothing I feel it meaningful to give a child (only children celebrate their birthdays, S says) of uncertain age and gender and interests, least of all the horrible things on the 'gifts' floor.
After Itahari we take various back roads and short cuts along paths across fields with children coming home from school ('They're all looking at you', says S) and arrive at his in-laws' home, where we stop for the usual tea on the verandah. It may be different in the hills where it gets properly cold, but here in the south, where to the uninformed traveller it can still seem pretty darned chilly on a January evening, the only communal space in a house is outside. (Everyone also persists in going around barefoot indoors, with sandals for the outside environs of the house, which at this time of year is silly. But it is only this cold for a few weeks.)
We have done around 100km on the bike today. Not a bad haul considering that riding on the back of a motorbike, along Nepali roads full of life-threatening ruts and unpainted speed bumps, with no safety gear, is completely terrifying.
The birthday is of some kind of cousin who lives round the corner, where we presently troop round. There are adults smiling and children in tall conical party hats. With her two younger sisters and assorted other friends, the birthday girl (for such she turns out to be) stands sedately, apart from the hat, on the balloon-festooned verandah, behind a table decorated with vases of flowers and a cake. We have arrived in time for the important ceremony: she duly cuts the cake. Then all the adults line up in front of the table to transact some business; S is looking carefully to make out exactly what is happening, which is more than I can do; but he tells me to put aside 50 rupees for the two sisters. Finally it is our turn. The birthday girl by now has an enormous red tika, or agglomeration of tikas, on her forehead, the size of an old half-crown. S picks up a large petal from a bowl, waves it over the three sisters while incanting something, then dips his fingers into a bowl of tiny red petals and adds his own tika to the girl's forehead. Then he solemnly hands over his unknown gift to her and a small-denomination note to each of her sisters. In return he is given a small square of cake. (No-one has ovens, so the cake is some odd synthetic cake-like substance.) From this he breaks off an even smaller part and puts it in the girl's mouth, and eats the rest. I copy as much of the procedure as I can remember.
Afterwards we are given dinner, which we eat though we are not hungry, and then various giggling young women want their pictures taken with me, and presently we return to the first house, where it turns out we are to stay for the night. I am tired and S, who has done all the driving, is shattered. So we do not return later to the birthday house, where apparently there is dancing.