Street Monkey

Nuts? You want nuts? Very cheap? A little head rises from a pile of monkey nuts, his feet standing on a small bamboo stool. The little boy is sleeping. Or at least he was, until his street instinct alerted him to my presense. His body emerges from his mobile wooden tray of a shop. His question is loaded with anticipation. I shake my head. His falls back down to his edible lumpy pillow.

Fewa Lake

So I am sitting in Mike's Restaurant, at the Lake Side, Pokhara. It is more expensive than when I was last here, and it now has a path built through it. There are many more tourists. Richer tourists. I last sat here three years ago. When I had absolutely no idea what the future would hold. Now I again have no idea what the next three years of my life will reveal.

Watching as a square flat peddle 'boat' is being maneuvered backwards and forwards. Filled with Nepali tourists who laugh as they keep arriving back at their starting point. Now a group of kids have just arrived. A straggly haired girl is asking for my pens, picking up my tea, opening my bag, shaking my book. She is tough. Too Tough. Her friends come. One has a bloody elbow. A small graze. It turns out he fell off his bike – riding on the stony dirty road too fast. “Next time go slowly” I say. He wants money “to clean up my arm” he tells me. I laugh at him and tell him to be a “strong man”. Another shows me a tiny cut on his knee and once again asks me to “fix it” with his palm out turned. I work my Magic. He is unimpressed. I give him some more 'tickles' as he stifles a smile.

This is something which has changed in three years. I am no longer scared of these pushy little street wise, life wise people. I have a new respect for them as well as a new barrier against them. Laughing and Laughter.

The small terrorists move onto the next table to terrify a Northface clad North American couple. The elderly couple look dressed in preparation of a safari rather than for a cup of tea by Fewa Lake, but then again, maybe their uninvited guests are providing them with adequate adventure. I stop watching their obvious discomfort and instead find myself staring at their Nepali counterparts: A traditionally dressed elderly Nepali couple who are skillfully climbing on board a rowing boat. The bent woman bends further to slowly release the rusty chain, freeing their little boat from the muddy root covered shore. The topi topped man sits at the back of the boat and slowly maneuvers the shabby wooden vehicle 180 degrees to face the distant bank across the flat calm of the lake. Slowly – so slowly – they (he) paddles across the dark liquid water. Their rehearsed controlled movements are in such a contrast to two small pirates who have just hijacked a tin yellow peddle paddle boat and are mercilessly ramming it backwards and forwards into the row of rusting tin yellow peddle paddle boats.

A little further along the lake shore gathers a group of women. Their vibrant pink sairees shout out at my eyes; a strange but beautiful juxtaposition against the dark brown of the soft mud they are squatting on. Their gold piercing dangle along their ear lobes and travel up their ears. Their golden noses glimmer in the equally golden afternoon sun, as they tilt their heads backwards and forwards in rhythm to the movements of their working arms. If you focus, if you really isolate your ears, it is possible to hear the rangle jangle clang clung clink of their rows of bangles which they bash together as they rub their piles of bright washing (what appears to be) clean. I sit and gaze and stare and wonder what happens during the time they pick up their wet clothes stamp them next to the muddy soil and then lift them back into the air - washed?

Another woman appears into my field of vision. She walks towards the water with her back to me. She is wearing a printed batik lungi pulled up to her armpits. She stands knee deep in the clam still water and bends towards the liquid lake, sending velvet ripples outwards from an equal direction all around her. She washes her lengths of hair as the other women scrub their clothes, the children play in the paddle peddle boats and somewhere between the muddy soil in front of me and the shadows of the same muddy shore fading beyond my vision, drifts a small wooden boat, with two ageless figures, who are silhouetted by the sun; suspended by the water.

The word 'suspended' triggers an association. This makes me look upwards. Momentarily blinded by the brightness of the sun, my eyes finally focus and latch onto what my thoughts were searching for. Sure enough I spy a rangi changi multicoloured parachute bellowing up and around, outwards and contained, with two gliding bodies suspended below. Lifted by the warm air currents, circling the town. Further in the distance the same distinguishable dots appear to be circling the clouds. Clouds which pad the beautiful snow covered peaks of the Annapurna range.

