Kathmandu, Nepal

View from my hotel window in Kathmandu

I arrived at the airport in Kathmandu, where it was gloomy, grey, and pouring out. I didn’t hear thunder and the rain was nothing compared to torrential downpours in Kansas, but it was certainly raining steadily. I remembered that on the pilgrimage last year I had no trouble using Indian money, and since I was running late I didn’t want to hold up the travel agent anymore, so I didn’t stop to exchange money. I furthermore figured I could do it at the hotel front desk. I met up with the travel agent Naresh, who in the airport stood with a sign with my name on it, and he led me out to a small white car with a driver.

I climbed into the back seat through the left passenger door, but the travel agent started getting into the car through the same door, so I quickly slid across the seat. Oddly, after we were settled into the back seat of the car, I noticed his right hand was draped across the back of the seat, almost as if he were trying to touch my shoulders. I scooted as far as I could to the window and wished he’d sit in the front seat, next to the driver, a skinny young male with curly hair. The travel agent, Naresh, was rather ordinary-looking, with a conservative short hairdo and a pencil-thin mustache, and he wore Western clothes, including a windbreaker; he looked to be between thirty-five and forty years old.

By the time I was riding in the back seat, the rain came down pretty heavily. I asked, “Has it been raining like this for long?” Naresh, said, “Only the past fifteen, twenty minutes.” I laughed. “As soon as I got here!” I said. I had seen the rain before the plain landed.

On the train early that morning, my virus had reached the hacking-up-yellow-phlegm stage, and I was excessively spacey for someone who’s been meditating for several years. Very congested, complete with congested waxy ears, here I was in Nepal on my own and having trouble understanding Naresh’s English or just about anyone’s English, when they actually spoke English.

During the rainy ride, I did some sightseeing, as I observed to Naresh, “Kathmandu looks a lot like India.” He agreed, fortunately for me; I wouldn’t want to offend. It has much the same architecture, in particular simple two- or three- or more story buildings that are like blocks gradually put on top of each other and with balconies stuck on. Typically they are painted some variation of yellow, white, or off-white. Many buildings and shops include roll-up garage doors or wooden double doors that are open during business hours. What I find different about the architecture was two things: 1) the wooden double doors in shops often have nothing but a narrow doorframe between them, so that they weren’t so much double doors as multiple doors and you’d be looking at a one-story brick building in which the front is a row of three or four sets of accordion-like doors. 2) Elaborately carved wooden window and doorframes, but maybe it’s just the particular style that I found different. However, it’s definitely different in that the windows tend to be covered with elaborately carved wooden trellises.

Between the airport and the Thamel, the touristy neighborhood where the hotel is located, I saw many more cars (Japanese or Korean) than I would have seen in India, and absolutely no rickshaws or motor rickshaws. This was sort of a culture shock. Certainly the Thamel neighborhood has the three-wheel bicycle kind of rickshaws, but I haven’t seen any of those odd little motor rickshaws in Kathmandu.

Rickshaws on a typical Thamel street.

At the hotel I got my room key and, in the lobby, gave my passport to Naresh, and got an update. Basically, at some point the following afternoon he would have my passport and Chinese visa and plane tickets and bring them to me. I was so out of it and confused, I had looked at my itinerary and thought I was supposed to get a Chinese visa at the airport, and I asked around and found out that I supposedly had to go to the Chinese embassy, so I mentioned this in the car on the way to the hotel. But no, the travel agent was taking care of all that stuff. Whew. Naresh asked me if I wanted to do any sightseeing tomorrow, and I expressed an interest in visiting the Boudhanath Stupa and the Swayambhunath Temple, and so we made an agreement on that, and he told me how much it would cost; he also didn’t want me to pay in Indian rupees.

Another scatter-brained thing I did, having a cold and having gone for a while without a shower, was to take a quick shower in my hotel room after I took my bags up; really I should have taken the shower after we parted. It was really inconsiderate of me to leave the travel agent waiting in the lobby, although the couches in the lobby are far more comfy than the beds.

