The lunch at Ganesh restaurant was good, as usual I was eating like that was my last day on earth. I can’t blame myself; it’s unlikely that I would get similar food back in Louisiana. I ate South Indian dish and lots of sweets, and my preferred drink was ‘Thumbs Up’. The place was relatively clean, and the prices were reasonable too. But I had one issue, I was having trouble communicating with the servers. When I spoke in Hindi they replied back in Nepali, then I see this server who looks like a Nepali and I spoke to him in Nepali, and he has no clue what I am talking about. And when I try to negate this problem by talking in English, no one has any clue. Lots of Nepalese work at Gorakhpur, I being Kathmandu locked bum hadn’t seen the extent of diversity in the features of the people in Nepal and India. That made recognition more complicated, and though there is political boundary between Nepal and India, culturally and physically the people look similar. Wasn’t a big issue at all, but for a moment I almost felt like Bill Murray in “Lost in Translation”.

After lunch we roamed around Golghar (major shopping center of the city), my acquaintances were keen on some shopping while they were there; I didn’t have any predetermined shopping list. After I entered Bata store I was amazed with the prices of the shoes, why the hell the prices for the same stuff almost quadruple at Kathmandu (the straight line distance between Gorakhpur to Kathmandu is about 200 kilometers)? I can understand the Custom charges and transportation costs, but that still doesn’t explain quadrupled prices. I bought a shoe for my father based on his shoe number; which later turned out to be bigger for him as Bata shoes are numbered differently. Why can’t the entire shoe manufacturers in the world use universal numbering system?

It was just a day trip for us and there were still few stops on the agenda, so we cut short our shopping spree and headed towards famous Gita Press. The area was another economic center of the city; there were variety of stores (not just books). My acquaintances entered in one of their regular bed cover store and I followed them. Gosh, the prices were insanely inexpensive, starting from IRs 100. Even the cheaper ones were very good, Indian fabrics are well renowned. I bought a total of nine bed covers from different price range. I have never bought that many bed covers at once and might probably not buy that many together in future too. I couldn’t resist when I found out that the one I bought for IRs 600 costs Rs 3000 at Kathmandu. We spent about 2 hours in that very store selecting my 9 bed covers and their matching extra pillow cases. Meanwhile the store owner served all 5 of us with two rounds of soft drinks, something you don’t find in USA. I only brought 2 of those to USA, leaving my mom very happy. One, among those two, proudly hangs in the wall of my apartment.

I had my hands full when we got out of the store that I completely forgot about touring Gita Press. Someone suggested a Kulfi (Indian ice cream) store and we drove off for it.

To be continued………..