Nepal!

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We arrived in Kathmandu after a grueling tour of Rajistan, looking for a place to rest our feet and perhaps take a warm shower. We actually got both, for a little while anyway, as we arrived at my Aunts family’s hotel in the outskirts of the city in a Tibetan enclave called Bouddha. Once the starting and stopping place for Tibetan traders, it is now a refuge for the Tibetans driven from their country by the Chinese occupation. My Aunt and her family were amongst these refugees in the sixties and while she has moved on to Los Angeles and married my uncle, her family operates a large hotel catering mostly to Tibetan Buddhist monks. We have been staying in their little house behind the hotel, safely tucked away from the extreme hustle and the noisy bustle of the city. We had the place to ourselves for almost exactly 24 hours before being joined by none other than my mother. We had a tearful reunion as she staggered out of the small airport much as we had a day earlier. My aunt united us with her ‘sister’ Pabitra, actually a family friend, who would be looking after us, making sure we didn’t fall into any of the large number of large holes in the middle of Kathmandu’s streets.

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I had pictured Kathmandu as less urban than it is. Rarely are buildings higher than 5 stories, and rarely is there an elevator to assist in accessing them, but they are closely packed for miles and miles in either direction from the center of town. The main square, Durbar Square, is at the center and a thousand very narrow and extremely crowded streets spiderweb away from this epicenter. At some point, some of the smaller brick buildings were torn down and replaced by ridiculous structures that have absolutely no architectural appeal at all. Its sad because the native red brick buildings of the Kathmandu valley are very beautiful with detailed window and pillar carvings, tiled or thatched roves. The newer buildings are on my hit list of places to destroy when remaking civilization to my desires.

I am surrounded by maroon cloaked monks who have come from one of the many surrounding monasteries to use the internet

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With Pabitra’s help, the three of us settled in to life in Bouddha. We learned where to get groceries, how to cook them, and how to leave for the greater sprawling city beyond. My aunt’s parents speak almost no English. Well, none, and we speak even less Tibetan or Nepali, but never the less we got along by drinking tea and smiling and laughing and playing together with their charming puppies that run from person to person looking cheerfully for food. Magda and I bought a Tibetan phrase book and basically learned how to say Hello and Thank You, the two most important things to know in any language. These scraps took us some ways towards family bonding, though “Daddy” as everyone calls him, is almost completely deaf so it almost doesn’t matter what language we speak, the communication barrier is high. The girls (I hesitate in my western mindframe to call them servants but that is what they are) who work at the hotel brought us food and warm drink for the first few nights as we settled in to Nepali life and the delicious food that comes with it. Mostly the cuisine in the Hotel is Tibetan, which works out well because my Mom is quite sensitive to anything that has spice, color or taste for that matter, and Tibetan food turns out to be very mild in comparison to its southern, more Indian flavored, neighbor. After eating quite well for a few nights, we arranged with the desk clerk to come and cook for us and gave him a small sum to purchase food for the coming days. This worked out poorly from the start as we had told him enthusiastically that we wanted real Nepali food, whatever he feeds his family. The resulting dish blew the back of our heads off with chilis and put my Mom back several years in her struggle towards proper digestion. After several attempts to feed us, poor Indra (that’s his name) gave up and disappeared from the hotel, presumably to drink away the rest of the grocery money. I honestly hope that is where he went, and that he’ll come back, since the family seems a little concerned and we feel somewhat responsible.

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Our days are filled with short day trips into and around Kathmandu. The city is endlessly explorable with its tangle of crowded lanes, punctuated by peaceful temple courtyards. Magnificent structures from the time of Kings surround and populate the main square, mostly Hindu temples that try to outdo each other with extravagant ornamentation. Looking carefully into the eaves occasionally reveal erotic relief carvings that would shock a sailor, or even a Chelsea boy dressed up as a sailor. There are mixed theories as to why these tantric motifs are there, but I’m glad they are, as like Nepali cooking, they spice up a walk through these holy places considerably.

Pabitra's Husband, the Lama
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When Pabitra is with us we go on missions to find cheap Nepali sweaters or authentic Tibetan cuisine. She finds side alleys and interesting shops for us to peruse. However, I found that following her black haired head through massive throngs of black haired people made me extremely nervous and one night I even followed her quite some ways in my sleep. My mom started to object though to the daily routine of catching an overcrowded and very bumber ride on the local buses, which are often not buses at all but three wheeled tuktuks with minimal protection from the traffic madhouse that surrounds you. The traffic is so bad that there is rarely any real danger of injury from a collision, as none of the colliding parties could ever make contact with any real speed. Never the less, Magda and I were soon venturing into the city on our own, without Pabrita’s help, which is of course the best way to make familiar an unfamiliar place.

