Back in the present, we walked through the doors of the hotel, and the little man that had served me tea and breakfast in the morning almost exploded out of his skin with excitement to see me return to the hotel. It was as though I’d just offered him a million dollars. He covered the distance between me and him in about two seconds flat, so fast he resembled a defender in a game of rugby and for a second I thought I was about to get tackled. Instead he paused just short, held out his hand and beamed a most terrific smile at me. What have I done to deserve this? His English was limited, so he checked himself, nodded his head deliberately and said, ‘Sir! How you, sir? How trekking, sir?’
I found myself wanting to tell him all about it, but instead I replied, ‘I am very good. Trekking very good. You have a beautiful country, my friend.’
‘Thank you, sir. Thank you,’ he beamed a smile at me that almost melted my heart.
I took my leave and walked up to reception where Subash had been putting forward my case. The receptionist, the same man that had checked me in when I’d first arrived at this hotel, turned and offered me a smile that I will remember until I’m old and grey. He was bubbling with excitement to see me return.
‘Hey, he’s back!’ I heard a voice call from behind me. It was the manager of the trekking agency. ‘How was everything my friend?’
‘Everything was great, thank you!’ I answered. I was beginning to feel a bit like a celebrity. Even the few tourists in the lobby were giving me looks like: Who is this famous guy? I do recognise him from somewhere….
‘How was the guide?’
‘I think you gave me the best guide and porter in all of Nepal,’ I answered.
‘Very good, very good,’ he said, while stepping forward and giving me an affectionate tap on the shoulder. ‘Please come and take tea with me at our agency.’
‘Yeah I will, tomorrow. I just want to relax today.’
‘Excuse me, sir,’ a different voice called from behind me. ‘Of course we is having the room for you, sir,’ the receptionist said once more. ‘It will be ready in just 10 minutes, sir, so please drink the tea with us.’
I looked at Subash, who had his arms folded, and the smuggest looking I-told-you-so expression sprawled across his face. I went back to the first man and he offered me tea while I sat with Subash in the lobby. I arranged to meet him at midday so that he could show me where his agency was. I wanted to arrange some tours to various places around Kathmandu the following day, and as I didn’t have a phone I did not really know how to get in contact with him. Barely two minutes later, a set of keys dangled down over my shoulder and I looked up to see my receptionist mate with another big smile spread from ear to ear. I took the keys and took my leave of Subash. I had things to do. I had a big-ass pile of trekker sweat and grime to rid myself of. It was going to be glorious!
*
The room was small but decorated with the same dark-stained-wood-on-a-cream-background feel that I had experienced with the other room, which lent a soothing, elegant touch. The bed was ginormous and after my shower I could not wait to jump on it. It was about the most comfortable thing in Nepal, that bed, after some of the places I’d tried to sleep at. Within seconds I could feel myself dozing off to sleep. It took great willpower to snap myself out of it, sit up, grab the remote and switch the TV on, but I did it. I flicked through dozens of local channels and others beamed in from India, 99% of which were utterly shite, the other 1% just good enough for a ten-second watch to laugh at the appalling acting.
It was a different animal, television in this part of the world. In Hollywood movies (some of them), the actors and actresses are so fantastically good at acting that it makes them seem like they are not acting at all – that they are in fact just relaying real-life events to you through the big screen. In Bollywood and whatever television or movie industry they have in Nepal, it is the polar opposite. They are so exaggerated and abnormal in their portrayal of characters so as not to seem real, and hence they differentiate between real-life and acting. It was dreadful really. The actors and actresses had about as much acting talent as a pubic hair. They were crap.
I was relieved when I stumbled upon an English-speaking movie channel, but it was an Adam Sandler movie, and he tried his absolute best to disprove my earlier comments that Hollywood actors could act, so I was forced into more flicking. Luckily I came across the ever-reliable BBC World, which is good watching for about an hour until they press the replay button and you are subject to the same ‘news’ over and over again, all day. Luckily, however, the ever-unreliable Kathmandu electricity was to intervene and a power cut made up my mind for me. Should have turned that rubbish off anyway. I dressed and planned to do a lap of Thamel before meeting Subash back at the hotel.
