“Welcome In Nepal!”

11Mar07

After a full day of traveling in an excruciatingly uncomfortable bus, we arrived at the Nepali border. The ride took longer than is should; apart from the driver stopping for a chai every hour at his friends’ restaurants, we also had a two hour wait while we waited for a new tyre to replace the one that burst on route. Stepping off the bus into the chill night air, we rubbed some life back into our battered knees (when discussing Indian buses, the phrase “leg-room” must be used rather liberally) and listened dutifully to our conductor.

“Two minute up road, you must get stamp”, vigorous gesticulation with fist and palm “Two minute more up road, you must get the visa”, animated air-scribbling “Two minute more, is the Hotel Nepal, here is your room for tonight.”

With departure stamps on our passports, we stamp across the border, receive an over-energetic smile and wave from the obviously under-stimulated border police, and present ourselves to the immigration office-staff. This consists of one important-looking man signing things in the background, one highly charged smile attached to a skinny man, and one masked figure. The system is three-fold, the masked man muffles something at the baffled tourists, who eventually hand over their documents and the correct fee, which is passed to the well dressed man at the back, who signs and stamps the passports, which are handed to the giant smile, who’s job it is to welcome you to Nepal. It’s not terribly efficient, but it eventually chugs out enough signed passports to get us to the top of the cue. When Paul is called to receive his passport “Ireland! IRELAND!” he is met by the grin with the body.

“Paul Colin?”  reading passport

“Er, yes that’s me”  out-stretched hand for the passport

“Welcome in Nepal!” smiling with unnerving intensity

“Thanks”  Hand still waiting for passport

“…”  Smiling and holding passport

“…”  Waiting for passport

“…”  Smile continues

“Eh, can I have my passport please?”

“…”  Smiling and holding passport

“Hello? You still have my passport!”

The smile eventually hands over the document and Paul backs off suitably non-plussed. I’ve been watching with amusement from further down the que, and decide that something must have been missing in the communication. After a few minutes of other tourists receiving their passports I figure it out. When I get to the booth “IRELAND!” I shout confirmation. When the generic “Welcome in Nepal!” arrives I give my biggest grin and shout “Thanks!” back at the smile. It works instantly, and I receive my visa. Guess they forgot the extra entry fee to Nepal, smile!

After a short night in a mosquito breeding ground, we stagger out of the hostel to meet  our Nepali bus. We instantly breath a sigh of relief at the comfortable seats and adiquit leg-room. We are just settling in for the eight hour journey when two young men hop through the door.

“You guys together? So that’s three bags?”

“Yeah, we already put them up on the roof.”

“Ok, that’s twenty, twenty, twenty, that’s sixty rupees in total.”

“Er, sixty rupees for what?”

“For bags! Twenty rupees per bag, no problem!”

“Actually, it is a problem. Why do we have to pay you for the bags? We have pre-booked tickets.”

“No problem, twenty per bag. Everyone pays, no problem!”

“We’re not giving you any money.”

“You don’t pay for bags?” His face turned a little sour “You don’t pay, you can take care of them yourselves.”

We watched the young men push down the aisle taking money from hapless Korean and Japanese tourists. “Are we paying them not to steal our bags?” We climbed onto the roof and to sure that our bags were securely chained down. Five minutes later the “bag minders” hop off the bus and we see no more of them.

The bus ride was much more comfortable and a good deal more interesting than the day before. Our bus (though we payed for a deluxe private couch) is more of a public shuttle that picked up and dropped locals the length of the journey. Groups of young school-goers, families with young babies, business men going to work. The bus barely accelerated when it was braking again to change it’s stock of passengers. At first it was hard to feel that we had left India, there was still the usual sari-clad women and men with tika dots on their foreheads. Everyone still said “Namaste” as the generic greeting (the same word in Hindi as Nepali. Our bus still had the reckless relationship with the rules of the road, tending to spend more time on the wrong side by the drivers sub-conscious preference. But we hadn’t gotten far into the day when I began to notice subtle differences from the great country that we just left the day before.

The clothes, though still containing the ubiquitous sari, was interchanged with much more western-style trousers and t-shirts. Gone were the young men with the tight-jeans and baggy shirts. And though many of them wore the dot on the forehead (a Hindu symbol making reference to the holy and all-seeing third eye) even the way it was worn had changed. The red tika smears were replaced with felt circles or jewels set below the hairline. The piercings were only displayed on the older women, most of the young girls wore nothing of the cultural dress that we had become so accustomed to. And there in lay the starkest difference that we first encountered, the women.

For two months we became used to the local women being covered from head to toe, never traveling alone and avoiding your eye. In our entire time in India, we spoke to barely a handful of Indian women, and then only in the cities. Outside the cities we had dulled our surprise on the countless villages of women coming only in two varieties. Teen-aged and being escorted by a mother/father/brother or being a mother herding children. Women that would have otherwise been young by our standards were middle-ages looking and sporting the rolls of stomach that only a mother of many children could have. Any young, unmarried girls must have been kept hidden from our sinful western eyes. But in Nepal, there were young attractive women everywhere. The mix of Mongolian and Indian genetics replaced the slim, petite build of the Indian woman with a more broad-face and curvy build. And the cultural taboo of women talking to and touching men was certainly not present. Girls and boys boarded the bus together, chatting away and sitting next to each other or mashed against each other in the press of the full bus.