The hotel looks flashy out front and in the lobby, complete with bellhops and shiny gold Buddha statues, but the room is plain and has no bottled water (maybe supplying two complimentary bottles of water is just an Indian practice in hotels and guesthouses), and the beds, which have very dark green coverlets and white sheets, are sunken in the center. I suppose if I were less lazy I could take the mattress and turn it over, though it might be just as sunken on the underside. Of course, I did request budget hotels, so I should be surprised I don’t have to squat and take bucket baths.

I parted with the travel agent at the Vaishali Hotel in the Thamel neighborhood and felt relieved to be on my own instead of with Naresh. I wandered the narrow, medieval, dirty and potholed streets, which are full of white Western tourists and colorful shops. While I stood in front of a tiny shop and bought bottled water, the electricity went out. Despite the rain and lack of electricity, I wandered around sight-seeing for some time; I didn’t want my melancholy to prevent me from getting a taste of the neighborhood. I felt ashamed for being melancholy when here I was on the other side of the world, where I should be excited. My father gave me a lot of money for this trip, and it seemed ungrateful and unappreciative to not feel blissed out, but emotions happen whether you like it or not. The shops were certainly fascinating: puppets hung from rafters, thangkas hung in windows and beyond doors, books and postcards were lined up inside and facing open doorways, many statues and masks stood or leaned or hung from walls. I was completely uninterested in buying anything, however; I just wanted to observe and walk. Perhaps because I am a social phobic introvert with a cold, or perhaps because of shock induced possibly by the contrast between being on my own and being with a sangha, part of me just wanted to be alone and invisible.

The Thamel reminds me of the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood in San Francisco and is really quite charming, especially if you overlook all the trash in the street and don’t think about it being too influenced by tourists. Well, it is Nepal, not the USA. Right up next to each other stands row upon row of tiny shops selling backpacks, shawls, statues and other Tibetan Buddhist ritual tools, puppets, books, postcards, handmade paper products such as journals and lanterns, wool felt items, thangkas, patchwork tapestries, wooden masks—really, everything you’d expect for sale and everything you could possibly want if you were a Westerner in Nepal. And there were plenty of Westerners slumming around: backpackers and dharma bums. However, I think most were French, German, or Italian, and I felt like I’d never hear English spoken clearly again. Maybe I’m the only American in Nepal; the travel agent in Kansas had given me a print-out warning about terrorists and burglars in Kathmandu, but that was six months ago, before the king stepped down.

As I wandered through the very narrow and bustling streets, I gawked and occasionally took pictures and dodged zooming motorcycles. It began to rain again, but only lightly, and I pulled up my coat hood and zipped up and trudged on. A man behind me called, “Umbrella, ma’am?” I raised my hand and said, “No, thanks.” I didn’t feel like buying anything but rather felt like wandering around as if I were in some bizarre dream. To be honest with myself, I truly felt like going up to my hotel room, hiding from humanity, and sleeping. When you’ve got a cold, you need a lot of sleep.

The traffic in the Thamel consists primarily of motorcycles, rickshaws, and pedestrians. I thought that I could simply go in a certain direction and not get lost in the Thamel, but the streets have no street signs and no names that I can tell, and sometimes, I came to a dead end and turned and kept walking, and unfortunately I didn’t count how many blocks I walked, nor did I take note of prominent landmarks. I noticed little detailed things such as certain puppets or sculptures. My eyes were overwhelmed with the sights around me, and I was focused on my fascinating surroundings rather fortunately at that point. In short, I got lost.

As I wandered with the uneasiness of someone who is lost in a strange place, several rickshaw drivers accosted me, and I kept trudging on, but I started thinking that maybe I should climb onto a rickshaw, because I really had no idea where I was and wanted to get back to the hotel and rest. I heard thunder for the first time.

