Such Great Heights (Nepal trek part 2)

Day 3 – Ghorepani

Now, where was I? Right at about the 4:30am wake up call point so I could climb Poon Hill in the dark and catch the sun rising over the Annapurna Ranges. Oh it sounds so impressive and hard core, doesn’t it? Well, it did to me, which is why I wanted to get plenty of sleep in me. After the couple of days I’d just had, I admit to being a bit nervous at the state my body would wake up in, and I was pretty certain it would be highly unimpressed at my intentions to climb up again. But this time there would be no pack involved, so I had high hopes.

Which brings me to the point in the tale where I would insert a great quote I read in Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marissa Pessl if I could, but I can’t. Instead I’ll have to rely on the gist of the quote, which says something about how when two people travel together the potential for it to go pear shaped is high. Cue moment for potential pear-shaped ness in this little traveling tale because… The aforementioned stomach cramps Chris experienced at the end of our day’s trekking didn’t settle down. We were sharing a small cabin with a teensy little bathroom about half a foot away from my bed, and perhaps three feet away from his. Let’s just say that during the night Chris probably walked another kilometre or so without ever leaving the cabin, while I was left cursing the fact that I’m a very light sleeper.

Neither of us was very happy when 4:30am came around. Nor were we happy that we’d run out of both toilet paper and tissues. Nor were our bodies happy (especially his) that we were soon climbing up a rather steep hill, trying not to turn an ankle on the unsteady rocks in the dark. I moaned. I complained. I sighed. I swore. I stopped. I started. I sniffled. I coughed. I moaned. I complained. I sighed. I swore….

Until we made it to the top and my legs rejoiced at how flat it was up there and my nose rejoiced at other people’s willingness to share much-coveted Kleenex and my freezing cold body rejoiced at the hot tea stand just to the left of me. Oh, what was that? Am I supposed to be looking at the mountains or something? I look up, I look around, I try and peer through the mist, but to no avail. It appears I’ve been sucked in to the biggest dupe of all and I’ve done all of this feeling like utter shite for absolutely no reason because it seems the Annapurna Ranges packed up and left some time during the night. They must have, because damn me if I couldn’t see even a hint of them through all this cloud.

Pfft. Sunrise over Poon Hill indeed. Whose great idea was this?

But then this happened:



I suspect the mountains detected how bad my mood had become, felt guilty, and snuck back into place while I was hiding from the biting wind in the tea shack. I’m very glad they did because otherwise I’d be left trying to crow about the quality of the most expensive cup of tea I’ve ever had that came straight from a tea bag to impress you. At the very least it’s the highest I’ve ever drank a cup of tea, so maybe I would spin the story that way. This is a moot point now, though, as I’ve got the mountains to talk about, and wow, they were preetttyyy. At least they were when the clouds parted long enough for me to catch a glimpse, which they dutifully did every now and then.



3210m!

So the climb up wasn’t a total waste and I got to see the sun and the mountains do their thing at dawn and I got to climb back down the mountain and sit in front of a wood fire and order a carb-fuelled stodge-fest for breakfast and more tea which all combined to give me my smile back. Until I remembered that according to our plan we needed to hit the trail again in a couple of hours. Cue the point where I look at Chris, who at least outwardly appears to be as shattered as I feel, and voice my concerns at the pathetic state we were both in. I never should have worried though, because we were in Nepal! And Nepal had already proven more than once that it was the kind of country I could count on to come through for me right when I need it most.

Our lovely guesthouse operator chose this moment to wander on over and offer the suggestion that we take a rest day here, because the descent could be tackled in a day if your knees were up to it. I did a quick body assessment and decided my knees were completely unrelated to all my other current problems and leapt at the suggestion. A whole day staring out at mountains? A whole day of not wearing my pack? A whole day of sipping tea for my sore throat and sitting by the campfire? What does Renee say to Tom in that movie, “you had me at hello” or something? Well, that was me right then. Hello indeed.

