Top of the World

After spending 10 days in Pokhara not doing anything and nursing my knee, I took a bus to the town of Tansen. The town was supposedly beautiful with lots of nice walks to do around the countryside. When I got there, I found it to be quite dirty and expensive, and I couldn't do the walks I wanted to because of my knee. I only stayed a couple of days, where I mainly spent my time reading 'Shantaram', which is an amazing book, before heading to the (formerly Royal) Chitwan National Park. I settled in a little guesthouse (aptly named Chilax House) about half a kilometer from the town center, right at the edge of the park, which had a really rural feel. One thing it did lack were roofs that kept the bats out. After a walk through the park on the back of an elephant, I woke up on the second morning with bat shit on my bed. Knowing that bats carry rabies, I quickly googled pictures of bat droppings, bat bites, and everything else I could think of about bats and rabies. Turns out a bat could bite you in your sleep and you wouldn't even know it, since the bites are so small. They also mentioned that if a bat was found in a room with a small child, an intoxicated person, or someone with mental difficulties, they should get rabies shots because they may not have realized a bat bit them. I counted myself among such people. The clinic in the town laughed when I told them I didn't think I had been bitten but wanted to get the vaccine, so I thought I'd change my plans and head to Kathmandu to be sure. I had originally planned to stop by the town of Janakpur, on the Indian border, where the women are known for the murals they paint on their houses – these murals are repainted every year during Tihar, which is when I would have been there.

Instead, I headed to the small town of Daman, in the mountains at 2300 meters, and on the way to Kathmandu. The buses were packed because of the holiday, so on the roof I went, along with a couple of tourists from Belarus and New Zealand. The ride was incredibly beautiful. I remember thinking that while many people think of Mount Everest as the top of the world, I think of bus rides on the roof of Nepali buses as such. As we swerved on the windy road up the mountain to Daman, listening to some of the guys on the roof play the drum and sing songs, the view of the Nepali countryside was breathtaking – terraced fields as far as the eye could see, smiling kids at the villages we passed, banana trees littering the side of the road. Things only got better when one of the guys on the bus started singing 'Wavin' Flag' by K'Naan. The last few hours of the journey were harsh, though, as the temperature dropped and the wind chill on the roof only made things worse. We got to Daman as the sun was setting, and we were thrilled at the prospect of getting warm, only to realize than Daman is a village on the side of the road with only a few guesthouses and shops, most of which were closed because of Tihar. We finally settled in a hotel – well, it was called a Resort but felt more like a second class hostel.

The next day, a few more tourists arrived – two guys from Belgium, a woman from Austria, and a Dutch biker who had just cycled 70km in one day from Kathmandu! If it hadn't been for them, my time in Daman would have been pretty crap, but I ended up having one of the best nights of the whole trip there. We took over the only restaurant that was open on Tihar, and cleaned them out of vodka and whisky, played games to determine who would get the chocolate that the Belgian guys had with them straight from Belgium, talked, laughed, complained about the Christmas music playing in the background, and were all grateful we had not found ourselves alone in a place like Daman.
The main attraction of the town is its view of the Himalayan mountain range, from which you can supposedly see Mt Everest, on a 'very clear day.' We woke up for sunrise, and by comparing what we were looking at to a map the Dutch guy had, we willed ourselves to believe that we could see Mt Everest – not entirely sure if we actually did, since all the peaks look pretty much the same size from that distance, but we convinced ourselves that our eyes had befallen the mighty Mt Everest, even if we couldn't distinguish exactly which one it was.

Later that day, the Belgian guys and I took the first bus to Kathmandu that had passed the town in two days. We hopped on the roof, and after an hour or so there were about 40 people on the roof and the rest crammed inside. Just when we thought we wouldn't be able to breath if one more person got on the roof, a group of about 10 people, including six toddlers, climbed up the latter to our pile of bodies, luggage and sacks of vegetables. Despite heads and elbows constantly shoving my spine, the ride went quite quickly since we had to constantly be on the lookout for leaves and small branches that might smack us in the face – one of which succeeded in wiping my cheek, much to the amusement of all the Nepalis around me.

I've been in Kathmandu for a few days now - got my first rabies shot the day after I got back, so I should be fine, and have worked on getting my Indian transit visa for next week when I come home, via Delhi. The bureaucracy here is insane. They needed a photocopy of pretty much everything I own, a passport photo, and two forms filled out. I went this morning at 9:30, when they open, and my number wasn't even called until two hours later! After waiting in line for one hour, since the person in front of me was conveniently a tour group leader getting visas for 25 people, I finally got to the front of the line, where they took my passport and money. Yay.

I would also like to take this opportunity to congratulation Kyle, one of the most amazing people I know, for winning the Mr. Hyphen contest – a charity pageant aimed at countering stereotypes about Asian-American men, if I understand correctly. I'm so excited to know a Pageant Queen! :) So so proud of you Kyle! You can read his great interview on NPR here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=131217366

I can't believe I only have a few more days left of my trip. I'm excited to go home where everything will be familiar again, and to see all of you, but it will be bittersweet. This trip has really been amazing and I'm so glad I decided to spend the six months since graduation discovering the world and myself in the process. But the prospect of clean feet, warm showers, real pizza, and raw salad is oh so enticing.

“I will learn from me, from myself, I will be my own pupil; I will get to know myself, the secret that is Siddhartha.” - from Siddhartha”, by Herman Hesse