KATHMANDU
Dipak and I agreed to meet in the hotel lobby at 8:30 in the morning, but he didn’t show up till almost 10. That was an excellent opportunity for me to have a great conversation with Raji – the guy at the reception. He was a 19-year-old who came to the big city to continue his education and started this job in order to pay his bills. He was getting paid very little having to work extended hours. However, Raji described himself as a “real lucky guy” for being given the opportunity to have a job. Unfortunately, most young people here didn’t have jobs.
Till noon Dipak and I worked on the documents related to a visa for India. I had decided to make a stop there as well when I felt that I didn’t want to be in Nepal anymore. It was easy, all I had to do was fill out a form and provide my passport, and everything else was going to be taken care of but my fellow.
Raj, the guy from couchsurfing.com, joined us around noon. He was accompanied by another traveler, York, a programmer from Ukraine. It was going to be an interesting day, filled with wild activities I had no suspicion of. After this day, many others like it were going to follow and Raj and I were going to become really good friends.
So here is how it all started – the three of us crossed the narrow streets of Thamel and at the end of the district, we got on a shuttle, with a sign only readable for Raj. After that, we transferred to another shuttle and got off someplace in the middle of the huge Kathmandu. Another local guy joined us there and the four of us hopped on one very run-down bus. We rode for more than an hour before we reached the outskirts of the city and found ourselves in something that looked a lot like a village. We walked for a while and entered a forest with steep hills. My poor leg wasn’t having much luck these days.
We arrived at a beautiful waterfall and the guy who joined us last took out some weed from his bag. Here in Nepal, there are holidays when people go to temples specifically to smoke weed. It is widely spread and they even grow it in their gardens. Later Raj started telling us about tigers living in the forest, to which we all burst into laughter. He remained serious and kept telling us he wasn’t joking though, which made the Ukranian guy and me laugh even louder. We didn’t get an encounter with a tiger and we decided to move. After a 20-minute walk through the steep forest, we arrived at a place that was even more beautiful than the waterfall. We sat down to rest a bit and prayed to Shiva in the recommended by him manner.
At dawn, we returned to the village and Raj took us to a pub. It was basically a room with rugs along the walls where one could take a seat and lean on the walls. There was no one inside and the host explained that it was going to get crowded in an hour.
In fact, this was the place where all the men from the village gathered in the evening over drinks and talks. I really wanted to try some local home distilled alcohol so I asked Raj to order something for me. He smiled and said something to the host. Two minutes later he returned with four small bowls and a pitcher filled with white liquid. Raj explained this was called Chan and it is made from rice. We all drank two bowls each within an hour (the alcohol percentage in it is almost as much as in wine) and as we were paying our bill I could sense that the host had told some bad news to Raj. In fact, they were. As it turned out, we were late for the last bus back to Kathmandu. We decided to walk back and meanwhile, Raj was trying to stop any vehicle that went past us. My leg had started to hurt a lot and at some point, I told them I was going to spend the night right there, in the middle of nowhere, because I wasn’t able to walk anymore. Raj requested that I give him 15 more minutes and then finally he was able to stop a truck. We hopped in the back. It was pitch black and I couldn’t see anything. I could sense a strong smell of cows and at some point, I thought they were right there among us. It turned out there were no cows, but their feces were everywhere.
The road was covered in potholes and I could barely stand on my feet, but the view from the truck remains in my memory vividly to this day. There were shacks on both sides of the road. There was no electricity, so there were candles lit everywhere. It was dinner time and all the people were sitting in front of their homes eating. I had never seen anything like this before. Despite being poor, and eating very closely to the dusty road, smiles were covering their faces. I saw peaceful and loving creatures, who could rarely be seen in the luxurious Western homes. I started thinking, since happiness wasn’t in the material belongings why did we all constantly chase exactly them…
The truck left us somewhere in the outskirts of the city from where we took a shuttle. Three of my fellows got off shortly after Raj instructed the driver in detail where to drop me off.
I rode for a while alone when I finally got off in Thamel, however, I had no idea where the hotel was. I stopped at a rickshaw with a cool mid-age guy, who gladly agreed to take me to the hotel. I ended the day with a hot shower in my hotel room and a heart filled with gratitude, hard to express in words. This time it was for the unique day I’d had and for the promising beginning of a new wonderful adventure—an adventure created by the only one who was capable of it – His Highness the Life.
