Namaste From Nepal

Hey, everybody, just a note before my post: I'm here in Pokhara now with Ingo. SO glad to be here, and I'll fill you on the trip here soon. But I have to tell you that the internet connection here is... SO... freaking... slow that I'm going to be limited to how many individual emails I'll be able to respond to. And uploading photos and certainly video may be near impossible. We'll see how it goes once they get a gadget that will allow me to log on with my own computer. Maybe that will help. In the meantime, please know that I'm reading every one of your messages and LOVE them! I'll answer when and if I can.

I hope to get caught up to the present soon, but, for now, here's what I wrote yesterday (which seems like ages ago) but was unable to send until now....

Sylvia, a solo traveler from Switzerland, gave me good advice yesterday. About Nepal she said, "Expect nothing ... except that things will work out." I realized in less than 24 hours that those are words I'll need to live by for the next three months.

Yesterday was like living 10 days within the space of one. And now it's 2:15 a.m. on the next. What will this day of surprises bring? The plan is that it will take me from Kathmandu to the much smaller city of Pokhara, also known as the city of lakes. Thankfully, Sylvia is going there, too. I'm glad to have such a confident travel companion who knows I'm unsure of myself and is gracious enough to help.

When I wondered aloud how we'd get a paper plane ticket—little is done electronically here, so it seems, and Yolanda had arranged for our travel by phone with an agency—Sylvia patted me on the arm and said not to worry, it would work out. I paid Yolanda (cash only, no credit cards accepted) for the ticket but received nothing tangible or digital in return as one would expect in the U.S., where we'd get at least a confirmation email or receipt.

At 8:30 a.m., give or take some Nepal time, which could be a while, Karna and his friend and cyber cafe partner, Dikpal, will return to the guest house to walk with me and Sylvia to the airport. They know a shortcut, they said.

But that's still hours away, so back to yesterday...

Like tonight, I couldn't sleep for long after I was dropped off in the middle of the night, showered, and rearranged my belongings. I was awake at 2 a.m., listening to dogs bark, which they did again at 4:30. Soon after, the sky began to lighten and a nearby rooster started to crow, so I climbed out my window onto the veranda again and watched my surroundings materialize and people begin to stir as the morning progressed. A man in a nearby open window began tap-tap-tapping, and the tapping continued for hours. What he was working on, I'll never know. Children played with a puppy in an adjacent courtyard, while their mother (I assume) was busy sweeping around them. A motorbike zipped by in the alley. Later, a man carrying a large load of newspapers announced his presence, or perhaps the headlines, as he passed outside the hotel gate.

At 6 a.m., I ventured downstairs. The guest house was quiet, but I found three of the staff—two brightly clothed women, one in vibrant blue, the other in fuchsia, and an orange-shirted man—sweeping and tidying in the courtyard. I sat at a table, just watching them and two resident dogs until Yolanda appeared and sat down with me.

"How do you know Ingo?" I asked her. And in her Swiss-accented English she explained, "A friend introduced us. I was looking for property in a remote area, and Ingo is trying to sell the resort at Shyauli Bazaar. So I went there in January. It is a beautiful place—you will love it—but it is too big for me alone. Maybe if I had partners. I believe Ingo told me about you then."

Yolanda went on to explain a bit about the Maoist rebels (I'm really trying to understand what's happening here in Nepal) and the current strike, now five days old. For those five days and who knows how many more, businesses have been forcibly closed and driving forbidden, with the exception of ambulances, the police, and some leniency for foreigners, of which there are relatively few right now in the city. People can't earn a living with this going on. ATMs are running out of money, and people are running out of food. Schools have been shut down for weeks, well before the general strike began.

"Why do they comply?" I wanted to know. The answer: because they risk certain punishment if they don't. As I also read in the newspaper, the Maoists will vandalize the shops and beat shopkeepers who ignore the rules of the strike. Same for those who defy the ban on driving.

Later, as I walked with Karna and Dikpal to their cyber cafe, I asked them how everyone knows these rules (and there are others). "They are announced," Dikpal replied. His English is quite good, easier for me to understand than Karna's. "They tell it on the streets, in the paper, and on the news."

"There's more electricity right now, " he added, "because businesses and factories are closed, so it's not shut down as much."

I said, "It must be difficult to run a cyber cafe when the power is shut off for hours twice a day."

Karna agreed. "Oh, yes. Very difficult. It makes it hard to pay the rent."  He meant both the rent on the shop—about 1000 rupees per month, which is equivalent to approximately US $150—and rent on the nearby 10x10-foot room he shares with several other young men.

