Living in Nepal

On the way back from The Last Resort late Sunday afternoon we stopped in a large town. When I say stopped I don’t mean we pulled over and stopped, I mean we just stopped right in the middle of the main street, which is the main road. There were other vehicles stopped on the opposite side as well so the road was blocked. One of the Nepalese guys got out of the bus and we just sat there wondering what was happening. All along the street were shops selling the same things: garish fluorescent blankets, cheap ugly clothes, electrical appliances, bottles of whisky and assorted bits of plastic junk. There would have been at least ten shops side by side all selling this stuff, like a row of really bad Crazy Clarks stores.

Bidhya told us that people living about 30kms either side of the Tibetan-Nepalese border are, on certain days, allowed to cross over and buy things duty free. There are a number of check-points as you approach the Tibetan border, which I’m guessing are there to police the traffic of these goods. Either that or it’s just a way of making money because on the way up there was a young boy travelling on the bus whose job seemed to be to get out and give money to the police at these check-points.

After a good ten or fifteen minutes the Nepalese guy hopped back on the bus carrying a rice cooker!

But as we were about to set off a problem arose. A truck came travelling along in the opposite direction and there was nowhere for it to get past. There was a brief stand-off then one of the Nepalese got off the bus again and it started reversing on an angle as he hit the back of it to let the driver know to keep going. We came within a centimetre of knocking over a motorbike parked on the side of the road before the truck had enough room to get past, which it did, beeping its musical horn as it went. Now we could finally get going again and as it was now getting dark I recalled the advice in the Lonely Planet guide that advises against travelling on buses at night.

All the people on the bus were with Projects Abroad, all were uni students or young people on a gap year and nearly all were Australian. Some of them are living in a place called Banepa, about an hour and a half east of Kathmandu and we dropped them off on the way through. It was just a more open spaced version of Kathmandu. Shop lights from the odd squalid looking café shone soft through the polluted air, fires burned here and there and street dogs wandered in search of food. Just more of the same, but it made Patan look like a leafy suburban paradise.

Yesterday morning, as we left our home away from our home away from home, the Dokhaima Café, and stepped out into the bustle of Patan Gate, there was a truck unloading police in large numbers. Some of them were sitting along a bench near the cafe, dressed in riot gear. We didn’t see anything exciting happen but there have been some demonstrations against the rising petrol prices. Last week the taxi drivers staged a protest by causing a traffic jam. The government is trying to force them to use their meters instead of demanding an upfront fare. We always have to haggle over the fare before we agree to use their taxi and if you ask them to use their meter they always refuse or say it’s broken.

Each morning at about 8 a woman comes to the house carrying a can of milk. Bidhya takes a saucepan out to her and the woman empties some milk into it. It’s then put on the stove to boil. This woman and her husband live an hour away in Baktipur. They get up at 3am every morning and milk their cow/s then catch a bus to Patan and deliver the milk. They also do odd jobs like cutting grass to stay alive. Bidhya could buy her milk at the supermarket but the woman has been delivering her milk for several years and she doesn’t have the heart to put her off now. Bidhya makes her own butter from the cream and also her own butter lamps, one of which she lights each morning in front of a Buddhist statue.

The power cuts here are getting longer as winter comes on. At least there is a schedule so we know when it will be off. Kathmandu is divided into seven areas and each takes turns going without power. Bidhya and Suhendra and several other households in the neighbourhood (some of whom are family) share a generator which just provides power for lights and when this stops working they have a battery at the house for just a few lights. It doesn’t affect us much. We have no TV to watch (although they have one in their room upstairs) and they use gas for cooking. And of course there is no heating. In previous winters they have been without electricity for up to 18 hours a day. 

When you consider that most of Nepal’s population still live a basic, rural existence, it’s not that surprising that Kathmandu doesn’t offer the comfort and reliability of a western city, even at its hotels. When we go in to Thamel and stay at the hotel on weekends, we try to create this fantasy where we pretend to escape from this developing country for a while, but it’s ridiculous to even think it’s possible. There’s hot water but it can start to run out and it’s brown. You can watch TV but even if the power is on, the transmission can drop out without warning and stay off for some hours. So too the internet, which is always painfully slow. Our washing gets done and it’s clean, but not the shining white clean as at home, just as the white towels at the hotel are grey. And it just isn’t as safe. Last Saturday night in Thamel a 21-year-old girl, a volunteer who had just arrived from England, leant against the window in her hotel room on the fourth floor and when it gave way she fell to her death.


.http://www.metro.co.uk/news/849784-x-factor-hopeful-dies-after-falling-from-hotel-window-in-nepal