Nepal Diary: Kathmandu and beyond

Besides a brief trip to southern belt, my journey back to Nepal was confined to wedding preparation, ceremony, and procedures then after. Some suggested my trip was short (stayed exactly 30 days in Nepal), but I am sure even if I had two more weeks I would still be engaged in ‘after wedding’ procedures. There were a lot of relatives I still needed to go visit. If you want to take my advice, planning a month long combo trip (wedding plus other adventures) to Nepal simply won’t sell. I had thought about going for a hike to Ghandruk but I couldn’t even manage a trip to Kathmandu University at Dhulikhel, perhaps next trip I could spare more time for fun factor and natural beauty which we always took for granted while in Nepal.

Besides expected adjustment to crowded Kathmandu and relatively less comforting life style, I noticed few changes on me. I was hugely frustrated on not being mobile, after my first year in I.Sc. I got my motorcycle license and since then I was always on bike. So now being handicapped with cab and someone else dropping me off didn’t go well with me. One of the biggest mistakes of mine was to expect my life back in Kathmandu to be in same state like in the past. I have changed, but for some reason I expected everything else there to be intact. Same were true of friends, majority of them were already abroad but I wasn’t able to get hold of the remaining in Nepal either. Few I couldn’t contact at all (due to lack of contact information), but few did respond to my email. I failed to grasp that they have different lifestyles and priorities now; it was foolish of me to expect same as in 2002. I would however like to thank Ranjil for stepping up voluntarily to help me during my wedding preparations; and others for sparing their time to meet me.

On the contrary, few issues arose as others too failed to accept changes in me. I simply couldn’t establish a habit of informing my parents whenever I was going out somewhere; I haven’t been accountable to anyone in past few years. Speaking my mind on some malfunctions of our tradition was always correlated to “you lived few years abroad and now you are talking like an American” by my relatives. Some friends even sarcastically mimicked my American accent (when I used english), I was surprised with that: I have been talking with natives for few years now so it’s bound to have some influence. But I was glad, unlike them, my Nepali was clear, crisp, and without any foreign accent.

One day I decided to take out my camera, I was having fun taking pictures around Basantapur. But street beggars started treating me like a tourist and I was also somewhat bothered by the glare of other bystanders, I quickly wrapped up so couldn’t capture more pictures of Kathmandu (Check my flickr account). I was glad to find out that Dharahara was open to public, but I was equally raged about their “no camera” policy. You can carry your camera-cell phone but you can’t carry a camera. However, I did appreciate their policy of not allowing pen, but still some people were smart (?) enough to carve their name in the walls. Though there wasn’t any extraordinary view from Dharahara, being in a historical monument itself was a pleasant experience.

View from Dharahara, pic taken from my cell phone

213 is the total number of steps in Dharahara

I did visit some of the temples in and around Kathmadnu, as I have grown older I started having more faith in god. However, I still don’t approve the complicated and messy worshiping procedures. I had to confront with few people who like to worship by crossing lines ahead of others. If they already performed a sin by getting ahead of people who were there before, what’s the use of being religious at all? It’s simply superficial. One of the biggest changes in me living abroad was to stand up against wrong practices (before I used to shy away). I started addressing “it’s always like this here” to “it shouldn’t be like this here”.