I later saw that room when Karna and Dikpal invited me up for tea. (And I must say, I've never had tea as tasty as the Masala  I've had in Nepal.) When we arrived, I followed their example and took off my shoes before entering. My trail runners looked out of place among the pairs of flip-flops and quite a bit larger. I noticed the big window was covered with cloth, but there was no glass. Inside, I found others seated on two single beds, watching the news on a small TV.  A girl and boy got up, and Karna motioned for me to sit in their place. I felt odd about them giving up their spots for me as they left the room.

The reporter was speaking Nepali, but I didn't need to understand the language to understand what I was seeing. It was amazing what had been going on in the city just a short time before, some of it right outside the cyber cafe while I was tucked inside. The storefront was closed, but we'd entered through a side door from an unlit hallway. From inside the small, dim space where I found several computer cubicles but nothing that resembled a cafe, I occasionally heard commotion out on the street: sirens and shouting and chanting.  Karna and Dikpal would go out to look.

"Come see," they urged, but I shook my head and continued looking through my email, which was comforting. It was my connection to what I was familiar with.

While I waited for my video to upload—slow, slow going in Nepal—I asked the boys... well, they're 24 and 26 years of age, so despite their much younger appearances, I should call them men... I asked them about how they came to know Ingo.

Karna did some of the explaining, but, thankfully, Dikpal helped me understand what he said. I think he'd realized I was having trouble making out Karna's words.

"We are grateful to Ingo and respect him very much. If it were not for him, we would not have this education. Maybe 2nd year only. Ingo found us in our village not too far from Shyauli Bazaar and brought us to his school. It was wonderful there."

I wanted to ask the young men more details about their lives before Ingo came into them, but I admit I was shy about what felt to me like prying. I'll have to get over that, I suppose, if I'm to write the book that is the main purpose of my time here.

"When the Maoists came, when we were young boys," Dikpal explained, "we had to hide in the jungle, so they wouldn't take us."

I asked if the Maoists still do that—force children 12 and over to join them... or else—but Karna said no, not since the end of the war.

******

After a few hours, I gave up my cyber-connection to the world at large and, despite their offer of free service, paid Karna and Dikpal the going rate for their internet and a bit extra for their help, coming to get me from the airport and today from the hotel and walking with me through the city. We talked some about how far foreign currency goes here in Nepal, and I told them the equivalent in rupees how much we'd pay for certain things in the US. Of course, things are at least somewhat relative to income levels, but Karna and Dikpal looked quite surprised.

Karna and Dikpal wanted to take me to Boudha Stupa, a nearby Buddhist temple. Dikpal explained that he and Karna are a combination of Hindu and Buddhist (if I understood him correctly) and pointed out a Hindu god portrayed at the temple. We couldn't go inside, but large numbers of people walk clockwise around the outside as a form of religious observance, and some lie on the ground—"prostrate themselves," Dikpal said—especially in the morning and evening. Among the many awkward things I said throughout the day, I replied, "I guess people have to be careful not to step on them." Karna and Dikpal laughed.

We walked in the rain for a bit, then spent a couple of hours at Karna's room. While I was there, a taller young man came in, and I recognized him from Debra Kaufman's documentary, "A School of Their Own," about the Riverside School whee Karna and Dikpal also grew up. I'll have to find out his name, but I was shy to talk to him, and he seemed not to notice me. He was quiet, intent on watching the news of the strike. He smiled only when a little girl came in and danced in what little floor space there was in the room. Maybe I'll have the chance and courage to speak to him when I return to Kathmandu at the end of the trip.

Why does asking so many questions feel strange? How do I draw people out and encourage them to tell me details about their lives—lives that are so much different and difficult than my own.  Will they feel like I'm judging? What questions should I not ask? What's too personal? If they know I'm writing a book, will they be reluctant to share things with me? Will they tell me the bad with the good? And how do I get used to the idea of exposing people's lives like that? Yes, I have much to learn and get used to.

At 6 p.m., Karna and Dikpal deposited me back at Yolanda's guest house, seeming unsure about being there and hanging back when I went inside. After speaking with Yolanda and learning the few details about the flight to Pokhara, I made arrangements to meet the young men in the morning. They laughed when I suggested a time—far too early and too long in advance of the flight, I'm sure they were thinking—but they agreed with a smile to come fetch me and Sylvia too.

