A weekend on the road to Besi Sahar

We got back last Sunday from a weekend overnighter to Lamjung district, 120km west and 40km north of Kathmandu. We went to a small town called Besi Sahar where a Dutch UMN doctor has been working for the past couple months so mum and Carolyn (an American lady) went to see her as a kind of pastoral visit. So there were five of us in the jeep (mum, dad, Richard, Carolyn and myself). The jeep was definitely the most appropriate form of transport though the roads were generally in relatively good shape.

We stayed in the Tukuche Peak Hotel which was a basic but nice and clean trekkers lodge. The staff were friendly, the food good and the beds hard but clean. We left Kathmandu at 7.30 on Saturday morning and had a slow start getting out of the valley off the ring road. There is one road out of Kathmandu for all traffic going west. It is a one lane each way road that has been dug up at the main junction off the ringroad where there is a small roundabout and a stressed out policeman. The queues of buses and trucks go way back down the road and the minibuses and vans and cars and taxis and motorbikes are all unhappy about being behind them and so try to overtake the larger vehicles. This creates a second and sometimes a third queue of traffic on the one side of the road. At times this even manages to block the oncoming lane as the vehicles are unable to get back in the queue and still want to get to the front. A very stupid minibus driver managed to keep driving and went into a vehicle coming the other way (well on his side of the road). This of course caused a line of traffic to back up the road as the problem was sorted out with some yelling at the stupid driver who then proceeded to try and overtake on up the road in exactly the same fashion. We were a small vehicle too and it was much quicker in that second ‘lane’!!

Friday was a warm sunny day. It got very sticky in the jeep where your back touched the seat. The open window let a pleasant breeze in along stretches of road that cut into steep hillsides that were worn into valleys by a clay grey river which meandered and raged along its varying stretches. Other times the heat of a closed window was preferable to the nauseating clouds of black smoke that belched out of the orange fronted Tata trucks ahead which were loaded down with stones or large logged trees; or to the dust which rose along short stretches of unsealed road that reduced visibility to a few metres.

The verdant greens of the end of the monsoon vegetation accompanied us the whole day. From terraces, evidence of agriculture on improbable slopes to low lying paddy fields of vibrant green highlighted by the red sari of the lady working in the field. By the hospital in Besi Sahar we walked by rice fields where the ripe basmati gave off a heady scent that was so strong we thought at first we were smelling rice cooking. It was very rich. Apparently there are places particularly in the west of Nepal where the rice has not been planted this year some places because the monsoon never arrived and others because people have been leaving through fear of the Maoists. The lack of rice will soon cause hunger where it is the staple for the whole population. It makes the fragrance of ripened rice all the sweeter.

Along by the road we passed small clusters of houses where all the village seemed to be involved in the physically demanding work of breaking stones. The trucks in the river below are filled with rocks from the river bed by men standing in the water that almost reaches the axle of the trucks. The large rocks are brought up to the river and road sides. Here people squat under makeshift shelters of blue plastic or natural matting erected on four wooden posts and break rocks all day for a pittance to pave the roads as they stretch towards the west.

Buses full of passengers lurch around blind corners passing slower trucks. We saw a couple close shaves. Though not all are reckless there are some bus drivers who appear to take their lives, and those of their passengers, lightly. Along the road there are a few broken down trucks. These are marked out with rocks to warn other vehicles to give them a wide berth. When fixed the trucks drive off leaving their grave like markings as a hazard to other users of the road. I remember many years ago going to Kathmandu on the back of my dad’s motorbike and we were victim to one of these rocks! A good story after the occasion.