And so it was that I spent the day lazily lounging around Ghorepani, taking a long hot shower, eating and sipping tea and wandering around town and writing postcards and reading by the fire and generally enjoying the splendidness of not moving very far - all with the mountains as a backdrop in case I got bored doing absolutely nothing. Nepal even threw in the added bonus of rain and hail in the afternoon to absolve me of any (unlikely) guilt I may have felt at not moving very far. By the end of the day I felt like an entirely new person, and I capped it all off with a great night’s sleep which is exactly what the doctor ordered for our day of descent.

Day Four – Ghorepani to Nayapul

I’m awake and fumbling around through my layers of clothing, sleeping bag and blankets to find a tissue and my phone to check the time when I catch a glimpse of something blue through the slit of the curtains. Crystal clear blue. My interest sparked, I brave the cold morning air and sit up and move the curtain aside to get a better look. 6am has never, ever been so delightful:




What a way to wipe the sleep from my eyes

Nepal, full kudos to you – for my last day in the hills you pulled out an absolute stunner, instantly rendering every step up, every ache, every snotty tissue, and the litany of every other pathetic complaint completely and utterly worth it.


Breakfast with a view

Just for those of you who may never get to admire the Annapurna Ranges up close, I made sure I took 1,759,547 photos of them so you don’t have to miss out. I promise to include only a small selection of them here, but for interested parties a public screening of every photo can be arranged once I am firmly back in the land girt by sea (girt, what a stupid word when you say it aloud. So glad it’s in the national anthem).



Ooooohhhh...Ahhhhh.....

To say I was in an exceptional mood would be an understatement. I was pretty ecstatic. The weather was perfect, the views even better, and my body felt wonderful compared to twenty-four hours ago. I even put on my pack without too much of a grimace, and while not looking forward to finishing the trek and heading back to reality, I was excited by the fact that today would involve going downhill, and anticipating the spectacular views to continue as we headed into the valley.

I was not disappointed (of course, since this is Nepal) and Chris and I happily chatted away as we made our way down the mountain, stopping every now and then to slip slop slap, chat with other trekkers, and take photos of the snow capped mountain views which kept us company for most of the day. As we wound our way down through small villages and past pack horses carrying food and bags of cement and other supplies I marveled at how easy it was to climb down compared to climbing up. I could do this all day, I thought, which was lucky since that was exactly what I would be doing all day. My contentedness with the world continued through our lunch stop (mmm, vegetable momos) right up until the point where I stood up from my chair and tried to take a step forward.



A bit of Maoist propaganda

What? What was going on? My calf muscles were refusing to follow the order I sent them from my brain telling them to move. And they hurt! A lot! So much that when I bent down to touch them, my fingers snapped back at the shooting pain they caused with a mere touch. Uh oh. We still had half the day ahead of us. Uh oh. This hurt. Uh oh, I could see more steps. And indeed it was a painful few hours for me that followed as we finished the trek and finally collapsed into the back of a 1923 model Corolla (yes, exaggerating), but I didn’t care really because I still had the film of snow capped mountains playing out in my head, which made me happy.

The happiness continued as our driver herded a group of local guys to push the car to get it started, and as he paused to conduct a drug deal with two very shady looking thirteen-year-old boys, and as we cheated death on the windy road back into Pokhara (possibly not helped by our driver's now obvious drug habit), and as I hobbled into our guesthouse eager for a shower and a lie down before … finding a bar. I know, you’re shocked.

And that brings me to the end of my (insert excessive superlatives) trip to Nepal. I hereby swear not to mention it again on this blog. (www.communicationsjobsinnepal.com??? Is there such a thing?)

Ask for Answers

As enthusiastic as I am for my job, there are some days where I ask myself why I've elected to give up living in a great country, in a great city, in a great house with great flatmates and a great salary to fund a great lifestyle to ... well, if you're a regular reader of my blog, you can probably insert the relevant experiences yourself.

And then I come across articles like this in today's Sydney Morning Herald online, which I urge you to read. Having assumed a degree of laziness, however, I have pulled out the bit I most identified with:

"The vast conurbations of the developing world are largely unsewered. They have little clean water. They pile humans, pigs, chickens, dogs, cats and rats on top of each other. The largest cities each contain as many people as Australia. They are perfect incubators of species-hopping viruses of all kinds. And the viruses only have to make it to the nearest airport to make a global impact.

There is, however, no need to terrify ourselves about the inevitability of new pandemics.

