by andyinasia » Thu Aug 04, 2011 10:16 pm
I really like this one.
63. If Paradise Is Half As Nice
16 Oct 2003
So after I sent that last report from Pokhara, what
happened? I spent the next four hours in the centre of
the lake, relaxing under a warm sun, feet dangling in
the cool placid water, enjoying the views of the
mountain peaks although the rest was covered by thick
blankets of fluffy white clouds. It is a universal
truth that all tourists everywhere do the same things
at the same time; by the time I got to the lake they'd
all moved onto the next thing, whatever the next thing
is after going 'wooo' for hours just because the echo
travels across the lake. So I had Phewa Tal to myself,
other than a few old Gurung ladies ferrying the fodder
they'd foraged from the forest.
Apart from the racket emanating from the jungle (birds
and insects) the tranquility was absolute. Shaanti
shaanta. No motorboats, no jet-skis, no white-water
rafts, no yachties or tourists going 'wooo'. I thought
how sad I'd been to be leaving for good my beloved
Scottish lochs, but Phewa Tal excels the best of them
plus after the rains you get a perfect climate and
sacred snow-covered mountains looming, even if they
are mostly in purdah (which means 'curtain' in
Nepali). Like Scottish tourist brochures which don't
mention the midges, so you won't read anywhere that
you don't see these mountains because of the clouds. I
know from the view from my house that if you wait long
enough or get up at dawn you'll get a glimpse; here
the mountains are much closer – walking distance, but
however close a mountain is there's always a
mountain-shaped cloud even closer. I won't bore you
with the technical meteorological details, suffice to
say it's got something to do with mountains. And
clouds.
The water is so clean too – no oil slicks, fishing
tackle, condoms or plastic bags. Women fill their
gagris straight from the lake, you can brush your
teeth in it (well I did), people wash and bathe in the
warm water – you can't do that (safely) in the rivers
in Kathmandu. The boat jetty happens to share a small
ghat with tasty low-caste women who possess only one
sari and choli (blouse) and bathe and wash their
clothes there.
I read, I chilled, I thought, "If this is hedonism I
could cope with it, for a while anyway. It got better
– as the sun set I rowed back to the shore (one
paddle, Hawaii 5-0 style) and wandered into a
salubrious joint that puts on free open-air evening
folk dancing. As much as I hate Disneyfied touristy
productions I made an exception as the dancers were so
good, the girls so gorgeous and the night so balmy
under the bright full moon. the did the dances our
children have learned and I improved my understanding
and appreciation of the nuances of dances from
different tribes and all that and I was having a
brilliant time as it was, but to cap it all I somehow
got picked up by the waitress, so the night didn't
finish when the show ended. To think I'd just written
hours earlier that it was a night for lovers, and to
think that in the space of less than twelve hours I'd
gone from convincing myself I was about to be arrested
and deported, to ….. well quite.
Madhu, aged 33 and possibly the oldest woman in Nepal,
is an exceptionally nice person with an
all-too-typical tale to tell. She hails from a village
near Namche Bazaar which is the launch pad for Everest
expeditions and treks to the base camp, although her
village is four days' hike over a mountain off the
tourist track. In the light of something else I'd
written to you earlier in the day I was interested to
hear how she'd gone against her parents wishes and had
had an inter-caste love marriage – which hadn't worked
out. She's the first Nepali I've met who is actually
divorced (it's always been practised amongst the
Buddhist tribes but is very rare). She was left to
support her two daughters plus her younger brother and
sister through school in Kathmandu, which she managed
by holding down two jobs, working sixteen hours per
day for years to do all this plus save enough money to
fulfil her dream of escaping Nepal and gaining
employment abroad. Last month she gave a fixer who is
her uncle 70,000 rupees who promised to get her a visa
and job in Dubai. You can guess what happened. She
found herself in desperate rent arrears and in deep
debt and had to flee Kathmandu with nothing but two
sets of clothes. She's left her children with a
'sister' in a far corner of Nepal and came to Pokhara
three days before I met her. She's now working from 6
a.m. to 10 p.m. for £16 per month (half our teachers'
salary) and still plans to save enough money to
emigrate to Europe, Amerika or the Middle East. Don't
worry, I shaln't be funding her but I hope that after
such cruel luck things work out for her.
Actually, after seeing each other somewhat
surreptitiously for four days in a culture where
'dating' is simply not done it did occur to me that
with me looking for permanent residence in Nepal and
her wanting to get to somewhere like Britain there is
a mutually beneficial option and much cheaper than the
student visa route, but I don't tell her that. Mind
you I can foresee one problem with this idea – I've
always been allergic to meeting the parents but this
would be no drive down to Oxford to partake of sherry
and fondue. I'd have to fly to the highest airstrip in
the world which is always out of action due to the
weather and Maobaadi. Then I'd have to spend time
acclimatising in Namche Bazaar because we're in acute
altitude sickness terrain here. Then the climb would
commence; she says three to fours days in ideal
weather, but that's local time – how long would it
take a useless couch potato like me? She tells me it's
one day up, one day down and one to two days up again.