The green hillsides are scarred with red gashes like giant cuts where monsoon logged swathes of land have uprooted all the green and tumbled into the river or valley below. The road has places where the clearing away of landslides is still in evidence. On our way back in the rain we saw a team and their bulldozer clearing the road of some earth. They are very quick now at reopening the road. A little way along the road to Besi Sahar, past police checks where police in blue uniforms sit and check red coloured little vehicle registration “blue books”; past women carrying bundles of foliage at least three times their size on their back with the weight taken by a strap around their forehead; past suspension bridges which provide contact for people isolated by white water possibly cutting hours or even days off access to the road; past shops selling plastic containers tied and lined up outside, blue, white, red, green and yellow, we drove by a little old woman who was sitting at the roadside in the middle of apparently nowhere with bunches of bananas laid neatly on a cloth as the vehicles belched their noisy way by. A checkpoint manned by bored soldiers held us up for about five minutes as a young soldier took the opportunity to relieve the boredom of four months checking vehicles on a small road.

We stopped in Mugling to buy some fruit. It marks the half way point between Kathmandu and Pokhara and its main trade comes from the passing trucks and buses. It is a long street lined with eating places furnished with tables and benches holding people feeding on pre-cooked dahl bhat served on stainless steel thalis with water served in stainless steel cups. There are shops with piles of samosas, jalebis, syel roti and other Indian sweets; stalls with bananas and guavas; boys carrying round trays of neatly sliced coconut washed in tap water; makeshift stalls selling packets of wai wai noodles and chewing gum; carts piled with chickpea snacks and peanuts sold in newspaper cones and measured out in blackened tin measuring cups. This visible town front backs onto a busy invisible town of brothels, typical of an arterial town on the main route to anywhere.

As we neared our overnight destination we passed a stretch of brightly coloured houses. They were all typical of those built by returning Gurkha soldiers who invest their money in building houses for their families. One particularly gaudy one was covered in tiles, each one coloured from white to pink. A pastel palace! There were also more attractive traditional mud houses with thatched roofs and mud washed red walls. In Besi Sahar itself we saw the hospital which is still under construction/renovation though still operational at the same time. It was very interesting to see.

Having anticipated the good views of the mountains we had glimpsed as we arrived and hoping for some good photos I was rather disappointed to wake up to it still raining. There was low lying cloud with misty wreaths decorating the lower levels of the hillsides, the tops being obscured by thick clouds. The mountains were just a memory. Despite the rain we were fortunate to make it home safely, the hardworking road maintenance men having cleared the road by the time we made it to the landslide. It was a short trip but well worth getting out of the Kathmandu valley and seeing a bit more of the country.

We went to have a meal with a family who I am old friends with on Friday night. Frankie was a friend at school and the year above me. He is in Nepal for another couple of weeks so it has been good to see him a couple times. I got to see photos of their daughter Marilyn (one of my best friends through my teenage years) 's wedding. It was good to catch up a bit on old friends lives. Their mum Sangi was always kind of like another mum in that we were always at each others houses so it was good to see her again too.

On Thursday mum and I were both off so we went to a newish coffee shop called Jivin' Joes. There aren't many places like it in Kathmandu. After walking through a covered entrance you start climbing up these dark, narrow and dingy steps wondering what on earth will await you at the end. A very pleasant surprise to walk into a bright open space with terracota tiled floors, nice tables and chairs and even a few sofas. We passed a very pleasant afternoon there. We also met the manager who is a Nepali called Rajan who I knew (though don't have a good memory of) when we were about 7 in Pokhara and went to Sunday school! You never know who you will meet up with and where!!

I was asked to consider on Friday whether I would stay any longer to help out at KISC (my old school). I have been helping with the art for the older class. They have an art teacher in the pipeline but she is having trouble getting her visa, so I will just help out a bit next term, which means I will be in Nepal until mid - late December. I was open to my trip being flexible and expected things to change, I just didn't quite expect it to happen after 2 and a half weeks! I am quite looking forward to it, though it is slightly daunting too!

Better go, my dad is back and we are going to see a wee art gallery, try to find an art supply shop and then I am going into the school with a couple other teachers to paint a bit more of the scenery for the musical which starts in a week and a half!

