Washing day in Kathmandu
It’s not surprising that the sheets are grey- they are put out to dry on a rigged-up line on a building site. Everything here is survival and finding creative ways to get by is an art form. Every hustler, motor bike speeder, every street vendor, every hole-in-the-wall-shopkeeper is fighting the good fight to extract the last rupee from every situation.
But actually despite the incredible pressure of people and bikes and cars and dogs, the hustle here is not too oppressive. Much more polite and restrained than many other places I have been to.
And we have business to do - far too busy to idle round haggling with street vendors- important business like finding a SIM card and changing our money!
It’s interesting how, in the life of a traveller, these tiny details of life become a big deal. People who are comfortable buying and selling houses and running businesses can find the process of buying a SIM card challenging when you are sweating and there are seven people grouped around watching your every move and talking to each other and you don’t have a clue what they saying but somehow suspect it’s something about - here’s another sucker for us to extract as much money as possible from.
But we got them, who knows if we paid too much?
Kathmandu now is not so different from the Kathmandu I knew in the 70s. Of course all the wild little hippies like I was then, are gone but there are noticeably no tourists here. There were only two other westerners on the plane and our hotel seems to have only one other guest.
Of course, this is very early in the season, still raining a lot and everyone seems hopeful that things will soon be better. But there are challenges- the costs to get here and travel here have increased a lot (although our - admittedly extremely basic- hotel costs $12 a night!!). So these things along with political issues, global travel options and Covid make for tough times for the grafters of Nepal. But we are spreading the love around, spending money, eating the yum food, smiling, bowing and trying not to get Degue fever which is apparently rife at the moment!
Most of the time I haven’t got a clue what’s going on but just practice that old adage about not trying to control things over which you have no influence.
Our plane to the Everest region is booked for Friday but I might try to have a little bit of influence over the gods when I fly in a tiny plane to the most dangerous airport in the world though - yay- Namaste L
