Chapter Summaries
PART VII
Himalyan Times
In the Kingdom of Nepal
Chapter 32
THE EMERAL
WATERS OF POKHARA
Made paranoid by lightning
watched from my hotel room just inside the Nepalese border, I reluctantly decide to
by-pass Lumbini, the birthplace of the Indian philosopher, Gautama – Buddha –
and make tracks for Pokhara and Kathmandu.
But the threat of
rain disappears with the clouds and the 125-mile ride to Pokhara is filled with
spectacular vistas of the Himalayan foothills. Melawend and I ride across the narrow
fertile Terai then go suddenly up, at Butwal, into the Siwalik hills and higher still into
the Mahabharat Range. It’s an Asian Switzerland with steep green hills flecked
with mud-brick and thatch farmhouses skirted by precariously perched terraces. There is
evidence of recent washouts. At scenic Tansen, Melawend breaks down and several
Nepalese children appear as if from nowhere to help in the repair. The road dives to
the Kali Gandaki River and rises again before it descends finally into the Pokhara Valley.
This segment looks at he loss of
innocence of this beautiful valley, and the rest of Nepal, after the country opened its
doors to the world in the 1950’s. King Birendra is making efforts to have
Nepal declared a "Zone of Peace" but the local zone commissioner seems
indifferent and impatient with yet another shoestring traveler (or perhaps it is just
over-sensitivity on the part of a weary wanderer).
The jewel of Pokhara
is the emerald water of Phewa Lake. It is hung on the studded necklace of the
Annapurnas with Macchapuchhare, "the fish-tail mountain" at its clasp – the
seductive beauty of the area inspires hyperbole. Hindu pilgrims visit the tiny
Varahi Temple on a tiny island in the lake. Here an Indian holy man talks of his
native Rajasthan. Rowing a "comfortable boat", I see more – water
buffalo chopping on the flats, native women and children washing clothes and bathing along
the shore and people lounging at cottages anchored to the lush green hills. A bronze
girl from Barcelona swims by and says she is renting one of the cottages for about $10 a
month.
Budget hotels simple restaurants and kiosks filled with Tibetan
goods, books, "luxury coach" bus tickets and Coca-Cola, string the northeasterly
shore. Young Indian and western tourists stroll or ride bicycles along the narrow
main road by the lake. Later-day, would-be hippies are seen on the road while a few
graying originals sip tea in the shadows of café verandas. Western music blares
from the Don’t Cross Me By Restaurant. And in this shoestring gathering place,
I encounter an old friend, Tal Sella, the friendly wandering Jew I met in Nairobi. I
learn something of doors closed to travelling Israelis.
With water buffalo wandering past
us outside Pokhara Gate, I check Melawend’s load and we head for Kathmandu.
Chapter 33
WHAT TO DO IN KATHMANDU
Melawend
and I weave along the Chinese-built Prithavi Highway as it follows the courses of three
rivers to Kathmandu. Along the way, I spot a fine image of rural Nepal – a clean,
large Nepali farmhouse in a luxuriant green mountainous setting. Click.
Then I turn my camera away respectfully when I see below me, next to the grade up to the
road, a beautiful naked Nepalese girl bathing in tree-sheltered stream. Behind me, two
short leather-skinned, cigarette-puffing women looking like walking bushes under their
heavy load of a leafy fodder, pose most willingly.
As I sip a Coke at a roadside
shop, I see a familiar person waving as he hangs precariously out the window of an old
rocking bus as it thunders past – timid Rodney from Delhi. And while in India I
wove around people, animals and carts, here it’s potholes, all the remaining 50
miles. Near Kathmandu, the road suddenly becomes excellent as it winds up into the clouds
beside endless terraces before descending into the Kathmandu Valley.
The capital of Nepal is to be
home for the next two weeks or so, so I believe, enough time to secure sponsorship for
onward passage. I set up in the quiet recesses of Hotel Shakti in the heart of the
ancient city. I meet Kathmandu’s friendly mayor in his spartan office in the
city panchayat (city hall) and then begin exploring the valley.
While
rural Nepal seemed virtually untouched by the outside world, Kathmandu has the look of a
decaying Shangril-la with the twentieth century forcing its way through the cracks in its
walls. Durbar Square, with its stone images, ornate pagodas and temples and masterly
woodcarving on the Kumari Devi – home of the living goddess – is flooded some
days by red-faced tourists. Cows rest where they want, even in the middle of busy
streets. In narrow alleys of ancient brick buildings fractured by earthquakes,
kiosks offer Coca-Cola and posters of a demure Phoebe Cates and a glaring Arnold (Conan)
Schwarzenegger. Modern 
hotels sit on
manicured lots along the cluttered byways and sprawl on the outskirts. At lofty
Swayambhunath, the exquisite historic "monkey temple", families of aggressive
protective primates accept my presence. In a room above a shop beside the huge
white stupa, four lovely sisters who model for me against the beauty of the temple and
valley, show off their prized possession – a Sony television.