The day that followed we decided to spend a little more quietly. After getting some good sleep till almost noon, I went to meet with Raj and York as we had agreed. We went to this pretty awesome café where York worked most of the time and Raj and I didn’t stop drinking beers. The whole day! York had to work on the next day also so Raj and I agreed to take a walk through Kathmandu. And so we did. He came in the morning and we headed to some place, I didn’t bother asking about. In fact, I never asked where we were going. I fully trusted Raj and I was absolutely convinced that his plans for our days are the best I could experience at the moment. Besides it was a lot more fun to not know what was next, it made me completely sink into this new and unknown world filled with things I had never seen before, scents I had never smelled before, and more than anything a world full of surprises.
After another ride on one of those shuttles, we arrived at a Hindi temple. I came to find out it was Pashupatinath, one of the largest Hindi temples in the world, dedicated to Shiva. It is located on the banks of the Bagmati River. Raj took us through a secret passage and saved me the entrance fee for tourists of about $10. I wasn’t fond of such activities, but when one is being led by someone, everything must be done absolutely unconditionally.
As we entered, my attention was grabbed by the number of monkeys around. Raj was somewhere behind me, when I made the brave decision to pet one of them. I picked one that was sitting at the top of a brick fence. As I approached I could sense that the monkey didn’t have a friendly look on its face, but my desire to pinch its cheeks was bigger than me, so there wasn’t a force in the world that could stop me from doing so. As I got closer the monkey started making threatening noises, but I had already imagined in my head how we snuggle in a warm embrace and how I give kisses to its entire face. All of a sudden the monkey jumped towards me, I bent over instinctively and the animal couldn’t touch me. As it landed on the ground though it started walking toward me when suddenly it went flying given a start push by Raj’s kick. He screamed at me that we needed to get out of there before the monkey called for help. I had a million questions in my head, but Raj had a better one, “What in the world were you doing?” I explained quickly my intentions and when he was done laughing at me he thoroughly described the behavior of Makasi.
If you are like me and have no idea what Macaques are, let me give you a brief description. Macaques are very aggressive monkeys. In case you are planning to snuggle one, as I did, you may end up in a hospital bitten by one or a few of them. What’s more, as you walk by them, it is not recommended to look at them. You just go on your way and act like they don’t even exist. If you look at them, however, you are in some serious trouble. If you have a bag full of food and the monkey wants it, give it away voluntarily. This reminded me of the thugs back home; the same scenario here except the monkeys didn’t have fancy cars.
In Pashupatinath, there were burial ceremonies every day. As I was walking by I asked one of the participants if it was OK to stick around for a bit and observe the ritual. They answered it was fine to stay but to not take any pictures. The deceased one was an old lady and a man fully dressed in white clothes was preparing the body to be cremated. The woman was wrapped in an orange fabric and was placed at a specifically prepared for the occasion pyre. I observed the relatives. There was no trace of the tears and weeps that I was used to from the funerals back home. I could see peace and calmness on their faces. I thought about the different effects that different religions have on the same ritual to such an extent that they didn’t even appear similar. A question quickly arose in my mind – “Why do we believe in things that bring us suffering?”
After the temple, we took another shuttle and went to visit one of Raj’s friends, who was a young and intelligent man, but similarly to Raj, jobless. The three of us made our way to the house of another friend of theirs. His home was basically one room that combined everything in it – kitchen, living room, and bedroom. We spent a few hours there filled with conversations, marijuana, and lots of laughter. A bit later Raj informed us that he had other plans for the day so we got up and left. Half an hour later we were already at one of the most significant stupas in Nepal, Bodnat. The stupa is located in the ancient trading route which led from Tibet straight to Kathmandu, by the village Sankhu and the other ancient but smaller stupa Ka-Bahi (Little Boda). In the span of many centuries, many Tibetan traders made breaks here and paid their respect to the gods. In the 50s of last century, many refugees came to Nepal and settled around Bodnat. It is said that the stupa contains the remains of Kashiapa, a respected Buddhist and Hinduist in the area.
Time was flying by so we headed back to my hotel as I had to collect my luggage. Raj had invited me into his home, and I was going to stay there for the next few days. I gathered my belongings quickly and an hour and a half later we arrived at his place. His home was in a newly built building, which appeared very much like the houses in the west. A bit later York joined us and the day ended with great talks and much laughter.
On the next morning York was leaving for Ukraine so we said goodbye and Raj and I decided to spend the day doing nothing. Not exactly though because we still made a short trip to the market and got some fruits and veggies. His father was a cook at a hotel in the city and he wanted to make something for us. The man boiled rice in a pressure cooker, and sautéed a bunch of veggies in a frying pan while adding a bunch of different spices. On a third burner, he had a pot boiling with something like lentils in it. An hour later we were already sitting at the table, eating the most popular meal in the area – dal bhat. The rice was served on a big tray to the side, next to it were the sautéed veggies, and the lentils were placed in bowls. I was offered cutlery but given that they were using their hands I decided to follow their example. It was a truly unique dish.
