2024 Nepal – Kathmandhu
29th December 2024
“There’s a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Kathmandu.”
Heaven knows why but this first line of a poem from my childhood always pops into my head when I hear the word Kathmandu but when Federika suggested going there, images of great adventure popped into my head. When planning the trip and looking at flights my first Google introduction was the headline “Kathmandu has regularly been identified as one of the worst airports in the world due to a high frequency of accidents.” That was not the kind of headline I was crazy about when booking a flight so I paid quite a bit extra for Air India tickets as I read somewhere that their planes tend to have more gadgets that prevent them from flying into mountains.
Indian Airlines didn’t have a great reputation but I didn’t understand why as we had always found them very good and certainly better than most European Airlines these days. What was surprising was the different security at each airport. No one was worried about the bottle of water I carried in my rucksack but I had to take out all my electronic equipment, including all the cables. On the plane, we were given a selection of hot meals as opposed to the glass of water most European airlines give you if you are lucky. Neither of us liked to sit in the middle so we had an agreement that if a man was sitting in the window seat then I sat in the middle, if it was a woman, then Federika did. In all our years of travel, I only got to sit in the aisle seat once. Normally, I was not too bothered but the young man sitting next to me had some kind of skin complaint on his hands and spent the entire two-hour flight alternating between picking the skin with his fingers and biting it with his teeth. It was so irritating but what could I say? I tried rigging up a kind of blinker system like horses have so I could only see in front of me but his picking had a jerky movement so there was no escaping from it.
At Nepal airport, we went through the bizarre process of going through security when we got off the plane. They had the same machines and frisking as when getting onto a plane. I don’t know what kind of terrorist gets on a plane loaded with explosives and then sets them off when they get to the destination airport but I assume they must exist otherwise the exercise was pretty pointless.
I had arranged for a taxi to meet us at the airport and take us to our hotel in Thamel in the centre of Kathmandu. I knew Nepal was a very poor country which soon became apparent by the state of the streets. Even in the centre, there were a lot of roads that were so small that two cars couldn’t pass and there were no pavements, so cars, scooters and pedestrians all competed for the same space. At one point, our driver was driving up a hill and saw another large car coming towards us. This happened all the time in the village where we lived so if someone was coming we looked around us to see if there was a place we could wait so they could pass. In this case, the driver took one look at the oncoming vehicle and drove quickly up to it, stopping only inches away. He made it clear that he was not going to move, even though the other vehicle couldn’t do anything. He just sat behind the wheel with his arms crossed, ignoring the protests of the other driver and even passing strangers. There was a lot of shouting and a crowd gathered around and at one point several people were banging on the car roof telling our driver not to be such an arsehole. There was no question he was an arsehole but I had to admire his indifference. After 20 minutes, a lot of shouting and a 37-point turn, the other driver managed to move enough for us to pass.
We were staying at the Everest Boutique Hotel, which was good except for the restaurant being cold due to them leaving the front doors open but we only ate there at breakfast. A guest recommended a nearby restaurant called Roadhouse so we went there on our first night. Federika ordered the exotic-sounding Nepali Plater, which consisted of Nepali-style smoked chicken sandeko, marinated dry buff (female young buffalo), peanuts, spicy potatoes, papad, soybean & beaten rice. I was never going to be able to compete with that so I ordered a lasagne. The “meat sauce” filling description was a little ambiguous but it was a reputable restaurant so I wasn’t expecting to find anything too unpleasant in the filling. Federika rarely managed to finish a full plate so I knew my meal would not be entirely without adventure if I could sample hers. I took a mouthful of Federika’s and although I was sure it was very tasty, it was impossible to tell, with my mouth being on fire. Even Federika struggled to eat it and she liked spicy food.
Some friends of ours who had been to Nepal three times on trekking holidays introduced us to their guide Kamal and he arranged all our tours, starting with Durbar Square. Special qualifications were needed for guiding in that location so Kamal sent someone to show us around who was OK except for a long lecture about the life of Budha. We didn’t have the heart to tell him we had heard it several times before and his explanation made no more sense to me than the previous ones.
