Kathmandu (1)
If India ran a marathon, and then smoked a huge joint, it would be like Nepal: fit, calm and kinda wacky. Kathmandu is Delhi on tranquilisers; Delhi is Kathmandu on steroids and speed. If Delhi is a Corvette, Kathmandu is one of those ancient diesel Mercedes sedans that some hipie got ahold of and painted rainbow clours.
In the Nepal Peace Garden Cottage Hotel (really, folks, I shit you not, that's its name) me and three mongrel pooches are the only occupants. Nights, the 57 year old owner and I sit in the garden beside the empty pool and smoke Marlboros and drink raxi (rice whiskey) and listen to Black Sabbath and Nepalese pop, which sounds like cumbia with Hindi horn and string setions. sometimes it rains for five minutes and the stars fade into dark haze.
Thamel-- the tourist ghetto-- has about 1000 shops selling
a) cotton crap with bright colours
b) scarves
c) brass statues of the Buddha
d) massive Gurkha knives useful for decaptitating hippies
e) trekking equipment
and there is NOBODY HERE. This is cos the Maoists (poor rebels) are PISSED at the King, who this year dismissed the Parliament and is ruling by decree, kind of like the Chretien Liberals. Actually the Maoists have been around longer than that. The rebellion has both its tragic (100 ppl died yesterday in combat) and comic (the Maoists request "donations" from the tourists...and they give receipts) aspects. The Nepali soldiers I've met are like other Nepalis: so friendly its hard to imagine them screaming bloody murder and shooting people.
So Thamel is deserted. You go for dinner, and five bored waiters atend you. Everything is half-price. There is more "my special friend..." type calls on the street, but whatever. I can get solid Nepali food-- cooked spicy chickpeas, potatoes, and momos, which are steamed chillied beef dumplings- for $1, or an imitation Western meal-- complete with hippies asking if the coffee is free range and the beef shade-grown-- for $4.
I had a grat breakfast the other day. I found a hippie couple, beat the woman till she ran off questioning the purpose of the Universe, killed the male, and had him fried. The restaurant traded me the rest of the body for my breakfast. Really, I SWEAR it happened like that. I mean, meat is so cheap here...
SO what else. I went and climbed up Nagarjun, which is the King's private national park. The way up had waves of tree frogs and crickets droning a psychedelic haze. On the top of it were prayer flags, forty billion pieces of garbage, a fine hazy view over the Valley and a bunch of schoolteaches celebrating the end of their term by setting up a really complicated sound system that distorted all music beyond recognition but stil allowed them to dance.
I walked that afternoon down to Swayambhunath Stupa, this massive prayer mound sacred to the local Hindu and Buddhist populations. Atop it, the sun fragmented behind a cloud and the gold and white domes gleamed.
A man asked me If I wanted to buy a mantra (a phrase some people repeat when meditating). I told him he was the worst Buddhist and finest capitalist I'd ever met. Trying to sell words! My camera batteries died and I refused to pay $3 U.S. FOR ONE GODDAMN AA BATTERY and so I was forced to Be In The Moment and not use my camera and actually experince reality instead of photographing it.
It's hard to tell where Hinduism ends and Buddhism starts here. The Buddha told his followers "do not worship me" and I am not a God" and "you must do your own work, and find your own answers." He also reputedly said "IF you meet the Buddha on the road, kll him." But when the Buddha died the Mahayana School of Buddhism waited 400 years and just took Hindu Gods and god-characteristics and gave them Buddhist names. Kind of like the wily Maya, giving Catholic saints their Gods' attributes.
But that's OK. Jesus was a Jew; the Buddha was a Hindu; Mohammed was a "pagan" and everybody who really gets enlightened will change from the thing they started out as being. We have to do our own work. GODDAMNIT I wAs hoping I could just pray once a week and all would be well.
Nepalis are really into heavy metal, '70s and '80s metal. I think it was all the old-school hippies who broght their 8-tracks years ago, and also, BLAck Sabbath sounds a bit like Buddhist chanting. BTW did you guys know that a group of monks in France has recorded a Gregorian chanting version of Sabbath's greatest hits? Nepalis also like bizarre hybrid music, like imagine Ricky Martin and Ravi Shankar jamming.
