Culture Shock

When we arrived in Nepal yesterday the airport went quite smoothly.  I almost became complacent, thinking that I would very soon be at ease.  Oh no.  Our driver sped through streets inundated with people and motorcycles.  I’m sure anyone else who’s been to a major city in a truly impoverished country knows what it looks like.  For me, though, no amount of reading or pictures quite prepared me for the realities of the third world.  And I’ve only been here 24 hours, just scratched the surface.  As he maneuvered through streets that had no lanes or rules, dodging around the pedestrians, our driver pointed out a few of the temples and other places we might visit.  I was more interested in just observing the city life of Kathmandu.  It was complete sensory overload for me. 

 

I’m sure Melissa was also thinking “Oh my, what have we gotten ourselves into here?”  We would occasionally look at each other in the midst of the chaos with expressions of speechlessness.  I have no pictures that quite convey the real nature of the city as we saw it on that first car ride.

 

After 20 minutes or so we were at the hotel.  It is a gated hotel in the midst of the most touristy area of Kathmandu, and highly rated on tripadvisor.com.  Walking in the main door, the owner immediately greeted us, bounding down the stairs and calling us by name.  Born in Nepal, the owner lived most of his life in a British boarding school in India and then the United States.  After years in Seattle and marrying an American, he returned to Nepal to operate this hotel.  His smile and Americanism immediately made us feel at ease.  

 

The hotel is popular with Americans, Brits, Canadians, and Australians.  Those nationalities comprise almost all his business.  He and his wife are on a first name basis with all their clients, hanging out with them in the courtyard and cooking meals for them.  They make their hotel a small community of foreigners who come for long stays and often come back from year to year.  It is an oasis, insulated from the bustle of street vendors, bicycles, rickshaw drivers, and stray dogs right outside the door.

 

Melissa and I did not venture far that first day.  After checking into our room we walked around the block.  Despite being the touristy area of Nepal, there are remarkably few tourists (it’s the rainy season, after all, but we’ve had no rain, so we’re lucky).  It seems that regular life proceeds for most of the locals without paying too much attention the small number of westerners.  Those who earn their living from the tourists, though, are plenty.  We could not stop to read our map without a rickshaw driver asking to take us somewhere or a teenager trying to sell us jewelry.  We politely declined, and all but a few of the vendors left us alone.  The persistent ones would walk with us a block or so and then go on their way.  Despite being persistent, everyone here is kind and respectful of the tourists, and despite being overwhelmed, we have not felt unsafe.

 

In the evening we had dinner at the hotel.  The owner cooked tenderloins on a grill he’d imported from Tennessee.  We chatted with the other travelers.  We were invited to dinner tonight by a family who travels abroad a great deal doing social work with adoption agencies.  That family was making arrangements to take a plane flight around Mt. Everest tomorrow morning, and we will be able to join them for that trip too--we hope to have great pictures on Sunday’s blog.  I also was surprised that someone in Nepal recognized my Sabres hat.  Being from Alberta, Canada, one of the other guests started talking hockey with me, and it was a strange combination of setting and conversation.  Still suffering jet lag, we turned in early.

 

Without being too condescending or sensationalistic, I should mention that outside our courtyard, the poverty is evident.  People warned me that that fact is what I would find most shocking.  Melissa and I awoke early this morning, and by about 7 am were walking around the streets again, politely ignoring the groups of children sleeping in the street.  There are also piles of garbage in the middle of the street, and I haven’t yet figured out if that’s the normal method of waste movement or if it’s an unusual amount of garbage due to periodic strikes in garbage collection.  It was easy to see how the packs of dogs eat, but I was pained when I saw children picking through the garbage.  Readers can understand our reluctance to take pictures of these aspects of Nepal that will be most permanent in our own minds.

 

The poverty is just life here, and it seems most people do what they can to make a living.  Commercialism is booming, at least in this part of town.  Like any major city, each vendor hawks his wares to the passers-by, and Melissa and I spent much of the day politely declining.  There are stores lining the streets selling food, handmade carvings, clothing of all sorts, musical instruments, tours, backpacking equipment, etc. Wall-sized framed photographs of mountains that would be $50 or more in the US sell for like 10 bucks.  But how are you gonna get it home? 

 

We decided to be brave and follow a walking route recommended by our extremely useful Lonely Planet guide book.  This path took us south from the Thamel area of Kathmandu to Durbar Square, a site of many ancient shrines.  This walk was dotted along the way with minor shrines and temples, and it was remarkable how ancient holy artifacts that would be treasures in a western museum were around every corner.  Most are in use today, meaning that everyday Nepalis stop to make offerings and pray as they go about their daily routine.  That does not mean, though, that they are well-preserved or in any way separate from actual life.  Steps of holy shrines had people sleeping on them or selling fruit, some were surrounded by garbage, some were falling apart.

 

The first main one we saw was Kathesimbhu Stupa, a holy place for Tibetan Buddhists.  This beautiful structure in a courtyard was surrounded by many smaller shrines to various deities, and people were lighting candles and offering prayers at many of them.  Here you can see the Buddhist prayer flags that make it quite picturesque.  Some people climbed onto the stupa to walk around its main section, but Melissa and I admired from a distance, feeling too ignorant of religious custom.  We’ve read a lot about Nepal and its religious heritage, but there are so many shrines and so many deities, and actually being here is intimidating.  It reminds me of a place like Paris, where there’s a beautiful medieval church around every corner, only here, I am so unfamiliar with culture and history that it’s even more difficult to appreciate them.  So we mostly just observe, looking at the architecture, the symbols, the images of deities, and the people at each one conducting their worship, sales, or begging.

 

Other notable religious things we found on our trip include a statue of Buddha dating to the fifth century.  That is astounding to me.  On Antiques Road Show it would be the most valuable thing ever, probably worth millions, and here, it was ignored on the street, stuck inconspicuously into the stairs underneath an eye clinic.  Unbelievable.  Another notable religious relic was the ancient shrine to the deity of toothaches.  People hammer coins into it to prevent pain.  Here you can see it over Melissa’s shoulder.  It was on a street with many dentists.

 

The last stop was at the bookstore.  Having read in Lonely Planet that Thamel had a Barnes and Noble, we were somewhat annoyed that American culture permeates even the most remote places, but also relieved, considering it indicative that we would be safe and welcome.  We found the Barnes and Noble bookstore, we think, but it seems to have been sold to Waldenbooks instead.  We perused the mostly English selections (which included a heavy dose of books about Everest), bought some postcards and a Nepali flag, and were on our way.

 

It is midafternoon.  We have returned to the hotel, having ordered both breakfast and lunch from small Nepali street establishments.  Tonight we eat dinner with the other Americans, and tomorrow morning is the Everest flight.  I can't control the placement of pictures on this site, but up at the top you see the 5th century Buddha, the stupa with prayer flags, and a hindu temple where cows, apparently unattended, are just wandering around among the pigeons.