We know how to prevent the spread of most pandemic diseases and to stop minor outbreaks from becoming major problems. A century ago, industrialised countries invested in sewers and water works and created basic primary healthcare systems available to all, regardless of income. Livestock was banished from the cities and instead raised and slaughtered in separate, hygienic new facilities".

Bill Bowtell, The Deadbeat of International Aid

Today I can say, unequivocally, that there is nothing else at all I'd rather be doing at this time in my life.

Running up that hill

“Himalayas, Himalayas, Himalayas”. If you say that three times really quickly it sounds exactly like you’re saying “Himalayas Himalayas Himalayas” three times quickly. Which is what I’ve been doing nearly every day since I got back from my trek which took me within cooee of the Himalayas Himalayas Himalayas. Because this could end up being a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing (though not if I can help it) this will be long, self-indulgent, and multi-installment post. But the beauty of the web is you can scroll down and satisfy yourself with the pretty pictures. If you do nothing else, do look at the pretty pictures.

First things first, the planning stage. This little sojourn of mine into the wilderness had been progressively planned from about January. Planning not being my forte, though, I thought I’d outdone myself by convincing someone else to do it for me. All I did was hand out the instructions of “I want hard core views with soft core effort, please,” by which I meant I wanted to stroll through the hills with nary but a small day pack, spending each night in a basic-yet-hot-shower-affair guesthouse. And someone else agreed to follow these instructions, plan the destination, and even went so far as to book me on a return flight. Well, well, well, I thought, this is the way to travel. I’ve not even picked up a guidebook and I’ve got myself a trek in Nepal. But (and we all knew there would be a but) what I had not taken into proper consideration when picking my trekking partner was that Chris, another AYAD, works with the United Nations Development Project as part of the Disaster Management team, and Chris spent a certain period of his youth living out Lord of the Flies scenarios as a boy scout, and therefore Chris, unsurprisingly (to me now) and I have very different ideas on what it means to ‘stroll through’ the wilderness.

Hence my insistent declaration that I would not carry my big pack as we trekked up up up and down down down flew out the window as soon as I admitted there was no conceivable way I could fit 4 days worth of clothing and supplies including a sleeping bag into my day pack.


Ah, this looks very much like a pack on my back

Hence that despite my insistence the trek we do be gentle, taking into consideration my plummeting fitness levels, we ended up doing a trek that fit people do in 4 days, and sensible people do in 5 days, in just 3 days. (No I am not bragging, but you will have to read on to believe me on that one).

And hence that despite the fact we were trekking in a country which has the sherpa/local guide thing completely and utterly sorted so there is never any need to carry even so much as a water bottle yourself as long as you’re prepared to pay someone else to do it for you, we fell into the (what felt like) 1% of foreigners who decided not to avail ourselves of any of these services and went it completely alone.

For each of these points there came a dawning sense of realisation on my part. As for Chris, he met each of my maybe not overtly negative but definitely somewhat less than exuberant comments with the kind of enthusiasm I previously associated with the Fitness First instructors I thought I’d well and truly left in Sydney. But with one very significant difference – he understood that look on my face which said “if you even think about uttering anything so much as a word within my earshot that could be considered as encouragement to me, then I will… [insert preferred dramatic, scary, yet completely unfeasible threat in here]”.


And I appear to be going uphill with this damn pack on my back

Ok, so enough about the planning already. Let’s just sum it all up by assuming I didn’t really know what I was in for and go to the bit where I outline our (Ok, Chris’) initial plans:

Day 1 – Nayupul to Tikehedgungga
Day 2 – Tikehedgungga to Ghorepani
Day 3 – Ghorepani – Poon Hill for sunrise, then to Ghandruk
Day 4 – Ghandruk back down to Nayupul

Now begins the ‘blow by blow’ account - assume edge-of-seat position, please. I’ve adopted a ‘day by day’ approach to my prose because, for the most part, most of what is to follow comes directly from my journal entries. I did say this was self-indulgent.

Day one – Nayapul to Ghandruk

The end of day one and unsurprisingly given the amount of planning I put into this, things have not quite gone to plan.