There seems to be a much more relaxed and innocent approach to human contact in Nepal. I had one middle-aged woman grab me to help herself over the buses handrail (hitching her sari up unselfconsciously) and plonk herself beside me, wriggling into the tight space. A girl in her early teens snuggled against me to get comfortable enough to sleep, her mother slumped against another passenger herself. Babies were handed about the bus in a comical fashion, it seemed anyone with a free hand (or knee in my case) was
generally assumed to want to hold one. At one stage the woman next to me received a small boy, who after half an hour of bouncing around in excitement promptly flopped down on top of me to drool into my jumper.

As the bus winded it’s way around the epic scenery, it went through stages of being packed like a clown-car. There was a young boy who acted as conductor, horn and wing-mirror all in one. He spent most of his time hanging out the door, shouting at people who might want to catch a bus. When one such people responded he whistled a little tune that the driver interpreted and slowed the bus to a crawl so the people could swing themselves in. As soon as they had one foot in the door the boy would beat the side of the bus and the driver would ram the bus onwards. If people were too close to the bus, or were walking with their back to the traffic, the boy would whistle a continuous tune to warn them of the bus. This one in particular I found perplexing, seeing as anyone unable to hear the roar of the engine or the constant and aggressive honking of the horn would surely be unable to hear a light whistle. Perhaps in a country where the roads are a constant source of beeping and rattling, a musical tune is what gets people’s attention. Perhaps many people have gone deaf from the noise and the boy is desperately trying to find a tone that their ears can hear. In any case, that was how we made our way around the mountain roads, banging and whistling along.

At one point (when there were several disappointed men trying to get aboard the sardine can) the conductor boy looked around the bus and then decided on me. He asked me, quite politely, if I would like to travel on the roof. I opened my mouth and then closed it again. Was he taking the piss? “No thanks…” He looked at me in mild surprise and then banged the bus to move on. I couldn’t think of why he would possibly think that I would find clinging to the roof-rack more favourable than my nice comfy seat. We later found out that many Nepali people prefer to ride on the roof, and to be honest we should have seen the signs earlier. Half the bus was energetically throwing up out the windows while the other half were begging for the boy-conductor to hand them the little plastic bags that the first aid box was stuffed with for this very purpose. Whenever the bus stopped for more than a second, the entire contents emptied themselves onto the road to cling to the steady ground. Apparently, Nepali people aren’t good travelers.

One man who clambered aboard the bus secured the seat next to me and introduced himself. His name was Durga, a high school teacher who’s subjects are English and Social Studies. He talks to me (in the flawless English that only people foreign to the language have) about Nepali life. He tells me that his father died two weeks before and that he was leaving the village to go back to work in Pokhara soon. He had finished the three days of silent reflection on of his father and had thrown a huge party for all his 200 close relatives. This is what is expected of the eldest son and he tells me in detail of the buffalo that he gave as gifts to many of his more senior relatives. He talks about how successful and energetic his father was, how he had a field of 470 orange trees and many animals. He talks of how his father got sick with stomach cancer and how he spent the few short months of pain being told by doctors that he was without hope. He talks about how he going to move to the village permanently to care for his aging mother, who relied heavily on his father. He tells all this in the open and honest way that no Irish person ever would.

One subject that we touched on briefly was the Maoists, and the recent peace treaty. Durga is a socialist, he supports the Maoists and is confident that they will win the election that the Nepali people have been promised in the next three months. He mentions that there is some kind of rally taking place in Pokhara where the Maoist leader, Puspa Kamal Dahal (nicknamed Prachanda) will be speaking. He says that he has huge support and that there will be thousands of people coming from the villages to hear him speak. Durga talks about how the Nepali people want a Republic like Ireland, free from the tyranny of the royalty. I can’t help but feel uneasy about people turning to communists as a way to freedom. The conditioning of my school history books and cold-war films has left an aftertaste of fear to the words National Socialism. But I smile at the educated school-teacher and shake hands with him as he leaves.

When we arrive in Pokhara we are swamped with touts and taxi-drivers all vying for our custom. It’s peak tourist season in Nepal, and no tourists have come. Fear of the fragile peace-treaty being shattered by violent demonstration has kept the crowds away. The industry is suffering hugely, and the Nepali people along with it. In the taxi ride to the lake-side (the tourist center) we weave through the truck-fulls of police in body armor and the throngs returning from the Maoist rally. Every lamp-post has a poster bearing the hammer and sickle that I associate with the Soviet Union, a red background with a smiling mans face in front. People tell me how incredible the Maoist leader is, if I heard him speak. Walking along the Lakeside our heads turn to follow the path of a small car. It has red flags and loudspeakers pumping out microphoned propaganda.

On the way to our hostel I talk to the young Nepali man who has secured our custom. He says that he will caste his one vote for the Maoist party. When I ask why, he shrugs and gives that one answer that I knew was coming “We’ve tried everyone else”.

Welcome to Nepal, the next year might get bumpy.

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