We needed to get to the town of Pokhara in central Nepal.  We could fly or take a bus, but this was an easy decision.  Everyone who has traveled on a budget in a third world country has the “local bus” story.   For Jacki and I  it was a 10-hour, white-knuckled, death-flirting on a ‘local p.o.s. bus’ that sent us hurtling down narrow, twisting, potholed roads cut into ridiculously steep hillsides with essential pieces of the bus either missing or occasionally flying off  (which I actually witnessed).  That was our trip from Kathmandu to Pokhara in 1986,  when two lanes of east-west traffic met on an eroded single-lane road  … like two trains on the same track  …  creating an 8-hr stopped-dead stand-off.   I remember trying to sleep on top of our stalled bus on a burlap sack of zucchinis and, when that failed miserably,  I tried to eating them raw  …..  pittoooee !

This time we flew.  Zucchini free.

Pokhara is a busy town on a tranquil lake.  You could even miss the lake all together if you stick to strolling down Pohaka’s bustling main drag,  a crammed wall of restaurants, clubs, trekking provisioners and the curio shops.   You ‘discover’ lovely Lake Phewa by walking through an entry to a lakeside restaurant to a typically pleasant  zen-like garden scattered with an eclectic collection of tables, chairs, burl benches and chaises.   These laid-back cafes pull in all the tired tourist feet for beers and sunset.

a working lake

Thanks to Lake Phewa and the local leaky-boat rental,   I can add ‘sailing in Nepal’ to ‘skiing in Dubai’ to my list of travel sideshows

Exquisite food.    Servers you want to take home.  No tipping.  Dollar beers ( 650 ml )  … about what you would spend for lunch at Dennys

Pokhara is destination where trekkers from all over the world, heading into the Annapurna Sanctuary, or some shorter circuit, stage their treks.  ‘Staging’ is the preparation real mountain climbers do to assure a successful expedition.  Staging for us meant renting sleeping bags and buying some genuine knock-off  Northface parkas.   ‘Northfakes’, as they are known locally,  are actually well-constructed jackets, by all appearances, with a flawless Northface logo right where it belongs.   The negotiation with the shop owner is whether we are getting ‘chinese quality’ (the genuine knock-off … “good”) or ‘nepali’ quality (less “good”).  Nick and I make the deal at $35 a piece for a couple snazzy maroon shells with gray zip-in liners.  Because these jackets will be our first line of defense against the freezing temperatures and snow at 14000 feet, we sprung for ‘chinese quality’ with the Northface logo spelled correctly.   The sleeping bags will also be rentals.  It really doesn’t make sense to lug all this stuff from home.  The shopkeeper assures us the sleeping bags are chinese quality … and ‘new’.  We pull out one sleeping bag (Jacki’s) and its looks serviceable.  After a further negotiation which involves a couple of bandanas and a slick new Northfake shirt which I will store at the hotel for my return and later burn a hole in by touching it with an iron.

The gods chose the most dramatic ‘himal’ of all the Annapurna peaks as the sole sentinel viewable from Pokahara.    Machapuchare rises to the north like an elegant 22,000 ft  ‘fishtail’.    It is the morning view that brings you to whatever window, balcony or street corner you find yourself first thing in the morning when the air is clear and crisp and the light brilliant.   For just a moment all thought flees,  your breath slows and you smile for nothing    …   then you can go pee

Machapuchare from a Pokhara rooftop

Oh, and a last note to self.   Next time check all three sleeping bags before renting them because, as Nick and I will soon discover,  the other two new-chinese-quality’ bags we rented for sub-zero temperatures somehow got through the Guangdong Northfake Sleeping Bag factory during the down feather stuffers strike  … or during the ‘glorious one-duck-per-bag five year plan’.  Each little quilted square had maybe one feather in it.

Thankfully the Nepalis will have great blankets

Here are three favorite diversions to seek out when visiting exotic locations:  rooftop restaurants,  music clubs,  and a local golf course.   Golf we’ll get to later.

Rooftop restaurants.  In an Asian city it’s nice be above the hoi polloi.  The air is a bit cleaner.  The view of thronging,  endlessly fascinating streets below is more entertaining and less of a scrum if you are watching it from above instead of navigating through it.  There is lot interesting to be stuff  to be seen on 3^rd world roof tops … laundry to love making .    Here is my artistically metaphorical photo of the great Buddhist temple of Boudhanath    …  which I saved just before Jacki hit the delete button  (several times actually ?)

