The momos, perogy-like, their backs textured like leaf veins or fish scales, the insides filled with a finely chopped mix of curried vegetables, sit in a circle, head to toe, on the plate. Already a favourite.
The never-ending grating cacophony of car and motorbike horns mixed with thick exhaust; people on cellphones yelling over the racket or across bad connections; the voices of trade, construction, friendship. The “streets” – alleys, lanes actually, often pot-holed, often garbage-stewn – of old Kathmandu.
A skyline – one lunch time – of two, three, even five-tiered red tiled pagoda-roofed Newari temples in Patan, temples that are now Hindu, now Buddhist, but mostly an ancient interlacing of both, along with other strands of local gods, customs, spiritual practices. These temples with their delicately carved, weathered wood panels, struts, doors, bringing to life the many-faced gods and goddesses, with their posturing, fights and love-making. How the profile of these many-tiered roofs echoes the nearby mountain skyline, an architecture of place, seeming to celebrate the joys of being here and here only.
We are walking pathways along the forested ridges east of Kathmandu city. A woman stirs a huge cast iron cauldron of homebrew. Men and woman work crops of hilled potatoes, rice, greens we don’t yet know. A granny swings her rod through the high grass, gathering up loose chickens, a grandpa sits sleepily beside several grazing goats. Below us, through the pines, the distinct bright greens of the paddies out of which rise, here and there, the stacks of brick-making plants.
Those shy Himalayas. We have left the city at 4:30 a.m. to (perhaps, maybe, if lucky) see the Himalayas at sunrise. We climb by car east into the valley’s foothills, up and up to Nagarkot town which sits on a pinnacle at the edge of the high ranges. We then climb up flight after flight of stairs to a hotel rooftop, where a small group of Chinese tourists soon arrive, signalling across to their fellows perched on other rooftops, taking pictures of one another from perch to perch, storks with cameras. Across the northern horizon are the Himalayas … out there we are told, just behind the thick late monsoon clouds. The sky brightens and we begin to see how high we stand above the deep surrounding valleys. Again we search for snow-covered peaks, examine the rooftop diagram of where Everest, Cho Oyu, Gauri Shankar, Annapurna rise, 6,000, 7,000, over 8,000 metres high. We again look along the northern horizon. The highest snow-covered peaks in the world. Brilliantly white this early morning. Somewhere. Out there. In the thick grey clouds. Kabi our guide has attempted to keep up our hopes. I say the mountains seem shy today. They want to stay veiled. He smiles. We take a few more cloud pictures.
“Where you from?” The question we strangers get asked – immediately and always, again and again. It feels like some primal locating, identifying, connecting-relational gesture, something our modern Western sensibilities find abrupt and invasive, its repetition annoying. Sometimes, in touristic places like parts of Kathmandu, the question is the marketer’s handiest opening gambit. Sometimes it might be the one phrase in English or some other tourist language that a Nepali has at hand. Sometimes it seems prompted by genuine curiosity. Sometimes is feels like it has its roots in old habits of human location: your home place, your family, your caste or class, who are you, are we related? And what does it feel like being asked Where you from? forty, fifty, sixty times a day? By midday, really, really irritating.
Our welcome – after the increasing weariness of several days of airline catnaps and airport transit – by the personable, helpful staff at the Hotel Ganesh Himal. The quiet and breathable air (serene, given that we are in Kathmandu) of the hotel’s garden-eating courtyard. If only we have many such welcomes and retreats along our way.
The drive along Kantipath from Patan into Kathmandu in rush hour. But no, this was not really a “drive.” Rather, several lanes of cars (but there is no driving in actual “lanes”), and some six, seven, eight “lanes” of motorcyclists, auto rickshaws, wheeled carts and cyclists all jostling and scrabbling for position, for some advantage, invisible to our eyes, in a sludgy flow of metal, rubber and exhaust. (All that grumbling about rush hour traffic on Ottawa’s Queensway now seems exceedingly petty. Kantipath Road – here’s reason to gripe!)
Our guide Kabi Raj smiles, says “good one” and gives me the thumbs up when I say Raj is a royal name. Turns out he is very conscious of his “senior caste,” as he tells Betty. He has led our way along country paths east of Kathmandu. Over the day he has moved along the pathway in such a way that, several times, an approaching person – sometimes elderly, sometimes carrying an awkward and perhaps painfully heavy load – has been forced to move to the side of, even off, the pathway. On the bus, he sets his shoulders and knees rigid, obstructing the efforts of an older woman to move into the inner seat beside him (she does so anyway). Along with the smiles and inquisitive chatter with us is a practiced contempt for those ‘lower’ than himself – and on this day, moving though hill villages, there are many who are ‘lower’.
