First day in Kathmandu
03/13/10
We stepped into the alleyway narrow streets, passing a man washing his underwear in a blue bucket sitting in brown dirt, a couple feet in front of his house. He held his underwear up to me, between scrubs, presumably to show how clean he had made them. I did not know how to respond, though had I been wearing tear-away pants, I could have instantly shared his enthusiasm for showing off clean underpants. I choose instead to nod and smile. Meanwhile, cars flew by within inches of his bucket, but he did not even react. Behind him, his wife hanged clothes to dry. Out front, their children yelled “Hello” to us, giggling and taking turns piggy backing each other across the street between fly-by motorcycles. Rickshaws bounced along the potholes beside us as we made our way towards the center of the city under a beaming hot sun…or so I hoped.
I had asked the manager of our guest house for directions. His route of travel was confusing, especially since he had no street signs to really speak of, just landmarks that described things I had never seen before. Plus, it probably did not help that I made a common mistake of mine in my recently-woken-up state of mind. I have definitely asked a question, ignored the answer and been too ashamed to ask again, way more times than I would like to admit. I have this strange problem. Whenever I ask someone something and they respond “Great Question!” I’m too busy congratulating myself to hear them answer the question. For this reason, I was only slightly confident on how we would get to the Monkey Temple.
Within minutes in Kathmandu, we saw what we missed last night in the darkness. My pupils were already dilated with sights and we had only turned one corner. The world around us was shaded brown. Brown gravel roads, to the brown concrete and brick boxed buildings that surrounded us; the buildings looking like old baked good, the falling bread crumbs, which seemed ready to turn into a cloud of dust. White was easy to spot, available in many directions, on the teeth of smiling faces of Nepalese people, which was a welcome change for us. They were happy living amongst garbage-strewn streets with few possessions. It came to show, as I’ve said before, that happiness is disposition, not circumstance.
Ahead of us was a steep, Dr. Seus-shaped wobbly street. In the foreseeable distance, I spotted what I hoped to be our destination, the infamous Monkey Temple, perched golden on top of a hill of trees. I pointed at the temple, something everyone could easily see. Boxie-boo gave me the same impressed look I received in Australia after I bragged about using a payphone. She looked at me like I was the reason companies have to write “do not eat” on stereo equipment.
The route in front of us was, however, scattered with waterways, narrow swerving streets and tight-fitted bazaars, looking like a brown maze cluttered with strewn-garbage, bridges and cresting hills we could not see beyond. I realized that taking people on a walk when you are uncertain of your destination is like making a dog wear a costume: I knew it was wrong, but I convinced myself that they were enjoying as much as I was.
Walking across a bridge, the water was so polluted that garbage piles made small rapids. Pigs and dogs walked amongst the slow current, tearing at bags of discarded food. It smelt of heated sewage, while the midday sun rose, surrounding us as we crossed the bridge single file trying hard to breathe out of our mouths only. For a moment, all I heard was water, the bending of plastic and the murky footsteps of diseased-looking animals seeking food out of filth.
My arms were already a shade darker from rising dust of passing vehicles that stuck to my sunscreen. The sun felt good as it returned to my face after our time in China, while the world around us constantly changed. At times, the streets were so busy I felt like a single oxygen bubble in the veins of this crowded city. I worried one of us might get knocked over by a car or fall into one of the road side puddles. At one point, when two opposing cars met, I stood, my feet wide, back against a brown building, stretched in dry pockets over nauseating puddles of brown water, while the garbage floated near my shoes. Other times, we found soundless side streets, where quiet worshippers kneeled to make prayers at small, roadside temples.
Before the Monkey Temple, we entered a small Hindu temple, stepping over a white dog, lying motionless in the dead of sleep at the entrance. As is customary, we walked around clockwise, passing locals ringing bells and spinning prayer wheels in praise of their deities. Golden candle holders burned incense on shelves permanently stained black with smoke and bizarre shapes from fallen wax. In front, followers left offerings of rice and flowers. When I was handed rice, I followed their lead always, placing the offerings where others had been left behind.
