32. THELMA AND LOUISE LET LOOSE

OKAY!  Enough with trying to save the world, one child at a time.   I'm having a HOLIDAY! aren't I?  Well then, let me put my head back up the exhaust pipes here where I can't see what I've been seeing, and do what I set out to do!  HAVE FUN! TAKE PHOTOGRAPHS! SIT ON ROOFTOPS AND EAT ROYAL NEPALI SPECIAL SET!

Luda is great, fabulous company.  She has the same mentality for shopping that I do when I have a camera in my hand and a photo opportunity.  Nothing can stop her. Not rain, not pollution, not noise, not exhaustion, not an empty purse, not hunger, not thirst. No closed doors, after hours, lunch or religious fast can hold her back.  No piece of fabric, chunk of silver, stone or bone is left unturned and examined.  No vendor is left unscathed.  It's an impressive process to watch.  For months now the men who stand on their steps have been wheedling and beseeching me to Please Come Inside I Have More Many Colours.  I run a mile.  Luda beams beautifically, flicks her blonde hair, and practically sings "Well, Why Not!"  and before I can say alakazam, we are inside another hopeful's cave of Luda delights.  They fall instantly in love with her.  They look at me as something that has stuck to Luda's golden slipper on her way in.  I am, I must admit in the shadow of the Countess Princess of Shoppers, a really bad second runner.   They offer me boiling cardomom tea not to make me happy but to shut me up because I keep making indicative faces to this woman,  who is single handedly helping Nepal out of its Gross Domestic Crisis, that she is being ripped off.

But she's smarter than all of us.   She practically dismantles the shop:  she empties the shelves, she envelops herself in layers of silk, embroidery and wool, she tosses aside with a haughty flourish those that don't meet her superlative standards, and those she wants she chucks into a growing pile on the floor.  Impressive I tell 'ya.   The vendors are hyperventilating and drooling.  She flirts with every octogenarian and adolescent from Thamel to Lalitpur until they are helping her take their place apart.

I'll have this and this and this and this and this and not that and this and this and no not that not that and this and this and this .... and your best price is?

Figure.

I said your best price.

Figure marginally less.

That's not good enough, she says, as she adds more to the pile.  She pulls out her purse, starts counting money, halves what they offer her. They start to sweat. They stab their calculator.  Friends from outside gather.  Cousins stop dusting. When they phone a friend brother cousin uncle father mother to ask if the deal is ok, Luda is already halfway out the door with twenty five of everything, her eyes peeled for her next commercial conquest. She hasn't even touched her tea and I've scorched my lips on the fifth cup, so far. 

It's the same with the sadhus.  I sidle up to them, camera as my shield. I hang around behind them, I pretend to take photos of rooftops and cremations and monkeys, then I sneak closer and then finally I'm in front, ready for lights, camera and action.  Their look is always, oh mama, what took you so long, do what you have to and then pay us and we're all happy.  What does Luda do? She plonks herself down next to one, starts sadhu small talk - wow, cool eyeliner, where'd you get that purple nailpolish - fab dreadlocks - and before I can say Holi Hanuman, I'm taking a photo of Luda with the Sadhu who is giving me Australian coins.

Anyway, I love these dudes and I love photographing them.  So what if most of them are charlatans, out for a good time?  They can be as psycho or blissed out as they want.  They have a natty sense of colour and style.  They paint their faces, slip into their flip flops, wrap themselves up in a vivid tablecloth and head for the nearest holy place to position themselves in front of a photo op. Hand upturned out for rupees and a vague blessing here or there.  They never need to visit the dentists here because the more jumbled their teeth, the better they look in a photo.  And if they're members of the Sadhu inner circle, well then I think they share the silver pot.  Or look after it while another dashes behind a cenotaph for a loo break.

Many of the locals know me now too. Those that hang around Durbar in Kathmandu wait for me and actually look disappointed if I don't have my camera, sort of like Luda's following, who know their day won't be the same if she doesn't bless them with her beatific presence.  Luda walks out of a shop, armed with pashminas and the shopkeepers say Bless You. God Bless You.  I take photos and hand over rupees and the sadhus incant something between their thumb and forefinger - may you always have good light or similar.

TWO DAYS ago, I took the back streets of Kathmandu down to Durbar Square.  I'm getting very comfortable with the locale, and as long as I can see my rickshaw wallah I know there's a pretty good chance I'll be pedalled back into sunlight and familiar surroundings.  I'm an attraction in my own right, down these damp, dark, grubby lanes where I try to be inconspicuous with my camera, silver sandals, hat and eyes bright with delight at the daily shenanigans, even though I'm now wearing a dust mask.

Yes, dust mask.  I'm having trouble breathing in this damp, choked Valley of the Gods environment. Underneath it, I have become my own ecosystem. I am humidifying my face, I am filtering the air, I am preventing sunburn and I am protecting myself from everything from Tb to cracked lips.  Best of all, I can remain inscrutable to everyone who sidles up to me trying to flog me tiger balm, boys and flutes; so I can understand and appreciate why women in these parts of the world cover up. I've had an awful, hacking cough where I sound like a wolf - a residue of the coughs and colds and ins and outs of the past few weeks, exacerbated by the terrible pollution from generators, motorbikes, taxis with Chernobyls for exhausts and wood fires.  I took my cough to Dr Buddha, who prescribed the mask, two tiny blue pills, some cough muti and wrapped it all up in yesterday's newspaper.  Here, he says, if we don't have dust, we get a cough.

Dr Buddha in business

As I walk these lanes where the old carved Merwari houses seem as if they're going to topple any moment, where many of them are held upright with electrical cables and tarpaulins, planks and crumbling bricks, perhaps a tree that's wound itself into the scaffolding, I'm transported into a world that hasn't changed for centuries. The architecture of history, and I stand and peer, and marvel, and wonder at the who's and why's and when's of the lives that are lived behind those dark shadows.

Then there is the street circus:  A bent-double man carrying a fridge on his head.  What I thought was a giant plastic bag with legs, but it was a child carrying rubbish. A man with ten large, rolled carpets balanced on his forehead. A man with the head of the Dalai Lama but the legs of a labourer.  Gold being sold on a scale as old as the first traders. Two sadhus sitting outside an ATM having a smoko.  A boy carrying two baskets of illegal green parakeets, ready to fly into hiding with them if the parakeet police are near.

The butchers.  The bakers.  The candlestick makers.  The flock fluffers.  The spoke pokers. The shoe retreaders. The lock breakers. The juice squeezers. The professional letter writers.  Professional mourners. The sad, the lame, the blind, the orphans, dogs crippled by traffic, dogs weak with mange, the cigarette glue shovers; new starry eyed tourists who don't yet know how to cross the Nirana roads, and those weary with travelling who have ceased to see what made them leave their homes in the first place.

I found five more reasons to be a vegetarian while in Kathmandu.  Flies. Dogs. Exhausts. Mud. Blood.