The Nepali Flat

by Gordon Alexander

  ‘Who is he?’ I whispered urgently to Subash.

  ‘He is Pushpa Kamal Dahal. The people is calling him Prachanda also.’

  ‘Why is he here?’

  Subash called out to the man next to him to make the appropriate enquiries, before telling me, ‘His daughter died.’

  ‘Ah shit. Why does he have so much security?’

  ‘Because he is former Prime Minister of Nepal and he is the Mao. You know what this is? Is the communist party and he is the leaders.’

  It was an amazingly interesting place. But now, please, let me pass you over to the Pashupati Area Development Trust Council’s remarkably persuasive information brochure for some flowery descriptions:

  ‘No visitor to Kathmandu would like to miss the opportunity to visit the Pashupatinath site, which is so richly endowed with places he would like to see and objects he would love to buy. Here there are temples and idols so esoteric and monumental for the lenses of their cameras. There are shops which sell objects that look mystic and magical. He can pack ‘golden’ monkeys jumping playfully about into his movie roll.’

  What are you waiting for?

  *

  It was 3pm by the time I returned to Friend’s Home and mercifully the power was on. I spent the afternoon reading, watching BBC News, listening to music and picking Kathmandu dust boogers out of my nose.

  *

  The following morning, we had just one more temple to tick off, which was a bit of a relief. They were just getting a bit same-sy. I know I can make it sound like a chore, but it did feel really good to be getting my hands dirty with a bit of culture.

  This time it was Changu Narayan, the single oldest monument in Nepal, dating back as far as the third century AD. It was a fair old drive to get there, but lineally it wasn’t actually that far from the centre of Kathmandu. If we’d raced a bird it would have left us for dead.

  We drove up another hill and we were confronted with a small village of sublimely unique architecture, quite unlike anything I’d seen anywhere else in the world, let alone Nepal. We followed a narrow path up through overhanging buildings comprised of red bricks, which had a multitude of power lines strung between them. The ground floor of these buildings was occupied, without exception, by little shops selling more crap. Ugly statues with gargoyles and heads with fifteen eyes. It was just gross and completely underwhelming.

  The monument itself was alright. It certainly felt old, although it was nowhere near as impressive as Durbar Square, which I was to find out the following day. However, it was a very important monument. The story goes that (and take it however you will, I don’t want to offend any Hindus out there, but I find it a little farfetched) there once was a farmer who owned a cow that produced a great amount of milk. One day this cow began to graze by the same tree every day. However, rather unfortunately, when the cow came back from grazing, the farmer found that the milk had begun to run very low indeed. After a while, a little disgruntled, he began to stalk the cow from afar, hidden in a few bushes. As the cow stood by the tree, a black boy appeared and began to drink the milk straight from the cow. The farmer was infuriated, and later fetched an axe and began hacking into the tree. However, the tree began to bleed actual human blood, and Lord Vishnu appeared, saying he had been be-headed, which had freed him from earlier sins he had committed, and hence had lifted the curse from him (quite how he did this after a beheading I’m not entirely sure). He told the farmer not to despair, and so he didn’t. Instead he built a monument to Lord Vishnu at this very spot where I now stood, and began to worship it over 1700 years ago.

  There were a few carvings of Lord Vishnu around the monument, but also of Garuda, a humanoid-like bird that served as Vishnu’s carrier. Fun fact: Indonesia’s national carrier named their airline after this god of the sky. Yay.

  I looked around for a very short while, before getting (understandably) distracted by the cutest little puppy dog hunting a leaf.

  ‘Go on, get it!’ I egged him on. ‘Don’t put up with that shit.’

  Subash had arrived on the scene, and almost seemed relieved there was extra entertainment to distract him from architecture. We unanimously decided it was time to leave.

  ‘Ok, now we is walking to the Nagarkot,’ Subash surprised me.

  ‘Ah ok, how far is that?’

  ‘Maybe take 3 or 4 hours, but it is depending on a you.’

  ‘That’s funny, I could have sworn you said 3 or 4 hours just there, right then.’

  ‘Yes, but you is a good walking man, so maybe takes the 3 hours.’

  I started laughing. This had to be a joke, but Subash was deadly serious.

  ‘Wait, wait, wait. Let me get this straight. I hire a car for the whole day, and we have to walk for 3 or 4 hours? And what, he meets us at Nagarkot and brings us home?’

  ‘Yes man!’

  ‘Why can’t he drive us there?’

  ‘Because we is going for the sunsets. To be seeing the sunsets over the Kathmandu Valley. If we is a driving there, maybe we be there by lunch time, not the sunsets time.’

  ‘Hmmm I dunno mate. I come from a city renowned for its glorious sunsets over the ocean,’ I said, trying to get myself out of this. ‘And I thought I said no trekking!’

  ‘This is not a trekking things!’ He exclaimed. ‘This is the walking things.’

  I sighed for the 142nd time on this trip, raised my hands in defeat and nodded.

  ‘Ok, it is past 11am, maybe we should have lunch before we go.’