The temple centered on the goddess Durga (below), depicted in bronze with eight arms. Goddess Durga is the mother of the universe and believed to be the power behind the work of creation, preservation, and destruction of the world. Hindu followers worship her as the supreme power of the Supreme Being and she has been mentioned in many scriptures - Yajur Veda, Vajasaneyi Samhita and Taittareya Brahman.
She is often depicted with eight or ten hands in temples, which represents eight quadrants or ten directions in Hinduism. This suggests that she protects the devotees from all directions. She is armed with many weapons, rides a lion, which signifies that she can release her followers from their fears. Not only a warrior, Mother Durga controls both aspects of energy, the potential and kinetic, and invokes her devotees to attack the challenges they face in life without losing their confidence.
According to some Hindu texts, Durga was created as a warrior goddess to fight a demon named Mahishasura who had unleashed a reign of terror on the earth, heaven and the nether worlds. Upon initially encountering Durga, Mahishasura underestimated her for being a woman. In response, Durga roared with laughter, creating an earthquake, before later defeating him with a sword. This weapon she is often depicted as holding symbolizes knowledge, which for Hindus represents freedom from all doubts.
Outside the temple, the elephant god Ganesh had many tombstone-like concrete carvings throughout the streets, allowing locals, I supposed, to pray to a deity on their daily commutes. He is the Lord of success and destroyer of evils and obstacles. He is also worshipped as the god of education, knowledge, wisdom and wealth. Beyond Ganesh, prayer flags were seen covering many small homes. We watched monks stroll by, chatting with market owners and offering blessings. Temple after temple, statue after statue, Religion and Kathmandu were one, as if they whole city was designed for worship.
I was thankful for all these temples. Not only were they culturally important and interesting, they distracted our group from being aware that I had little idea of where we were going.
“Do you know where you are going?” Boxie-boo asked me.
Maybe the temples weren’t as distracting as I thought.
I pointed at Ganesh. Boxie-boo did not even glance in the deity’s direction. This did not distract her either. Thanks Ganesh, I thought. We seemed to have entered another residential area, with no giant temple in sight.
“Umm,” I murmured, then paused. I paused long enough to make it appear that I was thinking.
Above us, monkeys walked along the power lines from outside apartments as if they were renting rooms. Boxie-boo and Liam both enjoyed watching the monkeys, which was a much appreciated new distraction possibly sent by the god of education. Thanks Ganesh, I thought again, this time not sarcastically.
“Yes, it’s this way,” I responded in albeit an unnecessary delay, feeling proud, looking up at monkeys who gripped the thickened electrical wires, before swinging themselves to neighboring buildings. I looked around the streets, rather bigheadedly, as if I had just answered a very tough question on Jeopardy, but no one around me seemed to be impressed. Some of the Nepalese people were even laughing at me.
It turned out the locals found amusement in our admiration of the monkeys, finding it strange how much we enjoyed watching them jump from building to building. To them, the monkeys were nothing more than annoying pests. They proved this by attacking them with brooms and tossed rocks.
Thankfully, a few blocks further, we met the base of the small mountain that held the Monkey Temple.
Boxie-boo and Liam led the way, pointing to a street-length wall of prayer wheels that surrounded the hillside. Boxie-boo moved under an archway, which featured a golden Buddha in the middle, guarded by paintings of white lions. Inside, Buddha statues sat in a meditation positions behind concrete lions. Monkeys were everywhere, focused on stealing the food offerings of believers. The trees were lined with prayer flags, creating waving shadows and the flickering of light across the walkway. We were followed by begging children, tugging at our pants and felt horribly sorry for them. Their little hands and faces were stained with caked-on dirt. Some of them mimicked for food, while others looked ready to cry. We had to keep moving, as in my experience, when you stop, you are quickly surrounded and risk being pick pocketed. Looking back, it is to think how quickly we almost got used to such sights and detached from the rawness of poverty that is common place throughout the world.
