Today (yesterday now?) was my last day in Nepal. I am writing this now from the Singapore airport. I realize that I haven’t been very good about updating, especially on things like Mustang and Langtang where I promised more info would come…..and it never did. I just spent three absolutely crazy days in Varanasi (Benares, India) and probably won’t mention it at all. Just call me. I know that I’ve pretty much failed to give a holistic picture the last four months of my life, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like to reminisce. I’m still digesting things and will be for a long time, I think. It may help if you, yes, you! wanted to call and chat.
Anyway, I guess my last day is pretty representative of Kathmandu so I might as well give you all that at least.
I spent the night in a Guest house in Kathmandu with my friend Will, one of the two other students from my program still in Nepal (official school ended over a week ago and the others flew home then). The assortment of busses and trains you have to take to get from Benares to Kathmandu had been hectic and tardy so I had only made it back to the city that morning. I spent the day saying goodbyes and running errands so I hadn’t really finished packing, so I woke up early and walked over to a friend’s house where I had stored most of my stuff while I was in India.
Load shedding in Kathmandu has begun in earnest so there was no power. Power cuts are up to about eight hours a day but Rinzi is lucky and has a generator in the back. Unfortunately, a member of the Nepali Congress (a minority political party) had been stabbed to death in a prison fight and the Moaist government was refusing to acknowledge him as a Martyr. In retaliation the NC called a Bandh, or nationwide strike, in which services of all kinds are shut down. Roadblocks are set up by NC sympathizers, schools are closed, and any motorists on the road are attacked. Massive strikes were a tactic used heavily by the Maoists before they gained power and, though the last few months had been thankfully pretty quiet, it’s actually quite common. The city gets pretty much shut down, which is cool because everyone is out walking everywhere, but pretty lame when you have to go to the airport. The Bandh had been going for several days and petrol stations had been shut down, so it also meant there was no fuel for the generator and thus, despite backups, there was no power. This is very, very Nepali.
I planned to meet Rhys at Rinzi’s at 8am so tbat we could start walking but he was running on Nepali time and was close to 45 minutes late. It didn’t turn out to be a big deal and I enjoyed just sitting around with Rinzi who shared half of his breakfast with m and made a thermos of milk tea which even he admitted had too much sugar in it. Too-sweet milk tea and generosity are Nepali staples. When Rhys did arrive we said our final goodbyes and started walking. It was awful. We had so much stuff and my duffle was super awkward to carry around. But no problem. We found Dilli Barja (approximate spelling), a porter, two minutes into the walk. He wanted $6 to carry my unweildly 27kg bag the hour to the airport. Like the stingy guys we’ve become, Rhys and I haggled him down to $3 and continued on what had become a much more pleasant walk. We even ran into a Tibetan looking man in the last few Kilometers before the airport and started talking to him in Tibetan. I think he thought it was pretty funny because he offered to wheel Rhys’s big suitcase the rest of the way. Who needs a taxi to live the high life anyway?
I think walking out of Kathmandu ended up being a good thing: kind of prolonged the goodbye, but I was still quite sad to leave, and landing in Singapore didn’t exactly soften the blow. It’s hard to imagine a more different place, really. OH MY GOD CUSTOMER SERVICE HERE IS UNBELIEVABLE. People talk about culture shock, as Rhys said, ‘more like culture orgasm.’
We landed around 9:00 in the evening but rather than sleep we threw our bags in a locker and were on a metro headed into city center by 9:40. Within three minutes of exiting the station we saw a lamborgini tear around a corner and jet off into the darkness. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand I’m not in the 13th poorest country in the world anymore.
Still, some things are the same everywhere. We were starving so we headed to the riverside and looked at the menu of the first restaurant we came to. It was real pricey but the hostess assured us that everything on the river was about that expensive and convinced us to stay with a couple of free beers. She was lying. Good old scammers. You’d thing I would have learned. We ended up dropping an outrageous amount of money but I got to eat 26 baby squid in honey sauce, half a barbeque stingray, and a clam in a bamboo shoot.
Feeling poor, but still in a celebratory mood we bought the cheapest bottle of champaign available at a minimart, walked to the pier, and spent our last night in Asia just sitting around watching giant cargo ships being unloaded by equally giant crane/mover things.
Oh, and then we tried to take the metro back but turns it’s closed at 2:30am! Who knew? We got sundaes at Mcdonalds and played hackey sack outside until rhys fell asleep using the curb as a pillow. I got a coffee and read the newspaper until the metro opened back up at 6 and we could go back to the airport.
Well, now you’re all up to date and my plane is boarding. No picture because I’m afraid it won’t load in time, but know that I’m looking forward to getting back and seeing all of you so so much. LAX (and some sleep) here we come.
David
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