Days 49-54: Kathmandu, Nepal

Mar 18-23

I need to look up the statistics on this, but Nepal seems to be the poorest country I'll visit on my trip, and the people seem much more desperate to improve their lot, unlike Laos where people seemed content with the little they have.

On my four-hour flight from Bangkok to Kathmandu, I sat next to a white-robed Indonesian monk. When we were filling out our immigration forms, I peeked over and noted that her official full name printed in her passport was "Dina" (no middle or last names). As is often the case with monks, I was unsure of her gender until I heard her voice when answering my question of whether she was staying in Boudha, the very Buddhist area just outside the center of Kathmandu. I asked because I was going there on my friend Ben's recommendation, and I didn't know the best way to get there from the airport. She said she was not, but that she had a Nepali friend who was picking her up who could help me. After the longest visa application wait yet on my trip, Dina's gracious Nepali friend negotiated my way into the back seat of a taxi that already had a passenger going my way. He turned out to be a Nepali business man on his way home from a business trip, and after a nice conversation he gave me his business card and told me to call him if I needed any help during my stay in Nepal.

Boudhanath, or Boudha for short, is the site of the largest Buddhist stupa in the world, and also of a large number of Tibetan monks and monasteries. A stupa is a conical structure, usually painted with the eyes of the Buddha overlooking, and Buddhists come to "walk in the clockwise" around it while they pray, click through their beads (like Catholic rosary beads), or recite their mantras. My buddy Ben had recommended Boudha because it's much more laid-back than Thamel, Kathmandu's insane tourist center.


Nepal's pleasantly warm days and cool nights were a welcome change from Bangkok's stifling heat, and I even got to enjoy a thunderstorm my first evening in my simple hotel, run by the next door Tibetan Buddhist monastery. At first, I thought the proprietor was crazy because he wandered around slowly mumbling to himself, but I later figured out he was just reciting his mantras as Buddhist do.


My first full day in Boudha, I was walking clockwise around the stupa along with many others, taking in the atmosphere, when I was approached by a tout, "Raju. Raju from Rajasthan [India]!", asking if I would like my shoes shined. Not only was I not interested, but I was wearing Keen hiking sandals. After I said no, he proceeded to follow me around the stupa and, since his English was pretty good, we were able to have an interesting conversation. He asked again if he could shine my shoes, and this time I said yes because I wanted to continue talking.

"Shoe shining" turned out to be painting my shoes with various vaguely appropriate colors and then buffing them a little, when really what they needed was washing of the mud already accumulated from the filthy dirt streets. He even took the liberty of stitching up what he deemed falling apart sections of my quite new shoes, but I wasn't about to stop him. Part way into the shining, a bearded white guy sat next to us on the sidewalk. After he silently watched Raju at work for a few minutes, I learned that his name was Hammod, he was from Iran, and had become friendly with Raju during his travels there. After the shoe shining and our nice conversation, Raju invited the two of us to his house for chai, or Indian tea. I was enjoying their company and fairly confident that they weren't going to rob or hurt me, so I agreed.


We walked for a few blocks, and then turned down a dirt alley that led to a large open area hidden by the main streets. Raju lived in a very poor ghetto of bamboo shacks along with about thirty other Indian immigrant families. The ghetto had a central water source where the men bathed, and a peripheral bath house for toilets and female bathing. Raju paid about ten dollars a month for ten square feet of concrete, on which he had built a bamboo shack for his wife, baby, cousin, cousin's husband, and himself. Raju was very hospitable as his wife prepared chai for all of us.


After chai, Raju offered to take Hammod and me to Pashupatinath, a large and famous Hindu temple nearby. Raju aspires to be a guide and was eager to practice on us. As we walked along the dirt road to Pashupatinath, children threw water balloons and buckets of water from the tops of buildings as a part of the upcoming Festival of Colors, which involves a lot of water fighting. I taunted the water throwers to try to hit me, and they cheered with laughter when they did. I felt that we went from being poor local and rich tourist to equals when they soaked me, and I laughed back at them as I ran away.


