This time it is Nepal - travel

This is straight narrative about travelling to Nepal. The location and the events make it interesting rather than style. Wish I had written more of this great adventure.

This time it was Nepal – 1990

Still searching for new images and the quest to find some overall consciousness and understanding of the world I traveled to Nepal. As the plane touched down late in the day in Kathmandu I learned that the airport had been closed the previous couple of days because of the revolution. There were soldiers standing around with automatic weapons as we picked up the luggage, but no one searched us or our bags. We had just flown in from the US, all eleven of us members of the Sierra Club and eager to do a 22 day trek, but somehow no one had told us about the revolution. Our guide was there and three sherpas. No one seemed particularly upset about the political situation so we threw our things into our bus and headed to town. Along the way we did notice a few soldiers lazily walking on the roads as further signs that things not quite settled. It was getting dark, there were few streetlights and the streets got narrower as we came into town. No one was out walking which made me think there was a curfew. It was a challenge to get the bus around some of the corners and we came on some tire fires set in the streets.

We were staying at the Tibetan Guesthouse, which was set back from the main street about 50 yards. We were told that we should stay in the Guesthouse and not walk in the streets at night and to keep our lights off after dark. There was a small square about a half a block up the main street and this was the rallying point for the revolutionary groups. We went up on the roof of the guesthouse where there were tables and chairs and the walls were painted with fake palm trees. From this fifth floor vantage point we could see over the city. It was about nine at night when sound started to come from the square about a half a block the main street. “Democrasie! Democrasie!”. It seems that the rallying point for the revolution there and things were getting started. We stood and wondered what would happen next; would they come into the alley, were we in danger? After a while the mob moved down the street and looking down the alley I could see a light in a house across the street. The mob, chanted, moved, picked up stones and smashed the lighted window and moved on ignoring our alley. By ten PM it appeared the worst was over for our area so we went down to our rooms and settled into an uneasy sleep.

The next morning all was quiet with just a few tire fires still burning. My room had two full walls of windows and Kathmandu was all that I had ever imagined it to be and more. I set out to walk to the monkey temple (Swayambhunath Temple). The streets were incredibly full of people, bicycles, rickshaws, street merchants. No one approached us, but I was overwhelmed by the strong images, faces colors, smells, two men each holding the horn of a decapitated cow’s head, “tiger baum” merchants, bright scarlet colors, saris, children with no underpants, sandals, bare feet, women nursing on the curb, smells of seasonings, dust, urine, etc. Came to Durbar Square and was swept by views of 50 temples, towers, vegetable markets, merchants selling bracelets, knives, guides, hashish, erotic wood carvings, soldiers sleeping on the temple steps, brass balance scales in the stores, animal sacrifice areas with carcasses and blood smears. Walked on by the river, which had dried to a 15-foot wide stream and found pigs feeding, naked kids making a weir to catch fish, ducks, a man emptying his bowels, a dead water buffalo left from the flood period a month ago. Turning the corner I came upon a burning ghat with the body half charred. The body was wrapped in a black robe; head, arms, legs, hair still fairly intact on a fire of geometrically stacked 2” by 2”’s. Three men were tending the fire insuring a full cremation. People streamed by not paying any special attention, old, men sitting in the sun, talking, and smoking. Two tourists stood with pained expressions staring, hand over their mouths. Leaving I walked through the smoke of the fire noticing nothing special. One has a tendency to remember the sensational, but there was also an incredible beauty and an amazing difference from anything else that I had ever experienced that gave the feeling of new expanded horizons and understanding for me. It was a very powerful feeling.

Continuing on over the river, then a mile up a slowly riding dirt road through a neighborhood of houses and shops – wool merchants, weavers, Coke bottles in the window, a video rental store, small vegetable stores. A woman stepped out of a doorway with a plastic basin holding four large ox hooves. We came to the foot of the steps that led to the Monkey Temple. They climbed steeply for a quarter of a mile; enough to make me stop a couple of times to catch my breath. Beggars lined the way; a nine-year-old girl holding a crying baby, an old man selling hash. I passed old gentlemen coming down chanting with yellow flower garlands around their necks. There were monkeys in the trees and on the steps and large brightly painted (white, green, red) lions on each.

At the top, was the temple, like a large Hershey kiss painted white on which were painted an outlined pair of eyes (some fifteen feet across). A thunderstorm was threatening and the white domed temple against the darkening sky was magnificent. There were prayer wheels, monkeys, incense, shrines, and clusters of people sitting and chanting and reading. It was very intense imagery just filling up my mind with new senses.

Just then the skies opened and the lightning and the rains started in a real downpour started. There was a small shop just off the temple square that sold meditative finger cymbals and singing bowls. Rubbing the rim of the bowl produced a deep reverberating hum that slowly faded over several seconds. There was just the shopkeeper and me and with the rain and thunder outside we sat for a half hour trying out maybe thirty bowls. There were many different tones to the brass and I learned of a musical group that performed with these bowl touring in the US. The sound was mesmerizing; sitting there isolated by the storm in that small store with all those magical sounds was a wonderful moment. I bought a medium sized bowl and rubbing it now brings back those times.

The storm ended, I walked out passed the temple down the steps, back across the river and hailed a rickshaw to go back to the hotel. It was pretty rickety with wobbly wheels and the street was rough so I wondered if it would make it. I started to notice that people were running by then someone who spoke English leaned in and said that I should get out and run. During the night’s revolution a policeman had been killed. It turned out that the police were coming to the area where I was to search for the people involved and violence was expected. I got out of the rickshaw and ran two or three blocks until the crowd settled and there seemed no more danger. The rest of the ride to the hotel was uneventful. New images were flooding in.

This was the beginning of a 22 day trek into the mountains which carried us through many small villages, across five avalanche shutes, on narrow trails with steep drop-offs, tiger tracks, with 22 sherpas carrying huge loads of food and our packs, sleeping in tents with magnificent views. This is one to definately put on your bucket list.