Namaste Kathmandu

The first thing that struck me was that it was very warm. The second thing that struck me was that there was an awful lot of children running around. Both things seemed weird to me, as it WAS the middle of the night. It should not be warm, and the children should be home, sleeping so they could be ready for school the next day. The children also impressed me by asking for some money, and they could even name a lot of different money units they would accept. Dollar, lire, rupi, kroner, guilders, pounds, anything. I was a bit uncomfortable about it, and figured I wouldn't get any use of the small coins I had managed to collect as change at Heathrow, so I gave them away. All of a sudden there was three times as many children swarming around me. I was just as uncomfortable about it as if the children had been sharks, and I don't know what would have happened, if not some person with a sign reading "Kathmandu Guest House" had tapped me on the shoulder and smiled. My hero!

Two minutes later I was in his car and on my way to Thamel, the backpacker center of Kathmandu. Before leaving Norway, I had planned to meet up with Sarah, a Canadian with travel plans similar to mine, and we had booked beds at Kathmandu Guest House, because none of us had any knowledge of the city, and this was a place everybody recommended. So at 3 in the morning we met. She looked a bit like the photo I had seen of her, only a lot more tired. It turned out she had been through a journey at least as tiresome as mine, going through Hong Kong and crossing the dateline. I took a shower in ice cold water, being a bit annoyed that the hot water wasn't functioning. At that time I didn't know that most places don't offer hot water for showers in this area. People are sensible enough to take their showers in the middle of the day, when it is so hot outside that a cold shower is just refreshing. I went to bed, and more gained unconsciousness than fell asleep.

When I woke up the next morning, I saw the room had a huge, oscillating fan (which explained the wind inside the room that had puzzled me in the darkness of the night), a colour TV, bathroom and furniture. Just what you expect to get for US$30 per night, which was what we had paid in advance through the Norwegian travel agent. Luckily Sarah had already met David, a Canadian man who had been to Nepal before and knew more or less what to pay for what. So we followed him as eager disciples to breakfast, where I had a good meal of semi-western cuisine for 140 rupis. And then we walked to a couple of other guest houses, and it turned out for what I paid for my breakfast, I could easily get a room. So we changed hotel, and the next night was to be spent at Mom's House Lodge at 150 rupis for two people.

For the rest of this Nepal journal, keep in mind that depending on where you did your money exchange, you would get about 50-60 rupis per US dollar. Sometimes this will mean things are ridiculously cheap by western standards.

Sarah and I started out walking around, without really knowing where anything was, or where we were going. It took quite a long time to find the British Airways representative. I tried to explain my sleeping bag problem, and they sent a few telexes around the world, not giving me any indication of where my bag might be. Going to different shops told me that you can get a very good sleeping bag for about 3-4000 rupis, that is about $65. Quite a good deal, considering what you pay for them back home. Still, we weren't going hiking for a few days yet, so I decided to wait and see what British Airways could do.

What I DID invest in, though, was sunscreen. I quickly realized that the sun here is rather a lot more intensive than back home. We walked around and I found a lot of very different and rather interesting things to see:

• Action. Just as we started to have no idea about where we were, we came upon a crowd of people who seemed very excited about something, and there was a voice coming from a loudspeaker that indicated that something really, really was happening. The voice was speaking Sanskrit, so I had no idea what it was, but decided to go in.

  I found a crowd surrounding an open space, and thought it could be cock fighting or something, and went closer. It wasn't cock fighting. It wasn't fighting at all, although it was a bloody mess. It was people giving blood. Or getting money in return for blood, to be exact. To improve the efficiency of the bloodgiving, they didn't even change needle between the donations. Very impressive. I politely declined an offer to give of my blood, and made a mental congratulation to myself on being so wise as to bring my own syringes in the backpack, in case an injection of any kind would be needed.

  This was one of the moments I really wished I knew the language. I can only guess at what the man with the microphone was shouting. "And here comes our next donator! He sits down, and the excitement IS building! Uh-oh... Now he takes off his shirt. Did everybody see that?! Come and SELL us your blood! Now! You get MONEY! The syringe is approaching the arm... How fascinating this is! The needle is through! Yes! YES!! The blood is flowing into the plastic now. We PAY for your blood!" Or something like that.

• Dogs. There were dogs everywhere. Some looking just dirty, others looking horrible, lacking ears, legs or just offering a seldom opportunity to see what a dog's brain or intestines look like. Strangely enough the dogs didn't seem to realize there were people around, they just lay on the ground sleeping. And the local people didn't seem to notice there were dogs around either. Truly confusing.
• Beggars. Suddenly they weren't just something I had heard about before, but something in my vicinity. They are dirty. They have torn clothes. They look hungry. They have tears in their eyes. They are professionals.

  When you are in a country where the average income is about US$200 and there is a huge problem with illiteracy, you have to think before you give any money to children. If a child can manage to be given one dollar per day, the child will make more money than the parents can. The parents know this, and if the child can provide so much money, the chances that child will ever be sent to school are very, very slim. Do not give children money.

  If you need more reasons not to give anything to beggars, consider the fact that the people you see begging on the street are NOT the people who are worst off. Even if you decide to give something "useful", like food, instead of money, you're probably not helping anyone out. I spent more than two hours outside the one fast food place in Kathmandu, observing a group of beggars there. They seemed to be related to each other, and had this incredibly pitiful look, and stared accusingly at the people inside the fast food place. During the time I spent looking at them, they each had between 2 and 4 hamburgers as well as loads of French fries and a couple of Cokes. These people were definitely not about to die from starvation, but probably had a rough life because they spent all their time outside this restaurant, instead of working or educating themselves.

  In short, there is only one way of actively helping the fight against poverty, and that is through donations to serious international relief and help organizations. Giving directly to people on the street is just keeping the problem alive. Yes. I know it is hard to be a cynic.

• Temples. In Kathmandu there are temples everywhere. Old, huge, small, wooden, stony, hinduistic, buddhistic and with other qualities. What more is, they are used. Constantly. People line up to offer something to some god or undefined higher being. You see religion and culture being practised everywhere all the time, without the artificiality you find in museums or in tourist shows in most other parts of the world. Simply fascinating. It can be a bit difficult to know whether it is ok to take photos or not. Asking will normally result in you getting your picture in return for giving them some money. I chose to just watch, and later buy a postcard with a similar theme.
• Couples. You will seldom see a Nepalese man and woman walking together, and you will never see them hold hands. What you will see all the time, though, are men holding hands everywhere, to a much larger degree than it is done e.g. in San Francisco. It's just the custom, and it seems like a nice custom, although it can be hard to understand the reason men and women don't hold hands as well. The explanation for it being so can be found through taking an anthropology introduction course at a university near you.

Back home I had had more than enough excitement for one day, when Sarah showed me an interesting detail at the toilet we shared with the rest of the floor. I am not sure what it was, but we agreed it might be someone was very sick and had vomited something huge, solid and pink into the toilet. The funny thing about Nepal is that everybody gets sick there. It's okay to stay off dairy products, salad and meat for a couple of days, but then you start eating everything, and pretty soon you're sick. I'll get back to that, with merciless details.

Again exhausted, I went to bed as early as nine o'clock in the evening. Due to a blues concert in a nearby "night-club" (everything closes at 10 at the latest in Kathmandu), I wore my ear-plugs for the first time on the trip. It turned out to be a good move.