Durbar Square was a thrilling start to our holiday and thankfully there was not too much traffic whizzing around us. Much of the tour was taken up with being told which buildings had been destroyed in the big earthquake of 2015 when so much of the city was flattened and nearly 9000 people lost their lives. It was surprising how well restored most of the buildings were with the help of foreign governments, mainly the Chinese. Most interesting was the Kumari, (The Living Goddess.) We were shown into the courtyard of a small palace with lots of windows facing us and told to wait for the Kumari who appeared at the window twice a day for less than a minute. 
A young girl between two and four years old was chosen to be the Kumari and remained so until she had her first menstrual period. She was not allowed to leave the palace except for six ceremonies each year when she had to be carried everywhere as her feet were not allowed to touch the ground. During those ceremonies, she could not talk to anyone, not even her family. It was a great honour for a family to have their child chosen to be the Kumari so there was no shortage of volunteers but of course, the child had no choice in the matter. The courtyard was pretty full when she was due to make her appearance and there were guards everywhere making sure no one took photos of her. An elderly woman came to the window to make sure everything was ok and then the young girl appeared. She was not supposed to show any emotion and if she smiled at you, it was a bad omen, although there was no danger of that. She looked utterly pissed off with the whole thing and couldn’t leave the window fast enough. To the untrained eye, it might not have been apparent but there was a definite hint of gum chewing going on which one tends not to associate with goddesses. I knew we had to be tolerant of other cultures but it was hard not to see how locking up a young girl for most of her childhood was not abuse. When her menstrual periods started and she left the palace it was originally believed that anyone marrying her would die young so they were not exactly queueing up for the privilege but these days superstitions have faded so she ends up leading as normal a life as an ex-Goddess can expect.
For lunch, we were keen to try momos which we had heard so much about but although I enjoyed them, they seemed the same as Chinese Dim Sum to me. After lunch, our guide took us to the monkey temple and who doesn’t like monkeys? They were everywhere and when Federika bought some nuts to feed them they surrounded her. She couldn’t hand them out fast enough, so one jumped up and snatched the bag out of her hand and they scattered onto the floor which increased the feeding frenzy. 
Our guide took us into a shop and asked if we wanted to see a healing bowl demonstration. We were keen to see it but soon realised we had been ambushed. It was a large copper bowl made of six different alloys and when the demonstrator ran a wooden mallet around the edge it made an extraordinary sound. We bought a singing bowl years ago but this was on a different level. Federika stood in front of the young man as he moved around her body bashing the bowl so the vibrations were transferred to her which is claimed to be therapeutic.
When it was my turn he put a small, doughnut-shaped cushion on my head and placed the bowl over the top so it was covering half my face. He then bashed it gently with a soft mallet sending vibrations all through my body. I had no idea whether it did all the things he claimed but it was an interesting experience and I was surprised how long the vibrations lasted from just one hit. The demonstration went on for ages and went well past the point of no return when we felt obliged to buy something. We both got a shock when he told us it cost £140 and weighed two kilos but we agreed to buy it even though we had no idea whether we would ever use it. During the demonstration he kept emphasising the difference between a singing bowl and a healing bowl, saying that singing bowls were known in the trade as tourist bowls and not to be taken seriously. Later that day I looked on the internet and could not find a single reference to healing bowls being any different except maybe a bit bigger. We were still happy with the purchase and ironically I used it that night although not for the purpose it was intended. I had developed a bit of a cold so I used the bowl for steam inhalation and it worked a treat. I even gave it a bash with the mallet to get some good vibrations going through my blocked nasal passages. We also bought a beautiful little game involving a wooden board with 20 goats and four tigers. That also weighed quite a bit so we were only on our first stop and already getting weighed down with luggage. 
