15. Kicking off in Kathmandu

SHANGRI-LA-LA!

I'm in Kathmandu!  

In a lopsided orange-brick family-run hotel with a view of the snow tipped Annapurnas poking through the smoky haze that blankets this ancient city. Simple meals of rice and steamed vegetables are served on the narrow lofty rooftop, on plastic chairs and rickety tables where rhododendrons grow in abundant miniature in cracked terracotta pots. Mangy dogs yap and squeal  in the alley below, giving a noisy commentary on the comings and goings at street level: particularly who kicked them and who owes them a meal. 

I have running water and a toilet that flushes. I have a double bed, with a thick doona. I have a cupboard; and I have wi-fi.  Life is sweet.

Hotel Horizon Rooftop - Kathmandu

I'd stayed here, years before, with D, when we hiked the Himalayas.  Nobo, the owner, recognised me.  WELCOME MISS SUSAN! He hugged me to bone breaking, galloped up three flights of stairs with a bag of mine on each arm, flung open the door to my new home, leaned over the railings and yelled down to the kitchen to prepare me a bowl of rice.

Namaste, Nepal.  I remember you well.

I'd felt stripped, leaving Australia: entering into a world of no fixed address. I'd run away from all my past lives; no property in my name, no car, no keys, no one to drop in a bowl of chicken soup. Just me, a few months, and the world at my feet, here in the Abode of the Gods.   It would be more acceptable if I was a 20-something, going on this long gadabout.  I keep getting reminded by society, and my daughter, that I should be standing in line for the pension, looking after my unborn grandchildren, living in a manageable urban flat, dirtying my hands and knees at the garden club, tending my dahlias. They'd all have more luck seeing me, at 80, in a floral kaftan practising Ayurvedic medicine in Bali.

But here I am in Kathmandu, Nepal, giving a thousand silent namaste genuflections for having survived the narrow mountaintop landing on a very skinny runway. After the wide open peace of the skies, the plane seemed to flex its albatross wings to land on a promontory, weaving through temple tops and pruning tall trees on it's way down. The locals brushed off their thick wool coats and repositioned their warm hats, while the remainder of the passengers checked the tips of their fingers to see if they were still intact after so much nail biting. The doors opened, the cold air hit with a blast; and there's The Mountain of all Mountains.

As I'd left Perth early, my Nepalese time frame was extended, so I had to change my visa from 30 days to 90.   I had forgotten the excruciating effort of getting a visa, the slow, complicated and language limiting process where everything happens in triplicate, never during lunch hour, definitely not at prayer time, nor when it's time for a nap on a pile of curling paperwork.  I kept jet lagged eyes open long enough to ensure I wasn't scammed with unfamiliar currency or incorrect change. Antiquated x ray machines rattled and jammed, dust huddled in corners, creased across fabric, stone and paper, and barefoot porters jostled and argued over luggage. Guards stood with rifles cocked amidst the chaos. Crock pots toppled off conveyor belts onto suitcases tied with string.

Four windows to heaven, from my hotel room

You have to give a nod of thanks to technology. My bookings were done on line, and via my iPhone, so I was more than surprised to see the driver from my hotel standing patiently with a piece of cardboard on which was scribbled my name.  I ran to keep up with him as he torpedoed  on short, skinny legs to his battered yellow taxi. He flung my bags into the boot, banged it shut, snatched open the passenger door, indicated a plastic bottle of water on the floral plastic covered seats, and while I was still fumbling for a seat belt, exploded out of the car park in a burst of honking and tooting, like a flamingo leaping from a lake.   I slid around on the slippery seats, just as I used to in my parents Studebaker, holding onto the window handle, and the back pocket of the drivers' seat, petrified I'd be flung into my next life even before this one had restarted.  I'd already used one of my lives during the landing, invoking every diety never before explored.

