Kathmandu (2)
WHere do you from where you've already been? I left Chitwan, Macke went kayaking again, and the Dutchman was off to the West of Nepal.
The road up to Kathmandu was hot and grey. Vendors' plates of cucumbers arranged like bleached flowers floated otuside the bus windows in one-road towns. Grey strings of soldiers shuffled along the roadsides, guns glinting black. Brown fog of diesel and steaming greay sky hammered at my head.
In Kathmandu I found coffee and the Royal Gorkha Hotel, whose owner complains fo the lack fo business but can't quite see how the blasting Hindi music and the bartender's endless channel-surfing might discourage tourists.
One morning I get up at 4 and cycle through streets filled with bird sounds and the swish of the streetcleaner people and the clatter of their trash bikes. In Bhaktapur where as in all cool palces there are no cars the streets are glowing red brick and the morning market is happening in the Durbar. Women are lined up with the day's vegetables. A woman with nine fingers plays with chillies that gleam in the sun. Men squint into the light, smoke, and eat yoghurt from clay bowls. Women wander through the alleys with plates of food. Where there are altars they make pujja-- offering to Buddhsit or Hindu deities-- by leaving food. Some of these altars are old paving stones and you watch your sandalfeet when you walk. Wheat is piled golden onto the road, where you motorcycles horses dogs Nepalis what have you walk on it to thresh it and men in dark vests and caps drink tea and talk.
Another day I ride at dawn out to Boudha, the largest Tibetan settlement in Nepal. The Tibetans got invaded ("Hi. We're the Chinese. Fuck you. Sign here. Now die." is pretty much how it went) in 1959 by the Peopole's Liberation Army of CHina and many have scattered all over the Subcontinent in monastic communities. The most famous Tibetan exile community is in Dharamsala, India, where the Dalai Lama (the Pope of Tibetan Buddhism, but way smarter and WAY more fun than the Catholic Pope, and also not senile and drooling and shitting his pants, and also conversant with philosophy that was written after 1100 A.D. (the Pope's reading seems to end with Anselm-- that's like, you like gangster movies and you never get past the first Godfather)) has his summer residence.
Anyway. Boudha is a massive stupa-- a white dome about forty meters across which starts at ground level topped with a gold spire. The stupa represents the world and has various altars aroudn its edges. At 6 in the morning there are hundreds of people-- Indians, Nepalis, monks in purple robes, holy men in orange with insane white stand-up hair smoking chillums, kids, housewives, dogs-- all walking clockwise around it saying prayers. On the stupa boys, monkeys at height, whitewash pigeonshit in arcing green lines off the dome. A guy with three fingers prostrates himself on the pavement and mutters prayers, gets up, moves sideways six feet, and does it again-- spiritual pushups. In one of the altars, the largest prayer wheels I've ever seen (eight feet tall) are turned by a Nepali-sizeddwarf-- the guy is under three feet. A woman does pujja in the acrid plastic smoke of garbage somebody's stufffed into another altar. A man feeds pigeons and my sandals slap them into the sky.
Later that day I meet Macke. Who always has some kind of plan thats going to change YOUR plans.
"Hey!" he says. He's practically drooling with excitement. "Wanna go to Tibet?"
The road up to Kathmandu was hot and grey. Vendors' plates of cucumbers arranged like bleached flowers floated otuside the bus windows in one-road towns. Grey strings of soldiers shuffled along the roadsides, guns glinting black. Brown fog of diesel and steaming greay sky hammered at my head.
In Kathmandu I found coffee and the Royal Gorkha Hotel, whose owner complains fo the lack fo business but can't quite see how the blasting Hindi music and the bartender's endless channel-surfing might discourage tourists.
One morning I get up at 4 and cycle through streets filled with bird sounds and the swish of the streetcleaner people and the clatter of their trash bikes. In Bhaktapur where as in all cool palces there are no cars the streets are glowing red brick and the morning market is happening in the Durbar. Women are lined up with the day's vegetables. A woman with nine fingers plays with chillies that gleam in the sun. Men squint into the light, smoke, and eat yoghurt from clay bowls. Women wander through the alleys with plates of food. Where there are altars they make pujja-- offering to Buddhsit or Hindu deities-- by leaving food. Some of these altars are old paving stones and you watch your sandalfeet when you walk. Wheat is piled golden onto the road, where you motorcycles horses dogs Nepalis what have you walk on it to thresh it and men in dark vests and caps drink tea and talk.
Another day I ride at dawn out to Boudha, the largest Tibetan settlement in Nepal. The Tibetans got invaded ("Hi. We're the Chinese. Fuck you. Sign here. Now die." is pretty much how it went) in 1959 by the Peopole's Liberation Army of CHina and many have scattered all over the Subcontinent in monastic communities. The most famous Tibetan exile community is in Dharamsala, India, where the Dalai Lama (the Pope of Tibetan Buddhism, but way smarter and WAY more fun than the Catholic Pope, and also not senile and drooling and shitting his pants, and also conversant with philosophy that was written after 1100 A.D. (the Pope's reading seems to end with Anselm-- that's like, you like gangster movies and you never get past the first Godfather)) has his summer residence.
Anyway. Boudha is a massive stupa-- a white dome about forty meters across which starts at ground level topped with a gold spire. The stupa represents the world and has various altars aroudn its edges. At 6 in the morning there are hundreds of people-- Indians, Nepalis, monks in purple robes, holy men in orange with insane white stand-up hair smoking chillums, kids, housewives, dogs-- all walking clockwise around it saying prayers. On the stupa boys, monkeys at height, whitewash pigeonshit in arcing green lines off the dome. A guy with three fingers prostrates himself on the pavement and mutters prayers, gets up, moves sideways six feet, and does it again-- spiritual pushups. In one of the altars, the largest prayer wheels I've ever seen (eight feet tall) are turned by a Nepali-sizeddwarf-- the guy is under three feet. A woman does pujja in the acrid plastic smoke of garbage somebody's stufffed into another altar. A man feeds pigeons and my sandals slap them into the sky.
Later that day I meet Macke. Who always has some kind of plan thats going to change YOUR plans.
"Hey!" he says. He's practically drooling with excitement. "Wanna go to Tibet?"
posted by Butch at 12:25 PM
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