Food Poisoning in Kathmandu

Buddhist monk praying with his mala beads in the darkness at the top of the Monkey Temple. Of course I asked if I might take his picture, and he was happy to let me.
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I've never seen more clearly what a First World Girl I truly am.

You don't really want to know. But I'll tell you anyway.

He glugged giant pools of olive oil into his hands and then spread the cold oil in various key head-massage places on my scalp.

I was in Kathmandu for five days and something happened the third day in.  But first I have to tell you about my haircut.  At 6pm on Wednesday, my third day in Nepal, I had an appointment to get my hair cut at the Kathmandu Guest House where I was staying. My thought was that perhaps the barbers at KGH could undo the mess that Dolma had lovingly sculpted back in McLeod Ganj.  I was wrong.

After more careful examination, I realized that I had captured a fuller monkey moment than I'd intended.
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I arrived on time and was quickly whisked into one of two barber's chairs, which were little more than black easy chairs with metal arms.  After signing up for a head massage, hair cut, and shampoo, all for a price of less than $10, we commenced.  My guy, whose name I'm ashamed to say that I've forgotten (although it may be just as well because these subsequent remarks might be actionable), was an amiable, plodding sort of cutter who seemed to be sucking on a toothpick for most of the action.

Girl selling marigold garlands to be used for religious offerings at Durbar Square.
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First, he removed my glasses.  Second, he exercised great strength in yanking a string all the way around my neck and tying tight a rather randomly cut piece of black nylon over my stomach but nothing more.  Then, after I communicated with some animation that I just wanted a trim, he commenced.  He took a squirt bottle, such as one would use to freshen one's ferns or dampen one's ironing, and misted the right side of my head.  Then, grunting with effort, he commenced to use a pair of thinning shears with a loose screw to take off the tiniest amount of hair ever seen by humankind.  Little clumps of hair, about the quarter of the length of my pinky nail, soon showered the black nylon.  When it was necessary, he would take a giant suck of toothpick and then pull as hard as he could to straighten my hair with a pink comb.  He seemed to be trying to remove my ears with the comb as well, raking with rare alacrity as he sped past them and into the cutting zone.  (Once he dropped the comb, and undeterred picked it off the floor and continued his art.)  After much squirting, grunting, ear-raking, and tugging, he was done.  I motioned that I especially wanted my bangs cut, and here he compensated for his caution in the overall trim by cutting them back a good inch and a half.  Fine.

Sarah lighting a candle to Ganesh.
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Time for the 15-minute head massage.  The barber reached into a cabinet in this tiny space and pulled out an econo-size clear plastic bottle of olive oil.  Cold olive oil, I might add.  He glugged giant pools of olive oil into his hands and then spread the cold oil in various key head-massage places on my scalp.  After a time longer than you would expect, the scalp was well-treated with oil and it was time to rub deep with the thumbs, humming Nepali pop tunes as he did.

Shiva and consort at Kathmandu Durbar Square.
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The massage ended without noticeable medicinal effect.  In fact, I was most noticeably becoming sick, but owing to food poisoning not the olive oil, although I didn't know that yet.  My barber then motioned me to stand up while he turned around my chair so its back faced the tiny bathroom sink where we were now, apparently, going to rinse out the olive oil.  He motioned for me to sit back down, putting my head on the edge of the sink.  He wasn't happy with my position and so beckoned for me to sink lower in my chair.  And lower.  My hiking boots were slipping on the linoleum.  He helpfully disappeared for a couple of minutes then and returned with a tiny black ottoman which he put next to my feet and gestured for me to put them on it.  I could only imagine putting my feet on it, having my head make one final bump on the edge of the sink before it smashed like a pumpkin on the linoleum floor behind me.  I pretended I didn't understand and kept my soles planted on the floor.

