Kathmandu Adieu

The only thing worse than trying to navigate Kathmandu streets is trying to find your way around them in the dark. Without enough power to run the city 24/7, there are scheduled blackouts and some unscheduled ones as well. The Kathmandu clan seems to handle this as amusement, and it lends a romantic candle glow ambiance to the already exotic. After the first time feeling my way down pitch blackness I learned to pack a flashlight as standard equipment when leaving in the daytime, just in case the evening sneaked up.

Even in full daylight, it's sometimes hard to see the smaller statues and stupas, the tiny ones dotting the city streets or tucked into dirty corners, because they're usually covered in merchandise or garbage, or used as a perch for a clutch of chatty men drinking their glasses of tea. I'm taken by the open affection men and young boys have for each other in this culture, arms draped around necks, or holding onto to a friend in contrast to male bonding in America that involves no touching, except in football games, and affection is displayed by hooting together with a case of beer (endearing nonetheless...)

Weary from crowd surfing in the heat I duck into Pilgrims Bookstore, the largest in Nepal, and explore its rambling room after room finally discovering a hidden oasis in the back garden vegetarian restaurant. Trancing out in the late afternoon, pleasantly satiated with fine Biryani and yak curd, Indian music and pungent sweet incense, it's an effort to disengage from the dream and reenter the mad world of Kathmandu to complete the trek necessity list.

It's hard enough to get the mandatory liquids and gels past the Improper Fluids Police at the airports so I wasn't taking any chances with trying to bring my knife in carry-on luggage. You absolutely must have a knife if you're hiking, the shop owner agreed and seeing a sale he pulled out several. The first one nearly slices the tip of my little finger off. I foolishly hadn't considered that switchblades were legal in other countries. More blood than bad, the store owner ran palely to get a bandage.

“Who is your guide?” the asked as he wrapped the bandaide around my wound.
“I'm not using a guide. I hike solo,” I knew I was in for an argument and a guide sales pitch. It was standard procedure ­ they want to be, or find, a guide for you ­ not because they're worried, but because they all need work. Although, after seeing how adept my blade skills were, he might have been seriously concerned as to my trekking abilities. I buy a smaller knife with less kick.

Back at the happy Hotel Karma, they're still unconvinced that I'm trekking solo. Women just don't do that unless they're natives hauling loads of wood or tending flocks. They think I've hired a sherpa without their help, cutting them out of the trickle down loop of funding.

“I need to leave tomorrow. Can you book a bus ticket and call these hotels in Pokhara for me?” I hand the desk clerk the list of guest house names I researched online.
“Sure, no problem,” is always the answer with a smile. That evening he hands me a bus ticket and a brochure from a hotel not on my list, telling me that there were no vacancies in any of the places I gave him... but he just happens to know the owner of the Grand Holiday Hotel lakeside in this portal town to the trail heads. The brochure looks nice and I'm grateful to have everything arranged with an early morning departure plan, even if I don't think all those hotels on my list were booked.

In the morning he walks me to the station to catch the 7:30 bus. At 8 a.m., the Pokhara bus rumbles out through harried bumper to bumper traffic in thick, throat swelling smog. Sputtering to get crosstown, the traffic is at stand still more than it is moving, crowds close in weaving through the stopped lines. The driver turns off the engine during these long spells. At one stall, a boy is running for his life with a mob chasing him. Probably having stolen something, the teen is overcome by the pursuing men who beat him madly, kicking him in the body and pounding his head. Perhaps it is the betrayal from another of their flock that trips the trigger from affection to violence in this men's code of ethics. Horrified, it shed an entirely unexpected perspective of a people I had thought to be forgiving and peaceful. Last night in one of the shops, a keeper gently removed a cockroach from a garment it was climbing.
“All life is sacred,” he smiled and put the bug outside.

A half hour out of the turmoil of city congestion, the bus is ascending up a narrow two-lane road of cutbacks and hairpins turns, winding through cleaner mountain air and tiered, lush rice fields. The Karma boys had said it was only a five-hour journey and seventy-five percent cheaper than the winged yeti mountain hoppers that fly between villages.

“It's going to be a long eight-hour ride,” the girl next to me grimaced as we 're tossed like seafarers on rough waves.
“Eight hours?” I gasped as the realization that there was probably a monetary kickback to someone for booking the bus ticket.