A young rickshaw driver, like so many parked at the side of the road, got my attention and was quite persistent. While I was somewhat nonchalant, or rather had deadened my emotions, more and more I liked the idea of just getting back to the hotel and closing myself in my room, alone and quiet. I mentioned the name of the hotel, Vaishali Hotel, and the driver recognized it and said he knew the way there. After some hesitation, I took up the rickshaw driver’s offer. “How much does it cost?” I asked, after he asked me where I was going and I said the Vaishali Hotel and he enthusiastically said he knew where that was.

“It’s no problem,” he said and waved me into the rickshaw. By that I thought he was saying that he was taking pity on me and my discombobulation and giving me a free ride. I climbed up, first feeling some hesitation due to my fear of heights, but it turned out to be easier than I expected, and as I settled on the little padded bench, I thought this was not scary at all. Of course I decided I’d definitely pay him anyway, despite his seeming indifference to a fee. A rickshaw driver needs money, of course.

The ride was very bumpy because of, guess what, the condition of the roads. They were full of pot holes and the usual trash. I held on tight to the wooden slats that made the old-fashioned canopy. The rickshaw bumped into the back of some guy’s motorcycle and he cussed out the driver in what I thought was a German accent, and I had no idea what he was saying; it was probably in Newali. The rickshaw driver didn’t seem to think the accident, which involved no damage to persons or property, was worth sticking around, and after a few words he continued driving. He looked like he was about twenty years old, and I got to thinking he wasn’t a fabulous rickshaw driver.

Oddly, the driver took me on a route that included a good look at the royal palace, or at least the wall around it, on a big busy street that contained no other rickshaws. He pointed to the palace and told me it was the Red Palace, as if this was an amateur tour. I began to wonder if he was deliberately taking a longer route to gain my pity, and I felt very suspicious. I was correct in feeling suspicious. Finally, he stopped the rickshaw in a narrow Thamel road that seemed like an alley. He pointed to a tall beige building and said, “There is the Vaishali Hotel.”

After a beat I recognized it and said, “Oh, great, thanks!” I jumped down and said, “Really, I have to pay you something…” as I opened my passport bag and reached in.

“Fifty dollars,” he said. I laughed. “Forty dollars.”

“Not hardly,” I said. He went the long way around and wanted me to pay him a ridiculously high sum of money, as if he’d taken me as far as New Delhi! It’s no wonder that, shortly after I climbed into the rickshaw, he had asked me how long I’ve been in Kathmandu; perhaps I should have lied instead of saying this was my first day. Beware of scam artists while traveling alone.

“Thirty dollars, no less. That was a very long drive,” he said. He was quite demanding, after seeming so amiable earlier (like a jerk you’ve just married under false pretenses, the best explanation for why my next door neighbor is married) and the rickshaw driver went on about how he needed money for education. I tried to give him three one dollar bills, but he refused to take it and by then demanded ten dollars.


Finally, just wanting to shove him off, I pulled out a five hundred note in Indian rupees. I said, “This is worth ten dollars.” He wouldn’t take it because of the currency, and I lost patience and said, “That’s final.” I threw the piece of paper at him and marched off to the hotel. I was suddenly afraid he’d chase after me, but he didn’t. No doubt he didn’t take me past the wall around the hotel because he didn’t want the guard or the bellhop to witness his scam. (500 Indian rupees are about $10 in U. S. money, and I didn’t yet know that 500 and 1000 Indian rupee bills are illegal in Nepal!)

Earlier, before I took my walk, I had intended to exchange Indian money for Nepalese rupees at the hotel’s front counter, because I needed three thousand Nepalese rupees for the tour of the Boudhanath Stupa and the Swayambhunath Temple tomorrow. The clerk had told me they can exchange Indian money but not five hundred or one thousand rupee bills, and he showed me a placard on the wall behind the desk that also announces this. Unfortunately five hundred rupee bills were almost all the money I carried. He had called a little jewelry shop around the corner, inside the hotel, and they said that I could do it later.

