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.