  ‘Good idea,’ he answered and pointed to a restaurant that had conveniently appeared right next to us. We walked in and climbed up the stairs to sit on the rooftop, which afforded fine views of the monument. We ordered some food and kicked back in silence while soaking up a delightful breeze that was now in full flow. I wondered if a monk had summoned it from somewhere unseen.

  ‘Hey man, come see this,’ Subash called to me from somewhere behind. I got up, stirred from my trance and went to join him on the far side of the roof-top. He pointed down to a little garden bed, which was teeming with marijuana plants.

  ‘Wow, they are growing them up here?’

  ‘Yes man, is growing. You see this one?’ He said while pointing to a brown stem that shot up at least a metre from the ground. ‘This one is an old one. They is already picking it and is a smoking. This ones are the babies.’

  ‘Not very subtle, growing it in your restaurant in the dining area. As my old housemaster used to say, ‘about as subtle as a brick’.

  ‘This is Nepal man, is a normal things.’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Summing Up

  The stroll to Nagarkot was as uneventful as it was easy. The following morning, I took in the ancient-looking buildings of Durbar Square and absorbed one last feel of a bustling, over-crowded Kathmandu. I was a bit sad. I knew I had to say goodbye to Subash.

  ‘So Mr Gorong,’ he was saying to me while I daydreamed over lunch, instantly snapping me out of it. ‘When you is coming back to the Nepal?’

  ‘As soon as I possibly can,’ I replied truthfully. ‘I wanna go see Kangchenjunga next.’

  ‘Yes, is a very good choices. World’s third biggest mountain. Is the beautiful countryside, not too many peoples. Maybe sometimes we is camping also.’

  ‘Yeah it looks beautiful. I don’t want to go over 5000 metres again though!’ I answered with a shudder.

  ‘You won’t have to.’

  ‘And I’ll only go with you and the Nima, ok?’

  ‘Of course man.’

  ‘Thanks for everything mate. I could not have done any of that without you. Keep in touch.’

  We completed a gangsta handshake, brought it in for a manly hug, turned our backs and went our separate ways.

  Above and below: The very impressive Durbar Square, Kathmandu...

  At the airport I joined a long queue for the flight to Kuala Lumpur, lit up on a typically ancient TV screen. After perhaps 20 minutes, the screen flicked off and returned to a state of b
lackness. Everyone began murmuring and turning their heads. A second later, the flight reappeared on a different screen, about four desks down. What ensued was a Jumanji-like stampede, whereby everyone in the middle and back of the queue trampled towards the front of the new check-in counter. Peeved people who were at the front could only shake their heads, pick up their luggage and wander to the back of the new line. Already being at the back, I probably gained a good six spots.

  Half an hour later I was still in the queue, while there was not a single airline employee to be seen. And then zang! The screen went black. The queuers braced themselves, urgently scanning from left to right to see where it would reappear. And then, the unthinkable. It showed its ugly face back on the original monitor, four rows back to the left! I gave up. I threw my pack up against the rear wall facing back into the terminal and sat down to watch the chaos unfold.

  *

  Once in the airplane, departing almost two-hours late, we began the push-back. We completed the obligatory 90-degree turn, but just as we stopped the entire left side of the plane slumped down a good half-metre. We stopped after rocking back and forth for a good few seconds. We waited while they disconnected the plane. The engines fired to life. The plane moved forward just an inch before it began rocking violently from side to side. Eventually the pilot gave up and took his foot off the gas.

  Then he had another go, with more engine power this time, which was directly proportionate to the increase in violent rocking of the plane. He gave up.

  ‘Ladies and gentleman, we have been taxied into a big pothole,’ the captain said grimly. ‘I have radioed for them to come and pull us out. Please enjoy the flight.’

  ‘Let’s try to take off first,’ I heard a middle-aged American man say a few rows in front of me.

  We watched with interest as one little tractor came tearing out, then disappeared as it went under the plane. A few seconds later, the plane began rocking from side to side as it attempted to win the tug of war. This was a bloody Boeing 777 for God’s sake. This was ridiculous. The rocking stopped and we hadn’t moved. Moments later another tractor came shooting over, disappeared under the plane, hooked on to the first guy, and then they simultaneously managed to pull us from the pothole, but with the accompanying rocking at its strongest.

  The passengers began contagiously clapping and cheering, so I joined in. The Yank started, for no reason at all, to chant: ‘USA! USA! USA!’

  So that sums up Nepal right there. A place where even the apron of an international airport has a pothole big enough to swallow a jumbo jet.

  I slipped into a state of utter bliss. The greatest mountains in the world slid past my line of vision, I was walking on a glacier, effortlessly taking a pass, viewing beautiful valleys and knife-edged ridges, laughing with locals, arguing with Israelis, herding some yaks, drinking Kukri rum, playing with puppies, eating delicious aromatic food, making life-long friends. It is my happy place. And I can go there anytime I want.

  THE END

  If you made it this far, congratulations! If you enjoyed this book (or didn’t), an honest review on Amazon is greatly appreciated by us wannabe authors. Feel free to get in touch if you have any questions, there are multiple contact options on my website: http://www.gordonalexander.org

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  Thanks and have a great day! - Gordon

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