Firstly - despite our well marked map, well trekked path, and well informed local villagers who willingly help out lost looking trekkers, we’ve managed to somehow reverse the direction of our trek by taking a wrong turn somewhere or other, and are now doing the trek the other way round. Luckily it’s no big deal, we’ll end up in all the same places, just at different times. But it does mean a change in which bits will be the hardest.


That little black spot in the middle of the pack horses there is me - going up

Secondly - despite the fact that Chris was supposedly a boy scout, and supposedly works in disaster management, and I’m supposedly of an age where I have developed an appreciation for my own mortality, we somehow decided we wouldn’t take any food with us other than an (albeit tasty) block of dark chocolate even though we hiked for over six hours. Fools.


Still going up, but wow, it's getting to be so...picturesque up here!

Thirdly – despite the fact that everything to do with the Himalayas implies a drop in temperature that could be considered significant for someone coming from a climate where sweating is as normal as blinking, I somehow made the ridiculous decision to leave my jacket behind because I thought I probably wouldn’t wear it, and I didn’t want to carry anything I didn’t have to in the pack I never wanted to carry in the first place.


Hmmm, but I'm starting to get a teensy bit over going up

So – what you would have seen had you been at the lovely guesthouse in Ghandruk we arrived at this afternoon were two very very hungry and two very very cold trekkers who spent the first hour desperately trying to go from our sweaty, wet and now cold clothes to … every single item of dry clothing we had with us because damn it is cold up here! And do this as quickly as possible because I need to eat like I haven’t needed anything in a long time. Cue moment where I briefly considered what life must be like for self confessed starvation fan Victoria Beckham, then tossed it aside so I could enjoy my garlic bread and fried vegetable noodles with relish.


And just in time Ghandruk throws a view like this at me

And now that the … somewhat negative bits are dealt with lets move right along to the fact that everywhere I have looked today, in every direction, whether up/down/back/around you name it – I have had significant difficulties wiping the smile off my face because this has been one of the best days I have had in a long time. The views have been truly stunning, and with the promise of more to come, I could be considered one of the happiest people around today.


Thoroughly enjoying one of life's pleasures... or two actually, eating and sitting down


Day two - Ghandruk to Ghorepani

Having had one of the most gorgeous experiences life offers today. I feel like a complete and utter thankless fool for the whinging I’m about to do but … hiking for nine hours, with eight of those hours involving climbing up, is hard. Really, really, really body achingly, shoulder numbingly, thigh shakingly hard. The first five to six hours of up up up up up today was the kind of hard, however, that I was prepared for. Having been fed and watered well, and waking up to mountain views, I was pretty damn eager to get back on the trail again as soon as we could. I wasn’t even daunted by the comments of our guesthouse owners who kept going on about today being a ‘long day’, and a ‘tough day’, and other such comments I was deciding to tune out since I was hell bent on embracing my new found enthusiasm for being ‘at one’ with nature.

And, sure enough, I did spend the first three hours of up happily chatting away about really important things like whether the next guest house would have garlic bread and vegetable noodles, and whether we could avoid eating the sloppy lentil soup/rice combo I’ve come to loath so much. At about the point where I was drenched in sweat and in desperate need of a loo and starting to dream about relieving my shoulders from the pack that I was never going to carry, and because Nepal is the kind of place which understands how much I need to love it, there appeared right in front of us a perfectly placed guest house with an “oohhh aaahhhh look at the valley” view




which served us splendidly warm hot fresh mint tea and, much to my relief, sold me mittens.



With our lovely, wholesome, friendly, restorative rest stop over, however, it was time once again to put on the pack and head in a northerly direction. The burst of energy from food and tea and the general sense of awe at our surroundings kept me pretty well entertained for the next few hours. Aside from the occasional grunt and moan at the incessant nature of going uphill, I was in a state of general well being which lasted for quite a while.



general state of well beingness

It lasted as we dropped down into a valley and climbed up the other side, and lasted as we crossed rocky river beds, and made our way through sleepy little villages of one or two buildings and lasted as we crossed bridges and small waterfalls and passed through green rainforesty smelling areas and lasted as we stopped for a chocolate snack on some rocks overlooking the distance we’d come and lasted and lasted and lasted until… We came to a stone staircase another three hours in and I all of a sudden could find not even a hint of well beingness in any part of me at all. I tried looking in my fingertips, under my feet, in my pockets, in my pack, in my camera bag, and finally even inside the very depths of myself and…I came up empty. Suddenly I was so full of despair, so exhausted, so certain that my legs were completely incapable of getting me any higher up than I was today, that I did the only thing one can do in these situations.