We hurtled through the crumbling outskirts of Kathmandu, avoiding skirmishes with pink painted cows and rusty bicycles. We lurched through oil-slick puddles between lumbering painted trucks that had HONK PLEASE painted across the backsides of lurid, sloe eyed women with heaving breasts and ample hips. I glimpsed the lofty, snowy peaks of the Annapurnas through clouds of dust and between temples and stupas, keeping my focus like a ballerina in a turn.  Rite of Passage, Rite of Passage, Rite of Passage, wondering where could I buy a prayer mala, practice mindfulness and attain Nirvana, today, before sunset.    

Flatulent motorbikes buzzed like mosquitoes, three wheeled cycle rickshaws carried a thousand eggs, or two goats and a man with a chicken on his lap, or a double bed, a hundred bolts of silk, a plastic palm tree; or ten schoolchildren, struck dumb by the sight of me, struck dumb by the sight of them.  We smashed through piles of plastic rubbish, dodged three wheeled tuk tuks, tore through pink painted squares where matted sadhus sat benevolently offering prayers. The taxi coughed and wheezed, choked and vomited exhaust fumes, then, over the racket of the radio blaring Hindi hip-hop, screeched to a heart-thudding stop when a white cow, lazily chewing a blue plastic bag, ambled in front of us, dropped a wad of shit, and waddled away.

This was mad, and dirty, and dangerous, and I was jet lag tired.  But a peace descended onto my exhausted shoulders, that I hadn't felt for a very long time.  I'm alone, in a strange country where I don't speak the language, I don't know anyone here, I don't know where I will sleep or what I will do or where I will eat or how I will spend my time or how far my money will go or who will watch over me if I get injured or ... 

Oh man, who cares!  I haven't had excitement like this in ten years. 

Less than a day ago, I'd left Perth, too desiccated and fed up to stay longer or photographmy children.  I'm a world, a universe, a lifetime away -  tidily ensconced in my room at the Blue Horizon Hotel, in Thamel.   It's spacious and clean, if you ignore the mould on the bathroom ceiling and the loo without a lid and that I have to stand on a bucket to look out the window to the mountains. To my joy, I discovered a double doona in the cupboard which I immediately threw over the candlewick bedspread until I become accustomed to the rarified air of the Himalayas. Yes sir, super deluxe actually also includes a cupboard. I'm on the top floor - five floors of steps several times a day,  guaranteed super hero legs in two weeks,   I have a corner room with six windows- four overlook the rooftop garden with pots of marigolds and snapdragons and oregano, and the others have views to  the mountains - over the satellite dishes on the roofs around me.  

I've had two rounds of Nepali fried rice, and a bracing shower.  I'm connected to a temperamental wi-fi, and thus the world.  But man, I'm cold.  Changing hemispheres has its disadvantages, too.  Forty degrees is a big adjustment. My teeth chattered, I'm lumpy with goosebumps and I had to remove my earrings in case they froze to my lobes. Seven kilos of clothing does not a pampered woman make.

I needed warm clothes. I walked down to the streets, jumping puddles and trying to avoid the scrawny scurvy riddled dogs that nipped at my ankles. The Nepali, who take cold in their stride, were bundled up to their earlobes: it is February, and snow and rain are on the horizon. 

Straddled between antique wooden houses are hundreds of stalls that sell Tibetan singing bowls, hand woven bottle-bags, knock off dvds at two dollars a pop, pashminas that can slip through a small ring, and antique Tibetan jewellery.  I find the Warm Clothes shops down a damp alley -  where for $10 I outfitted myself with a thick fleece with built in thermostat jacket and pants that double as pyjamas.  

The streets are potholed, jammed with traffic:  bicycles, three wheeled cycles with plastic seats and fringed canopies peddled by scrawny, toothless men with bursting leg muscles;  motorcycles that buck and bite at every corner, taxis with drivers asleep inside, their feet propped up on the steering wheel. Fruit vendors peddle arcs of bananas on their bicycles.  Houses look as if they'll  topple at any minute into the deep ditches that still hold water from the last downpour.  I was tempted to duck into the shop imploring "please, come, look, my backside has many more pashminas,"  just to be safe from the traffic. 

