Kathmandu

Kathmandu was not at all what I expected it to be. The consistent story I heard from other travelers was that it was a crowded, busy, polluted big city. When I arrived, the traffic didn't seem *that* bad and I found the old, city center area to be nice and walkable. Then I found out that it was just because of a petro strike! Evidently gas hadn't been trucked into the city for about a week, so the cars and pollution were way down. Lucky for me (not the city!) the strike lasted most of the time I was in town :).



The 16-hour power outages that I faced on arrival also made things interesting. The city basically shut down after about 8pm. The Maoists are in power now here in a coalition government (after democratic elections) and the combination of drought and mismanagement have left the country with a severe shortage of power generating capacity. People are not happy, with this and with the fact that many economic reforms have not occurred as the government had promised. There were marches, strikes and protests every day that I was there. It was confusing to know who was protesting. Many times they were Communists, and I kept thinking "what are they protesting? Aren't they in power?". But evidently it is often the 18 other Communist parties in the country that are complaining about not sharing the Maoists success (plus the Maoists marching occasionally to show their strength). It doesn't feel dangerous here for tourists, and after the first few days of protests, my reaction when running into one was "Communists *again*?". (Update: having the Prime Minister resign earlier this week didn't exactly ease the tensions, either)




Trekking is the big reason many tourists come to Nepal, and the Thamel tourist district in town resembles nothing if not a gigantic REI store. You can get anything here related to hiking and outdoor activities. Some of it might even be real! Nepal is famous for selling locally-made rip-offs of outdoor clothing company wares, especially The North Face. My Isreali friend Arial likes to call them "The North Fakes". The funny thing is they are pretty well made. I had a very warm North Fake "super down" vest, sleeping bag and fuzzy cap that did me well on my trek. You start looking at the logos on the clothes, to see how close they are to the real thing, as if that's some indication of quality ("The font is a little off on that one" or "The real North Face wouldn't use such a big type face there"). The clothing rip-offs make for some interesting shifts in what brands represent over here. For instance, Dolche and Gabanna is so ubiquitous on the t-shirts, caps and cute little jackets of Nepali youth that it is more like The Gap than haute couture.




In addition to my friend Jordi, I had the good fortune of having a couple of friends living in Kathmandu that I could stay with and see different aspects of the city. My friend Nick, who I met in Mexico last year, is staying in Kathmandu studying on a scholarship. We had a great time going to an Osho Commune up in the hills outside of town for a weekend. Unlike the high-end spa setting of the Osho Ashram that I avoided in Pune, this place had a much more down-to-earth feel. The commune offered a full-day's schedule of meditations that ran the gamut from an hour of continuous dancing to Osho's famous "Dynamic Meditation". Dynamic Meditation involves breathing as deep and as hard as you can for 10 minutes, primal screaming for 10 minutes, then jumping up and down chanting the Sufi matra "Hoo! Hoo!" for 10 minutes before collapsing into 15 minutes of meditation. Osho's idea with this was to get your body as tense and exhausted as possible before going into meditation so that you would have no thoughts at all to disturb your peace. It strangely works - after that routine my mind would be eerily silent, and those thoughts that I did have would be faint and quiet. It seemed like a lot of work to get to that state though! A fun weekend, but not really my thing...



Nick lived in the historic town of Patan, above a well-off Nepali family who had kind of adopted him and invited him down for dinner often. The parents were a kick and two of the sons were famous Nepali musicians. We made jackfruit curry one night and brought it down to share with them (note to future curry makers: jackfruit is nasty to work with. It gives off some sort of white latex goo that sticks to everything when you cut it). I loved the family, the mother especially. She didn't speak a word of English but was one of the funniest people I've ever met. She would ply me with the potent local Nepali wine, raxi, fill my plate with a ridiculous amount of food to eat, and then make fun of me.



After staying with Nick, I moved back to central Kathmandu to stay with Amy Paro, sister of my good friend Erika. Amy and her husband Adam work for USAID in the US Embassy in Kathmandu and were wonderful hosts. They have a sweet house near the embassy with internet access, lots of power thanks to a generator, and all the amenities. This was a good break from my backpacker lifestyle. They were also trekking pros and hooked me up with some essential supplies for my trek.