I checked again after I had been out wandering, and this time the store could do two thousand rupees, but what they did was exchange it for Indian 100 rupee bills, which I took to the front counter to exchange for Nepalese rupees. The little shopkeeper I swear looked like a pimp, in need of a shave and wearing a black leather jacket and having the top few buttons of his shirt open to display a gold necklace; this didn’t help to make me more at ease. I was very addle-pated, tired, and finally desperate enough to mention going to a money exchange place, since, as I pointed out, I needed three thousand for the tour, and the clerk warned me about going to money exchange places: he said that they charge twenty-five percent interest. Probably because of my cold, I still felt terribly stupid and even strangely stressed out. I was pathetic enough that the front desk clerk took pity in me and took money out of a safe, so I ended up with thirty-five thousand Nepalese rupees. Whew! He then went into a long conversation with me, telling me the front desk number and asking how my room was and all, and going on and on for a long time, while I was anxious to go up to said room and take a nap.

The young man behind the front desk at the hotel was very friendly and chatty. On one hand, perhaps he was flirting, though I didn’t think so; I think it more likely that he was just using me to practice his English (which, incidentally, is significantly clearer than Naresh’s). Although I acted patient with his chattiness, I found it kind of annoying, really. I recently read a novel by Spider Robinson called Escape from Kathmandu, which explains a tendency people have of using foreigners, such as the main character, as tools for practicing their English, and the protagonist found this very annoying and wasn’t as patient as I appeared.

It certainly didn’t help that I was making an ass of myself: I felt really out of it and congested, not to mention somewhat bummed out. I felt terribly stupid and ridiculous and wanted to be invisible, to not be seen by any human. I don’t know if I often felt that way while I lived in St. Louis, but I have regularly had a frequent strange wish to be invisible since moving to Topeka, Kansas, so not my kind of town, where people stare at me as if I have two heads, when they’re not harassing me.

I didn’t understand my befuddled emotions since arriving in Kathmandu; I only knew I had to get to the privacy of my hotel room and have some solitude. As soon as I got a chance to leave the talkative desk clerk, I eagerly started heading to my left, toward the staircase.


Unfortunately, I noticed the bar: a few Nepalese men were sitting at the bar and staring at me, and at least one of them smiled unblinkingly at me as though he thought I was insane. I certainly didn’t feel sane and rather abruptly ran up the stairs. Near the top of the staircase, I stumbled, but fortunately I wasn’t in sight of anyone.

After I finally got upstairs and locked myself in my room, I set up my meditation cushion on the bed, sat cross-legged on top of it, and began to observe my breath. The phone rang. It was the front desk clerk. He wanted to chat, and he asked me what part of America I’m from, and said he’d been to Mexico but not the United States. He chatted on about that, and I figured out that, like in the novel Escape from Kathmandu, he was indeed practicing his English. He apologized for bothering me, and I said with a cheerfulness I didn’t feel, “Oh, it’s alright. Good-bye.”

I finally got off the phone, sat back on my cushion, crossed my legs, closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and began to breathe mindfully. The phone rang again. It was the desk clerk again. He asked, “I am sorry to bother you again, Susan, but do you need a wake-up call?”

“No, thank-you. I have an alarm clock,” I said. I gave up with my sitting meditation and instead got under the covers and, after a few minutes of reclining meditation, went to sleep.

I still hacked up bits of yellow phlegm, and I rather suspect Kathmandu has its share of pollution, though I don’t think it’s as severe as Delhi; still, it wasn’t good for my respiratory system. The power was out for three hours, till about 8 in the evening, but fortunately my room contained two candles and two small boxes of matches. No doubt the rain and my illness were not the only reasons why I felt melancholy. During my first day in Kathmandu, I lived in the present moment—an easy thing to do in a strange place. I went to bed around six o’clock in the evening, while the electricity was not working, and I mostly stayed in bed, though I recall waking up and seeing a couple of glowing lamps. That may sound like I was getting an abnormal amount of sleep, but I still had that virus.


My visit to Kathmandu so far was excessively surreal, and I was feeling lonely, grumpy, exhausted, congested, and stupid. Not to mention acting stupid. It’s like if the director of Lost in Translation decided to make another, similar movie.