The leccy-free village is high up the side of the Arun
Valley which is the deepest valley in the world. When
I did finally arrive they'd probably slaughter a yak
in my honour and force me to eat it. Then they'd hand
over thirty starving kids for me to take back and
educate as part of my new-found family obligation.
Okay I think I've talked myself out of this one.
Two other quick stories: her one sister was living in
her husband's village when the whole village was wiped
out by a landslide. There's no compensation or
insurance scheme in these parts of course, so with
their home and livelihood destroyed the family had to
relocate to the next village and rent land to farm,
and now they too are in deep debt. The nearest school
is three days over the mountains weather permitting,
so the three daughters won't be getting any more
education. You think your family's got problems. The
other story is from one of the waiters working in the
same place. He told me a tale which involved a similar
sting – a promise of a job on an Amerikan cruise
liner. Earlier in the summer he quit a good job in
Pokhara's best restaurant and handed over his life
savings to some conman. When you read about the
British government and its fascist press getting all
worked up about evil illegal immigrants coming to the
UK for an easy life after having given all their
savings to human traffickers to flee appalling
conditions, just spare a thought for those who try to
do things legally and honestly and see what happens to
them. Thus endeth the sermon by your friendly illegal
alien.
So, being a pushover I allowed myself to be persuaded
to stay one more day, just one more day, well four
more days longer than I meant to. The problem was not
that my clothes were utterly rancid - the stench
didn't seem to be cramping my style too much, it was
that my money had run out. By the definitely
definitely final last day I found myself without even
the bus fare to get to Kathmandu and then I agreed to
stay one more day as she'd just negotiated a
three-hour afternoon break. Figured I'd be alright as
I've learned how to blag my way in Nepal. I simply
wouldn't eat and drink only water from the lake, and
I'd get on the bus without buying a ticket and haggle
with the driver – I'd empty out my pockets and show
him I only had half the fare and he'd say okay but
you're on the roof. I've watched the locals do it – no
problem.
By the way, last time I was telling you of the road
over the mountains. An Australian I met told me his
bus had just turned in many hours late as another bus
had gone over the side of the gorge (You thought I was
exaggerating these bus trips?). I checked out his
story in the paper the next day and in the small print
was a mention of a truck being immobilised in the road
by a rock fall and a bus coming too fast round a bend
hitting it and partly skewing off the road but not
actually toppling into the river. There were 33
casualties of whom three were critical. I knew I'd be
alright though; the reason I had no money left was
that I'd spent my last £13 on a gold painted statue of
Tara, the Tibetan saviouress who protects you from
wild animals, storms, landslides and kamikaze bus
drivers (but possibly not one's own stupidity).
Nah, that wheeze never actually happened. I was making
my way to the bus when money rained down form the sky.
Dunno how that happened as the clouds had just
momentarily parted to offer a perfect vista of the
Annapurnas and Machhapuchhre. Okay, one more day then.
Alright, for you dull rationalists the alternative
version is this: I'd read on a website over a year ago
that there is one cash point (ATM) machine in Pokhara
that will take my card but there was no point trying
to track it down in this sprawling city. Madhu wanted
one last rendezvous under a big ol' Bodhi tree a few
minutes away from her work-place and gossipy staff,
and as I waiting I noticed the ATM was right there, in
the tree.
Except it wasn't one more day. I'd already met and
talked to many people while Madhu worked and as this
continued I heard so many stories. Initially
everything looked pretty hunky-dory from the middle of
the lake and in the distraction of moonlit walks, but
then I began to realise how bad things were in
Pokhara. The hotel manager told me that whilst there
were virtually no Maoists in the city the checkpoints
ringing the city deter tourists, but these are
necessary as the Maoists have recently strengthened
their forces in all the surrounding areas. Fierce
fire-fights are breaking out between them and the
security forces in some of the popular trekking areas,
and then there is the 1000 rupee donation trekkers are
asked to pay the Maobaadi. Personally I don't see why
a rich trekker would be turning his pants brown at the
prospect of forking out eight quid, and indeed Richard
told me that the receipt the Maoists issue can be sent
to your insurance company for a full refund. I suppose
it's the fear of something interesting happening to
them that scares them off.
Here's an aside: I had a blinding (or deafening)
revelation whilst enjoying the folk dancing. I am
trying with the Nepali, honest, but I get frustrated
when people refuse to understand what I'm saying just
because I fail to aspirate my 'kh' perfectly and stuff
like that – I mean, I'm close enough aren't I? But
then one of the musicians was introducing a well-known
local folk song about Nepali cookery. I thought this
strange as Nepali cuisine is quite literally nothing
to sing and dance about. Then the guys appeared waving
their big knives – a khukuri song! Since then I've
heard the bloke say the word a hundred times – and I
still can't hear the difference.
Are you keeping up with the sequence of events here?
So I said goodbye to Madhu and went to get the night
bus. However with the resumption of the conflict the
night busses were not running (By the way Santosh has
just told me how his two day journey to his village
became more than four due to check-points and
landslides, and at night the bus had to pull over at
checkpoints and all the smelly sweaty passengers had
to sleep in or on the bus). So I wandered back and the
night was not yet over and it occurred to me I hadn't
seen all the other folk dance groups. You'll never
guess what happened – oh, I see you're ahead of me by
now. This one was called Chandrika and she looked
absolutely stunning in her elegant blue sari. I'd
barely sat down when she rushed over to pour me a
drink, give me her number and insist I call her the
next morning. And I really meant to but unfortunately
after that place closed I went into another one that
stayed open until four, made loads of new best friends
and got so hammered that I slept until the goats
bleating for their lunch woke me. By the time I called
she was back at work. An Englishman abroad, still at
least I don't behave like a tourist, eh?