Well, I suppose I should try to sleep again for a while.  I'm anxious for the sun to come up and can't wait for breakfast. I realized too late yesterday that I'd not eaten anything but a little Nepali snack of dried rice and some kind of bland but appealing, crunchy, flour-based thing (thanks to Karna) since breakfast yesterday. Amazing how you can completely forget your hunger for a while when your other senses are close to being overwhelmed.

Nepal!

Written sometime in the middle of the night on Wednesday, May 5th (or 6th):

The word of the day is "adapt." Adapt to the surroundings, the circumstances, the culture, because Deb definitely is not in northern Arizona.

Flying into Kathmandu, I pressed my face against the window, looking for any sign of life or light in the darkness below. Were we still above the clouds at 11 miles out? (So said the computer screen on the seat back.) I couldn’t see a thing. Then, five minutes out, I began to see some twinkling lights, but nothing like you would expect from a city. And now I know why: The power has been shut down in Kathmandu, and what light there is is running on battery power or candle flames. Good thing I brought my headlamp.

It's been a long time since I exited a plane onto a tarmac. Once the man who blocked the aircraft doorway as he asked a flight attendant for some papers she didn’t have let us down the steps, there was no longer any direction. No one in a purple jacket or dress suit was waiting inside the airport to answer travelers' questions as there had been in Hong Kong. So, I followed the small crowd—most of the passengers had gotten off at the stop in Bangladesh—who walked up to a row of kiosks and filled out immigration paperwork. (Good thing I brought a pen, which I then loaned to another traveler.) That done, I followed the "With Visa" sign since I'd gotten my 90-day visa in advance from the Embassy of Nepal in Washington D.C.

When I approached the man behind the tall desk, I opened my passport, pointed at the visa stamp, and said to the top of his head, "They didn't write in an expiration date, but I leave on August first." He said nothing and didn't look up. He just wrote the date on my visa, 90 days from today, and handed it back to me. I followed other passengers to baggage claim.

Yippee! My luggage arrived. I'd had my doubts and was resigned to the fact that I might have to wear those same travel-dirty clothes for at least another day or so. I glanced over at the three somber men seated behind a table with a sign that read, "Mishandled Luggage: Complaining Desk." I was prepared to have to walk over and say, with a smile of course, “I'm not really complaining, but my luggage is missing.” Happily, that was unnecessary.

As I hauled my bags down the next hall and around the next corner, thinking, wow, I didn't bring enough stuff; these bags are pretty light, I saw a bunch of faces on the other side of a glass wall. I immediately recognized Karna. Then I saw the sign ("Namaste, Deb Lauman") he told me he and his friend would make, which they were holding against the glass, upside down. I waved, and they came around and met me outside.

After a quick hello, Karna and his friend (I didn't catch his name, only that he's Karna's partner at the cyber cafe they own) took my bags and loaded them into the trunk an old Toyota sedan. In turn, each of the boys reached up (because I'm significantly taller at 5-foot-5) and placed yellow satin scarves around my sweaty neck with a "Namaste, Deb. Welcome to Nepal."

(Photo: Karna and his friend have trouble opening the trunk of the car.)

Then came the drive to Yolanda's hotel. It was a white-knuckler as we twisted and turned, narrowly avoiding concrete barriers jaggedly aligned down the middle of the road. The streets were deserted and the city dark. What I could see of it as we passed looked like bombed out buildings from the second World War.

Soon, we turned abruptly down a narrow alleyway, barely wide enough for the car. The two men in front (there was a third man, a driver who was also a friend, Karna said) didn't speak at all, and Karna and I were also pretty quiet in the back seat. He did say, though—or at least I THINK he said—something about having to take the Maoist strikes day by day, hour by hour, and this was a night they were able to drive. It would have been a very long and rather eerie walk to the hotel had they not been able to use the vehicle. [Later: I realized they took a risk coming to get me, though they were safe while I was actually with them since I'm a foreigner.]

Suddenly, the car stopped (good thing I'd been bracing myself, or I would have tasted the back of the front passenger seat), and I hesitated as Karna and his partner got out. This was it? Apparently. Dogs started barking behind a locked gate, and I soon heard a woman say, "Who's there?" No one else answered, so I said, "It's Deb. I think I'm staying here." Given the accent, I assumed the voice wasYolanda, Ingo's Swiss friend (though I don't know how or how well they know each other).

