Kathmandu

Here I am, in Kathmandu, roof-top of the world. I have been thinking about all kinds of witty remarks to write about this place - it's a great place to be, more fun than India, which is a lot poorer, dirtier and generally worse off.

But I haven't really been in the mood for witty sayings lately, because of everything that's going on between Bush and Iraq. I've been trying to ignore news in general ever since I got to India, but it's getting increasingly harder to do that, and now I've completely broken down and resorted to watching CNN at least once every day, just to make sure that the entire world hasn't blown up yet. You do get the feeling here, that something like this could happen without you noticing it...

I'm staying in Thamel, the tourist village of Kathmandu. This must be the average Westerner's dream of the exotic east. It makes me think of what San Francisco must have been like in the late sixties. I'm staying at Hotel Changjiang, which is just opposite Hotel California (yes, just like the song), and where the only television speaks nothing but Chinese. And to round out the '60's effect, there is Alice's Restaurant just up the road, where they serve (just like all the other restaurants and cafes here) "Set Breakfast", which is your typical American breakfast of eggs, toast & coffee (you pay extra for the OJ, sausages, ham & bacon). Just so you understand, the locals would never eat this stuff.

As you walk down the streets, you get various '60's songs wafting out of the many music shops, together with "Om Mane Padme Hum" meditation tunes. It is some three or four (or five or more) solid blocks of nothing but tourist shops - but the atmosphere isn't so much touristy as laid-back - shall I say "hippie" atmosphere? Besides the ethnic arts & crafts shops, jewelery stores (unbelievably large rocks, they have), music shops, trekkers' supply stores (don't forget how close we are to Everest), book stores, thanka shops (thankas are Tibetan devotional wall hangings, and incredibly beautiful), internet cafes, restaurants, hotels, etc.; you have men, women & children peddling Nepalese embroidered bags, flutes, fiddles & board games on the street. Every once in a while, a man will saunter past you, muttering "hash, grass", in hopes that you will stop and ask him for some. Just about every shopkeeper you pass will try to "Excuse me, madam" into their shop, so you have to get used to not answering them at all (otherwise you will be doing nothing but trying to shake off all the would-be merchants).

The first thing that hit me when we arrived here was not just that the pavement of the street connects all the way up to the sidewalk, but that there is a pavement at all, and a sidewalk!! Not just heaps of dirt & dust connecting with cow-manure. (You have to remember that I came here straight from Bihar, where - if symbols really reflected truth - the state emblem would be the cow-pie, and the state "bird" would be the mosquito.) I spent the first couple of days telling my traveling companion: "Look - there's nobody pissing in the streets!!", "Listen - nobody's honking their horns!!". I have since graduated to being a spoilt brat, sending the waiter back to fry me some new eggs, because the ones he brought had hard yellows, and not runny, the way I like them. Amazing how quickly a person can adapt, isn't it? The waiters here all greet you like their best friend whenever you are anywhere near their restaurants, and they always serve you with their right hand, touching their right elbow with their left hand in a gesture of respect or some such thing. I'm not sure I really like all this servility (is this the word I want?), but you can't escape the fact that it is extremely comfortable. I think I'll survive.

Now that I think about it, I never wrote you about the overnight visit I made to the home of a friend in Bihar, about a month ago. (This has nothing to do with Kathmandu, but I really want to tell you about it, and it is an interesting contrast.) We hired a car and drove off, if you can call that amount of bumping in and out of potholes "driving". As a matter of fact, the driver often chose to drive on the dirt side-of-the-road, because that bit actually had less holes, and was smoother riding. At some point, we departed the "paved road" (jokingly called so because you could see little bits of pavement here and there in between the potholes and dirt) - and continued driving on a "dirt road" (called so because they didn't even try to pretend it was paved), which actually looked more like a goat path (and probably was). This road leads to the mountains, and continues alongside the mountains, until it goes over a ditch and into the village.

Now, the only difference between the village and the road leading up to it, is that - along the road, the mud and the dirt stay at ground level, while in the village, they get to rise - more or less vertically - into forming walls that hold up the grass roofs. We drove past several of these mud houses, and finally stopped when we reached another ditch that the car could not get through (even with the physical help of the many village children who were crowding around). So we took our bags, locked the car, and proceeded on foot, surrounded by any number of children, brown with both their natural coloring and with dust.

At some point, I saw what must have been a menagerie (if that is the word I want), because it was half open, with a couple of wooden poles instead of one of the walls, a pile of straw at one end, and a cow (or was it a water-buffalo?) inside, complete with all the accompanying muck and smell. This is where we turned in. The far wall had an opening in it. This led to a small room, with another opening (don't talk about doors, just openings) - which led to a courtyard, surrounded by several small rooms.

A few years ago, I took a tour-guide course, in which I learned, among other things, about the kind of house that the pre-biblical inhabitants of Israel lived in. They built a series of rooms (out of mud and cow-dung) in a square around a courtyard. The rooms were small (about half the size of a typical Israeli bedroom, which isn't too big to begin with), with no windows, and most of the (extended) family's life was led in the courtyard, where the cooking was done. If you want to see exactly how life was led back then, I can show you the villages where it's done now.

We sat down in the family courtyard, and most of the village's children (and a large number of the adults) crowded in, and stood staring at the white-skinned lady. Two or three of them knew a couple of words in English, so I got "hello"ed quite a lot. Then Raju's mother set out some food on the table made of a few old and splintering wood planks. Not only did we sit on the same table as we were eating (using our right hands as cutlery), but Raju's mother, like so many people who prefer to sit on their haunches, perched like a bird with her feet on the table's edge, watching us.

Later, Raju's sister took me walking through the fields, and gave me a ring from her finger and the earrings off her ears. She wouldn't take them back, and there was no way I could explain to her that I wouldn't wear them, because her english was limited to "Hello" and "OK".

After sundown, all the women crowded in the courtyard, pounding a small drum and singing, because it was the wedding night of a young girl who was in one of the rooms, waiting for her new husband. He was scheduled to appear sometime in the early morning hours, and snatch his new bride away to their new home. I must admit that I was too tired to stay up and watch this happen, so I went into the room where Raju was born, and lay down on the cot they saved for me. The cot is a wooden frame, with ropes tied to it, making a hammock, and if you're lucky - a blanket on the hammock as a cushion.

When I climbed in, my foot touched something soft and warm, and I started, but it was only a couple of the household children who had crept in under the blanket. Raju's mother moved them into the bed next to me, where they joined a few more kids, and then sat down to look at me some more (they never did get tired of looking at me, and I didn't do any parlor tricks or anything). Another one of the little girls of the family climbed into bed with me, and that is how we slept, wakened occasionally by the mother and baby who were sleeping on the floor next to us.

The number of people living in this little conglomerate of a home can be measured by the fact that all of us - some 6 or 7 people – were sleeping in one room (remember the size of it?), and there were about 3 or 4 rooms like this around the courtyard, all with a similar number of inhabitants. It took more than a week for all the insect bites and assorted rashes that I accumulated in that one night, to calm down.

This village (like so many others in Bihar) has no school, which brings to mind another interesting point. Most tea-shops have small children working in them. Someone mentioned to me that it was outrageous that these children weren't in school, but at that time, my thoughts were that these children were lucky to have a place to stay, and a relatively sure source of food and clothing.

As you can see, I'm still obsessed with the poverty in Bihar, even when I'm ordering waiters around in Kathmandu. And - believe it or not – I can't wait to get back there. Somebody should do a study...