I spent much of what this time would absolutely
definitely be my last day in the company of the
Tibetan community. I won't mention how many addresses
and proposals I collected but I learnt that life's
very not so good for the thousands of Tibetan in
Pokhara. Dozens of ladies line the roads pleading with
tourists to take a look at their crafts. Nice
jewellery and other things too but nobody buys. So
they talked with me for hours about life in a refugee
community. Now it has occurred to me that whilst none
of these myriad tales I've heard are in any way hammed
up, I can see that once these women realise they not
going to get a sale or tip out of me they don't give
up because they're thinking that marriage would be a
better long-term deal than a quick sale. Everyone
wants something, but I don't begrudge that, I just
wish I could do something to make a real difference
like I'm doing in Kathmandu.
The women are from Tashiling camp which was
established about forty years ago, so they're all born
and bred there. The Tibetans have never been accepted
by the Nepalis into the community even though the
Tibetan community has been in Pokhara since it was a
village, i.e. the Tibetans have seen thousands of
incomers arrive and treat them like they're aliens. I
didn't see a single Tibetan in regular employment in
the city. So they don't feel welcome in Pokhara and
they'll never get to see the home they've never known.
Whilst Tibetan culture is becoming more trendy in the
West and some big bucks end up in a few places, and a
fair few tourists come to Boudha to stay at the gumbas
(monasteries) and spend good money in the shops,
enabling that Tibetan community to become relatively
well-off, in Pokhara they seem to be overlooked and
forgotten. In contrast to Boudha the tourists who come
to Pokhara aren't interested in Tibet, that's why
there's only one Tibetan restaurant in the city, why
the Tibetans own or rent no shops and have to try to
sell their wares hawking in the street, making a sale
a week.
I talked to Nepali thangka painters also – their art
is just amazing and the artists paint in their little
family-run workshops, passing their craft down the
generations, creating their work before your eyes – if
you're patient; the bigger ones takes months to
complete and I was shown one that was nearing
completion after two and a half years. But nobody
buys. The Chinese and Indian tourists don't spend
(actually the Indian tourists are very conspicuous in
Pokhara and distinctive from the Nepali populace –
roaming in large family groups, clearly not bred in
the mountains and not underfed) and the westerners are
there to trek and don't want to lug stuff around in
their knapsacks. They also tend to have little
appreciation of Tibetan or Buddhist culture as they're
only interested in the mountains, not the pesky
people.
I do hope some of you registered the irony implicit in
my title for this report; this is an idyllic place to
relax, yet everyone I've talked to (bar a pair of
happy chappies who were raging drunk) tell me stories
filled with unhappiness and a desperate wish for a
better life. I've only actually related a small
proportion, for instance I didn't mention the
seventeen year old waiter who pleaded with me to take
him into our school as his job and life is such a
dead-end. I noted the absence of the usual smiling
dispositions you find on Nepalis and Tibetans except
when they affect a positivity to try to extract a
sale. Here, in a third world city which exists to
cater to rich western tourists you can't say the local
workers don't know any other life; their faces are
rubbed in affluence hour after hour. I recall that
ancient lyrical masterpiece, the Sex Pistols song
'Holidays in the Sun' which Johnny Rotten prefaced
with "Cheap holidays in other people's misery." The
answer? Take a holiday in a third world country, spend
copiously but come home feeling very guilty – or, more
positively, set up some sponsorships to break the
cycle of misery for some. I've said all along that
whilst the mountains and waters of Nepal are the most
beautiful in the world and that's what draws tourists
to Pokhara it's not why I came to Nepal. The
hedonistic pleasures were getting a bit hollow – it
was time to go home.
Absolutely no more delays now; I just needed a plate
of chips and then to bed for an early night and a 4
a.m. start. So I nipped into the first available place
I came across – yes it did happen to be the same place
as I was in until 4 a.m. that morning but that was
more coincidence than everything else. And yes,
another waitress, another story. I'd been yapping with
the lads the previous night but it was too early for
them so she came and sat next to me. I forget her name
but she's got the best arse in Pokhara so I'd find her
again easy enough if I wanted. She works in this place
until 4 a.m. and is back on duty at 6 a.m. In all,
over 24 hours she gets three hours' break, two to
sleep and one to bathe, change clothes and eat. Sounds
impossible? Hang on; she gets no holidays ever and how
much does she earn working these inhuman conditions?
Nothing. Her brother manages the place; I noted he and
the other staff address her as 'kanchi'. Remember? Not
that she was complaining as she answered my questions
– for her this is an easier life as before she came to
Pokhara she was working on the family farm in the
mountains. She had two years schooling, not getting
past Class 1 (a real person to go with statistics I've
given in the past) when her parents pulled her out to
work the land, but she's pleased to come to Pokhara as
she really doesn't want to marry a village farm boy.