Fascinating old stone with 11 languages on it saying the same thing -- but I couldn't make head nor tails of the English on it. Where did it come from? Why is it on the edge of Durbar Square? No one seemed to know anything more about it, including my $2 guide.
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After a yearlong session of trying to wash out the olive oil with a succession of inadequate shampoos, he pronounced it was time to dry.  (In the meantime, a man had come in to sit in the other chair and employ the other barber in giving him a military haircut, although I think he came in just for a trim, too.  His glasses removed as well, I doubt he know what was happening either.)  Reaching into the same cabinet, he pulled out an electric hair dryer smaller than the average travel hair dryer, its cord wrapped around its trigger a thousand times.  Once he detangled the cord, he picked up the same pink comb that had now been on the floor at least twice and proceeded to rake my ears again.  He was determined to straighten my hair through sheer power of will (and arm).  After a couple of minutes of this, I smiled brightly and said I liked to air dry my hair and that we were done.  He continued on, I realized my language skills were inadequate to the situation, so I simply stood up while the motor in the tiny hair dryer roared its despair at being abandoned.

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I tipped the barber an exorbitant amount and fled back to my room.

My room.  Where I was to spend the next 36 hours curled in fetal position, except when otherwise occupied.  I have honestly never been so sick in a short period of time in my entire life.  Truly.  I mentally traced my sickness to the pile of lukewarm scrambled eggs on toast that I had had for breakfast that morning, or maybe the tour of crematoria I had taken that afternoon.  Whatever the case, I was seriously ill.

It took me a little while to realize the holy men, the sadhus, around various famous temples are charlatans -- both because they actually speak to tourists and they ask for money. Real sadhus would never do either.
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I read Sense and Sensibility all night and all the next day because that was the book I happened to have at this point in my knapsack.  I'm sure I'll never be able to read the book again, much as I was engrossed in Marianne Dashworth's similar tale of illness and convalescence.

Thursday morning, alarmed by a small article in The Himalaya that happened to mention people were getting sick in droves in a faraway corner of Nepal and that three had died, I decided to call a doctor.  The guesthouse doctor on call, a Nepali doctor with excellent bedside manner and rather basic, low-tech diagnostic skills, was carrying an old-fashioned doctor's bag and wearing a brown tweed jacket, despite the 85-degree heat.

Heavy load.
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He sat on the side of my bed and listened to my litany of symptoms:  Throwing up at least a half dozen times overnight, running to the bathroom every twenty minutes, inability to keep juice, soup, and then even water down, extreme nausea, feeling sick to my stomach -- and being sick to my stomach -- without end.  He nodded pleasantly and sympathetically and waited for my ten-minute story to end.  When I finally stopped he asked, "Any vomiting?"  and I realized we were off and running in another "Lost in Translation" moment.

Boy in back alley of a poor neighborhood next to Durbar Square.
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The doctor took my pulse and blood pressure, listened to my heart with his stethoscope, poked around my belly a little, and pronounced it food poisoning.  He said I would feel better in 36 hours.  He looked at my bedside stand and said I didn't need Immodium, Pepto Bismal, or Cipro, that the condition was "self-limiting," and that I just had to let it run its course.  He said to call him anytime I needed him.  Then he asked me for 1500 Nepalese rupees and left.

Strangely, I was reassured by him and his remarks.  And sure enough, like clockwork, in about 24 hours I had my last intense offering to the bathroom gods and goddesses and soon was feeling quite a lot better.  Not quite better enough to leave the Guesthouse at 6am the next morning to catch a plane to Bangkok, but that's what I did anyway.  And in 36 hours, except for being weak and having a very tender belly, I was almost well.

Shiva cutting off heads in a frenzy of destruction
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To end this abbreviated tale of hair and hell, let me share the culturally insensitive remarks that I will never travel to Kathmandu again on my own, or maybe not even with a group of hundreds. You'll see some photographs of sights I enjoyed before I got sick, but not even the temples and Buddhas, nor the two Hindu cremations I saw across the river compensated for the food poisoning I enjoyed on my last few days in a Third World country.  As I said at the start, I've never seen more clearly what a First World Girl I truly am.  I'm in Bangkok as I write this, staying in a Western-style hotel with a real shower (and bathtub!), enjoying taxi cabs that have meters (and functioning seat belts!), and enjoying things like two-hour Thai massages for $15.  I may never come home after the joy of being in Bangkok, I pleasure I savor all the more because of the hellish experience I had in Kathmandu.

Outside Hindu temple.
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And on a lesser note:  Judy says my hair care stories promise a more formal essay, but I suspect they promise only more disasters to come.