The magic that is Nepal

Wow, I have just got back from Nepal
And I agree with every pure word you have written about this beautiful place. Here is my first day diary entry if you care to read. I loved reading your journal, your words show you have a pure heart. 21/01/2011 Show Reply ▼Reply Reply all Forward Delete Junk Mark as unread Mark as read Delete all from sender Print message View message source Show message history Hide message history Show details Hide details sarah taylorKathmandu The Himalayas frame everything here. Exhaustion is secondary, the smog a mere irritant, the chaos and dust, the grasping hands and shuffles of touts trying to steal us away, my lost bag in DTo mickcowan1@hotmail.com From: sarah taylor (sez35@hotmail.com) Sent: 21 January 2011 15:37:06 To: mickcowan1@hotmail.com Kathmandu The Himalayas frame everything here. Exhaustion is secondary, the smog a mere irritant, the chaos and dust, the grasping hands and shuffles of touts trying to steal us away, my lost bag in Delhi, my jet lag. Nothing. Nothing at all to me, compared to the sun shimmering from the tops of the mountains, a spectrum of colours reflected off the snow. “Sarah, we need to get to the hotel”, urges Suellen. She’ s right. 22 hours of travel is showing on both our faces, and now bag less, we are in a vulnerable state. I pull myself away from the hypnotic beauty of the mountains and we battle through the touts, demand some ID from a driver and cram into his seatbelt-less cab full of prayer beads and pictures of Lord Shiva. The capital of Nepal, Kathmandu, is an explosion of the senses on all levels, choking with people, with shops, with poverty, stray dogs, with spirit, pulsating with pashmina’s and mandalas, crowded with excited school children crammed four onto the back of a bike a if their lives depended upon it. Colours, luminous, muted, primary, tie-dyed, flash of orange of the sacred Sadhu, my eyes hurting to take all this in. As we struggle through people laden streets to find our way to the Hotel, the pictures in the guide seem to be a lie as all the streets look the same. Every side street littered with the same tangled wires, board upon board grasping for attention screaming about their tours of mountains and safari parks, it could be anywhere in this mayhem. I’m feeling almost naked without the reassurance of my backpack and, containing carefully chosen clothes and diaries, and just want to get to the hotel and feels some walls around me so I can re-gather myself in this foreign land, in which I am now like a baby. With a sigh of sudden amalgamated excitement and weariness, I see the bold scripted letters of the Hotel Fuji, and with a familiar sense of homecoming, open the door, feeling the reassuring realness of the brass topped handle in my hand: “Namaste, can I help you?” A beautiful Nepalese face greets me with curious eyes and a flawless skin as I rush out a battered piece of paper with a hotel reservation on. He takes the paper and stares at it, yet seems bemused and checks his computer: “ We have no record of you booking here”, he says with honest eyes staring back: “ But we can do special room, just for you. Nice, near gardens”. I’m so tired I’d settle for sleeping in a phone box and we gladly follow him up steep stairs to our room. It’s massive, but rudimentary and the bed looks like it can be doubled up as some penitary punshiment for a misbehaving monk, but as he peels back the decaying net curtain, I’m stunned by the iridescent mountains far in the distance, mellowing in a jaw clenchingly sad sunset of purity and eternity. I am here in Nepal, bag or no bag, as raw as the day I was born, this is my destiny.