‘Boudhanath with Beer’

Usually you find local music in the street or in saloons and restaurants.  Local music is, of course, a great atmospheric …  a sound track for the local culture. Even the most foreign sounds can be toe-tapping after a few jumbo Everest beers, and you will almost always see and hear some unrecognizable instruments,  usually home-made.   We found this little restaurant in KTM from a sign on the street.

I have the cd.  It’s still in its shrink wrap like most of my other native music cds .  I bought it because this sweetly smiling something-player came to our table and told us the proceeds from the cd   ….   ‘were for the children’.

Toasting good bye to KTM … avoiding eye contact with a hippie King Birenda’s 1972 purge apparently overlooked

from the once infamous Kathmandu Guest House

I am not going to write a lot about my old friend Kathmandu because later I am going suggest that you not come here   …  to skip it for a better option.  (that would be Bahktapur a few miles to the east in case ‘later’ is a rhino or an avalanche)

It’s usually a boring travel narrative to talk about ‘the way things used to be’.   But Kathmandu is a peculiar story.   Nepal was a monarchy the first time I came here.  King Birenda, back in the 80’s, was by all appearances respected by his people … ‘revered’ as Kings would have it.   One thing I remember about Birenda is that he kicked all the hippies out of Kathmandu in the 70’s by tightening visa laws.    (Duuude !?)   Once I actually got a limo glimpse of the Queen on her way to her walled lakeside palace in the then little town of Pohkara, her eyes rigidly forward speeding past her Nepali subjects lining the streets as if she might catch something from them.   In fact the Nepali royal family tree was loaded with rotten fruit.  Birenda’s brother introduced the heroin trade to Nepal addicting hundreds of thousands of his own people.   Then of course the Shakespearian grande finale in 2002 when Crown Prince Dipendra opened fire on his family killing the King and Queen and another half dozen family members  … over a girl they didn’t like.  (Duuude ! )   Dipendra then shot himself in the head but not fatally at first.  He lasted a couple of days during which time the confused, traumatized Nepalis actually made him King for his two surviving days since he was,  well … next in line.

Now out of all this chaos come the Maoists.  While the western countries were wallowing in our financial woes a few years ago Nepal was in a full blown civil war with the murdering, bank-robbing Maoists, now getting traction by virtue of a few reasonable ideas to help the people.  Populists but  still Maoists …. actual Stalinists if you believe the posters at their rallies.  But the opposition was so bad the Maoists for the first time in human history won an election and run around today opposing things like voter registration.  The consequence of all the fighting was that tourism was slowed to a trickle and all the hill people flooded the Kathmandu Valley doubling its populations.

Out-of-control expansion has caused concrete to spread like kudzu out-pacing infra-structure so the city is now without electricity  for half the day.   It’s a bigger and more bizarre story than I can tell but check the picture.   The once enjoyably walk-able and bike ride-able streets are clogged with traffic and pollution.   The local-market ‘ambience’ of fresh morning produce spread on sidewalk tarps,  of good exotic  street food,  the occasional goat’s head boiling in a sidewalk cauldron has since morphed into a commercial sprawl of trekking shops, Chinese knock-off emporiums, souvenir shops and tourist claptrap.  The old medieval sites like Durbar  Square, that once charactertized the city,  are now isolated into World Heritage sites you now have pay to walk through.

Maybe this explains Kathmandu ?

Nick did a few tourist ‘survey’s for KTM coeds

The city is deranged, enervating, fascinating and, despite the lack of breathable air, we loved every minute.

Eighteen hours later … and, as always, I am awake the entire flight.  Lots to do in eighteen hours. First do the in-flight magazine crossword, then check out the models in the SkyMall magazine, then master the entertainment module which, on international flights,  offers every movie ever made.  I will eat every pretty-good meal they serve and snatch a complimentary chardonnay miniature now and then.  You know those little fat guys in Wall-E that float around in Barcaloungers?   It’s pretty much like that.

By and by  I’m about halfway through Die Hard Another Day  and Jacki turns to me and says

“Oh oh. Calcutta”

“Oh Oh Calcutta ?  I haven’t seen that one.  Is it good ?”

“Not a movie, the city in India … that’s where we’re going.”  Jacki likes to watch the flight path screen and peeking over I see our ETA has changed from 20 minutes to 3 hours and the nice straight line coming west from Seoul has morphed into a scribble over Kathmandu.  It looks like someone is flying the plane with a Etch-a-Sketch.   Despite the fact we are cruising through a towering skyscape of brilliant white clouds we are told we have a weather problem and  we are being diverted to Calcutta. Something is broken in Kathmandu.  Welcome to Katmandu