Pashupatinath was closed in parts to non-Hindus, but there was much else to see, and Raju did an excellent job giving us a tour and explaining what was going on. The holy Bagmati River ran past the temple area, and there were seven cremation platforms which were all in various stages of use. We could see a dead woman lying on one of the pyres, circled in procession by her three relatives and then set aflame by one, to burn slowly to ashes and then be swept into the river. Further upstream, there was a group of people around a sick person half lying in the river. Raju explained that when a person was dying and nothing would cure them, they were taken to the river in hopes of healing them. As we watched, they decided the person had died and started carrying him away, presumably to be cremated.


After the tour of Pashupatinath, Raju invited us to his home for dinner. Raju's wife and cousin made us the usual chai and then began preparing food. First the vegetables: shelling peas, chopping cauliflower and green herbs, and carrots. Raju's wife put a battered pot over the fire and combined oil, whole spices, chopped spicy peppers with powdered spices, and the herbs. She used the handle of a small rolling pin to grind garlic and ginger together. A small child ran over to our hut to borrow the one knife.

After the main course had cooked for a while, intermittently being stirred and other ingredients being added, that pot was set aside and another was put on for boiling water for rice with peas. While that was going, Raju's wife mixed flour, salt, and water to make the dough for chapatti. When the rice was ready, they put a flat frying surface on the fire, used their hands and then the rolling pin to make disks of dough, fried them on either side, put them in the coals for a minute to char the bread, and then buttered one side. A final side dish was chopped onion and radish, plus lime for squeezing on. I ate with my (right) hand my most delicious meal in memory, constantly being offered more and reminded of my beer, chai, and water (which I was careful not to drink) next to me.


While she cooked, Raju's wife watched after their 18-month-old daughter, and even nursed her and put her to bed while she cooked. She procured silverware from under the thin mattresses on which we sat. While chopping, she squatted on the concrete floor and threw the trash bits on the floor, to be swept out of the hut later.

Towards the end of the meal, a German man appeared in the village with a sack of rice that he gave to a family. He then joined us in the hut, and explained that he had recently had a near-death experience in the hospital with liver problems, and was now filled with energy to help others. He is a doctor and his wife a violinist. He said that he had no interest in visiting temples or other sites, and wanted to see the real people of Nepal. He said that the people in Nepal are "fucking tough", relating a story of pulling a Nepali woman's tooth with almost no pain killer, something that would be unthinkable in Germany. He was obviously very moved by what he saw, and wanted to help. He wanted to give money or food, but recognized also that more self-sustaining aid was necessary. He agreed to return to the village on Saturday to help whatever people in the village needed medical attention, and then Raju would show him more of the "real" Nepal.

I slowly walked back to my guest house, via a circle around the stupa, with a glowing feeling, both from day's sunburn and the incredible chain of experiences I had had that day.

The rest of my time leading up to my trek was comparatively uneventful. Hammod and I went to another temple, Swayambhunath, this one joint Hindu and Buddhist, with monkeys climbing around everywhere. The actual day of the Festival of Colors I spent at my guest house, hiding from the water and paint fights going on in the streets, but I got to watch from the roof of my building. That evening, after the locals had showered and cleaned up from the day's mess, they turned out en mass to quietly walk around the stupa.


I spent two days before my trek preparing for it, getting a map, iodine for drinking water, hat and gloves, renting a sleeping bag, and figuring out how to get to the beginning of the trek. Most of the preparation I did in Thamel, the tourist and trekking preparation center of Kathmandu, which was insanely busy and oppressive with constant traffic and people trying to get money from you. It made me very glad to have based myself in Boudha.

The transportation between Thamel and Boudha is worth describing. Taxis were available but expensive and required hard bargaining or else you would get really ripped off, so I opted for the more authentic (and slower and less comfortable) local buses and minivans. You stand on the side of the road with traffic going in your direction and buses slow down with their assistants yelling a blur of destinations. You tell the assistant where you're going, and he either lets you on or shakes his head. The buses were like normal buses, but the minivans were a treat. They would wait at a minivan depot until enough passengers got on so they were packed like sardines. Then four more people would somehow squeeze on, as people already on board would reluctantly squish to make room. It's the driver's job to drive, and the assistant's job to collect passengers and money. They were usually able to keep the minivan packed for the whole journey, even as people got on and off. A half hour ride cost about 30 cents.