I will admit that I was very enjoying the filthy looks
I was getting from the English Adonis crying alone
into his beer next to us, all the impossibly
good-looking young local lads and the jealous bar
staff. My ego's had the holiday of a lifetime, and yet
I found myself thinking, "This is really great, but
it's just not me." Maybe a year ago I thought my ego
had been decisively laid to rest but I see now that as
Augustine and many others have discovered, the
conflict between higher and lower self never ceases. I
also see that the problem with earthly pleasures is
that they're bloody great, that's why people get so
attached to them. But what disturbs me is that I'm
aware that here in Nepal I possess a certain power
that I don't feel comfortable with and I don't want to
use, either consciously or sub-consciously.
So what did I do? I walked. As I headed back I thought
to myself, "Is there something wrong with me? I'm a
single guy and I'm spurning the advances of a series
of beautiful women. If I'm sick I know I can cure this
quickly with a couple of beers." It also occurred to
me that with people so desperate and vulnerable and
yet so honest and trusting it would be all too easy to
spin some yarn about being an agent for a western
hotel chain recruiting the best and prettiest
waitresses or dancers; you'd rake in the money and
favours (please don't). Pokhara lies in the heart of
an area from which thousands of girls are duped into
the sex industry every year. This is no
mafia-controlled industry with professional baddies;
the pimps and conmen with their false promises are
usually 'uncles' – family members known and trusted
who might just take one or two nieces to Bombay and
thereby ensure that at least his daughters won't
suffer the same fate. So maybe this is my new insight
into what poverty means – it makes good people so
desperate that they'll cling onto any false hope or
promise and leave themselves vulnerable to such easy
abuse.
With all this thinking going on in my head I nearly
failed to realise that I was coming up to the place
where Madhu was still working. I thought it might be a
little indiscrete to let her see me two days after I'd
said I'd gone, but the only possible detours involved
either scaling a sacred mountain or walking across the
lake, so all I could do was divert into some place for
an hour. Oh look I'm not even going to tell you – you
can write the script perfectly well by now.
I did get back to my hotel though, late but
semi-sober, and the mosquitoes kindly woke me up at 4
so I got the bus at last. The mountains were indeed
magnificent in the early morning light. Machhapuchhre
is all a mountain should be, and it and the others are
all utterly vertical – I read that more mountaineers
have died than come back alive from attempting to
scale these peaks. They are impressive indeed but they
were not where my mind could rest. No less impressive
were the old ladies bathing in the streams that are
melt-water from the snows at 6 a.m. The road was quiet
at that time and the journey uneventful. A strolling
minstrel got on board and regaled us with a song
accompanied by a sarangi, Nepal's nation instrument, a
sort of untuned fiddle. I could only understand part
of the song but the chorus' refrain was, "So that's
why I'm very not happy."
One last observation: in the last week I've seen the
two main cities, the Terai plains, the countryside of
the hills and mountains, indeed a sizable
cross-section of the country. Everywhere I saw one
common factor; now it's still my first year here, I
have no background knowledge on these things and I've
read no news reports or statistics but I can tell you
with absolute certainty that we're in for a bumper
rice harvest in the next few days. Living so close to
nature and the earth (did I tell you that Nepal has
the highest proportion of the populace directly
working on the land – 85% as opposed to 2% in the UK –
and that's all mechanised) I see the people working so
hard yet always at the mercy of the vagaries of the
gods. I've written about the natural beauty and power
of the mountains, lakes and rivers, and about floods
and landslides, but the same monsoon rains that bring
such disasters have actually been very kind this
season; Annapurna, the goddess of corn/plenty has
taken pity on her people. This is not an 'event' that
will ever be reported anywhere, but will have a far
more significant effect on the larger scale than
floods or bombs, so whatever news I bring you in the
coming months – and much will be very bad, remember at
least the people have rice to eat this winter.
That’s the good news; but I’ve barely mentioned the
war. It’s definitely back on, although not much
killing in the city as yet. I mentioned above what
problems Santosh had travelling to his village, but
when he finally got there he found that only four out
of thirty of his generation had returned. It seems
that the Dasain festival really has been a totally
damp squib across the country. The Maobaadi who are
vehemently anti-Hindu put out heavy hints that people
should not celebrate the festival at all, and so the
few who did go to their villages for reunions were
scared to have any fun and just stayed indoors. He
said that people were even too scared to play cards in
their houses lest the word got out that they were
gambling – also a Maoist no-no and in the majority of
the countryside where the Maobaadi are the law you
don’t defy. But that’s just the intimidation; it
wouldn’t surprise me if an atrocious incident this
week made the small print of the western press. In the
far west the army burst into a building where a group
of Maoists were holding a meeting and shot everyone.
The building was a school and a number of
schoolchildren were gunned down. Of course you can
draw attention to the cynicism of the Maobaadi for
holding a meeting in such a place at such a time but
they’re supposed to be the bad guys. It’s just the
sort of incident where for each of the thirteen
Maoists killed a fifty new recruits will be lining up
to join.
If this report seems quite disorganised and rambling,
it simply reflects the rather confused nature of my
week. Yet another report in which, if you read it
closely you'll note that I didn't do anything – not
really, but analysed everything.
