It was the final day of Tihar, and the auspicious time for this day’s main celebration was around 11.50 so when the Gentleman Friend, tired and unwell, finally woke and we left for breakfast there was almost no breakfast to be found. Eventually we made our way to the French Bakery (where I had the […]
Neighbourhood dance
I got caught up in the local Tihar celebrations today. At around 8pm all the neighbourhood women gathered at someone’s house, all dressed in red, and sang and danced. The songs were mostly rather like our Punjabi tappas: someone would improvise or semi-improvise a couple, funny or otherwise, and the others would sing it after […]
Run up to Tihar
This coming week is Tihar, what the Nepalis call Diwali. Our hostess will be leaving for her village to get a tika from her mother. Even more embarrassingly than yesterday’s faux pas, I learned today that I have been calling her by her daughter’s name all this time. I had thought I was so clever; […]
Nepali weekend
The Nepali weekend is Saturday, today. We have a new guest at the homestay, a young Israeli gentleman (whom I embarrassingly misidentified as Lebanese because of his coffee and his Arab sounding name). He used to live in Nepal and speaks some broken Nepali as well, and is on his way to India to learn […]
Not happy
Today, Pakistan’s Supreme Court acquitted Asia Bibi, a Christian peasant woman, of blasphemy. She had been accused by two of her Muslim neighbours after they quarrelled when she brought them a drink of water and they refused to drink from a cup that a Christian had drunk from unless she converted to Islam on the […]
Homestay
The other residents of this homestay are a Tibetan couple from China who carry a small sign saying ‘Dear sir or madam, I am sorry but I do not speak English or Nepali. Please give me a three month visa’. It appears to have worked, for here they are. We communicate through smiles and gestures. […]
Playing twister
This morning I left the hotel. They gave me a ride to my new abode, a homestay on the western outskirts of Kathmandu. It is set at the foot of a green hill with a Bon monastery just above, but is otherwise very residential, what I would call in Pakistan lower middle-class aspiring upwards, with […]
Down, down, down
I am clean(er), showered and partially dressed in clean clothes. ‘Partially’ as I only have a clean t-shirt and panties remaining to me, and I don’t want to put on the other, slightly grubby, clothing till I have to. I am resting in my room in Syarubesi. It has two beds with adequately clean sheets […]
The lasting image
The image that think will stay with me from this walk is not the mountains or the waterfalls or even the landslides, but of the old woman in the Langtang teahouse, methodically finishing her dinner every night and then, equally methodically, raising her plate to her face to lick it clean in long, vertical strokes, […]
What a night
What a night indeed. About an hour after dinner (daal bhat which I shall never have again) I felt funny about the stomach. Oh fuck, I thought, and indeed it was so. Food poisoning such as I’d never had in memory. The toilet was beyond repellent, think Trainspotting but in a Himalayan village, with an […]