I asked Karna if I should pay for the ride. He didn't know, he said, and went around to the driver's side to speak to the man behind the wheel. The car sped off, and Karna said nothing, so I followed Yolanda, who'd unlocked the gate and led us inside the dimly lit building and up a few flights of stairs. Karna and his partner followed with my luggage.

Yolanda explained that there may or may not be power in an hour or so. She showed me into my room and pointed out the bottle of water and candle on the small table. She said breakfast would start at 6:30.

Karna and friend stood side by side in the hallway. How would they get home, Yolanda asked. Karna said they would go on foot. I asked Karna if I would see him tomorrow and if I could visit his cyber cafe. (There's no wireless here, so I'm writing this on battery power in the hopes I can send it from the cafe tomorrow.) Karna said he would come back in the morning. Yolanda asked him what time, and when he hesitated, I told him that I would be here whenever it was convenient and not to rush. I can tell already that this is not a city that I'll be exploring on my own, particularly given the present political conditions and strikes.

When the two young men left and Yolanda closed the door behind her, the first thing I did was open a window. Two panes, each double locked. The room felt a bit oppressive, so I needed to let in some air. I pushed open the outer window and climbed onto a veranda (I'm sure there's a door somewhere, probably from the hallway). I needed to try to get my bearings—where am I?—even in the dark.

(Photo: My small hotel room. Sorry about the lousy quality. It was late, and I still need to figure out the settings on my camera.)

How quiet for a city. The only sounds I heard—and that I'm still hearing as I lie on the thin mattress by the open window—are barking dogs and, I believe, an occasional parrot. And crickets. I see only one dim light in a nearby window. But there are no traffic sounds. No people sounds.

I had a much-needed shower, too. A cold shower, but that's just a statement of fact, not a complaint. Why complain at all? Things are as they are, and I have no expectations. I'm just here to see and hear and learn and take it all in.

And the other word of the day: alone. It's one thing to be by yourself in familiar surroundings, even in places you've never been but that are familiar culturally. Here,  halfway around the world in a place that, so far, bears little to no resemblance to my life at home, I feel very much alone. But I'm not afraid or nervous. I'm just here.

So are the mosquitoes. Hence, the lavender mosquito netting that's presently tied up above the bed. But rather than let it down, I think I'll attempt to end the lives of those that got in, close the screenless window, and try to daydream myself to sleep.

Next day: Posting this in a hurry. Karna and his friend, Dikpal, have opened their internet cafe for me to do this and check email, but we had to come in through a side door. The Maoist strike means all businesses, including this one, must be closed. Otherwise, they risk vandalism and then some. I'm trying to get a plane to Pokhara ASAP, to be where Ingo is. Kathmandu is not a place I want to hang out right now, though Yolanda's hotel is very nice and feels safe. Yolanda is helping me and another traveler get one of the limited planes out right now. More soon...

Leavin' On A Jet Plane Today

This morning I feel like I did the day I left for the beginning of my six-month Appalachian Trail hike filled with anticipation but anxious about the unknown. And like that adventure, I leave today for my three-month stay in Nepal with no doubt I can finish what I'll start. Who knows what future starts this experience will lead to, but how dull life would be if we always knew what was in store for us.

So, I'm down here in Phoenix, having just woken up in a shaft of sunlight with a sweat ring around my neck. What a difference a two-hour drive can make. Had I awakened back in Flagstaff, where it was snowing yesterday morning, I would have grabbed a fleece as soon as I got out of bed. But I'd better get used to waking up warm, as it'll soon be monsoon season in Nepal, hot and extremely humid.

My plane leaves at eight this evening. I change airlines in Los Angeles, then sit for another 13-some-odd hours in another flying tin can with a couple hundred of my closest friends (flying is not my favorite pastime) till I arrive in Hong Kong. After 13 hours wandering and people-watching there, and I'll be in another airborne capsule for seven hours until I land in Kathmandu at 10:30 p.m. on May 5 (which is about 9:15 a.m. on the 5th here in Arizona, I believe.)

Once I clear customs with my one large suitcase, mostly filled with t-shirts, synthetic convertible pants, at least 15 pairs of underwear, and nearly as many pairs of socks, along with a half-empty duffel bag and a carry-on backpack full of electronics, I'll hopefully find HRDSN member Karna Bahadur Dura and Yolanda, Ingo's Swiss friend who runs a hotel not far from the airport. I'll go to the hotel for at least one night, but I hear there could be "political unrest" in the city, so I may make my stay in the capital a very short one before flying to Pokhara.

As with all mostly unplanned adventures, and even most that are planned to a T, we shall see.