Again – if you listen carefully it is possible to hear the 'Whaooo' of excited floating screams, which echo down on the same living air which carried them on their wonderful journey to no where in particular.

Pokhara's Peace Pagoda

Peace Pagodas. A visit to another one. Another hike up another hill. But this time rather than overlooking the cooling clouds hugging Darjeeling, the Peace Pagoda was surrounded by the white fluffy clouds of the Himalayas, warming the 7000 plus meter peaks. Below in the green terraced valley stretches out the city of Pokhara. Is it really so massive? Where do all the houses hide when I walk past the green hills and muddy lake? Does Fewa Lake provide so many crooked corners for all of these little concrete blocks to pile unseen by those strolling along the main tourist trail? What spreads out before me is one of the largest cities in Nepal – a tourist hotspot, that continued to attract backpackers during the conflict while at the same time reeling in thousands of internally displaced nepalis throughout the region. People travelled to Pokhara looking for employment or to escape the fighting in the more rural regions.

As I sit in the shade of the stunning white Japanese Peace Pagoda, surveying the city below and the mountains above, an old Nepali man approaches. He is wearing old flip flops which are flip flopping off and on his feet. His head is capped with the traditional Nepali embroidered topi, and he wears a tweed waistcoat over a T-shirt telling all to 'Visit Malaysia'. He squats down by my side and begins to talk. He lives next to the Peace Pagoda. He complains about the number of tourists. I agree. Although I wonder why he wants to talk to me if he has an aversion to tourists? There seems to be a constant stream of people who have rowed across Fewa Lake and then hiked through the jungle to share this view. This popularity is a reflection of the tourist boom which has hit Nepal in 'peace time'.

There are now many more tourists than in 2005. Many more. Since the formation of the new Maoist led Communist Government of Nepal in April this year, there has been a renewed influx of richer, older and even younger tourists. Pre arranged package tours of older 'luxury trekkers' and young rich parents hike around with toddles stacked into new North Face baby carriers. Such groups have flooded the new 'safety' of this imagined Shangri-La. As a result, it is now expensive to be a backpacker in Nepal. As with tourists hotspots throughout the world, the popularity of a destination brings a here massive hike in prices. India now seems incredibly cheap in comparison, and Pokhara is even taking on a resort like feel.

As young little people wearing 'yak yak yak' t-shirts, baseballs caps and faces painted extra white with sun block trek up to visit the Peace Pagoda, I think of the long haired rasta Nepali girl I saw this morning. She was filthy, with filthy dreads and no 'guardian' in sight, only a smaller dirtier child who seemed to be in her care. Such street children have also flooded the city in recent years. During the two decade conflict, children were either trafficked, ran away from forced recruitment or more commonly, were drawn towards its magnetic promise of employment. It is of no surprise that the city seems to be spreading before my watching eyes, and I wonder about the more practical problems of infrastructure, water provision and waste disposal, let alone the cultural tensions which both the tourists and the Nepali youths must be bringing.

These cases of internal displacement will not disappear with 'peace', especially as in the words of my Nepali friend, “the government has too many other problems to deal with right now”. However, these parallel worlds seem to continue as the children staff the kitchens or tout on the streets and the tourists pay triple the price of three years ago for 'original' souvenirs mass manufactured in Pokhara's back streets.

I ask the old man sitting next to me if he ever needs to go to the city – although it is just a few hundred meters below, it seems like it would be quite an adventure for him. He replies 'sometimes'. But he grows his own crops: Ahlu, makai, daal, baat. As if he has read my mind, he confides that his worry this year is 'pani': The monsoon did not bring enough rain, and now as the sun burns down from the clear blue sky, he is worried about his rice. I watch as tourists enjoying the beautiful day, huffing and puffing towards the pagoda, camera's dangling from wrists, dispose of their plastic pani bottles in the burnt out bins that lay around the well watered gardens.