Towards the end of the afternoon, Federika started to feel unwell and back at our hotel it became obvious she had food poisoning. It was strange because although we ordered different types of momos, we always shared each other’s food and I felt fine. It struck me how trusting and vulnerable we were on our travels and one of my favourite Latin phrases came to mind “Iacta alea est” (the dice have been thrown.) We spend our lives accepting food from strangers without a clue as to where it comes from or what unwelcome guests it might contain. If we are unlucky enough to one day ingest something harmful, we throw the dice and the result could be anything from a mild stomach upset to a one-way ticket to that great restaurant in the sky. I was not worried about it as most of us are optimistic by nature but it did bring it home to me what might happen and the importance of good travel insurance, even though in the 50 years of buying it I had never once made a claim.
Next morning while Federika was in bed I took a stroll around town and bought a few things but it was a little hectic and hard to relax whilst praying that the scooters saw me in time to avoid a collision. There were lots of interesting shops including one with a huge pile of giant fish stacked three high on a counter next to the pavement. Next to it was a large fish tank also full of giant fish that were looking sorrier for themselves than the dead ones.
They looked great to eat but being so far from the sea they must have been river fish which in my experience tastes awful. Kamal told us that the fish are preserved using formaldehyde. I had only ever heard of formaldehyde being used to keep dead bodies minty fresh. It sounded horrific to me but I later read that it was often used to preserve food, so I had probably been ingesting it for years. There was also a shop with a pile of chicken pieces on a slab next to the pavement and without a refrigerator in sight. It seemed a bit unhygienic but then I noticed that the chickens were kept alive in cages at the back of the shop so I suppose the meat they sold was fresher than in any supermarket in the world.
Throughout the next day, Federika started to feel better although still not well enough to go to the New Year’s Eve dinner we had planned. We asked the hotel receptionist where we could buy a suitcase and he organised the hotel taxi for us with the assurance that the driver knew where to go. As so often happens these days, the taxi driver didn’t have a clue so I ended up directing him using Google Maps. I had to laugh when I thought about taxi drivers in the UK who in the past had to drive around London on a moped for three or four years doing their knowledge. I think they had to know every road in London. As always, Mr Google had no trouble getting us to the small shopping mall where we managed to find a branded suitcase which was half the price we would have paid in England so I was suspicious but I had a good look and it seemed genuine enough.
The next morning Kamal drove us to Bhaktapur which was a much quieter and prettier area than where we were staying. For lunch, we went to a restaurant in the middle of the square and sat on the first-floor balcony which goes around the outside of the building. Later we made a surprise visit to a house tucked away down a side street. It was called The Peacock Shop owned by the amazing 70-year-old Mr Ramnarayan Prajapathi who described himself as an “artist, collector and renovator.” 
His house was huge, with five floors and rooms tucked away here there and everywhere. One area that looked like a cellar had lots of hand-carved pillars, some of which he had made himself and others that were hundreds of years old that he had restored. 
He was such a happy character and we were lucky that he was in the mood to show us around, not to push us into buying something but just for the joy of it. I think his main business was making paper as there were huge piles of large colourful sheets and Federika bought quite a few for her artwork. He was very proud that his son lived in the USA and had written a book about the Bhagavad Gita (the Hindu equivalent of the bible.) It had been translated into many languages and he knew the exact number that had been sold. It was the only thing he was pushy about selling although the cost was prohibitive.
We discovered that the dinner we had planned the night before wasn’t a special New Year’s event but available every night so we arranged to go with Kamal that evening. The building was called the Nepali Chulo with a restaurant downstairs and banqueting rooms upstairs. The dining room was long and narrow with a stage at one end where there was some classical Nepalese dancing.
There was one dance between each course which I found to be a good format. Star of the show was a giant peacock that had developed a cunning way of getting tips. It extended its long neck into the pockets of customers and searched for money. It came down to us and Kamal put a 100 rupee note on Federika’s head for the ostrich to remove. After a lot of unsuccessful pecking, Federika’s head got a bit sore so she took the note from her head and put it in the ostrich’s mouth.
There were six small courses and just when we were both feeling pretty full, they brought out the main dish. We were the last ones to leave so I seized the opportunity to get on stage and try a bit of Nepalese dancing myself but modesty forbids me to say how good it was.
2024 Nepal and India