*
Subash found me sitting in the lobby drinking yet another cup of bloody tea. Unfortunately, I’d only just taken the first sip as he walked in the door.
‘Wow, look at you!’ I exclaimed. My trekking guide had entered wearing black designer jeans and an almost skin-tight grey designer top with a Ralph Lauren logo on it (I say that because it couldn’t have been real, but it was a bloody good try). He had a large, green and almost awkward feminine bracelet attached to his wrist and his hair was as well-groomed and puffed up as I’d ever seen it. He kind of stood there in the doorway expecting me to jump up and follow him, because that is what I did; but a cup of tea could not be taken too lightly in a country obsessed by it, so I waved him in and motioned to the little kitchen attendant that he should get Subash a cup as well. We sat in silence for a while, I think mostly because we were enjoying the comfort of the leather couches too much for words.
Within a few minutes we were finished and I followed as Subash took me on a tour of the back streets. They were mercifully void of cars so an act as simple as walking down the street suddenly became safe again. We were walking parallel to one of the main roads and I could hear the chaos, even if I could not see it. A security guard watched us approach, almost suspiciously, but was immediately defused after hearing a white man salute him in his mother-tongue. He broke into a smile and replied to my greeting.
An old lady wandered out of an old, crumbling building with a small bucket of water in her hand and was about to launch it over the road in combat of the dust. I kind of made a wimpy squealing noise because I realised she hadn’t seen me and so I was about to get drenched in filthy water. Despite her age there was absolutely nothing wrong with her hearing. She checked her throw, kind of scowled at me a little bit for being such a drama-queen and waited until I was out of soaking range before expertly spreading that water over the maximum area that could be wetted down by that volume. I feared I would be the talking point while she shared dinner with her family that night and so I vowed not to return the way I had come (it hardly seemed like something I should worry about as I was utterly lost).
A large sign stuck out over the road read: ‘Outdoor Himalayan Treks’, and it suddenly struck me that ‘outdoor’ was such a pointless word in the company name. Of course they were outdoor. It would be a bit silly if they were ‘Indoor Himalayan Treks’. I don’t know why this thought hadn’t crossed my mind in the duration of the entire trek, but perhaps it was because I had never actually been to this agency before. My mind began to wander, as it sometimes has a tendency of doing, and I had great visions of clients walking on treadmills in large air-conditioned rooms with those large virtual reality head-sets on, showing magnificent 3D footage of the Himalayan mountains. Ridiculous, I know. Or I could be on to something huge.
Below the sign was the company slogan, and it was an absolute peach. The sign read: ‘Outdoor Himalayan Treks: Your no more lonely on this planet!’. Enough said.
The boss had seen me enter and I heard him shout something through an open doorway, and within two-hundredths of a second a boy sprinted out and shot off down the stairs. He returned seconds later with a tray upon which sat three glasses of steaming, milky tea.
‘This the same tea like
at the bus station,’ Subash informed me.
‘Ah yes, my favourite!’
‘You is a liking the Nepali tea?’ Asked the boss, perhaps with a touch of surprise in his voice.
‘Yeah I love it,’ I replied and took an eager sip from the glass. My taste buds were immediately slapped by a combination of cardamom and cinnamon, and I made a sound like ‘Mmmmmmm’. I know that cardamom can be an acquired taste, but I acquired a taste for it long ago and I vowed to have a go brewing this delicious tea when I returned home.
‘Subash is telling me that you is wanting to make the tour of the Kathmandu,’ said the boss, and I could tell that he was about to enter entrepreneur mode. ‘You is having the five days here in Kathmandu. I suggest you fly to Pokhara, see the lake, stay a few nights and even view a little the Annapurna range.’
‘Ah mate I appreciate the advice, but I am pretty tired and I don’t really want to see Pokhara on this trip. I want to see it, and the Annapurna’s too, but I would like to do it properly one day, like I did for the Everest trek.’
