Thamel

Shehrish and I have gone to Thamel the last couple of days, a tourist area of Nepal crawling with activity. We have been walking from her house, a considerable hike but I have enjoyed seeing more of the city. The only problem with walking through these areas is the amount of dust and gasoline fumes from all of the bikes. A lot of people walk around with masks on their faces to avoid inhaling the allergens, and eventually I may follow suit. On the way we turned a corner to be greeted by 10-15 cows walking in our direction. Shehrish got terrified and hid behind me like a child. Sometimes I wonder who is the foreigner. Walking by the palace, a massive golden eagle flew right over us and landed in a tree. Being irrationally petrified by birds of prey, it gave me quite the fright. Entering Thamel, we walked by a lot of street children who would tug on my clothes begging for money. Lots of them had their faces buried in small paper bags, huffing glue non-stop. This was heartbreaking, but an unfortunate reality in KTM.

The heart of Thamel is really exciting, with tons of shops and restaurants condensed in really narrow streets filled with cars, motorbikes and people. Many of the shops sell bootlegged things, and I got the entire series of both Sopranosand Loston DVD for the equivalent of $12 USD. I don't think that copyrighted material exists in Thamel. We met up with some of Shehrish's high school friends at OR2K, a dirty hippie place with good vegetarian food. We ordered veggie momos (dumplings), chips chilly and hummus. Chips chilly is essentially french fries covered in a spicy, chili red sauce with vegetables on the side. I loved it, and love that in Nepal it is common to get appetizers while having drinks. All of the food is Thamel was good and relatively cheap; the momos were Rs. 80, about $1.25 USD. While hanging out at OR2K, there was a massive thud on the metal roof. One of Shehrish's friends made a remark that it was probably a monkey, and I thought he was messing with me, until all of a sudden a big monkey jumps out on the ledge and skittered away along the roof. I had thought that the monkeys were only in the jungle areas, but apparently I was wrong. Later on, we went to Buddha Bar, a small place with beautiful ambiance and good hookah. I liked OR2K because it was more spacious, but Buddha Bar was a lot nicer.

We walked around a bit more, and the area got kind of shady after it got darker. Some of the streets were poorly or completely unlit, and walking through these areas was rattling. Lots of people came up to us either begging or trying to sell drugs, and I was happy to get back to the lit areas. While in this nasty part, I stepped on something squishy and wet. Having stepped in crap the day before, I looked back to see if I needed to clean my shoes yet again. I had stepped on a fat dead rat, laying in the side of the road. I have never been more grossed out in my life, aside from having to clean fraternity house bathrooms after parties.

To end the evening, we met up with Shehrish's dad at Upstairs, a place sort of on the outskirts of Thamel that had live jazz. I tried buff (alo) momos for the first time, and liked them alot. In America, I got tired of momos, but in KTM every place has different styles and different 'achar', the sauce on the side that is usually spicy. I don't see how the Nepali crowd at Salem can even eat momos in America, because they are terrible in comparison. I guess any momo is better than no momo. Upstairs was nice, but a bit crowded for my taste. Being sandwiched on a rickety bench isn't fun, and the smoke factor is annoying after getting used to smoke-free restaurants/bars in North Carolina. Most of the places are well ventilated or partially opened, but not Upstairs.

All in all, things are great so far. I plan on taking a class to learn Nepali, and have been told by several people that it is a pretty simple language to learn. There have been some communication issues with the maids, and they have actually done better than me in that they ask me things in English now. Seems like a uphill battle to be able to pick it up at this point, but I am going to try. Everyone speaks predominately in Nepali around me, but I am used to this from hanging out with the Salem crowd.

Hope that everything is well in the States. The predominant news stories lately have been the political scene with the upcoming Nepali constitution (so confusing with the different parties splitting/merging/disbanding that I can't even keep up) and the tsunami in Japan. The Kathmandu paper is fun to read, but the English is written slightly differently that I have to reread a lot of sentences. For the most part it's Nepali news but some world stuff too. In today's paper there was a write-up on Indianapolis malls, which was fun to read because I had been to them. Why they would put an article in Indy malls in a Nepal newspaper is beyond my comprehension, but I have stopped overanalyzing everything to avoid going insane. They also have a section for celebrity birthdays; happy belated birthday, Joel Madden of Good Charlotte. Lodeshedding just kicked in, so I'll post this when I can, ciao.