All the while, Boxie-boo’s Italian skin tone left locals confused, as many market owners asked her whether she was from Nepal or India, while some young men glared at me, thinking a foreigner had stolen one of their local beauties. Greetings came to her in Nepali language. This we would have to get used to as it only became more commonplace later in India. While she blended in, sharing their welcoming smiles, I often felt like an intruder.
The stairs led the way with three steep and narrow steps, followed by a larger wide one, over and over again. Reaching a market partway up the hillside to the temple, a local woman chiseled a Tibetan calendar out of rock, complete with symbols into circles of flattened stone. She wanted 3,000 Rupees for one, a special price for tourists. In the end, I bought two for a 1,000 total. “
You bargain hard like Nepal man,” she said. “You win, I lose.” We both knew, even with such a price drop, a local would have paid far less.
Towards the top of the temple, Boxie-boo pointed at monkeys grooming each other in the shade of concrete statues. When they looked at her, she jumped back, hiding behind me, while Liam and I focused our cameras. It was only our first full day and I had already snapped tons of photos. It was easy to become photo happy in Kathmandu, a city that seemed to constantly cause sensory overload.
It cost us 200 Rupees each to enter the top section of the temple. The area was centered around a bronze pole of circles, gradually getting thinner towards the top. It was surrounded by prayer wheels, which at times, were almost constantly spinning by circling worshippers. From here, we looked across the expanse of Kathmandu, while pigeons flew around us, landing to eat the thrown rice. In some sections, there were enough pigeons to block the concrete below. From above, they looked like a one large grey shadow that moved gently in unseen wind.
…Hours later…
Have you ever been so disgusted you did not know whether to laugh or cry? This was Boxie-boo’s end to a day of sightseeing. Let me explain.
Liam was busy bartering with taxi drivers outside Patan Durbar Square. An outdoor concert had the streets sardine packed around the corner. Suddenly, the crowd changed, slamming tsunami-like towards us. They ran forward, looking back behind, with the faces of fleeing, harsh, stony and frightened. Liam stopped bartering immediately and was smart to usher us into a cab as quickly as possible. Kathmandu is sometimes the focus of political demonstrations, strikes and even forced curfews. These crowded situations have a reputation for leading to violence, which of course, is not necessarily the case. We decided it was better to be safe than possibly sorry and get away from the chaos.
(I apologize for the following description)
There is no easy way to write this, so here it is: The cab smelled like semen. The car may have been small, but the scent of sex was so strong in the backseat, there may have been an orgy of midgets in it minutes earlier. The sex-scented parade entered our nostrils, swinging across the nose hairs like chandeliers, propelled by what smelt of tuna-scented farts. Boxie-boo and I immediately rolled down our windows. She gagged once. I told her to focus on breathing from her mouth and to relax her hands. She did. On a damp seat. This wet feeling of a soggy cushion only increased the lingering smell, while we felt our clothes moistening as the smell worsened to dead fish. She instantly lifted her hands off the seat, a little too quickly, as this caused her hands to rise up near our faces. I felt vomit rise up in my mouth and hung my head out the window just in case.
By the time we got out of the cab, our bottoms were soaked through to our skin. In something wet that smelt of semen. It is safe to say this was not the highlight of the afternoon.
“Only in Nepal,” Boxie-boo said, feeling the dampness of her pants. She began to laugh while crying.
“It is on my pants,” she screamed, her fingers outstretched, hands pushing downwards as if trying to push away the smell.
“Eww,” she said laughing.
“Eww, eww,” she repeated, this time crying.
We hugged while avoiding each other’s lower backs in the slow dance position of a young man trying to hide his arousal, then chaotically into the hostel. Our day of sightseeing ended with Boxie-boo running into the shower, then scrubbing our clothes in the sink. By nightfall, Boxie-boo had reinvigorated her skin with her body lotion. We went to bed, shuddered occasionally when we thought back to the smell, armed with our flashlights under our pillows as we faced another electricity cut, a fact of life in Kathmandu, as electricity was rationed throughout the city.
That’s all for now.
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