I really like this one.
[b][size=150]63. If Paradise Is Half As Nice [/size][/b]
16 Oct 2003
So after I sent that last report from Pokhara, what
happened? I spent the next four hours in the centre of
the lake, relaxing under a warm sun, feet dangling in
the cool placid water, enjoying the views of the
mountain peaks although the rest was covered by thick
blankets of fluffy white clouds. It is a universal
truth that all tourists everywhere do the same things
at the same time; by the time I got to the lake they'd
all moved onto the next thing, whatever the next thing
is after going 'wooo' for hours just because the echo
travels across the lake. So I had Phewa Tal to myself,
other than a few old Gurung ladies ferrying the fodder
they'd foraged from the forest.
Apart from the racket emanating from the jungle (birds
and insects) the tranquility was absolute. Shaanti
shaanta. No motorboats, no jet-skis, no white-water
rafts, no yachties or tourists going 'wooo'. I thought
how sad I'd been to be leaving for good my beloved
Scottish lochs, but Phewa Tal excels the best of them
plus after the rains you get a perfect climate and
sacred snow-covered mountains looming, even if they
are mostly in purdah (which means 'curtain' in
Nepali). Like Scottish tourist brochures which don't
mention the midges, so you won't read anywhere that
you don't see these mountains because of the clouds. I
know from the view from my house that if you wait long
enough or get up at dawn you'll get a glimpse; here
the mountains are much closer – walking distance, but
however close a mountain is there's always a
mountain-shaped cloud even closer. I won't bore you
with the technical meteorological details, suffice to
say it's got something to do with mountains. And
clouds.
The water is so clean too – no oil slicks, fishing
tackle, condoms or plastic bags. Women fill their
gagris straight from the lake, you can brush your
teeth in it (well I did), people wash and bathe in the
warm water – you can't do that (safely) in the rivers
in Kathmandu. The boat jetty happens to share a small
ghat with tasty low-caste women who possess only one
sari and choli (blouse) and bathe and wash their
clothes there.
I read, I chilled, I thought, "If this is hedonism I
could cope with it, for a while anyway. It got better
– as the sun set I rowed back to the shore (one
paddle, Hawaii 5-0 style) and wandered into a
salubrious joint that puts on free open-air evening
folk dancing. As much as I hate Disneyfied touristy
productions I made an exception as the dancers were so
good, the girls so gorgeous and the night so balmy
under the bright full moon. the did the dances our
children have learned and I improved my understanding
and appreciation of the nuances of dances from
different tribes and all that and I was having a
brilliant time as it was, but to cap it all I somehow
got picked up by the waitress, so the night didn't
finish when the show ended. To think I'd just written
hours earlier that it was a night for lovers, and to
think that in the space of less than twelve hours I'd
gone from convincing myself I was about to be arrested
and deported, to ….. well quite.
Madhu, aged 33 and possibly the oldest woman in Nepal,
is an exceptionally nice person with an
all-too-typical tale to tell. She hails from a village
near Namche Bazaar which is the launch pad for Everest
expeditions and treks to the base camp, although her
village is four days' hike over a mountain off the
tourist track. In the light of something else I'd
written to you earlier in the day I was interested to
hear how she'd gone against her parents wishes and had
had an inter-caste love marriage – which hadn't worked
out. She's the first Nepali I've met who is actually
divorced (it's always been practised amongst the
Buddhist tribes but is very rare). She was left to
support her two daughters plus her younger brother and
sister through school in Kathmandu, which she managed
by holding down two jobs, working sixteen hours per
day for years to do all this plus save enough money to
fulfil her dream of escaping Nepal and gaining
employment abroad. Last month she gave a fixer who is
her uncle 70,000 rupees who promised to get her a visa
and job in Dubai. You can guess what happened. She
found herself in desperate rent arrears and in deep
debt and had to flee Kathmandu with nothing but two
sets of clothes. She's left her children with a
'sister' in a far corner of Nepal and came to Pokhara
three days before I met her. She's now working from 6
a.m. to 10 p.m. for £16 per month (half our teachers'
salary) and still plans to save enough money to
emigrate to Europe, Amerika or the Middle East. Don't
worry, I shaln't be funding her but I hope that after
such cruel luck things work out for her.
Actually, after seeing each other somewhat
surreptitiously for four days in a culture where
'dating' is simply not done it did occur to me that
with me looking for permanent residence in Nepal and
her wanting to get to somewhere like Britain there is
a mutually beneficial option and much cheaper than the
student visa route, but I don't tell her that. Mind
you I can foresee one problem with this idea – I've
always been allergic to meeting the parents but this
would be no drive down to Oxford to partake of sherry
and fondue. I'd have to fly to the highest airstrip in
the world which is always out of action due to the
weather and Maobaadi. Then I'd have to spend time
acclimatising in Namche Bazaar because we're in acute
altitude sickness terrain here. Then the climb would
commence; she says three to fours days in ideal
weather, but that's local time – how long would it
take a useless couch potato like me? She tells me it's
one day up, one day down and one to two days up again.
The leccy-free village is high up the side of the Arun
Valley which is the deepest valley in the world. When
I did finally arrive they'd probably slaughter a yak
in my honour and force me to eat it. Then they'd hand
over thirty starving kids for me to take back and
educate as part of my new-found family obligation.
