29. On the road I met ...

The joy of travelling is very often your fellow journeyers.   I've been collecting some beauties.

In three weeks I've met:  One Newari woman in a DVD knock off shop who is going to take me to a wedding sometime next week.  2)  Mr Uttam Pokharel, of Nepal Highpoint Trekking, who is taking me somewhere into the country, on a public bus, to a remote village where people still wear traditional dress, so I can photograph them and eat real Nepali food.  I should be back before dark ....    3) Someone else whom I am meeting on Monday 11am in his clothing shop next to the stupa where the tea shop is, who has a brother who has an uncle whose father is a wholesale jeweller.  

I met a young man from Mongolia in the Israeli restaurant.  On his first visit to Kathmandu, he was here to study yoga.  He said he felt grounded, excited and energised.  We talked about cultures, and Tibet, and politics and vegetarianism, and global consciousness, and alignment of chakras.  Then he said I should come and stay with his family in Mongolia, in the mountains. Cool,  I told him, I am a photographer and I'd love that.  He said - in his American accent gained form watching movies - cool, you can take photos of me.  We talked about closed borders and cultural restrictions.  I asked him what he did.  What I do? Yea, you know, for a living.  Oh, he replied, I'm a butt model.  A What?  A Butt Model.  A BUTT MODEL?  Yea, I have perfect glutes, so I'm a butt model.    A butt model from Mongolia.  Outta.  Cool!

I met a woman from Norway on the rooftop of my hotel.  She was with me when my D wall broke.  She lives in Udaipur where she is a fashion designer, working with recycled saris. She lives in a huge house by herself.  She makes her clothes in India, and sells them to Norway.  I said I'd like to come and visit her in Udaipur, because once upon a time in another life I was very happy there.  We were talking about street dogs.  She has a plan.  She wants to make clothes for the dogs of Rich Indians out of recyled saris.  She wants to have a fashion show.  She wants the dogs to parade the fashions on a dogwalk.  Yes. A dogwalk.  Like a catwalk, except for dogs.  She wants to donate part proceeds of the sale of these recycled sari dogclothes to the street dogs of India.   Cool!

I met a young girl from Canada, in Or2K. She is living in Pokhara with her Nepali boyfriend. She met him on a short visit and stayed.   They're madly in love.  They live with his parents.  Cool!  Not so cool is that he has been married to an American woman for 3 years, and that he hasn't told his parents that he is married, and he hasn't told his American wife that he has a Canadian girlfriend with him in Pokhara.  Double uncool.  Or cool.  Or what-ever.

I met a man from Kathmandu in Kathmandu.  He sells knock off dvds.  I started talking to him in my Pidgin english.  He replied with a perfect cockney accent.  Good God Lad! I exclaimed, where on earth did you pick that up?  I love British Comedy, he laughed.  Oh so cool!

I met a man from Afghanistan, as he was walking down the road in Kathmandu, carrying a case of beads from Kabul.  I stopped him.  I told him I was from Australia and I may be interested in buying his wares. Follow me, he said, his case limping behind him.  We went down a few lanes, and then he entered the lobby of a seedy hotel, asked for a key to a room and asked me to follow him.  Every head in the seedy, dusty, gloomy hotel turned my way as I obediently followed him upstairs along a grimy corridor.  He unlocked the door of 309,  kicked it open, flung open the dusty curtains as the power was off, bolted the door, raised the greying triangular towel at the foot of the bed and spread out his beads.  I stood.  He patted the bed.  I sat on the corner.  He took off his shoes.  He took off his socks.  He folded his legs on the bed.  He told me he was in Kathmandu for one night only.  I told him his beads were too expensive and that my 'asbeen was waiting in New Orleans restaurant.  I would go and fetch him, we'd come back. I stood. I unbolted  the door. I walked out. I kept walking. I ignored the dumfounded faces of those in the dirty grubby dusty lobby. I walked into the sunlight. I kept walking, fast. I didn't look back. I thought I must be mad you are a lunatic letting yourself be locked in a room with a total Afghani stranger.  

What a scary buzz.  It could have been okay.  But MayBe Not.  Terribly terribly uncool.

 

Readers: 
DO NOT PANIC!

I am getting worried mails from my goddesses that all is lost.  It is not.  I was lonely, and tired, and a bit over the shitty here, and I needed a green salad with village goat cheese, so when D contacted me, I slipped into a hole of my own making. 

I left D for the reasons that still stand.  I will not be with someone who has broken my trust.

I swear on Holi Hanuman Moses Kali Gandaki that my journey - and your story -  is safe.  For more than six years I didn't take any photographs or do any writing.   Would I give up how far I've come in so few weeks, just to be miserable and uncreative again?


NOT ON YOUR PARVARTI NELLI!  
ALL IS DEFINITELY NOT LOST!  
YOUR BLOG IS SAFE! 


(PS I will have sex again, one day!!  Inshallah!)