Happy Kyismoss, Nepal, 1994 (c) Robert Hale 1995
Chapter 1: Clean, Green, Healthy Kathmandu
In front of me on the bouncing Formica top of the train table lay an empty Ruddle's County beer can and the wrapper from a British Rail Bacon Lettuce and Tomato sandwich. It isn't often that such meagre fare feels like a culinary treat but there are times when BR catering is just what is called for - times such as arriving home after three Pakistan International Airlines meals in eleven hours, all of them Chicken Curry. My relish in such a humble meal had been watched with some amusement by my fellow passengers - a business man in a dark blue suit and a teenager in a scruffy leather jacket who were clearly eager to see what the madman would do next. What I did was reach into the rucksack that occupies the adjacent seat and take out a rolled up tube of newspaper. From it I extract the Mandala Thangka that I had bought just a few days ago in Patan and spread it out side by side with the remains of my lunch. It was about twenty inches by twelve and painted on heavy parchment-like paper done predominantly in shades of brown and gold. There were three diminishing circles rising up the paper each consisting of many tiny images of the Buddha, tinier in each layer. The ever diminishing images spreading out from the centre seemed to mirror my already diminishing recollection of the detail of what had been too wonderful a trip to be forgotten so easily. It moved me to action. I reached into another pocket of the slightly battered rucksack and took the notepad and pen and start to write, wishing as I began that I had found the time to make better notes as I went along. Still, better late than never. At least the trip was still fresh in my mind.
But where should I begin? To which point should I backtrack? The genesis of the trip lay in the early part of 1994 when I decided that I this year I wanted to cancel Christmas and do something more interesting instead and started looking for suitable destinations. That really would be too much like starting an autobiography at the moment of conception. It couldn't sensibly be before the day of departure at Heathrow for the if the play is to make sense then cast must be assembled. It shouldn't be at Heathrow either for that was no more than a meeting point where faces were scanned with the eager interest of people who were going to live in each others' pockets for three weeks and brief introductions were made by Margaret, the tour representative, to be immediately forgotten in the information overload. Perhaps it should be in the Transit lounge at Karachi where we all drank tea and ate cake, where Graham went to sleep on the floor, where Frank took a photograph, where I stretched and yawned my way through the couple of hours to our connecting flight, where in fact we all did things that pointed to they way our next two weeks would be spent. Perhaps I should start on our approach to Kathmandu where the pilot uttered the helpful words
"For those of you who wish to see Everest, it is not visible from this route." again foreshadowing the future problems with aeroplanes and their efficiency.
No, none of these would do ! The right place to begin must be standing for the first time on proper Nepalese soil, outside Kathmandu airport having waited for the people who didn't obtain visas in advance and waited again while Graham and Frances registered their video cameras with the authorities, and again while we found our suitcases. That was the point where the trip truly began and so that is where I should begin. I picked up me pen and started to write.
We landed at dusk but by the time we had completed our immigration formalities it was already dark. As we left the airport buildings we were surrounded by children begging and by adults wrestling for our bags to carry them the six feet from the arrivals building to the bus and then demand a few rupees for their efforts. As Nepal is one of those countries where you cannot get the local money in advance of actually being there no-one yet had any Nepalese currency and they were wasting their considerable efforts at getting us to part with some. A few of the more enterprising ones did indicate that they would take other currencies, preferably Dollars or Deutschmarks but in emergencies Pounds Sterling. That seems to be the story the world over. This sizing up of the new arrivals is a ritual in every airport in Africa or Asia but at least here it was all fairly good natured. No-one seemed particularly surprised or bothered at their failure to separate us from our luggage. I.