I started singing songs in my head. Cue Placebo’s cover of Kate Bush’s “Running up that hill”, cue Depeche Mode’s “My Own Personal Jesus”, cue Ben Fold’s “Such Great Heights” and on and on it went. Along with the inspiring songs (Here Comes The Sun, Beatles’ version), there were some unhelpful tracks that made their way in (Never Enough, The Cure; She’s Lost Control, Joy Division) but on the whole, I was incredibly relieved to have a mental soundtrack from which I could draw inspiration from because… there was none coming from anywhere else.



Snow! (and no, I will not stop for a photo - general state of well beingness has passed)

And the up just kept coming, and coming, and coming. And the head cold which was a mild annoyance a day before was now becoming a major issue as the air temperature dropped, altitude increased, and my tissue supply depleted. And the up just kept coming! At this point - about the point where I thought this was never, ever going to end and we were going to get stuck out here in the mountains in the cold in the snow because putting one foot in front of the other was becoming a monumental task I was not cut out for – Chris took over. Whereas our normal walking style was for him to let me go first and set the pace, the time had come for him to take the lead and hope like hell that I would follow. This was slightly hard to communicate to me, I admit, since I was beyond talking and the deafening silence from me was a strong indication that I was not in a happy place.

But, press on I did, through the combination of Chris’ patience and my sheer terror at the thought of being stuck out here in the cold (no, Gotye did not come into my head, by now my soundtrack had well and truly ended). As we crested the mountainside and headed over the ridge, I was left utterly breathless by the sensation that we were literally on top of the world, or very close to it. With valleys either side, I managed to start talking again, and use positive adjectives, superlatives even, as we took in the stunning views we were surrounded by. I was even starting to think that maybe, just maybe, this pain would all be worth it if we made it into town.


I am trying really hard here, but smiles are not my strong point right now

Since getting into town still involved about an hour of downhill (thank god!), I wasn’t crowing just yet. Which was a good thing, since this is the point where Chris hit his own set of problems with severe stomach cramps. As you can imagine, it’s rather difficult to hike with a pack on while doubled over in pain. Somehow he managed it though, and I managed to keep my tired thighs in motion, and the pair of us managed to stumble into Ghorepani after a long day of hiking for over nine hours and stumble straight into the first guest house we found and stumble straight into the beds that were so gloriously before us and from which we didn’t move for a long time.

When we did finally move, however, it was so, so worth it because 1. there was food, 2. there was a fire, and 3. there was hot water. Oh, the luxuries life offers sometimes!

Now for a good night's sleep. With a 4:30am wake up call ahead of us so we can trek up hill for an hour in the dark to catch the sun rising over the Himalayas from Poon Hill, after a day like today, we're gonna' need it.

To be continued...

Couch Surfing

Along with just about every other person in my generation (or so it seems) I unsurprisingly list ‘travel’ as a hobby in things that require descriptors of my personality. Whether it be Aussie sites I’m seeing, or struggling through a variation of charades, smiles and goodwill in foreign countries, I don’t care – it all brings me a sense of inner peace that some other people apparently get from (much cheaper) hobbies like yoga, cooking, or taking walks on the beach. I’m not sure where the obsession started, but I suspect it has something to do with coming from a family who knows how to vacation. I don’t think there was a single year when I was a kid that we didn’t pack up the car and temporarily leave our little slice of suburbia for someplace else.

With the advent of the internet, it has become increasingly easy to indulge this obsession with “other places I’d rather be right now,” and one of the ways I do this from time to time is read the Backpacker Blog on the Sydney Morning Herald site. A few months ago while reading through some post or other about how annoyingly pretentious well-traveled people can be “Oh, you liked Paris? I thought it was so, well, so touristy. I much preferred [insert obscure, remote, city name almost no one has ever heard of], it was much more authentic.” I saw a note from the author requesting offers of couches in far off places. Me being the kind of girl who often finds herself putting her hand up for things (like a 12 month stint in Bangladesh, for example) I sent off an e mail offering my couch in Chittagong and then promptly forgot all about it.


