india

I cannot say that I am not eager to be leaving Nepal the day after tomorrow. As much as I really love Nepal and the people, the political situation is just a little too unpredictable and "adventurous" for me right now. I have, up until now, never been in a country where the government and what is happening politically have made me truly uneasy. Its just one thing after another here and when you read in the newspapers what is going on.... its amazing and unnerving. I have heard the word "time bomb" used to describe situations like this when I have read it in newspapers from the other side of the world. This is the only word that comes to mind when I try to describe the feeling I have now and why I am so eager to leave.
I started to really feel it arriving back in Kathmandu today by bus. Suddenly the bus just stops and lets us out in the middle of nowhere in Kathmandu. Not at the busstop where we picked up the bus heading out of Kathmandu but in a totally, totally different and unrecognizeable locale. It was suspicious because all the Nepalis that were on the bus got off the bus at some point before, like they were in the "know" about something, and it was only us tourists left, baffled. The road sort of ended, like it was under construction. There were tons of taxis and other busses around, driver's and touts shouting in the bus windows trying to solicite our business before we even got off. Big time competition. I asked the driver "Thamel?" as in ..."hey! this is not Thamel" (the district where we boarded the bus on our way to Pokhara and within walking distance of all the cheap hotels and shops and stuff). You would think that since I bought a return bus ticket that the bus would return to relatively the same spot as it departed from, right? i'm thinking... but no, this doesn't seem to be the case. "Yes, yes, Thamel!" the bus drivers assures us. Ahah, then this is why the taxi driver's are shouting "100rupees to Thamel" at us through the windows.... because we already ARE in Thamel. I don't think so buddy. But for some reason, he is not going any further. End of story.
The energy is strange. Driving in, before we stopped, there are more than the usual amount of people standing around on the street and they LOOK funny, or they feel funny to me, i'm not sure which one. I get the sense, and i don't know if it is because someone yelled something from the street in English that penetrated my brain or where it came from, but i get the sense that there is a strike or something for some reason.... my feeling is that the bus cannot go any further because it would be crossing a line of workers, or some business like this. But its just a feeling, and i can't confirm it.
I disembark. Its just me and 3 other tourists from Korea who are doing a really good job at looking totally disinterested and blase about this whole turn of events, but i can tell that they are just as disgruntled as i am.
I haggle with a couple drivers through the window over the price of a taxi ride, just to get a general sense of the environment I'm stepping into. I know I can walk one block in any direction from the bus and get the trip for half the price they are now quoting me.
Determined to take it like a pro, I slip out of the bus and into the middle of about 7 men all vying for my business. I hadn't, at this point, totally decided to go with the same hotel i stayed in last time, although it was nice, it was too expensive and I was thinking I would try something else. One of the men was waving a pamphlet for a hotel that is in my price range AND has an attached bathroom with hot water PLUS a free taxi ride there. He just said all the right things and pretty soon I am packed into a small taxi and we are squeezing between the taxi/bus/people melee. I can't resist asking him "What is going on?" Things are just too unusual outside. I begin to be even more suspicious when he evades my question "nothing, nothing, everything is normal". No one in the tourism industry or employed in work that is supported by tourism wants to let on that there is any problem that might deter tourists from visiting Nepal. So sometimes it is hard to get a straight answer about the state of things as they would rather carry on like nothing is happening. The worst thing that could happen for them is if word got out on the tourist/traveller grapevine that there were serious problems in Kathmandu or Nepal or that there was any reason to not visit, so they are going to downplay or minimize anything. That is why his strange denial rings false to me and raises my suspicions even more.
I look outside and there are piles and PILES of garbage. More than when I left a week ago. On top of one particularily large heap I see a sorry sight that will stay in my memory longer than I like: a lone seated figure, warming their hands on a small fire they have started from the refuse and sifting through the garbage, lazily looking for something of value. I strain to see their face but it is either half turned or half covered or so dirty as to not show its features. All I can see are the hands and the feet of this human, who looks wholly unlike a human, and they are blackened with filth.
This scene strikes me as something profound. This person, so desperate, living at such a base level that it is nothing for them to be seated atop this trash, burning trash and sifting trash, in the middle of a busy intersection. It is one for the record books, folks. A record book I'd rather not read.