Holy Man in Bouddha
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Let me digress a little. Today I’m actually typing at an internet café, as the connection speeds are decent and the cost is low. Being in the Tibetan enclave that we are in, I am surrounded by maroon cloaked monks who have come from one of the many surrounding monasteries to use the internet. It is excellent to be here. Magda, three monks down, is buying train tickets via the net for our return trip to India. For some reason, Christmas in that Hindu country is a very busy travel time, and it is some trouble to procure the tickets we need to re-enter Rajistan, to spend the holidays with a new couch surfer friend and his family.

Selling Butter Candles During the Blackout
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The light is failing, and in a half an hour the lights will go out in the whole neighborhood, as it is Bouddha’s turn for the second night in a row to go powerless for several hours in order to light the rest of the city. It is called, “load sharing” and it is actually my favorite time of the day if we are prepared for it. The lights shut off accompanied by a collective sigh from the whole area. Candles and gas lamps are quickly lit and the alleyways take on the feel of Elizabethan England, if Elizabethan England had LED lights to help guide the way after dark. Despite the pitch blackened streets, motorcycles still race through the crows at dangerous speeds, their brakelights illuminating the red monks robes like blood colored candles. It is a lovely time to walk the crumbling streets. The ladies behind the counters at the many butchers stalls are lit from below by flame that also illuminates the day’s selection of meat. Shadows are cast on the waiting mongrels below, sleeping and licking their lips in anticipation of the end of the day’s business. Stacks of manderines and the fruit stands are similarily lit, a warm candlight bathing the candle side oranges in intense light, the other sides of the little spheres in blackness. Somewhere between the highlight and the shadow is the magic of the walk through streets without power, pedestrians stumbling on overturned cobblestones. I’d paint it if I could, since even photography will fail in that low light. Each stall is already a Chiaroscuro painting, the whole street a gallery.

Family
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Aside from walking around the city and being assaulted and enticed via all our senses we’ve taken many day trips to small traditional Nawari (Kathmandu Valley people) villages and one day trek to three monasteries perched in the high hills surrounding Bouddha. The Himalayas are a constant and sometimes fleeting attraction. White peaks hide behind green hills, poking out occasionally if they aren’t maddeningly hidden by clouds. When you do catch sight of one of the majestic peaks, perhaps from the top of a hill that has been transformed into a Buddhist sanctuary it is the closest I’ve come to a spiritual experience on this trip. The scarcity of this experience, thanks to the low angle and the smog of Kathmandu is what makes the occasional sight special.

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Magda and I found ourselves wanting more in this city at the foot of the world’s greatest mountain range, and rode a bus two hours into the hills at the rim of the valley to a small village called Dhulikel. An ancient Nawari town, it still is mostly made up of the indigenous brick architecture and narrow, vehicle-less streets. Sorry, actually you are never free of the stray motorcycle here. You can be peacefully appreciating the carvings on a crumbling house facade when an earsplitting toot and the rev of an engine will make you jump out of your shoes and into the path of an oncoming motorcycle. You are never safe.

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The other attraction of the town is a nice hike up into the surrounding hills, up a long wide staircase to a Hindu shrine with a spectacular view of the mountains. We chose only to stay a few moments after our hearts slowed down, the climb is steep and the altitude high, since the army has literally entrenched itself on this tall lookout. We stepped over bunkers and past loaded machine guns to return down the small steep climb, and made our way to a restaurant that is perched on the edge of a steep dropoff. We had lunch with the mountains, and then wound down a path that stuck to the spine of the ridge, looking down on little farms that also stuck precariously to the hill, surrounded by steeply stepped rice and mustard fields that proceed downwards like a topographical map of Nepal.

Elephants at Durbar Square, Patan
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On another day trip, the one that convinced my Mom to give up buses, Pabitra took us to a little town named Pharping that houses one of the holiest Buddhist sites in Nepal and a Hindu Blood sacrifice temple. The Buddhist site was interesting, but you can guess which one left us most impressed. Down in the depths of a spooky hollow, moss covered steps lead down to a stream that runs through a complex of dilapidated temples and shrines. As non-Hindus, we weren’t able to technically enter the main shrine, to one of Hinduisms scariest gods, but we were able to see the corpses of donkeys and chickens, having been sacrificed at the alter, being dragged to the stream for cleaning and butchering. Fresh, iridescent red blood was splattered on the paving stones and a grey and black crow flew too close to me carrying the severed head of a chicken. It was great! We were able to poke our heads over the wall of the temple, no one seemed to mind, to see the blood splattered alters, stained a permanent crimson. It was a quiet day there though, apparently on Saturdays and Tuesdays, the bloodbath gets really messy, as does the traffic and paths to the sacrifice. Lines of animals, dumbly waiting to get off-ed, clog the stairways. But the day we were there we came and left easily, slightly troubled by a certain headless donkey that was leaving it’s thinking box behind. Forever.