Couch surfin', Chittagong style

Until I heard back from Ben who should be arriving on my couch in Chittagong around the end of April. For anyone else as insanely jealous of this idea (him couch surfing around exotic places across the world, that is, not spending the night on my couch) you can satiate your jealousy by reading all about it

Back in the good old world

I know I haven’t finished uploading the photos which match my blog post about Kathmandu, and I also know I haven’t even written the post about the fantabulous trek I did in Nepal, but it seems my nine days back in Bangladesh are demanding to be written about in the middle of it all. The ensuing chaos fairly matches the way life goes here, so I figure jumping around a bit should be no problem. Hell, it could even be considered all post-Darwinian and fit in well with the notion that time is not linear, which means that on some level I may perhaps get to relive the trek experience by delaying my blog post about it. Yeah, ok, I need sleep.

But back to Bangladesh, which is well and truly where I am. And here are the reasons why I know this:

1. I’ve been in (another) accident: My first bus trip back in the ‘desh included a momentary increase in my heart rate as we crashed head on with a CNG. This was very disturbing given the mob mentality that often follows on from car accidents where the crowd turn against the ‘bully’ (in this case the bus). Fortunately (for me) we managed to keep the bus doors shut and the crowd out, and fortunately (for the people in the CNG) it didn’t look like anyone was killed. Though the uncertainty of my words is evidence that I can’t be certain since we didn’t exactly stick around. Yes, this makes me feel guilty.

2. I eat dinner in my underwear: There are a few reasons for this, and none of them are remotely kinky, but I bet you already guessed that. Firstly, it’s stinking hot. With temps of 36-40 degrees, it’s relentlessly stinking hot. Secondly, relentlessly stinking hot weather means people want to use more power to power extravagant things like, oh I don’t know, the fridge and a fan. Not to mention the rich buggers with their greedy air conditioners. But, in a country of over 150 million people squished into a tiny little pocket of land, there just ain’t enough of the juice to go around. And all of this means that when it comes time to eat my dinner it’s really really dark inside and it’s really really hot and I just really really can’t face sweating through another set of clothes. So, underwear it is. Oh, I feel like I should add in here that I’m currently living alone for the next three months.

3. My digestive system is (once again) deciding whether or not to mutiny: After relative peace lately, save a few minor hangover related upsets (ahh, Nepal), I was rather enjoying the peace and quiet that had been restored to my stomach. But, not 48 hours back in the ‘desh and what did I feel as I sat at my desk after a lunch? Yep, stomach cramps. A week later and not a day goes by where I don’t get some twinge or other ‘in there’ somewhere. Now, it’s no big deal. It’s nowhere near the extreme level it was before. I’m mostly keeping my food, and it’s not taking over every waking thought I have, so it really is a vast improvement on a couple of months ago. But, it has got me thinking that either a) my stomach knows when I crossed the border and is none too impressed about it, and is letting me know by being all passive aggressive on me. Or b) I’ve got stuff growing in there that shouldn’t be. Suffice to say that while I’m not usually a supporter of passive aggressive behaviour, on this occasion it’s the option I’m most in favour of.

4. I’m (once again) public property: After the relative anonymity I felt in Nepal, it seems I’d forgotten just how much attention I get out and about on the streets as a ‘white chick’. In a week I’ve had numerous “hey sexy’s,” shouted at me; three invitations to visit the homes of complete strangers as I paid for vegetables, walked home from work, and caught a bus; been asked to pose for photographs wearing some guy’s hat, sitting in the middle of a group of mothers pretending I was ‘gossiping’, and reading my book in a waiting room; and had people run their fingers through my hair, put a bindi on my forehead, and hold my hand, all without asking. And I haven’t even included the standard, daily queries I get on the street of ‘What is your country? (Au-stray-li-ya) Where is your husband? (Dhaka), “What is your feelings in Bangladesh? (It’s beautiful)…” and so on. How quickly I’d forgotten about this aspect of my life here. Hopefully I’ll just as quickly get used to it again, and will feel completely normal as my (female) colleague interlaces her fingers with mine an hour into our seven hour drive while belting out a tune about how Bangladesh is the most beautiful land of all.

