Rooftops of Kathmandu
After four weeks of wandering Asia, I was finally in Nepal. Sitting in the back of an old passenger van crammed full of locals and rumbling across the countryside on a dirt track, I had been in a constant state of motion since landing in the capital the prior afternoon. Kathmandu had looked charming from the plane: thousands of toy-sized buildings awash with vivid colors, stacked upon each other like Tetris blocks set against a backdrop of mountains. Once I set foot in the city, it was like being in India again, but without the suffocating density. Kathmandu has similarly primitive infrastructure, and rampant pollution, but unlike India, has a Buddhist influence in place of that of Islam. Stupas and Hindu temples were scattered throughout the old and touristy district of Thamel, which had plenty of hidden gems, but it wasn’t what I had come to see. I came to Nepal to see the Annapurna massif, and walk the famed trekking route of the same name. I didn’t want to spend any more time in the congested capital than necessary, but had a distant acquaintance to make before heading for the Himalayas.
I stumbled upon this stupa in the heart of Thamel
A friend and former coworker of mine is a Nepali immigrant. I never appreciated the significance of that until long after I had quit my job and arrived in Nepal, and until that point I just thought it a coincidence that she was the only person I had met from the impoverished nation. While in India, I learned that Indian society (as with that of the Chinese) is prone to “daughter aversion”, or the preference of giving birth to sons. This has led to a population imbalance to the order of tens of millions more men than women, causing a whole slew of societal issues (really fascinating read on this here). But Nepal, while sandwiched between these two massive civilizations, is experiencing just the opposite. While the birth rate in Nepal still favors boys, the population of women is actually higher due to the fact that a large percentage of the men have expatriated to find work abroad, sending remittances home so support their families (I saw counters at Tribhuvan airport devoted solely to the receipt of remittances from abroad, something I had never noticed at an airport before). Most of the men end up working in the Middle East doing back-breaking manual labor, and often are only able to return home once every few years. This discovery gave me a newfound appreciation for what my friend had accomplished, as she emigrated to the United States to work in the I.T. industry and later started a family of her own. She grew up in Kathmandu, and since her brother still lives there, she put us in touch, and I planned to meet him that first night.
Sunil, (my friend’s brother) and I had planned to meet for dinner at a Chinese restaurant near my hostel. I invited an Italian man named Andrea to join us - who had not only been on my flight from Bangkok, but had also booked a room at the same hostel in Thamel - and so we walked to the restaurant together to meet Sunil and his friends. We joined the Nepali men at a round table in a private room upstairs, and shared a family-style dinner, washed down with Tuborg - the popular Dutch import similar to Heineken. We drank and talked late into the night, exploring the similarities and differences of life between the three countries represented at the table. One of the things I found most heartbreaking about Nepal is the difficulty of nationals to go abroad with the ease that Americans or EU citizens can. Sunil and his friend Rajesh had many questions for Andrea, as they hope to travel to Italy one day. Their difficulty in doing so isn’t because of an inability to afford such a trip, but rather in obtaining a visa. I learned that because Nepal is such a poor country, there is a very rigorous process in place for its citizens to obtain tourist visas to Europe. Whereas I can simply show up in the EU with my US passport, Nepalis must pay to even apply for a visa, a process which involves demonstrating proof of their income sources, and in some cases naming a sponsor in the country they wish to visit. They essentially have to prove that they aren’t planning to stay permanently. It made me think twice of sharing experiences from my travels in Europe in fear of sounding boastful, because I was now realizing how much I took my US citizenship for granted.
Sunil and his pals showered us with the unending hospitality that India and Nepal are known for. Aside from consuming our fill of food and beer, they had valuable advice and insights to share about the paths laying ahead of Andrea and I; myself heading West to the Annapurna range, and Andrea bound eastward to complete the Everest Base Camp Trek. I didn’t know what to expect going into that night, but it ended up being one of the most meaningful and authentic experiences of the entire trip.
Jumping forward in time, to that fully laden van jostling across the rugged, rural landscape, I couldn’t help but think about how surreal all of this seemed: The fact that I had not one, but two personal connections to this tiny, remote country. Having just met the brother of a friend the night before, I was soon to be reconnecting with one of my college friends, an American serving in the Peace Corps in Lamjung (Central Nepal) at that time. Becca is her name, and we had planned to meet in Besishahar, the starting point of the Annapurna Circuit, and the end of the line for the local bus I was on. Sitting squished up between the window and the man seated next to me, I was surprised at how many of the passengers had achieved unconsciousness on this bumpiest of cross country rides. I had been up since 5 AM, and definitely wasn’t going to catch any sleep on this six hour carnival ride. As we traced the river valley westward, I started to catch glimpses of distant snow-capped mountains, that must have been taller by a mile than any other mountain I had yet seen. There was nowhere else I wanted to be.
Various sleeping positions assumed as our bus bobbed and swayed over hard terrain for over five hours