another land on my map turns red

---

Top of the world to you! After a particularly brutal bus ride, Mike and I have arrived in Kathmandu. We plan to stay here for about a week before heading back to the Gangiatic Plain. It would be nice to skip the city at some point and get somewhere with more than fifteen stars in the night sky, but at the moment my traveling companion is experiencing some gastrointestinal difficulties.

Our bus was supposed to arrive in the city at Midnight, but instead got here around six in the morning. The good news is we save money on a night at a hotel.

There were many checkpoints on the mountain roads where the bus operators had to pay to traverse. Whether operated by the Maoists, the Royal Nepalese Army, or simply local toughs I do not know (probably a bit of all three). The civil war is over here, but political tensions remain. At any rate, tourists are "sacred cows" as it were, so I feel no worries. Of course, I am not one prone to fretting about things outside my control.

I managed not to shave my beard the whole time I was in India, but now my facial hair has been shorn. I've gone from looking like the photo of a Taliban militant killed in Afghanistan to a particularly tall sixteen year old kid.

A couple of days ago, on a tour of Varanasi, I (along with Mike and two attractive Israelis) was shown into the salesroom of an overwight and malignantly mischevious silk-valla. He served us tea, spoke of the histroy of the silk industry in Varanasi, told us of his six hundred employees, and showed us his wares. No one was buying, and it occurred to me that if no one would purchase luxury items from the exploitive middlemen in the world, then such people would have absolutely no power. Free markets would work perfectly, if only individuals were less greedy and more clever.

---