As I was talking he had casually strolled over to the far side of the room and was now holding up a cheap billboard clumsily advertising Pokhara. It had a gorgeous picture of the lake, but in the foreground there were these white people from the 80s sporting the fakest smiles I ever had the displeasure of seeing. They were clearly Yanks. When I finished talking, he nodded slowly, clearly wishing he could extract a few more dollars from me. He was a nice man, don’t get me wrong, but he was a business man first and foremost.
He put down the billboard, wandered back to his desk, sat down, raised his arms in the air and asked, ‘What you want to do then?’
‘I don’t know mate. No trekking,’ I replied, and both he and Subash went into hysterics.
‘Ok, ok, no trekking. You tell me.’
‘You tell me mate, what do most of the tourists go and see. I want to get a bit of culture from the Kathmandu valley.’
‘Ok we can take you to the Changu Narayan. This the famous pilgrimage places. Maybe the Pashupatinath Temple and the Monkey Temple and also the Swayambhu and Baudhanath.’
‘Yes, what you just said. All those things.’
‘Ok these things, and maybe you go to Nagarkot and is watching the sunsets on the valley?’
‘Yep, that too. Sounds good.’
‘Ok so you is needing the tour guide.’
‘I already have a guide,’ I answered, a little confused. I motioned to Subash, who dropped his head in embarrassment.
‘My friend, Subash is being the trekking guide, not the touring guide.’
‘What’s the difference?’
‘Here in Nepal we is having the two types. A trekking guides and the touring guides. One can do the city tours and one can do the mountain tours, but they cannot do both. It is so that everybody is getting the monies.’
‘Ah I see. Can he still come with me to show me the places?’
‘Yes he can, but maybe he is having to walk behind you or in front of you.’
I started laughing, thinking they were joking, but as they showed no signs of joining in I knew they were being serious.
‘Also, Subash is the trekking guides, so he is not knowing the thing about these places. You know like the culture and the histories and the things.’
‘Yeah that’s ok, I will just Google it later.’
‘Ok so you is needing the private car for two days. It will take the two days to see these things.’
‘Ok,’ I answered, but it did sound expensive. The boss got out his calculator and started punching in 17,000 digits, before flipping the calculator around 180 degrees so I could read the damage. It was 10,000 rupees, or US $100, for a car and driver for two full days. You can’t really argue with that, so I smiled and shook the man’s hand.
‘One more thing,’ he decided to add. ‘I will not pay Subash for this things because he is not a guide. You can pay him whatever you think is fair.’
‘No worries, mate,’ I answered quickly, because I was going to do that anyway. I arranged to meet them back at the agency the next morning and excitedly hit the supermarket. I bought enough dry noodles to feed greater Kathmandu, some Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut bars and a few bottles of juice. Party in my room. Woo!
*
I didn’t know a great deal about anything much after my head hit the pillow that night. I was, as they say, out like a light, which was not switched back on for another 12 hours. A noise – a painfully familiar noise, annoyingly designed specifically for the task of dragging you away from sleep – was making its presence felt about a foot away from my head. My alarm was going off. I swatted at it absentmindedly for a few seconds before coming to the realisation that this never actually worked. With a sigh that could have killed a flower, I raised my head and pressed the snooze button; but just as I did I remembered that I hadn’t given myself any snoozing time as I wanted the longest possible sleep. Damn you Gordon. Damn you!
I looked around the room and saw half a dozen empty packets of noodles with their accompanying flavour sachets scattered carelessly on almost every conceivable surface. A guava juice box was on the floor while I was sleeping next to an empty Cadbury chocolate wrapper. Must have been a good night, I thought while pushing myself off the bed and into another glorious, hot shower. I could not believe I hadn’t scheduled another rest day. What was wrong with my brain? Tip-toeing over the noodle packets, I dressed and made my way down for breakfast. I’m not ashamed to admit that I stopped and stared at a pack of five sitting there on the desk, contemplating whether or not to skip breakfast and just dive back into the dried noodles. Common sense prevailed and I went down the stairs, which told me that both my knees were absolutely screwed. I winced in pain with every step, but by the time I was at the bottom they were beginning to warm up and I was moving with a lot more freedom.