Armed with my warm clothes in a plastic bag, I had another What Am I doing Here Am I Mad? Moment. How was I to spend the next several weeks? So I carried on walking, way past my hotel.  My anxiety calmed as I remembered places I'd been to before, the delight of this ancient place, the photographs that needed taking. 

I walked back to my hotel, and ordered lunch on the rooftop.  I started talking to Brigit, a six foot blonde blue eyed Danish woman and her 5 yr old daughter Olivia, with dark eyes and skin like Mexican mud, on the run from the Brazilian father. Brigit is doing a masters in sociology in Goa, but in Kathmandu doing a specialised yoga course.   Olivia who tears like a mini cyclone across tables, chairs and rooftops, speaks English with a Danish accent, and Danish with a Goan accent and even the Nepalese can't understand this genuine smorgasboard of a child.  Goggle eyed men follow Brigit everywhere.  She's tailed by Candida Pakistan Ganga, her hyperactive mongrel street dog that she'd found on a rubbish dump in Goa and brought to Kathmandu by train for Rp50,000,  for the two months she spends here doing her yoga. Both the dog and the child are quite mad: the child told me she likes putting Vicks in her nose because it makes her want to dance. And the dog chases its tail, a never ending dizzy dance, even without the aid of Vicks.

Brigit wanted to change hotels, for something larger and less expensive. I followed her and her  two mongrels scoping the other hotels around here;  as I did think my room was very basic for a long stay for discerning woman of my standards. We spent a few hours checking off possibilities on our list.  We wound through creepy dark passages where we were leered at by men with paintbrushes. We clambered over plastic sheets to check renovations in progress, wondering who was murdered in some of the rooms, and why the walls were painted psychiatric green, and I decided my room is lovely, and perfect; quiet, personal, well located and why would I spend more and offend dear Nobo?  I have everything I want here. All the wonder of the streets beyond.  

Sometime, March 2011.

FRIDAY NIGHT FEVER - OR UPCHUCK IN KATHMANDU

I was so cold last night, even in my Empresses new fleecy outfit, that the only part of me that stuck out was my nose, Every time I moved,  icy air slid in beneath me and bit the first piece of available skin.  Dogs barked, yapped, yipped and howled. At 4am, I woke with a mouthful of sick.  I stumbled to the toilet, in the dark, as the electricity was off as it is for 16 hours a day. I sat, shivering, on the rim, with my hiking headlamp clamped to my forehead and a red bucket between my knees, wondering what food could possibly hate me so much that it should select me on the first night for this rite of passage.   All I ate yesterday was a bowl of fried vegetarian rice and then a cheese and tomato sandwich. Perhaps I should stop my ideals of being vegetarian and eat the buffalo stew.

But I survived the night. The sun streams through my window onto my bed. World news is on CNN and my door opens to my patio which overlooks the mountains. A million birds twitter, and all around, women hang their brightly coloured washing on rooftops.  Bamboo poles suspend the solar panels for our hot water, and chanting monks in the lane below walk to prayers.  My head spins, my stomach flutters, my legs tremble. I  creaked down to the kitchen to ask Nobo to bring me some tea and toast.  He ran upstairs with it,  5 minutes later, and laid it ceremoniously at my table and chair outside on my private patio, where I sat coughing hard and shivering.  I must have caught whatever this is from the French woman who coughed her French Bad Germs over me during the outdoor movie the night before I left Perth.

What a beautiful place to feel like death.

While the world implodes in Libya, I am curled up on a big bed with the world at my feet in Kathmandu. The air is fresh.  I have fruit in a bowl, my music,  and I feel safe.  I have some new friends, I'm warm, I can see the mountains.  Life's pretty great.

Oops.  Gotta go.  Bring on a bucket.