I arrived at 3pm this afternoon and it is now 7pm. After reading a few newspapers and talking to a few people I learn that there is a garbage strike. Apparently the people were hassling the government garbage collectors because of other issues that they are trying to draw attention to, power outages being on the top of the list, "load-shedding" they call it. anyhow, so the garbage collection stopped, because they were being hassled and blocked by the disgruntled people. Garbage strike. Good thing its not july. But still.... you can't have heaps and heaps of garbage in the middle of a big 3rd world city (i hate to use that term) without a potential health risk developing.
Oh, i forgot where is was.... in the taxi, yes.
So suddenly, my hotel tout mumbles to the driver and jumps out of the taxi as we are driving. I see that a couple new busses have arrived, spilling out fresh disoriented tourists and he can't resist to stop and drum up more business. So we, the driver and i, continue on to Thamel.
I begin to recognize everything, even the street he turns down before he turns down an alley that leads to another alley that leads to a dead end. "This is gonna be killer to get to at night when the power is out" is all I could think to myself. I'll probably have to take a taxi just from the main street to the hotel front door just to find my way back safely in the dark. This is what i am thinking. seriously. It amazes me how the survival instincts come out. You only bite off as much as you can chew, and no more, when you are alone.
I have to say that being older and more experienced now than when I travelled to Europe the first time when I was a teenager makes me more wary and nervous, knowing what I know. When you are young ignorance is bliss and you still have no concept of your mortality. When you are little bit older, you are a little more concerned about your life expectancy and correspondingly more cautious.
The hotel is basic. Just barely meeting my standards, it will do for 2 nights. They pay the taxi for me and I move in.
To be perfectly honest, I'm getting tired of scuzzy bathrooms and scuzzy hotel rooms.... maybe its just a phase i'm going through but I am looking forward to getting back to the cozy ashram in Rishikesh which feels like home. sigh.
The world is a rough and tumble place for a little Canadian yogi, loose in Asia.

Unfortunately there is still more to this sad story. It is sad because the Nepali people are such a beautiful and proud people. They deserve a government that can provide for them and do things right, so that they may have a successful and peaceful future. As it is, the dissatisfaction and dissolutionment seems to grow by the day.
This morning in Pokhara, not to scare anyone, but there was a few riot police in the street. Our bus was late getting out of Pokhara because the roads were blocked or backed up from student protestors i guess. "The students are striking for better education" i am shyly told by my seatmate. He too is a student, but he is reluctant to talk too much about it. I sense that he too doesn't want to give his country a bad name and is downplaying the events as much as possible.
Its good, i think, that the Nepali people are standing up and making their demands and dissatisfactions known to their government. At least they have the freedom and chutzpah to do that and are not intimidated. But the sight of the riot 6 or 7 police in riot gear on the corner with shields shakes me up a little bit. Periodically as we drive out of Pokhara, there are peppered here and there the odd soldier in blue camo gear. I believe, police again. Just being a "presence" for order. But i see the looks on everyone's faces outside and they are looks of people waiting for something to happen. Looks of expectancy and unusualy alertness. The feeling unnerves me.
So this is why I am glad to be leaving Nepal. As much as I love it.
Now there is talk of the load shedding hours increasing from 16 to 20. 20 hours of no power every day.
As i walk down the streets of Thamel in Kathmandu, the city seems so edgey and alive and electric. (ironic for a city on 16 load shedding limitation, haha). Still for some reason I find it more relaxing after dark than in the light. I don't know why. Fewer people i suppose, less chaos and madness. There are bicycle rickshaws and people strolling, Germans eating chocolate pastries and kids. I see some things again, I wish I didn't see, that I wish weren't there, the homeless kids, KIDS, around a fire in the street. I give a few rupees to the one legged guy outside the baskin robbins. I almost collide with a man chasing two dirty boys around the age of 10, pulling them both up by their shirt collars and dragging them back to the shop that they just stole two wool hats from. Who knows if they stole the hats for themselves for warmth or to sell, but they weren't running when they were caught. The shop owner just kinda laughed as he took the hats back while the citizen's arrest guy scolds the kids and cuffs them both upside the head before releasing them. All of this amongst a celebratory atmosphere of music and good times in the streets of Thamel.
what next?
thank goddess I got my visa and passport back today.
My "agent" really made me sweat when she said she'd meet me at 5:30 and then proceeded to be late. I had all these thoughts running through my mind... i was thinking not nice things about her and doubting that she was even legitimate. Laxmi, honey, I am so sorry for thinking those things about you. She appeared, with my passport and my visa, just the way i needed it. She came through. man, i haven't sweated over anything so much in all my life. the mind really runs with it when it gets going, doesn't it.
so i paid her and hugged her, bought her a mango juice while we visited and then we parted ways.