Raj’s mom and grandma were also living in his house. His mom had had a difficult surgery a week prior and was recovering so we rarely saw her. His grandma spent almost the entire day soaking up the sun on the rooftop while sewing or patching anything you could imagine.
In the evening I decided to introduce my hosts to Shopska salad, besides I had brought along a small bottle of my dad’s famous rakia. As I was describing the liquid and pouring in the glasses I saw excitement growing in Raj’s eyes. It was his first time drinking anything with 50% alcohol content and after the first sip, he got concerned that his throat might catch on fire. A little water and some Shopska salad made things better so we repeated the steps a few more times. After dinner, we went to the living room and as we were talking he just lay on the floor and passed out. Rakia had soaked up his energy so much that I could even hear him snoring a little bit. Half an hour later he woke up and looked at me with eyes filled with accusations of murder attempt.
On the following day, he took me to Syambunat, which was an ancient Buddhist complex, where I could see one of the most popular stupas in the world. According to an old legend, back in the day the whole valley where Kathmandu is now located was a large lake where a lotus grew. An enlightened man, named Manjushri had a vision of the lotus and went in search of it. He realized that the place where he found it was great for worshipping; he dug a gorge through which the water from the lake flowed away. A city was formed in the valley and the lotus changed into a hill and bloomed into a stupa. The view from the hill can leave you breathless. Any direction you look you can’t see the end of the city. The presence of large groups of monkeys is a must in the area, but I had already gone through training, so luckily there were no accidents.
After Syambunat we took a shuttle and went to Bhaktapur Durbar Square which is a mosaic of pagodas and temples, dedicated to the Hindu deities. The place was beautiful so we spent about an hour there. Later we crossed some narrow market streets and took another shuttle to the outskirts of the city. We met one of Raj’s friends there, whom I knew from the previous days so we spent the remainder of the day together.
On the next day, Raj informed me that we were going on a journey out of town and that I was going to need a towel and swimming trunks. After about two hours ride we were already hiking through a forest. Raj was obviously familiar with the path so at the end we quickly arrived at a waterfall with cliffs around it and a natural pool in the middle. We took our clothes off immediately and jumped into it. The water was freezing and only two minutes later I exited the water because of the sharp pain I was experiencing in my lower abdomen. We had brought food with us so we spent the entire day there. It was sunny and warm which helped us recover quickly after the chilly baths. At some point, I stopped feeling the cold water and we were even able to sit under the waterfall and enjoy the water stream shower over us.
The time with Raj was going by very quickly and ten days had gone by already. We could spend a lot more time together but unfortunately, my leg wasn’t making a good recovery so I decided to leave Kathmandu and go someplace else. Some place where I wasn’t going to communicate with people and was going to have a few “sick days” locked in my hotel room. I had a trip to India ahead of me and it was time I stopped limping.
I said my goodbyes to Raj’s family, and he accompanied me to Thamel. I was looking quite rough so took me to a barber to take care of my looks. Here I’d like to add a piece of advice to the male travelers – when you go to Nepal, you absolutely must make a stop at one of the local barber shops. It is an interesting experience. First, your beard and hair disappear at the speed of light, and afterward, you receive a massage that nearing its end seems more like a beating. As soon as I received the first punches I searched for help in Raj’s eyes but all I could see in them was peace. I decided to let my masseuse finish me. I even tipped generously, after all the guy did his best to give me a concussion. We sat at one restaurant to grab a bite one last time. I didn’t want to part ways with Raj, he had become a real good friend to me. We vibed so well and could easily read each other’s thoughts. I had no idea how to express my gratitude to him. Shortly after that, I left and we never met again. Dear friend, I hope life treats you well, pampering you with plenty of its gifts, which you definitely deserve. One of my favorite prophets Slava Sevrukova said, “Life is neither good nor bad; life is what we deserve.”
Later I paid a visit to Dipak at the agency. My passport was ready and besides I wanted to say bye to him as well. As soon as he found out about my intentions and that I was leaving Kathmandu he recommended that I visit Pokhara. Supposedly it was the second largest city in Nepal and had a large lake. It also attracted many tourists so apparently I couldn’t get bored there. I had already heard about this city and was even considering going there. I decided that this was a good sign and spontaneously concluded that tomorrow I’d be making a stop there. The adventure wasn’t over yet.