March 6, 2020
After 26 hours of travel and no sleep I arrive in Kathmandu and thankfully get picked up by the guest house I reserved for tonight. This is the best thing I could do for myself when landing in a foreign country with no phone, no understanding of the currency, no sense of direction and your decision making capacity is that of a sloth.
Even though I laid in the most comfortable bed so happy to be horizontal I was lucky to get the couple hours of sleep I did. The time difference is going to take a few days to get used to; an 11 hour difference, switching night for day. After hours of a restless sleep at 4 AM I am forcing myself to stay in bed. Fearful thoughts start to creep in; ‘I am halfway around the world and have no idea what I am doing’ ‘I am all alone’ ‘Where do I get a SIM card?’ ‘I don’t know where to start’ As these thoughts start building a story I decide I need to get up and get moving before they paralyze me.
By the time I am ready the birds are making a racket outside and the sun is just rising and blows apart all that fear I was just feeling. I grab my daypack and just start walking towards the center of the morning action. I sit on a stoop and watch the world go by and I feel like the sun is coming from me bursting out of my chest. This is so much more than I could have anticipated. People are burning incense, performing prayers, cooking food, opening store fronts. Uniformed children are running to school in packs, young boys have their arms around each other; motorcycles carrying a family, grapes, or propane tanks zoom by. A monkey shows up stealing the marigolds out of the prayer urns. People dump water out the store front doors to keep the dust down. This is all happening in one tiny roundabout with a small temple in the middle.
As I sit here a man opens a store front across from me selling SIM cards. I have a wonderful transaction with this man who patiently spent the time to set my phone up for me. I ask him if business is slow and he tells me he is lucky if he has 20 percent of the business he should at this time of year. They don’t expect it to get any better and told me those of us here will get to see a Nepal most tourists don’t get to see. I feel for the economy here but am selfishly very excited for this opportunity.
We say our farewells and I go to step down out of the store not paying attention and almost get taken out by a mini Scoobie Doo van. A rookie move, you have to look both ways while leaving a storefront to be sure you don’t get hit by a car, TukTuk, motorcycle, bicycle, donkey, pedestrian, or dog.
I am quickly learning how to be a part of the mode of travel chaos rather than a part from. You have to do your part. A beep behind you means tuck your elbow in and get as small as possible. Do not vere from your path to avoid a pothole, walk through it. You will learn quickly that your elbows are easy targets much like the food cart on airplanes. You may end up with a bike fender up your ass but not lifting you off the ground, a possible nudge from a car but not pushing you off your feet. It just works.
In my walking getting lost wanderings of the city I reached a very busy 10 lane LA looking Intersection. Unlike LA there are NO lanes. More of the same; Cars, trucks, bikes, bicycles everywhere but the size of a never ending football field. Before I get a chance to observe how people pass here an elder Indian woman with a beautiful fuschia and gold sari on grabs my arm and points across asking me to escort her slow limping self. I am not exaggerating when I say it took us 5 minutes and a transformation to cross this mayhem. I was petrified at first. There was no use in navigating to avoid anything, you had to have faith that you were going to be avoided. Faith that you were even visible in the yellow dust storm.
This 4’ 10” woman kept looking at me meeting eyes and patting my arm as if I was her daughter and she had all the faith in me to get us across. I was under her spell and kept looking down at her with this peace in my heart that replaced the adrenaline. It was so beautiful and so intimate. When we got to the other side she grabbed my head and touched our foreheads transferring her red vermillion to my forehead. She looked in my eyes and and walked away. It almost felt like she just evaporated and I imagined her being on my arm. I have the vermillion to prove she was real.
I have been trying figure out how to put into words my feelings of Kathmandu. Chaos and magic. I feel this moment describes it perfectly. It is everything I thought it would be and more. This is one of many stories from this day; magic at temples, slums, and the royal palace. More to be revealed today. I was going to leave Kathmandu today but I am going to stay another night.
Some added facts;
The red dot on the forehead is Vermillion (a pigment) and represents Shakti strength. Shakti “The great divine mother” in Hinduism. Creative, sustaining energy, as well as destructive. It symbolizes love, and can also symbolize marriage.
I think I am going to find me some vermillion today, Nepalese and Indians are very fond of green eyes.