5. I’ve identified a business opportunity (that I’m never going to act upon): Because there’s no such thing as ‘easing in’ to Bangladesh, my first week back after my break included a spot of house hunting to try and cope with the situation I alluded to before – the fact that I’m currently living alone. Due to various changes I’ve found myself in a 4 bedroom apartment all on my own, with a hefty rent price to match. Obviously, this is not ideal, and just as obviously (or so I thought) it was time for me to go house hunting, to downsize, to find a place more manageable etc etc. After a mere two weeks of house hunting experience in Chittagong, however, I’ve spent three nights with an excel spreadsheet putting all my hard earned accounting experience into practice pinching from Peter to pay Paul so I can avoid ever having to go house hunting in Chittagong ever, ever again. Because here is how you go house hunting in the gong.

First, you put on your walking shoes, and make sure they’re comfortable. Second, you put on your glasses if, like me, your distance vision isn’t quite up to scratch. And three, you hit the streets, peering through said glasses, at every apartment block you pass, looking for elusive ‘To Let’ signs. And you do this as you walk down every street you think you may want to live in until you finally find a ‘To Let’ sign in the right place.

Then you walk up to the guard and start asking about the available apartment, i.e. how big it is, how much the rent is, when it’s available from etc. and depending on the answers, you either say “thanks mate, but it’s not what I’m looking for”, or “sounds great, can I’ve a look at the apartment?” Or at least that’s sort of supposed to be how it goes. If you happen to have a job which keeps you occupied for most of the daylight hours, you’ll need to factor this in when you go hunting because with the power outages there’s no light once the sun goes down and you can’t see any ‘To Let’ signs. Big pain.

Having perfected the process above, and enquired after no less than twenty ‘To Let’ signs in apartment blocks of (alarmingly) varying appeal, I have come to the decision that forking out astronomical rent for two months is infinitely more preferable than moving into any of the complete hovels I’ve been offered to rent. It seems that every decent place in a well-lit area with good security not on the ground floor is either well out of my price range, or the landlord is completely unwilling to rent their apartment to (gasp) a single white woman from the (gasp again) west. My reputation (or at least American TV) precedes me, and I heard from more than one landlord they didn’t want ‘my type’ living in their house. In stark contrast to that attitude is my current landlord who loves having foreigners live upstairs from him and his family.

Which brings me back to the business opportunity mentioned above. Why oh why has no one developed a classifieds system for the housing market in Bangladesh? It seems so unbelievably preposterous and time consuming that every time you want/need to move house you have to trawl the streets looking for signs slung up on building fences. To make it clear just how ridiculous this system is, the ‘To Let’ signs themselves have no further information about the place than the words ‘To Let’ and a phone number. No information about whether it’s a one bedroom studio or six bedroom, top floor extravaganza, no information on when it is available, no mention of the going rent price, nada. Just a tiny little sign on the outside of a towering apartment block saying ‘To Let’, and offering you the opportunity to give someone a tingle.

Having already identified a business opportunity for car insurers here, I feel like it’s the least I can do to offer a heads up to domain.com.au that Bangaldesh could be their next big thing. I mean, you do the math – 150million plus people (and growing) in one of the most densely populated countries in the world that’s quickly running out of available land??? It’s a veritable gold mine for some one in real estate! Really, the opportunity is almost too good to miss. If I wasn’t so busy running around vegetable patches and asking people whether they prefer their lives with food or without food, I’d be right onto this one. In the mean time I’ve decided to stay put in my current place. After all, there are two rats who are pretty keen on taking up residence in my kitchen lately, and if I can only coax them into splitting some of the rent, things could soon be looking up indeed.

You Gotta' Love This City

Eleven days seems like a relatively short time when you start making comparisons between how long it took to build the great wall of China, or how long elephants are pregnant for, or … no, I won’t go absurd. I’m sure you’re following. In any case, the past eleven days for me have followed this alarming trend of brevity, as is becoming apparent to me in my current situation. Typing by candlelight would be a little more romantic if I was not simultaneously trying to mop up drips of sweat from falling from my forehead onto my keyboard; Macs may be a new love of mine, but I’m not sure my Mac loves me as much as I love it.