School Days

Back in 1987 I was the first student to be registered for a new school that was starting called KISC (Kathmandu International Study Centre). A guinea pig for a new idea where we were being educated through self-study supplemented and assisted with tutorials. 15 years later it has changed significantly but there are still some things that seem similar. It is now more like a regular school with classes most of the time and it has grown with over 80 students now. The building(s) are also bigger now. However as Frankie, a friend from when I was at KISC noticed the other day, they still use the original school bell. It also still has a nice atmosphere and that flavour of an international school.

My mum thought it would be a good idea for me to help with the painting of their set as they really needed some help so I went out last Tuesday (just over a week ago). It feels like I have been there longer than a week. As well as helping with the scenery I have ended up helping with the drama part of the musical they are putting on, as the teacher responsible for this had to suddenly go back to the UK for a while. Fortunately there are others helping too!! I am also teaching the AS level art classes as they only had a teacher for one period out of five. So all in all I’ve ended up quite involved and have one day a week that I don’t go in, as well as the weekend of course. It has been fun though and quite similar in a way to the work I was doing back at home. So much for being on holiday. However I am enjoying it, they need some help and term finishes in a couple weeks after which mum and dad and I are going to Pokhara. We are also eagerly anticipating our Tibet trip in October.



“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life”
Jack Kerouac ‘On the Road’


Festival for Women

Monday was a day of reds and golds. It was Teej, the annual festival for women. They all dress up in beautiful deep reds and bold pinks with threads of gold weaving patterns through the soft folds and over the shoulder hanging ends of the saris. They look freshly scrubbed; their faces have been powdered and matching their lipstick is the line of red powder down the center parting of their neatly combed and well oiled braids. Many have fancy doree in; black or red cotton three standed hair adornments that are braided in through the hair and have fancy dangling decorations at the end. The women go and do puja at their local temples but many also go out to Pashupatinath, one of the big temples in Kathmandu to do puja. The vendors were out in force along the sides of the roads: there were men selling beautiful glass bracelets that sparkled in the sun on carts, there were some snacks, a man sat on the ground printing beautiful red patterns on hands and feet, there were some clothes on sale, there were lots of sheets of plastic laid out with stainless steel plates and pots of many shapes and sizes and there were gaudy poster sized framed pictures of gods and holy men. There were the requisite real holy men wandering around too wearing saffron yellow with artistically made up tikkas on their foreheads and their metal alms pot. Ever aware of the money making potential of a camera I am approached by a yellow robed holy man whose photo I take who sends another man away as I have already been ‘got’ by him. They are mostly there for the generosity of the women on festival day who will be in a good mood and wanting to notch up their merit by giving to the holy men.

As well as the religious aspect of the day the women are there for a good time. There are clusters of women standing around watching while those in the middle play the madal (a Nepali drum) and sing as one or two dancers move gracefully in the middle. At another group there is a number of men on the outside of the ring and a load of them on the nearby slope looking down with fascination at the women dancing, intrigued but yet still apart from this day where the women are central. It is really important in a culture where women are so restricted and still seen as second class citizens. It is also a day where women get to go home to their mothers. In Nepal when a woman is married she has to go to live with her husbands relations and often doesn’t get to see her family, maybe even from one year to the next, so this is an important festival. I remember as a child always enjoying Teej. We would walk up to Batulichar, the next village from where we lived, to where the women would all congregate on the village green to meet and dance and enjoy themselves. I loved the colours and the new clothes and especially I remember the hair ‘doree’ with their fancy decorations that I loved as a little girl. It was all so pretty.



Today I am off and taking the morning to catch up on some emails and read. This afternoon mum and I are going to head into town. That should be fun. I will just have to continue exercising restraint as I keep seeing lots of lovely, affordable things!! I will just have to enjoy using my new camera that I bought with the money I was given (for that purpose) from Oasis for my leaving present, to record all those lovely sights and things.

