First Time Nepal

Well, Kathmandu has just become my adoptive city and, as much as I can see, it is a fascinating place and a real experience, especially if you are fond of misleading touts and insistent sellers. And the very popular line of questioning 'you first time Nepal?', 'you like Nepali people?', 'you married...?'

The cold rainy evening that welcomed me once I stepped out of the plane was as inviting as a stomped toe in a place where silence is strongly reinforced. The room full of local people sticking their faces to the window in order to get a better view of the incoming crowds (also known as gullible tourists) was as reassuring as a bathtub full of sharks but, as I was positively sure, none were waiting for me.

I finally shared a supposedly free taxi to Thamel, the tourist hotspot in the city so it was no surprise in me also sharing a room with a quiet Dutch youth at the Paradise Hotel, where paradise would have packed up and run away as fast as a hunted deer.

The rain was persistent throughout the next day but that didn’t stop me from wandering through Thamel, the place where the tourists mingle mindlessly among tiny taxi cars and rickshaws while negotiating through some 1200 tour companies that bait their customers with shiny maps and internet photos of various treks in Nepal. This notwithstanding the numerous overpriced hotels and restaurants. But when a small battalion of policemen held hands in front of an alley with too many restaurants and bars, and the crowds thickened so that it would have taken a sensible natural disaster to make them disperse, I got completely confused; it turned out that the police had blocked the street and my enlightenment consisted in a really blurry mobile phone photo from an overly excited Nepali woman: an Indian film studio had taken control of the street to film a scene for their upcoming blockbuster. The film studio might more likely ring a bell as Bollywood. So when the director gracefully commanded ‘3, 2, 1, actiooon!’ and the main character appeared in all his glory a mere 50m away from the crowds, dozens of voices united in a clumsy but eardrum popping ‘hurray’ which was eagerly took up for the second and third take until finally the famous (yet, in light of these facts, not terribly bright) actor got everything right for the 10-minute shot.

Night-time Kathmandu is altogether another place than day-time Kathmandu. The sellers and dwellers retreat behind heavy, padlocked gates and out come the entertainers and their recipients: drunken, loud Kathmandu is what the place is called at night. Live music screams from most restaurants, as do the smoky voices of happy-but-not-really-sure-why-must-be-all-those-beers tourists. Guitars compete for the worst Pink Floyd or AC/DC cover but their audiences (Nepali and/or otherwise) appreciate every single note and even join the screeching speakers all around Thamel.

As luck would have it, my first Nepali bus ride only came on the third day in Nepal but I managed to find a reasonably long drive in order to fully appreciate this well-guarded and highly treasured experience. The bus was supposed to take us to the starting point of the Langtang trek some 120 km away and so it did, on winding roads up countless hills, never really driving downwards, but always cannoning passengers from left to right at every slight change of course. I still preserve the opinion that the bus ride was representative and my only argument is that it took about 8 hours and the music (be it Indian or Nepali – didn’t solve the mystery just yet) played the same tunes 3 times over. I can proudly declare that I am by now a fairly good connoisseur of some Nepali (or, maybe Indian) trendy music that’s been deeply engraved in my brain and can be accessed anytime one might fancy some tunes… Although the roads did constitute quite a challenge for the bus driver, it wasn’t all that long a drive: the countless checkpoints along the way, where tourists need show their trekking permits and where the odd Nepali officer has to neatly write down all the data while fashionably sticking his tongue out did, indeed, take a long time. Also, the lunch and brunch break were minor hindrances for the estimated travel time.

Lastly, I needed the reminder but will keep it in mind as long as I’m around here: there shall never be another day with fairly clean fingernails and a normal-sized tongue. The former is because of eating – usually done with the help of all right-handed fingers – while the latter concerns drinking – usually done to steaming-hot tea or coffee, meaning that my taste buds are in need of a long hospitalisation period, as they are no more than carbonized red blotches that dwell somewhere in the small confines of my mouth.