Kathmandu whipsaws my senses in a
bizarre carnival of decrepitude, confused ambition and western excess. On the filthy
crumbling streets, there are small ancient temples with ochre-pasted stone idols. There
are crowded pie emporiums on Pig Alley. There are substantial new office buildings
with rubbly overgrown courtyards and rubbly empty rooms. The Ministry of tourism has
a mouse-ridden waiting room with a single bare light bulb in the waiting area, dirty walls
and old mismatched chairs. The streets are teeming with bicycles and pedicabs and
rattly compact cars – all with ever-clanging bells and buzzing horns that no one
heeds. The sidewalks are filled with Nepalese men in the colorful topis (the
traditional cap), women in flowing saris, ragged beggars artful and wretched, sunburned
backpackers and even a few lanky old hippies still dressed in the psychedelic pajamas of
the 1960’s.
It is a city of fifty-cent
"finger chips" and 10-dollar bottles of Kraft Miracle Whip. Its atmosphere
is pungent of spices and old cooking oil and human excrement, of engine exhaust and
choking dust that is all briefly purged by a sudden refreshing monsoon. It seems
like a biblical downpour and I wonder if there is a man out there named Noah who is
looking for lumber. The muddy streets turn into rivers. Children wearing only soiled
T-shirts frolic in the flood that also washes away open sewage. In the night, there
are families in candlelit rooms with dirt floors and there is a sense of closeness.
On a ghetto blaster near the hotel, Stevie Wonder sings "Part-time Lover."
There is the clanging of wedding processions in the dark and the noisy nocturnal
grapevine of dogs that ceases only with the call of roosters. And where else could
one go to a cramped local restaurant, sit next to a portrait of a skeletal fasting Buddha,
down a big plate of lasagna with milk tea and apple crumble pie for dessert while
listening to Lionel Richie sing "Truly"?
For me, this convoluted medieval
dreamworld soon becomes a nightmare of buck-passing bureaucracy and ravaging bacillary
dysentery. With a gray gaunt face that looks like something had sucked all the blood
and air out of me, I seek high-level meetings with national airline officials, eventually
seeing the Minister of Tourism himself. I feel optimistic that they would negotiate
onward passage: "Yes, let him die in some other country," my distorted
imagination hears them saying to themselves. But the kindly minister is soon
implicated in scandal. Airline executives seem mostly annoyed by my
persistence.
For a month an a half, much of my
free time is spent on my hotel bed, staring at the octagonal design in the ceiling and
listening to dogs barking or the pounding of rain. Frequent runs to the common
bathroom augment misery. Sad I feel to search for optimism amid the leavings in the
toilet bowl. Truly ill and homesick for the first time, I look soulfully upon things
so often taken for granted, such as love and home. It occurs to me that I might not
know either again.
Prospects for getting out of
Nepal look as grim as I do. I am convinced that I will spend the rest of my life
trying to get out of here. And I wonder: in a developing country, can you still call
911? But I think of Dad and hear him say: "And this too shall pass."
In this time, I do a lot of soul
searching. I wonder if I've been programming myself for failure - all that
stratified quicksand becoming the stage upon which we act. I feel I am loosing track
of the heavy investment I've made thus far in my Odyssey, and I wonder what you loose
first, your principal or your interest. I begin to realize that one way or another
you definitely loose your perspective.
And what of all this
journal-keeping? Lately they were becoming just a blotter for self-pity.
But I also begin to see journals as canvas for dreams, a chart for the voyage ahead, a
drawing board for plans... and a heirloom record for a life worth recording.
And what of happiness? The
problem was not recognizing when you are truly happy: for Gods sake - here I was in Nepal,
one of the most beautiful and intriguing countries in the world. Thought ill and
distraught over onward passage, I start to enjoy Kathmandu, at least in my mind - the
sights, the people, the sunshine, even the rain - the place that has so much
potential. And I remember the wisdom of Kahlil Gibran and other philosphers.
Finally, the dysenteric battle is
won and I write a correspondent’s report – a humourous militaristic parody of
the ordeal in contrast to the bravado over amoebic dysentery as reported by Hemingway in
"A.D. in Africa: A Tanganyika Letter".
I know I have to do something.
I tell myself: You'd better decide what the hell you're going to do, for
you can't afford just to dream or to live on maybes anymore.
As in England, it seems someone
is indeed watching over me. An anonymous benefactor sees to it that I get onward
passage. Also, in what become the final days in Nepal, I meet Laxman Tuladhar, manager of
the Honda division of a local family’s conglomerate empire. After a fine dinner
of momos with Laxman and his family, Laxman and I stand on the
roof of his home and look at the stars, the indigo foothills and the light-flecked valley,
so much of it that I must leave unexplored. We make a pact to do just that should I
be fortunate enough to return someday.
The chapter concludes with me
waiting at Tribhuvan Airport in eager anticipation of change – the ultra-clean,
high-tech island paradise of the modern kind – Singapore.