As we boarded the bus we were each presented with a garland of orange and red flowers in a faintly embarrassing welcome ceremony. Everyone sat down on the bus wreathed in flowers and unsure of how long we ought to wear them to be polite. I introduced myself to the person sitting next to me who turned out to be also the group's other Bob. By the time we were under way it seemed darker than ever although that could simply have been an illusion caused by moving away from the relatively bright lights of the airport. The journey through Kathmandu was an eerie one. Although it was dark it was still only about six O'clock local time so the streets were filled with people and vehicles. Even in the darkness we could see the pall of the smog that lies everywhere in the city which is the most polluted place that I have ever visited. A sign on the outskirts declared
"Welcome to Clean Green Healthy Kathmandu",
a slogan clearly penned by someone with an overdeveloped sense of irony. The bus took us through the dirty dusty streets past row after row of open fronted shops, many of them scarcely more than wooden shacks, illuminated inside by candles or kerosene lamps and occasionally by a naked electric light bulb strung from the ceiling. The light from these differing sources spilled out onto the ground in puddles of variable intensity. Inside we could see people busy buying and selling groceries, motorbike spare parts, beer, clothes, cigarettes and any number of other things glimpsed too briefly for even a tenuous identification. Then without warning we were in a more prosperous area. This was apparent from the way that the open fronted buildings gave way to larger, more modern shops with glass display windows and more sophisticated wares, furniture, carpets and washing machines. A sign above a restaurant proclaimed "TRY THE REAL TEST OF TANDOORI !". Neon advertisements for coca Cola and Sprite, constructed on rickety wooden structures that seemed as if at any minute they might collapse altogether, added randomly spluttering colour to the scene. At a chaotic traffic island a frantic policeman tried vainly to control the flow of vehicles whose drivers on the whole were ignoring him completely. We turned left, than a little later left again into the car park of our Hotel, The Narayani.
Inside the lobby was decorated for Christmas with streamers and hanging lanterns and a Christmas tree with flashing lights and brightly wrapped ersatz Christmas parcels at its base. It seemed that even in a country where the vast majority of the people are either Hindu or Buddhist or a peculiar local amalgam of the two there was to be no escaping the season. As we waited for Margaret to register us we were each presented with a 'Narayani Special', a drink consisting of some rum like alcohol mixed with Mango Juice, and a parcel containing postcards and information leaflets and a T-shirt embroidered with a mountain scene and our names. Keys were allocated - I was sharing with an Irishman, Brian, who ran a bar in Brussels and said he had formerly been an elephant and crocodile hunter. I couldn't tell if he was being serious or not.
Normally when I visit foreign shores I make an attempt to learn a few simple phrases of the local language. The guide books to Nepal were singularly unhelpful in this effort. Phrases such as
"I need a person to carry me" or
"Please sing me a song" and even
"I think your son is very beautiful"
were commonplace but 'yes' was only ever given as equivalent to 'I have' and 'no' as equivalent to 'I do not have'. 'Please' was only listed in the sense of 'please give me'.
One book gave the word 'dhanyabad' as meaning 'thank you' but with a warning that no one ever actually says it and it will sound distinctly odd to the locals if you use it at all. Worst of all I could not find any translation for 'bugger off' which, after 'beer', is the single most important phrase in a traveller's lexicon. I can say this, or its equivalent in about twenty different tongues but as far as I could find out it simply does not translate into Nepalese. On the way to our first sight seeing stop, Pashupatinath, this very point was raised with our guide. He tried to teach us a phrase to use in its place to deal with the people we would meet trying to sell things to us. This phrase sounded like 'Chahi Deyna' meaning, he informed us 'I do not need it'. Sadly no two of us seemed to be saying it the same way and it did not appear to correspond to any of the limited set of phrases in my guide book. As its use subsequently caused only extreme amusement in the locals without in any perceptible way discouraging them, the correct pronunciation it turned out to be unimportant.
Pashupatinath is the most important Hindu temple in Nepal. It lies on the banks of the Bagmati river and like all of the temples in Nepal has been in constant use for hundreds of years resulting in a generally dilapidated and shabby air. The first thing you notice about any temple anywhere in the country regardless of the religion is that it could benefit from a quick once over with a bucket of whitewash. As we approached it we were surrounded by people trying to sell us small carvings, prayer wheels, daggers and assorted jewellery. Our best attempts at the local language caused gales of laughter and frequent wickedly accurate mimicry of our hopeless accents. At the side of the narrow road leading down to the Bagmati, a road which in reality was scarcely more than a dirt track, a group of men was combing the wool from sheep fleeces while nearby several nearly naked children were playing in a doorway. On the opposite side of the path a rusty pipe sticking up out of the ground disgorged something black, oily and evil smelling out into the soil where it oozed down into the stream that ran parallel to our route. We walked down to the point where this foul watercourse joined the river and then along the bank as far as a bridge that led over to the temple itself. The temple, and various associated buildings occupied several hundred yards of the opposite bank and as non-Hindus we were not allowed to enter it although we could cross almost over the bridge providing we did not actually set foot on the shore.