Okay I think I've talked myself out of this one.
Two other quick stories: her one sister was living in
her husband's village when the whole village was wiped
out by a landslide. There's no compensation or
insurance scheme in these parts of course, so with
their home and livelihood destroyed the family had to
relocate to the next village and rent land to farm,
and now they too are in deep debt. The nearest school
is three days over the mountains weather permitting,
so the three daughters won't be getting any more
education. You think your family's got problems. The
other story is from one of the waiters working in the
same place. He told me a tale which involved a similar
sting – a promise of a job on an Amerikan cruise
liner. Earlier in the summer he quit a good job in
Pokhara's best restaurant and handed over his life
savings to some conman. When you read about the
British government and its fascist press getting all
worked up about evil illegal immigrants coming to the
UK for an easy life after having given all their
savings to human traffickers to flee appalling
conditions, just spare a thought for those who try to
do things legally and honestly and see what happens to
them. Thus endeth the sermon by your friendly illegal
alien.
So, being a pushover I allowed myself to be persuaded
to stay one more day, just one more day, well four
more days longer than I meant to. The problem was not
that my clothes were utterly rancid - the stench
didn't seem to be cramping my style too much, it was
that my money had run out. By the definitely
definitely final last day I found myself without even
the bus fare to get to Kathmandu and then I agreed to
stay one more day as she'd just negotiated a
three-hour afternoon break. Figured I'd be alright as
I've learned how to blag my way in Nepal. I simply
wouldn't eat and drink only water from the lake, and
I'd get on the bus without buying a ticket and haggle
with the driver – I'd empty out my pockets and show
him I only had half the fare and he'd say okay but
you're on the roof. I've watched the locals do it – no
problem.
By the way, last time I was telling you of the road
over the mountains. An Australian I met told me his
bus had just turned in many hours late as another bus
had gone over the side of the gorge (You thought I was
exaggerating these bus trips?). I checked out his
story in the paper the next day and in the small print
was a mention of a truck being immobilised in the road
by a rock fall and a bus coming too fast round a bend
hitting it and partly skewing off the road but not
actually toppling into the river. There were 33
casualties of whom three were critical. I knew I'd be
alright though; the reason I had no money left was
that I'd spent my last £13 on a gold painted statue of
Tara, the Tibetan saviouress who protects you from
wild animals, storms, landslides and kamikaze bus
drivers (but possibly not one's own stupidity).
Nah, that wheeze never actually happened. I was making
my way to the bus when money rained down form the sky.
Dunno how that happened as the clouds had just
momentarily parted to offer a perfect vista of the
Annapurnas and Machhapuchhre. Okay, one more day then.
Alright, for you dull rationalists the alternative
version is this: I'd read on a website over a year ago
that there is one cash point (ATM) machine in Pokhara
that will take my card but there was no point trying
to track it down in this sprawling city. Madhu wanted
one last rendezvous under a big ol' Bodhi tree a few
minutes away from her work-place and gossipy staff,
and as I waiting I noticed the ATM was right there, in
the tree.
Except it wasn't one more day. I'd already met and
talked to many people while Madhu worked and as this
continued I heard so many stories. Initially
everything looked pretty hunky-dory from the middle of
the lake and in the distraction of moonlit walks, but
then I began to realise how bad things were in
Pokhara. The hotel manager told me that whilst there
were virtually no Maoists in the city the checkpoints
ringing the city deter tourists, but these are
necessary as the Maoists have recently strengthened
their forces in all the surrounding areas. Fierce
fire-fights are breaking out between them and the
security forces in some of the popular trekking areas,
and then there is the 1000 rupee donation trekkers are
asked to pay the Maobaadi. Personally I don't see why
a rich trekker would be turning his pants brown at the
prospect of forking out eight quid, and indeed Richard
told me that the receipt the Maoists issue can be sent
to your insurance company for a full refund. I suppose
it's the fear of something interesting happening to
them that scares them off.
Here's an aside: I had a blinding (or deafening)
revelation whilst enjoying the folk dancing. I am
trying with the Nepali, honest, but I get frustrated
when people refuse to understand what I'm saying just
because I fail to aspirate my 'kh' perfectly and stuff
like that – I mean, I'm close enough aren't I? But
then one of the musicians was introducing a well-known
local folk song about Nepali cookery. I thought this
strange as Nepali cuisine is quite literally nothing
to sing and dance about. Then the guys appeared waving
their big knives – a khukuri song! Since then I've
heard the bloke say the word a hundred times – and I
still can't hear the difference.
Are you keeping up with the sequence of events here?
So I said goodbye to Madhu and went to get the night
bus. However with the resumption of the conflict the
night busses were not running (By the way Santosh has
just told me how his two day journey to his village
became more than four due to check-points and
landslides, and at night the bus had to pull over at
checkpoints and all the smelly sweaty passengers had
to sleep in or on the bus). So I wandered back and the
night was not yet over and it occurred to me I hadn't
seen all the other folk dance groups. You'll never
guess what happened – oh, I see you're ahead of me by
now. This one was called Chandrika and she looked
absolutely stunning in her elegant blue sari. I'd
barely sat down when she rushed over to pour me a
drink, give me her number and insist I call her the
next morning. And I really meant to but unfortunately
after that place closed I went into another one that
stayed open until four, made loads of new best friends
and got so hammered that I slept until the goats
bleating for their lunch woke me. By the time I called
she was back at work. An Englishman abroad, still at
least I don't behave like a tourist, eh?