Which brings me to another new love of mine – Nepal – where I’ve been for the past eleven days. And I’m not talking love as in the “LJ n Nepal 4 eva” kind of love either. I’m talking your “shall I compare thee to a summer’s day”, the “bright star, were I as steadfast as thou art”, the “doubt that the stars are fire, doubt that the sun doest move, doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt I love” kind of love. The love that fills musty old books in dingy second hand book stores with yellowy pages that no one can bare to throw out because they’re so full of … young lads who probably weren’t getting any, come to think of it. But aging romantic poetry aside, it is fair to say I fell for Nepal the way Romeo fell for Juliet. One look from a balcony, and I was gone.

Rather than continue along this terribly unrelated path, I’ll once again let the pictures do some of the talking for me, and hope they go some way to explain why I’m so smitten.

Exhibit A: I’ll have the French cabernet sauvignon, thank you sir. Oh, and make it a bottle.



This is the very first café we went to in Kathmandu. See what I’m doing???? Yep, that’s right, drinking red wine, ordered right off a menu, as normal as you please.

Exhibit B: Northern Exposure

As much as I promote the practical uses of an orna (previous post relates), it was so refreshing not to be constantly wearing one. Admittedly I spent my first three days feeling a bit like I was going commando, every now and then surreptitiously looking over my shoulder to see if the hordes of people winding their way through the streets of Kathmandu were staring aghast at my indecency, wandering around with my (gasp) breasts clearly discernible. But, no. Nary a comment, no odd looks, no lewd gestures, nada. I was just like every other foreigner wandering around the place. Oh, the relief at being just like everyone else.




Exhibit C: Postcard Moments

I am sure I’ve mentioned this before, but one of the great things about Bangladesh is that there is no tourism to speak of, which means you get to see things up close, and everything can be considered as “off the beaten track”. There are times, however, when the last thing I want to be is off the beaten track, and this short break was one of those times. I did not want to wander aimlessly around some strange town asking bewildered locals where the fire breathing temple which I’d heard about off hand from someone a few months ago is, for example. Which of course turns out not to exist in the first place, but I don’t find this out until after I walk through a random riverbed for two hours (even though I enjoyed exactly this experience just shy of a month ago). But no, not on this trip.



What I wanted on this trip was to be entirely predictable, eating in places recommended in the Lonely Planet full to the rafters with other travelers, and visiting designated tourist sites where locals gather to pester said travelers to buy their exotic wares such as ‘authentic’ Buddhist and Hindu icons, ‘Tibetan’ incense purportedly the Dalai Lama’s preferred scent, or ‘colourful’ (ok, mildly garish) ‘traditional’ Nepalese carpets, hand woven (by ten year olds, but what’s a bit of child labour if the price is right?). Lucky for me, Kathmandu was exactly that, and more, since the Aussie dollar is better against the Nepalese rupee than the Bangladeshi taka. Not only did I find myself in clichéd tourist heaven, but I was in cheap clichéd tourist heaven - and loving every standard postcard moment of it.




Exhibit D: C-c-c-cultcha

After enjoying a long day full of postcard moments, my fellow traveling buddies and I enjoyed another one of Kathmandu’s delights – the culinary culture. What you see here is Casey sitting around our table which features an Israeli vegetarian smorgasbord, complete with red wine, candle light, a bar in the background, cushions, low tables, and lots of mixed-gender socialising.




In case that wasn’t enough, we then moved on to a pub where we outlandishly ordered yet more alcohol, and a sheesha! Mmm, apple flavoured tobacco and (more) red wine on bellies full to the brim with hummus, falafel, babaganoush, marinated mushrooms, woodfired pita bread, eggpl…



“Oh”, I hear you say, “is that all? She went to a capital city and ate food and drank and posed for photos. Well, if that’s what she was after, she should never have left Sydney.”

I hear you, I hear you, but to that I say, you’ll be hard pressed finding this in Sydney:



Which brings me to part two of the Nepalese adventure, which I will save for part two of this post.