In front of the temple on the river bank a public cremation was taking place. Several men in loincloths, presumably priests, were keeping the flames hot under a funeral pyre. The corpse was mostly obscured by the material it was wrapped in and by the flames themselves although its feet were clearly visible protruding from the end nearest the bridge. As we watched one of the feet burned through and fell from the pyre. An attendant picked it up with no more ceremony than if it had been a coal and returned it to the flames. A little further along the bank a second body was being wrapped in saffron coloured robes and garlanded with flowers ready to take its turn on this grim conveyor belt.
The river itself is polluted and disease-ridden and has a dirty oily sheen to it that makes it look like a mixture of used washing up water and discarded motor oil. Nevertheless it is considered holy and in it there were many people ritually bathing and others who were floating offerings of flower boats downstream to the gods. Our guide told us that even now with so many of the younger adults having a University education the religion still dominates their lives. They still believe that the disposition of the souls of departed relatives lies with the amount and quality of gifts that they the survivors make to the gods.
"In ancient times," he told us "The Brahmins would say 'If you wish your father to have eggs in heaven then you must give us a chicken, if you wish him to have milk then you must give us a cow. Nowadays some people give gifts of radios and television sets so that their relatives will be happy after death."
It seemed to me to be an unnecessarily cynical assessment of the situation but as I did not speak to any of the worshippers there I cannot be certain. Perhaps the people really do make such strange gestures, perhaps it was no more than our guide's contempt colouring his description. In any case it is certainly true that everyone there takes religion very seriously.
Although we could not visit the left bank of the river the temple area also extends to much of the right bank and we were allowed to explore this side as thoroughly as our limited time there permitted. Here among the temple buildings hundreds of small grey monkeys run rampant, playing and fighting and snarling if people approached too closely. In a country where rabies is common not many people want to risk getting too close. Indeed many of the local people carry weighted belts to whirl around to scare away any monkeys or dogs that come too near.
Sitting in the shadow of one of the Chaityas, small religious buildings of which there are dozens, a beggar contorted his body into bizarre positions with his legs crossed behind his head and then, smiling serenely, hacked up a mouthful of phlegm and spat it onto the ground. Another beggar with a deformed and twisted leg manoeuvred among us on two hand held wooden blocks with a quickness and ease that can only have come from many years of practice. Eventually our guide called for us to return to the coach and we left behind the monkeys, beggars and temples to once more run the gauntlet of the souvenir salesmen who had now been joined by one selling tiny wooden fiddles which he demonstrated by playing Frere Jaques at about five times its normal speed. No-one was tempted.
Next on the agenda was Bhaktapur, the City of Devotees, which is the third largest city in the Kathmandu valley. Before we had even stepped from the bus we were surrounded by hordes of child entrepreneurs offering their services as unofficial guides. This too is not unusual when travelling in poor countries and in the absence of a Nepalese equivalent of 'Imshi' there are only two ways to deal with it. You can either completely ignore your would be guide and hope (probably in vain) that he will be discouraged by your lack of interest, or you can accept the services graciously and tip at the end. We walked from the car park to the Royal Palace determined to ignore them and listen to the official guide. In addition to this difficult feat of concentration we also had to negotiate more people selling prayer wheels and a ridiculous number of people selling 'genuine Gurkha Khukri knives'. If everyone of those knives was genuine the Gurkhas would have been the largest standing army in the history of the world, albeit rather poorly equipped.
By the time we reached the palace I had given up trying to ignore the lad who had decided to be my guide and was even taking an interest in what he had to say. His English was better than mine and his knowledge of the local history was astounding. I tried to picture a Birmingham child being able to tell me the history of anything local other than perhaps Birmingham City or Aston Villa Football Clubs but the image was simply ludicrous. Obviously he had taken a lot of trouble to learn everything that he could to make himself useful to tourists. I spot checked some of the things he was telling me in the guide book trying to catch him inventing an answer but I couldn't fault him. He pointed out and described the many animal carvings inside the Palace grounds and explained their significance as representations of sacrificial animals. He even pointed out the altars upon which they were killed and the drainage channels to allow the blood to run away. Through a gate into a separate courtyard we came to the bathing pool with its twin cobra statues and its thin layer of dirty stagnant water in the bottom. Through another highly ornate gateway we glimpsed the inner court of the palace although this section was still used and a military guard prevented any closer access.