I spent much of what this time would absolutely
definitely be my last day in the company of the
Tibetan community. I won't mention how many addresses
and proposals I collected but I learnt that life's
very not so good for the thousands of Tibetan in
Pokhara. Dozens of ladies line the roads pleading with
tourists to take a look at their crafts. Nice
jewellery and other things too but nobody buys. So
they talked with me for hours about life in a refugee
community. Now it has occurred to me that whilst none
of these myriad tales I've heard are in any way hammed
up, I can see that once these women realise they not
going to get a sale or tip out of me they don't give
up because they're thinking that marriage would be a
better long-term deal than a quick sale. Everyone
wants something, but I don't begrudge that, I just
wish I could do something to make a real difference
like I'm doing in Kathmandu.
The women are from Tashiling camp which was
established about forty years ago, so they're all born
and bred there. The Tibetans have never been accepted
by the Nepalis into the community even though the
Tibetan community has been in Pokhara since it was a
village, i.e. the Tibetans have seen thousands of
incomers arrive and treat them like they're aliens. I
didn't see a single Tibetan in regular employment in
the city. So they don't feel welcome in Pokhara and
they'll never get to see the home they've never known.
Whilst Tibetan culture is becoming more trendy in the
West and some big bucks end up in a few places, and a
fair few tourists come to Boudha to stay at the gumbas
(monasteries) and spend good money in the shops,
enabling that Tibetan community to become relatively
well-off, in Pokhara they seem to be overlooked and
forgotten. In contrast to Boudha the tourists who come
to Pokhara aren't interested in Tibet, that's why
there's only one Tibetan restaurant in the city, why
the Tibetans own or rent no shops and have to try to
sell their wares hawking in the street, making a sale
a week.
I talked to Nepali thangka painters also – their art
is just amazing and the artists paint in their little
family-run workshops, passing their craft down the
generations, creating their work before your eyes – if
you're patient; the bigger ones takes months to
complete and I was shown one that was nearing
completion after two and a half years. But nobody
buys. The Chinese and Indian tourists don't spend
(actually the Indian tourists are very conspicuous in
Pokhara and distinctive from the Nepali populace –
roaming in large family groups, clearly not bred in
the mountains and not underfed) and the westerners are
there to trek and don't want to lug stuff around in
their knapsacks. They also tend to have little
appreciation of Tibetan or Buddhist culture as they're
only interested in the mountains, not the pesky
people.
I do hope some of you registered the irony implicit in
my title for this report; this is an idyllic place to
relax, yet everyone I've talked to (bar a pair of
happy chappies who were raging drunk) tell me stories
filled with unhappiness and a desperate wish for a
better life. I've only actually related a small
proportion, for instance I didn't mention the
seventeen year old waiter who pleaded with me to take
him into our school as his job and life is such a
dead-end. I noted the absence of the usual smiling
dispositions you find on Nepalis and Tibetans except
when they affect a positivity to try to extract a
sale. Here, in a third world city which exists to
cater to rich western tourists you can't say the local
workers don't know any other life; their faces are
rubbed in affluence hour after hour. I recall that
ancient lyrical masterpiece, the Sex Pistols song
'Holidays in the Sun' which Johnny Rotten prefaced
with "Cheap holidays in other people's misery." The
answer? Take a holiday in a third world country, spend
copiously but come home feeling very guilty – or, more
positively, set up some sponsorships to break the
cycle of misery for some. I've said all along that
whilst the mountains and waters of Nepal are the most
beautiful in the world and that's what draws tourists
to Pokhara it's not why I came to Nepal. The
hedonistic pleasures were getting a bit hollow – it
was time to go home.
Absolutely no more delays now; I just needed a plate
of chips and then to bed for an early night and a 4
a.m. start. So I nipped into the first available place
I came across – yes it did happen to be the same place
as I was in until 4 a.m. that morning but that was
more coincidence than everything else. And yes,
another waitress, another story. I'd been yapping with
the lads the previous night but it was too early for
them so she came and sat next to me. I forget her name
but she's got the best arse in Pokhara so I'd find her
again easy enough if I wanted. She works in this place
until 4 a.m. and is back on duty at 6 a.m. In all,
over 24 hours she gets three hours' break, two to
sleep and one to bathe, change clothes and eat. Sounds
impossible? Hang on; she gets no holidays ever and how
much does she earn working these inhuman conditions?
Nothing. Her brother manages the place; I noted he and
the other staff address her as 'kanchi'. Remember? Not
that she was complaining as she answered my questions
– for her this is an easier life as before she came to
Pokhara she was working on the family farm in the
mountains. She had two years schooling, not getting
past Class 1 (a real person to go with statistics I've
given in the past) when her parents pulled her out to
work the land, but she's pleased to come to Pokhara as
she really doesn't want to marry a village farm boy.
