Arriving in Kathmandu was like entering the drug-addled dream of a schizoid dope fiend. Staring at you at the station we’re a dozen or so blood thirsty urchins-eyeing you in anticipation. You can smell the hunt, prey and predator watch each other anticipating, calculating. As soon as you step beyond the airport arrival barriers, almost as if an invisible force field is switched off – the hunt begins. Heading in your direction is a motley crew of rapscallions, there eyes bulging, their neck veins dilated, their nostrils extended, their fingers and arms like raptors. They cling to your rucksack, as if a baton in a relay. As if the first to touch, is the winner of your fare. So begins a lengthy battle of ‘pass me back my rucksack’ – the rucksack is manhandled from one urchin to another, each trying to pull it towards their vehicle
‘Please Sir, come with me, I take you to Shangri La Hotel!’
‘No, please come with me Sir’
‘Where do you want to go sir?’
‘What would you like? Coffee, Tea, Apple pie, Hashish, smack, dope, she girl, sex, brown sugar?’
Brown Sugar?!
Anyway, I stare helplessly on and watch my rucksack disappear in a sea of limbs. The airport officials look on impishly (giggling under their breaths). I see other tourists being greeted by hotel officials from hotels that had been booked ‘before’ landing.
Me? I like to do thing the hard way you see.
Eventually, by some process of osmosis or divine Providence, my bag ends up in some beaten up taxi, with me in the back clutching onto my bag, and the driver sitting at the front, with another man to the right and two men sitting in the back with me.
Stop. Wait a second. Just picture this:
Beaten up Taxi. Driver, drivers associate, me in the back with two guys; one on my left and other on the right. Five of us in the taxi, like sardines, and from what I can tell I’m the only tourist here. Still, I don’t ask questions. This is Kathmandu and I am suffering cultural shock. I close my eyes and repeat:
“Don’t worry, this will pass. You’re just adjusting. You need to adapt. You’ve just arrived and it takes time to adapt”
I open my eyes and look out of the window.
Adapt! Adapt! I see us trammelling though a well-rutted path (road?), I spot a cow spurting out brown shit on the side (did I just see that?) I turn my head to confirm. Little box huts line both sides of the road, their occupants sitting on the steps watching, twiddling their balls. The taxi bumps and tumbles its way through a mesh of fumes, traffic, blaring horns, bikes, pretty girls on bicycles, rickshaws, 4 WDs, donkeys, asses and my retina registers the occasional bust of chicken feathers and a squawk as we play chicken with the er chickens. Children line the roads with dirt caked faces and wolverine eyes. There’s an impish kid being washed on the roadside by its mother, his dark skin covered in foam. Scrawny pariah dog’s loaf around nudging scraps of dirt and orange peel with their noses. Another burst of red-orange feathers hits my retina as another chicken is 'chickened'.
Does this taxi have breaks I wonder? No, we use horns instead. Others use breaks.
‘We show you heavenly pagodas and temples sir, we show you gardens of Babylon, we show you trekking, you want to see Annapurna mountain range? Everest? You want to go trekking sir?!’
We drive into town and past ‘Freak Street’ – Freak Street! Correct, that is the name of the street. This is 'Thamel' the home of hippie Dom and chilled out hippy dudes; escapees from the western world, looking for a little enlightenment in the East. The stores lining the road are a litany of tourist inspired services:
‘Himalaya tours, Everest Base Camp Tours, Professional Trekking company tours, Palmist-Marishi Yogi whatitsname, Soothsayer – 10 dollars – find your future destiny, Tibetan Tours – we arrange guide, travel and sleeping quarters no problem!’
The restaurants seem to have caught the global bug and have adapted well:
'Kathmandu Chinese Restaurant - we serve Chinese, Burgers, Pizzas, Omelettes, Egg Fried Rice, Chips, Steaks, Italina, Tapas, and Haute Cuisine...at your service!'
Blimey.
and
'The Monk Bar - Espressos, Cappuchinos, English and American coffees, finest cakes and apple pies'
The hip bars are bursting with western music. Bob Marley and Bob Dylan – crooning in a haze of hashish. Women walk around in gypsy attired outfits, orange pyjamas, tops with hanging beads, a shower of reds and greens.
You spy Mongol faces, Indian faces, Chinese, western, Kazakhstani, smooth burnished Mongolian types, small noses, large hooked one’s, odd racial mixes, mongrel mixtures of the genes that this melting pot has inspired. The locals are very pretty. The women are charming with high cheekbones and thin waists. The whole place feels like a medieval town, people dressed in all manner of theatrical costumes, large green hats like those pointed ones worn by magicians (but these are for real), colourful waistcoats adorned with little glass mirrors and baubles that twinkle in the sunshine, some of the men wear highly adorned semi-circular daggers with ornate handles and curved tips. Monks sprawl across the roads on non-stop pilgrimages to Lhasa. The buildings are rickety lean too's, like cardboard cut outs, every so often you notice the golden head of a temple stupa sprouting from behind the roofs. Kathmandu has more temples per square area then anywhere in the world. Monks importuning for alms, itinerant street hawkers, roadside street sellers. If there’s a market for something somebody’s selling it.
For many years, when Tibet was closed to foreigners, the Himalayan Kingdom of Nepal has served as a kind of second hand or poor brother of Tibet. It’s done well. 75% of the GDP now depends on foreigners. But at what cost? Lost of innocence and a form of modern imperialism; not as brutish a face as the previous incarnation but imperialism nonetheless.
For now, I enter my 8 dollar a day guesthouse, with en-suite luke warm shower no less, unflushible toilet bowl, and a musty smelling room and bed sheets that smell of soap. I take off my shoes, socks and fall into blissful sleep. I wake up before dawn when the sky is dark blue and the spectral outlines of the buildings stand out from the sky. I head out for an early morning walk. It’s quiet. No squawking hustlers. Rickshaws asleep. Shop fronts asleep. Its an eery to the carnage of the day. Little children with starched clean outfits heading for the temple to make offerings to the gods; old women walking sagely; the patter of early morning domestic life; children getting ready for school; a mother combing her daughter; the aroma of breakfast. A different world now. Less touristy and you feel the Nepalese are more themselves carrying out their chores while the tourists sleep…this is the real Nepal you never see in the hustle and pungent noise and din of the day when the bright light removes shadows and bleeds colours and illuminates only a harsh unreality.
