Doing nothing, mainly

Hey guys, haven’t written for a while. This is not, as you might quite rightly have assumed, because I had got it together to go up into the mountains. In fact I haven’t got it together remotely. I’m always terrible at leaving places – it’s some sort of inertia thing. Or, as you might term it, total laziness. Come to think of it I’m hard pressed to say what on Earth I’ve been doing for the last month.

Obviously a lot of it was curfew. That’s my excuse anyway, for when the backpacking truant officer comes round demanding to know how many temples I’ve ticked off. I think I’m going to have trouble with him though because I haven’t eaten a single banana pancake. Do you think he’ll take mixed fruit porridge in lieu?

One thing I have done since last we spoke, is go to Pashupatinath – Nepal’s most important Hindu temple. Actually, I went twice. The first time I walked there and then couldn’t find it, decided to stop for food, then after a nice dinner it was late and I wandered home again. The second time I splashed out a pound on a taxi.

It was nice ‘n’ all – templey, you know. And then on the way from there to Boudha (big Buddhist temple) I asked direction from some teenage girls and ended up getting invited to a wedding feast. As you do, you know. They were very excited. They dragged me in, sat me next to an old man who I later discovered to be the priest, brought me a big plate of food and then sat nearby giggling.

I tried to look as inconspicuous as a 5’8” white woman in scruffy travellers’ clothes can in a tent full of Nepalis in their Sunday best. It wasn’t really working as everyone was craning their heads to look at me. A couple of people even took photos. ‘Look, a tourist, eating, clumsily!’ It was quite funny. I made small talk with the priest and tried to explain the workings of the British constitutional monarchy in between mouthfuls.

But apart from that, since the curfew finished I’ve done fuck all. I find myself sitting in a café all day, or lying in bed reading a book. And who knew that iPods had solitaire on them? There’s another wasted afternoon, just like that! But I think, ‘Sod it, it’s my holiday, I’ve worked my arse off for the last year, I deserve to lie around doing nothing.’

The trouble is I’m perfectly capable of spending the next six months doing nothing with this justification. I’d have to move to a cheaper room though, to stay that long, and that would involve initiating action… Three months then.

In lieu of interesting adventures of my own (that don’t involve beer) I’ll tell you a bit about normal life here. Feel free to skip to the bit which interests you.

Traveller life in Kathmandu

One thing is that I’ve met very few Brits. Apart from the drunken British Embassy staff of course. And a Tim-nice-but-dim public schoolboy type who was here to do the Everest base camp trek and knew NOTHING about Nepal at all.

Lots of the outdoor types are lovely, but some of them seem to think Nepal’s a kind of mountain theme park. Tim-NBD didn’t know what religion they were here or anything. How could you be coming to such an intriguing place and not read anything about it?

I’ve met the afore-mentioned herds of Belgians and Canadians. And lots of French people, I think because the Hotel owner is French-Swiss. And of course I’ve spoken to loads of Nepalese people.

Point being – because of this, my English is losing any regionalness. In an effort to be understood I’ve stopped using any Scottish-isms. I only realised when I wanted to describe someone as glaikit and was frustrated that I couldn’t think of synonym for it. I’ve obviously been editing myself unconsciously, and only noticed when I got to a word I couldn’t substitute for. Weird that there’s no other word for glaikit though, eh? Answers on a postcard if you can think of any.

I’ve also dropped Nottingham words (not that there’s many, or that I get to use them much in Edinburgh anyway) and most British slang. My accent’s got blanker too and I even find myself talking in completely wrong syntax. ‘I bus station going’. ‘Bus is leaving when is?’ ‘No, no good price, my price more better!’

And I’m actually using different wrong syntax according to how the person I’m talking to speaks. Different syntax for French people and Nepalis, for examples. It’s weird how quickly you pick that up. If the vocab is familiar, maybe it’s quite easy to learn new grammar rules.