Musings on hanging out in Kathmandu

The valley is surrounded by hazy blue hills that in N.Ireland would most certainly be called mountains. Here they form the rim of the smog filled basin that holds the city of Kathmandu. Even in early morning the snowy mountains are still hidden behind a low lying layer of white clouds. By mid afternoon the blue of the sky is mostly erased by the gathering dark clouds that bring the downpour which signifies the monsoon is not done yet. The nauseating fumes of the manic Kathmandu traffic mingle to provide a healthy ride home. You can almost feel the carbon monoxide poisoning seeping into your body. Caught out in one of the afternoon downpours we decide to give up on the shopping and get a taxi home. After a short journey in a breaking down tuktuk (we are convinced he just didn’t want to go all the way to where we were going) we got into a taxi as the previously chugging tuktuk sped off. The taxi had a very wet back seat that left me with a very wet backside. Due to the many new one way systems in Kathmandu we went down through narrow back streets along roads with shops selling clothes, or vegetables, or meat with heads beside it (to prove what the meat is). The tarmac long since broken up we bumped our way along streets that had turned into rushing rivers as the failing city drainage was overloaded with an hours rain.

In the back of the three-wheeler tempo buses, the new gas or electric run form of public transport there are ten people squashed onto two bench seats. A pretty face with fuscia lipstick on looks out of the small window on the side and an elderly man in a Nepali topi (hat) holds his bag on his knee as he looks out the back door. Hanging out of the front is the young conductor calling out their destination to passersby who are all potential custom. He looks like he should really be at school. At the recently installed traffic lights a man on a motorbike talks on his mobile phone before the lights change. Further up the road the traffic is directed by a policeman in a blue uniform with orange waterproofs over the top and with white gloves. As he changes shifts with another policeman he hands over the all-important gloves and takes off the orange hood that he has tied over the top of his peaked uniform cap. The new man gets the sequencing wrong much to the frustration of the waiting motorcyclist who starts angrily beeping his horn.

Shops seem to crop up in areas. There are the usual little corner shops and quite a few more larger mini supermarkets than there used to be. Others come in groups. You know where to go when you want to buy beads, or shoes, or light fittings or cameras. The bulk of the nice craft shops seem to be on the Pulchowk hill near where we are living, though a few can always be found elsewhere. A new phenomenon since I was last here are flower shops. These are still few however and seem fairly well dispersed. There is a proliferation of food shops or wee restaurants which range from a hole in the wall selling a few snacks to some quite fancy places with every variety in between. No shortage of food to try and a plethora of shops with neatly stacked mounds of tempting Indian sweets.

In Thamel, the main tourist area, we sit and have a light lunch. My vegetable momos are delicious and a nice treat for someone who has become vegetarian since I last had meat momos aged 15 and really wants to savour some familiar tastes. The streets of Thamel are familiar and lined with shops that may or may not have changed hands over the past 11 years. Some shops seem expanded, others have different signs and some may have new things to sell. Essentially though there are restaurants, quality postcards, cheap and tempting clothes (which I have to mostly resist and which make me think of several friends back home), well stocked second hand bookshops, Tibetan carpets, bags, Indian imported crafts and shops which sell a mixture of everything. We wander with only the usual minimal hassle of a tourist area where you are the hope of a sale. In a season where tourism should be entering its highest numbers there are only a reasonable amount of foreigners around. The local politics of Maoist insurrection and a political vacuum and the regional politics of unrest in India and Pakistan have all contributed to the general flow of tourism redirecting elsewhere. Coming from Belfast a few small bombs aren’t enough to make you too nervous. There are small reminders of Belfast a number of years ago as our bags are checked entering a shopping centre. However there is no specific threat and foreigners are not targets. The political situation in the country is very sad though. Corruption reigns supreme and along with the violence is bringing the country to its knees.

People are on the whole as friendly as ever. Being able to talk in even very rusty Nepali is a plus. How nice it is not to just be an ignorant foreigner who only speaks English (as I will be on the rest of my travels). The men are dressed mostly in trousers and shirts, but the while some women still wear saris, many now wear kurtas (or Punjabi outfits). These are long tops / dresses over baggy trousers. They are colourful and look very attractive and range from plain cotton to some quite elaborate embroidery and fabrics. The long scarf they wear that hangs over their shoulders and down their backs gives it a touch of elegance. I myself am on the look out for a beautiful sari.

xx