‘Good morning, sir,’ my little friend greeted me with a smile so big I thought it was going to tear his face into two different bits.
‘Good morning, how are you?’
‘Fine, sir,’ he answered. He was always fine.
‘Milk tea, two pieces of toast and two fried eggs, sir?’ he asked, but he already knew the answer. I had the same thing every morning.
‘Yes, thank you very much,’ I replied, while I got sucked into the buffet. I was fuelled up and ready to do battle with the monkeys at the temple. I had visited the monkey temple in Ubud, Bali, some years before and the monkeys had taken a serious disliking to me. We reckoned this was because I was probably the hairiest human being the monkeys had ever seen, and they had mistaken me for a large Rwandan mountain gorilla that had come to assert my authority over the dominant males. They screeched at me, one attacked my shoe, yet they didn’t bat a monkey eye lid at any other person there. I would just beat my chest, cry out hoo hooooo haaa haaa and they would run away with their tales between their legs, and I’d acquire some new territory in the process with full mating rights.
I brushed my teeth, sent a sausage to the sea-side (or wherever they go in Nepal) and eagerly stepped onto the street. From trekker to tourist. I was well rested, full of fish and noodles, only at 1300m above sea level and feeling like two million bucks.
I found Subash at the agency, but we didn’t have long, so he ushered me out the door and back onto the street where we’d wait for our driver. I’d opted to have a car without air-conditioning as I wanted to have my window down and drink in the Kathmandu buzz, the vibe, the atmosphere. But all I ended up drinking in was a shit-load of dust and exhaust fumes. The car had pulled up at 9am sharp and was driven by a loveable looking fat man with the face of a small child, but by 9.05am I was deeply regretting my decision. A couple of extra bucks and I could have been soaking it all up in beautiful, artificially filtered air. You live and you learn. Well, not in my case, but some people do.
We negotiated the maze of Kathmandu, at one point making five left turns in succession, giving me the impression that we were, in fact, lost and going around in cir
cles. Eventually we shot up a hill and then confronted a carpark teaming with taxis and mini busses. We were at the monkey temple.
Also known as Swayambhunath, the Monkey Temple lies on top of a hill on the western side of Kathmandu. The name the Tibetans have for the temple is translated as ‘sublime trees’, and it was easy to see why. Enormous trees graced us with an abundance of shade, while a multitude of prayer flags strung from giant to giant flapped contentedly in the breeze. There was little dust up here and I could hear beautiful Buddhist chanting drifting on the wind down from a higher place. I took a deep breath, paid my entrance fee and stepped into this most peaceful of places. A crowd had gathered in a circular pattern ahead of us and so we approached to see what all the fuss was about. People were throwing coins into little buckets that made up a strange statue.
‘This is bringing the good lucks,’ Subash informed me.
‘We need to have a go at this,’ I replied, but I didn’t have any coins.
However, there was a man there whose job it was to change people’s notes to coins for a small commission. I spent about three bucks on coins, and soon Subash and I were pitting out skills against each other in fierce competition. Nepal vs. Australia. Final score: Nepal 7 – 8 Australia. It was an important away victory for the men in gold. I led a deflated Subash up a large set of stairs that we barely noticed past a group of monkeys that barely even acknowledged our existence. This had a far holier feel to it than the temple in Bali. At the top sat a large domed stupa with a golden turret on top that had yet more prayer flags strung from the tip to the surrounding temple buildings.
All around the area were little shops selling Buddhist memorabilia and cheap trinket-y tourist crap. It was a little tacky. We did a loop of the stupa, spinning the prayer wheels as we went and absorbed the mesmerising smells of burning incense, and stopped to watch a monkey or two strut their stuff before descending the stairs once more to find our driver. I’m not going to say I rushed it, but despite the history of the place – the site has been a religious landmark for some 1500 years – it was really just a round concrete dome with a set of eyes painted on top of it. I felt the spirituality of the place. I get it. But 20 minutes of shoeing away hopeful merchants whilst keeping a watchful eye out for cheeky monkeys was quite enough.
The Nepali Flat Page 18