I should apply that to my attempts to learn Nepali! As long as I can remember the vocab, I just need to put them in the order that Nepalese people with bad English use. I’ve been trying to learn a bit of Nepali. So far, I can say stuff like, ‘How are you? I’m well thank you.’ And ‘One beer please’. Of course. I can say that in loads of languages.

I’ve been raiding the bookshelf in the guesthouse, so as not to squander the books I went to the trouble of carrying here. How come every guesthouse bookshelf in the world has a copy of Ayn Rand’s ‘The Fountainhead’? Is there some right wing version of the Gideons going round and leaving them everywhere? Also you may remember, I made a throwaway remark the other week about the ubiquity of Paul Coehlo’s ‘The Alchemist’ in travelling circles. That was before I’d seen that the bookshelf here has got FOUR copies of it. French, English, Dutch and German. For all I know they’ve got it in Hindi and Korean too but I can’t read the titles.

And I should tell you a little more about my turret. It’s got my magnificent terrace of course. A corrugated iron roof, with a ceiling beneath, and sometimes a pair of crows who hop about incredibly noisily on it. Reassuringly the roof leaks just exactly where the ceiling light is.

There’s an ancient anglepoise lamp by the bed whose plug is all splintered so the pins move about and I’m constantly surprised I don’t electrocute myself. Those dusty blue-washed walls you get in Indian houses. And yesterday afternoon it started to smell of rotting cabbage.

My first thought was that I REALLY needed to get some clothes washed, but it turned out it wasn’t that. After sniffing everything in the room I ended up on my hands and knees under the wicker furniture set and decided it was the rug. The door to the terrace (as well as the roof) leak when it rains. It chucks it down, so there’s a lot of water. And mainly it soaks into the rug. I got the owner to come and have a sniff and he took the rug away. Hopefully the smell will have cleared when I get back.

Everyday life

Have I mentioned all the rubbish? There are mounds of rubbish everywhere in the streets. Quite neatly, in particular places. They don’t have bins, so the refuse system is these designated spots where everyone goes to chuck their rubbish, and then a truck comes round to pick it up, with a couple of guys who shovel it in. Rank job, eh? When it’s hot the piles stink. And during the curfews the rubbish wasn’t collected for weeks and the piles got huge.

Lots of the rest of it seems quite normal by now, so I can’t think what else to tell you. What about the sounds of Kathandu? Thamel is full of embroidery shops where you can get big dragons and stuff embroidered onto the garment of your choice for dirt cheap. So in the evenings there’s this constant vrrroom of sewing machines. And then about ten o’clock the dogs start barking and don’t stop ‘til dawn. The little bastards sleep quietly all day and come to life at night when it’s cooler and no-one kicks them.

You stop noticing background noise pretty quickly though. I remember when I was in Kashmir years ago, one night, sitting on our houseboat, the guy I was with said, ‘Listen to that gunfire from the hills.’ I kept saying I couldn’t hear anything. In the end he imitated the sound. ‘Oh no,’ I said, ‘that’s just a normal Indian noise, you hear it all the time!’ It wasn’t until later that I realised that the village I’d stayed in in India was next to the Indian Army’s rifle range….

Foodwise, I told you that you can get any sort of food in Kathmandu. Good food too. Not like the Indian version of a pizza. But Nepalese food is mainly dal bhat. At it’s most basic this is simply dal and rice, but usually it’s the Nepalese version of an Indian thali – curry, dal, rice, poppadom, pickles and curd. It’s pretty good. Also there’s a Tibetan dish called momos, which is like Chinese dumplings, with a spicy sauce. I’m totally addicted to momos now. Partly I just love ordering it ‘cos the name’s so cool.

Anyway, that’s probably enough for now. Another day I’ll give you an update on the political situation – all very complicated, but some of it quite funny.

Much love to all. I know my original plan was to stay until the end of June, but I’m now thinking I’ll change my flight and come back later ‘cos I think the money will last until then. If anyone wants to come visit, then let me know!