The never-ending grating cacophony of car and motorbike horns mixed with thick exhaust; people on cellphones yelling over the racket or across bad connections; the voices of trade, construction, friendship. The “streets” – alleys, lanes actually, often pot-holed, often garbage-stewn – of old Kathmandu.
A skyline – one lunch time – of two, three, even five-tiered red tiled pagoda-roofed Newari temples in Patan, temples that are now Hindu, now Buddhist, but mostly an ancient interlacing of both, along with other strands of local gods, customs, spiritual practices. These temples with their delicately carved, weathered wood panels, struts, doors, bringing to life the many-faced gods and goddesses, with their posturing, fights and love-making. How the profile of these many-tiered roofs echoes the nearby mountain skyline, an architecture of place, seeming to celebrate the joys of being here and here only.
We are walking pathways along the forested ridges east of Kathmandu city. A woman stirs a huge cast iron cauldron of homebrew. Men and woman work crops of hilled potatoes, rice, greens we don’t yet know. A granny swings her rod through the high grass, gathering up loose chickens, a grandpa sits sleepily beside several grazing goats. Below us, through the pines, the distinct bright greens of the paddies out of which rise, here and there, the stacks of brick-making plants.
Those shy Himalayas. We have left the city at 4:30 a.m. to (perhaps, maybe, if lucky) see the Himalayas at sunrise. We climb by car east into the valley’s foothills, up and up to Nagarkot town which sits on a pinnacle at the edge of the high ranges. We then climb up flight after flight of stairs to a hotel rooftop, where a small group of Chinese tourists soon arrive, signalling across to their fellows perched on other rooftops, taking pictures of one another from perch to perch, storks with cameras. Across the northern horizon are the Himalayas … out there we are told, just behind the thick late monsoon clouds. The sky brightens and we begin to see how high we stand above the deep surrounding valleys. Again we search for snow-covered peaks, examine the rooftop diagram of where Everest, Cho Oyu, Gauri Shankar, Annapurna rise, 6,000, 7,000, over 8,000 metres high. We again look along the northern horizon. The highest snow-covered peaks in the world. Brilliantly white this early morning. Somewhere. Out there. In the thick grey clouds. Kabi our guide has attempted to keep up our hopes. I say the mountains seem shy today. They want to stay veiled. He smiles. We take a few more cloud pictures.
“Where you from?” The question we strangers get asked – immediately and always, again and again. It feels like some primal locating, identifying, connecting-relational gesture, something our modern Western sensibilities find abrupt and invasive, its repetition annoying. Sometimes, in touristic places like parts of Kathmandu, the question is the marketer’s handiest opening gambit. Sometimes it might be the one phrase in English or some other tourist language that a Nepali has at hand. Sometimes it seems prompted by genuine curiosity. Sometimes is feels like it has its roots in old habits of human location: your home place, your family, your caste or class, who are you, are we related? And what does it feel like being asked Where you from? forty, fifty, sixty times a day? By midday, really, really irritating.
Our welcome – after the increasing weariness of several days of airline catnaps and airport transit – by the personable, helpful staff at the Hotel Ganesh Himal. The quiet and breathable air (serene, given that we are in Kathmandu) of the hotel’s garden-eating courtyard. If only we have many such welcomes and retreats along our way.
The drive along Kantipath from Patan into Kathmandu in rush hour. But no, this was not really a “drive.” Rather, several lanes of cars (but there is no driving in actual “lanes”), and some six, seven, eight “lanes” of motorcyclists, auto rickshaws, wheeled carts and cyclists all jostling and scrabbling for position, for some advantage, invisible to our eyes, in a sludgy flow of metal, rubber and exhaust. (All that grumbling about rush hour traffic on Ottawa’s Queensway now seems exceedingly petty. Kantipath Road – here’s reason to gripe!)
Our guide Kabi Raj smiles, says “good one” and gives me the thumbs up when I say Raj is a royal name. Turns out he is very conscious of his “senior caste,” as he tells Betty. He has led our way along country paths east of Kathmandu. Over the day he has moved along the pathway in such a way that, several times, an approaching person – sometimes elderly, sometimes carrying an awkward and perhaps painfully heavy load – has been forced to move to the side of, even off, the pathway. On the bus, he sets his shoulders and knees rigid, obstructing the efforts of an older woman to move into the inner seat beside him (she does so anyway). Along with the smiles and inquisitive chatter with us is a practiced contempt for those ‘lower’ than himself – and on this day, moving though hill villages, there are many who are ‘lower’.
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