Thats all for today. More tomorrow then I'm going to walk around Annapurna which should take thre weeks.
In the Nepal Peace Garden Cottage Hotel (really, folks, I shit you not, that's its name) me and three mongrel pooches are the only occupants. Nights, the 57 year old owner and I sit in the garden beside the empty pool and smoke Marlboros and drink raxi (rice whiskey) and listen to Black Sabbath and Nepalese pop, which sounds like cumbia with Hindi horn and string setions. sometimes it rains for five minutes and the stars fade into dark haze.
Thamel-- the tourist ghetto-- has about 1000 shops selling
a) cotton crap with bright colours
b) scarves
c) brass statues of the Buddha
d) massive Gurkha knives useful for decaptitating hippies
e) trekking equipment
and there is NOBODY HERE. This is cos the Maoists (poor rebels) are PISSED at the King, who this year dismissed the Parliament and is ruling by decree, kind of like the Chretien Liberals. Actually the Maoists have been around longer than that. The rebellion has both its tragic (100 ppl died yesterday in combat) and comic (the Maoists request "donations" from the tourists...and they give receipts) aspects. The Nepali soldiers I've met are like other Nepalis: so friendly its hard to imagine them screaming bloody murder and shooting people.
So Thamel is deserted. You go for dinner, and five bored waiters atend you. Everything is half-price. There is more "my special friend..." type calls on the street, but whatever. I can get solid Nepali food-- cooked spicy chickpeas, potatoes, and momos, which are steamed chillied beef dumplings- for $1, or an imitation Western meal-- complete with hippies asking if the coffee is free range and the beef shade-grown-- for $4.
I had a grat breakfast the other day. I found a hippie couple, beat the woman till she ran off questioning the purpose of the Universe, killed the male, and had him fried. The restaurant traded me the rest of the body for my breakfast. Really, I SWEAR it happened like that. I mean, meat is so cheap here...
SO what else. I went and climbed up Nagarjun, which is the King's private national park. The way up had waves of tree frogs and crickets droning a psychedelic haze. On the top of it were prayer flags, forty billion pieces of garbage, a fine hazy view over the Valley and a bunch of schoolteaches celebrating the end of their term by setting up a really complicated sound system that distorted all music beyond recognition but stil allowed them to dance.
I walked that afternoon down to Swayambhunath Stupa, this massive prayer mound sacred to the local Hindu and Buddhist populations. Atop it, the sun fragmented behind a cloud and the gold and white domes gleamed.
A man asked me If I wanted to buy a mantra (a phrase some people repeat when meditating). I told him he was the worst Buddhist and finest capitalist I'd ever met. Trying to sell words! My camera batteries died and I refused to pay $3 U.S. FOR ONE GODDAMN AA BATTERY and so I was forced to Be In The Moment and not use my camera and actually experince reality instead of photographing it.
It's hard to tell where Hinduism ends and Buddhism starts here. The Buddha told his followers "do not worship me" and I am not a God" and "you must do your own work, and find your own answers." He also reputedly said "IF you meet the Buddha on the road, kll him." But when the Buddha died the Mahayana School of Buddhism waited 400 years and just took Hindu Gods and god-characteristics and gave them Buddhist names. Kind of like the wily Maya, giving Catholic saints their Gods' attributes.
But that's OK. Jesus was a Jew; the Buddha was a Hindu; Mohammed was a "pagan" and everybody who really gets enlightened will change from the thing they started out as being. We have to do our own work. GODDAMNIT I wAs hoping I could just pray once a week and all would be well.
Nepalis are really into heavy metal, '70s and '80s metal. I think it was all the old-school hippies who broght their 8-tracks years ago, and also, BLAck Sabbath sounds a bit like Buddhist chanting. BTW did you guys know that a group of monks in France has recorded a Gregorian chanting version of Sabbath's greatest hits? Nepalis also like bizarre hybrid music, like imagine Ricky Martin and Ravi Shankar jamming.
Thats all for today. More tomorrow then I'm going to walk around Annapurna which should take thre weeks.
posted by Butch at 10:03 PM
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