I wish Namaste to the old farmer, who despite his aversion to tourists, does not reveals his original attention for joining in my meditations by asking I would like to buy some of his home grown marijuana.

Riding High

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep. But not just a 'beep' more of a 'treeeedle tri treeeedle' as the Nepali buses fly around corners they are meant to be driving around. Beeping a welcoming warming Namaste to the other flying treeeedle tri treeeedling buses. My transition from India to Nepal was marked by a fifteen minute time difference (always trying to state its separate identity while having the geographic mis-fortune of being wedged between two superpowers) and finally a comprehension of communication! After six years of first visiting and working in Nepal, I am actually realising the value of the painful hours of sitting in a wooden icy room, repeating strange new sounds. I remember working just to hold a pencil, willing my frozen fingers to warm up enough in order to copy down the vocabulary which our patient Nepali teacher was trying to share. At the time I felt like I had severely failed to grasp anything more than the most basic of understanding of the Nepalese language. But somehow, now, on my fourth visit to Nepal, my brain must have been teaching my subconscious, as communication is far easier than I remember.

This sort of helped as we sat perched on top of a bus. The sunlight was fading as the Dewali electric lights were illuminating the otherwise invisible houses and shops. Pink, green, yellow, orange – flashing rainbows dangling from every generator powered plug. My fellow passengers on the roof of the tin can bus were all men and young boys. The women and livestock all seemed to be squashed into the creaking carriage below. One pot bellied cheery farmer put his arm around Bruno as he began to explain that the next day was a special day during the Dewali festival when the sisters would 'tikka' the brothers. The pot bellied cheery farmer was on his way to his sisters house in preparation for this matriarchal tikka.

Sure enough the following day we rode past the most beautiful of tikkas plastered carefully onto the foreheads of boys and men of all ages. Pink, yellow and green grains of rice had been carefully placed on the metaphoric third eyes, while the fresh petals of golden carnations lay on top of shiny black hair of youths or the more traditional topi's of their fathers. What was even more entertaining were the many street dances, performed mainly by girls and young women but occasionally by pairs of couples: Live singing, twirling of hands, swirling of hips. The top of a bus was really the best place to view these colourful blessings of Dewali, and it made a change from being the object of stares to now be the uninvited onlooker However, the sun became too hot, and despite the stunning views of terraced fields and the rushing tumbling Kosi river, the grid beneath my bony bum seemed to grow harder, and eventually I relented and tip toed down the ladder to fight for a semi-cushioned place in the bus below.

Down 'below', inside of the bus, squawked chickens fresh for the pot and the wide kohl painted eyes of babies, who were not sure what to make of the blonde haired, teeth baring 'thing'. I wonder when I will figure out how to stop scaring local babus? The driver piled us all out (and down) several times: Twice for daal baat, and once in the dark on a hairpin bend for a toilet stop. I guess the men could have peed around one corner and the women around the other? Since I was wearing trousers I didn't pee anywhere. We all piled back in again and the bus remained intact. Two minutes later the bus would stop again and yet more Dewali travellers would squeeze the doors wider. And then another two minutes later – and so the ever widening spiral would continue, until, just as in the busy streets of India, I began to feel so insignificant. I sat watching a hundred lives interact for minutes or hours before continuing upon their separate web of journeys. Seats or spaces filled by one family would within minutes be replaced by different faces. Lives passed the moving windows, while Lives looked out of the same worn glass. I sat bumping precariously on and off my small seat, thinking about all the buses filled through of Lives moving around the country. I thought about the amount of buses which travelled on every different day, filled with different people or the same people, but different. I am one of so many; I am so little of so much.

Eventually, after covering 128 km in a little over eight hours rattled our way through the valley and towards the dim lights of one of Nepal's prime tourist destinations – Pokhara. Just as three years ago, Om Mane Padme Hum, seems to trill from every street corner, Nepali daal bhat continues to be dished up in incomprehensible amounts and the buses continue to treeeedle tri treeeedle as the laughing passengers wave down to foreign faces (me) from the moving bumping jolting travelling roof tops that speed through this land of hills and Himalayas.