I will admit that I was very enjoying the filthy looks
I was getting from the English Adonis crying alone
into his beer next to us, all the impossibly
good-looking young local lads and the jealous bar
staff. My ego's had the holiday of a lifetime, and yet
I found myself thinking, "This is really great, but
it's just not me." Maybe a year ago I thought my ego
had been decisively laid to rest but I see now that as
Augustine and many others have discovered, the
conflict between higher and lower self never ceases. I
also see that the problem with earthly pleasures is
that they're bloody great, that's why people get so
attached to them. But what disturbs me is that I'm
aware that here in Nepal I possess a certain power
that I don't feel comfortable with and I don't want to
use, either consciously or sub-consciously.
So what did I do? I walked. As I headed back I thought
to myself, "Is there something wrong with me? I'm a
single guy and I'm spurning the advances of a series
of beautiful women. If I'm sick I know I can cure this
quickly with a couple of beers." It also occurred to
me that with people so desperate and vulnerable and
yet so honest and trusting it would be all too easy to
spin some yarn about being an agent for a western
hotel chain recruiting the best and prettiest
waitresses or dancers; you'd rake in the money and
favours (please don't). Pokhara lies in the heart of
an area from which thousands of girls are duped into
the sex industry every year. This is no
mafia-controlled industry with professional baddies;
the pimps and conmen with their false promises are
usually 'uncles' – family members known and trusted
who might just take one or two nieces to Bombay and
thereby ensure that at least his daughters won't
suffer the same fate. So maybe this is my new insight
into what poverty means – it makes good people so
desperate that they'll cling onto any false hope or
promise and leave themselves vulnerable to such easy
abuse.
With all this thinking going on in my head I nearly
failed to realise that I was coming up to the place
where Madhu was still working. I thought it might be a
little indiscrete to let her see me two days after I'd
said I'd gone, but the only possible detours involved
either scaling a sacred mountain or walking across the
lake, so all I could do was divert into some place for
an hour. Oh look I'm not even going to tell you – you
can write the script perfectly well by now.
I did get back to my hotel though, late but
semi-sober, and the mosquitoes kindly woke me up at 4
so I got the bus at last. The mountains were indeed
magnificent in the early morning light. Machhapuchhre
is all a mountain should be, and it and the others are
all utterly vertical – I read that more mountaineers
have died than come back alive from attempting to
scale these peaks. They are impressive indeed but they
were not where my mind could rest. No less impressive
were the old ladies bathing in the streams that are
melt-water from the snows at 6 a.m. The road was quiet
at that time and the journey uneventful. A strolling
minstrel got on board and regaled us with a song
accompanied by a sarangi, Nepal's nation instrument, a
sort of untuned fiddle. I could only understand part
of the song but the chorus' refrain was, "So that's
why I'm very not happy."
One last observation: in the last week I've seen the
two main cities, the Terai plains, the countryside of
the hills and mountains, indeed a sizable
cross-section of the country. Everywhere I saw one
common factor; now it's still my first year here, I
have no background knowledge on these things and I've
read no news reports or statistics but I can tell you
with absolute certainty that we're in for a bumper
rice harvest in the next few days. Living so close to
nature and the earth (did I tell you that Nepal has
the highest proportion of the populace directly
working on the land – 85% as opposed to 2% in the UK –
and that's all mechanised) I see the people working so
hard yet always at the mercy of the vagaries of the
gods. I've written about the natural beauty and power
of the mountains, lakes and rivers, and about floods
and landslides, but the same monsoon rains that bring
such disasters have actually been very kind this
season; Annapurna, the goddess of corn/plenty has
taken pity on her people. This is not an 'event' that
will ever be reported anywhere, but will have a far
more significant effect on the larger scale than
floods or bombs, so whatever news I bring you in the
coming months – and much will be very bad, remember at
least the people have rice to eat this winter.
That’s the good news; but I’ve barely mentioned the
war. It’s definitely back on, although not much
killing in the city as yet. I mentioned above what
problems Santosh had travelling to his village, but
when he finally got there he found that only four out
of thirty of his generation had returned. It seems
that the Dasain festival really has been a totally
damp squib across the country. The Maobaadi who are
vehemently anti-Hindu put out heavy hints that people
should not celebrate the festival at all, and so the
few who did go to their villages for reunions were
scared to have any fun and just stayed indoors. He
said that people were even too scared to play cards in
their houses lest the word got out that they were
gambling – also a Maoist no-no and in the majority of
the countryside where the Maobaadi are the law you
don’t defy. But that’s just the intimidation; it
wouldn’t surprise me if an atrocious incident this
week made the small print of the western press. In the
far west the army burst into a building where a group
of Maoists were holding a meeting and shot everyone.
The building was a school and a number of
schoolchildren were gunned down. Of course you can
draw attention to the cynicism of the Maobaadi for
holding a meeting in such a place at such a time but
they’re supposed to be the bad guys. It’s just the
sort of incident where for each of the thirteen
Maoists killed a fifty new recruits will be lining up
to join.
If this report seems quite disorganised and rambling,
it simply reflects the rather confused nature of my
week. Yet another report in which, if you read it
closely you'll note that I didn't do anything – not
really, but analysed everything.