From the palace our official guide led the group toward Bhaktapur's Durbar square. There are Durbar squares scattered all over Nepal. It is simply the name given to the part of a city occupied by the royal apartments, the word Durbar means 'Palace'. My young guide showed me the temples beginning with the Bhairabnath temple, the Valsala Darga temple and the Nyatapola temple. Here the figures carved on each level are supposed to be ten times the power of the figures on the lower level until the Goddess inside is ten times more powerful than any of them. He continued to hang around as I joined some of the others in a Thangka shop where many fine paintings were for sale at only sky high prices. Admittedly the quality was very high but none of us could believe it when Brian actually paid four hundred dollars for one. I went back outside to find my young guide waiting patiently for me.
All around the square I could see other members of the group with similar eager assistants. After asking if I had bought one of the thangkas he told me that he could take me to a shop where 'fine paintings are also for sale but not as expensive'. I had been expecting some such move to come eventually and at least he didn't insult my intelligence by claiming it was his 'brother's shop' as often happens. I followed him a little way along one of the alleys that lead off from the square and into a tiny shop with the walls entirely covered with paintings. Inside I discovered that Graham and Miles had both also found themselves there. Obviously the shop owner tipped the young entrepreneurs generously to lead custom to him. I didn't mind. Why should I, the lad had done a better job than most professional guides. None of us bought a thangka from the shop but on the way out I gave my guide a good tip. Anyone who has gone to that much trouble deserves to be rewarded for his efforts. Moreover he didn't ask me for any more money or look disappointed at the amount I had given him.
Soon afterwards the whole party regrouped and rejoined the official tour. In spite of his apparent satisfaction with his tip my guide carried on telling me about the city anyway, talking above the real guide and as his English was accentless where the other's was difficult to follow I found myself listening to him once again. We wandered through the back streets of Bhaktapur for a while, looking at the pottery being made and at the overcrowded and impoverished conditions in which the normal citizens of Nepal live. The streets were narrow and the buildings tall giving the place a claustrophobic look that, in spite of the style of the buildings, put me in mind of the pictures I had seen of the slums of Victorian London. In spite of these conditions everyone we saw was cheerful, friendly and happy.
Finally we departed from Bhaktapur to return to our hotel for lunch. In view of our earlier visit to the cremation at the river I felt that a barbecue lunch served around the swimming pool was in particularly poor taste.
After lunch it was time for more sightseeing. This time we were starting with the Durbar square of Kathmandu itself. This is larger than the one in Bhaktapur and, as I would learn later, larger than the one in Patan but somehow it seemed less impressive, possibly because I had no guide explaining it all to me. More likely it is because it has such a different character. The one in the morning had been small and crowded with temples, a busy and bustling place where the people seem to have been designed to fill the gaps between the buildings. It looked as if some naughty godchild had emptied a box of toy temples out onto the floor and then just set them upright where they landed. Kathmandu on the other hand had its buildings more spread out and looks planned.
As I approached the square, ducking through an archway on the left brought me into the courtyard of the Temple of the Living Goddess where, for a small donation, the Living Goddess herself appeared briefly at the window of the apartments. She is a child of about ten who would remain in office until puberty when a new goddess would be chosen. The 'temple' was a fairly shabby tenement building which on closer examination revealed an unexpected wealth of detailed and intricate carving.
When I entered the square itself there was a beatific holy man in crimson who was apparently too holy to permit photography unless paid a few rupees. Everywhere and at every moment people selling jewellery and knives surrounded us. Our magic words of dismissal produced only the same raucous response that they had at Pashupatinath. I purchased only a postcard of the Living Goddess (photography of the building is permitted but photography of the Goddess is strictly by appointment only).
As evening approached we left Kathmandu and went on to the Swayambhunath Buddhist temple that is also known as the 'Monkey Temple' from the large band of monkeys that crawl over every inch of it. Although extremely impressive the temple has an even more run down look to it as Pashupatinath and for the same reasons.
We spent some time exploring the buildings. Inside a group of novice monks were at their lessons, singing and chanting and later they provided one of the strangest sights of the day when, lessons ended, they came out onto the Stupa platform for a game of football. Frank photographed virtually the whole game including the incident when one of them kicked the ball over the wall and down the hill and they sent the youngest and smallest, with maroon robes trailing behind him, to climb down the terraces and retrieve it. Then Frank photographed the temple, the city seen from the temple and for good measure a group of giggling Nepalese teenage girls who were sightseeing and insisted on giving him their address so that he could send them all a copy. As the sun set, sadly obscured by clouds but nonetheless captured faithfully on Fujichrome, we headed back down the hill to our coach and then onward to our hotel after a very full day of sightseeing.
