Kathmandu

Standing on a rooftop in Kathmandu, it is early in a very misty humid Nepal morning, listening to a chorus of dogs, birds, roosters, distant motercycles, honking, and the lonely drone of an airplane heading for Lukla and the Khumbu. Reminding me of that place in the mountain, climbing alone, melting ice, waking up buried in snow and the endless dreams of the great mountain etched into my body.

From my rooftop I can watch the small dramas of people moving about, children going to school, goats and chickens, a cow, little trucks, older people on the terraces. 

Nima took me to the Pasang Lhamu climbing center, named after the first womanp to climb Mt. Everest. The climbing wall gave climbing on plastic a whole new meaning, these were old creaky walls, the plastic was smooth and hard and worn and shiny.

I have gone native, riding a motorcycle. A Nepalese taxi, driving down the wrong side of mostly unpaved roads with no stoplights on bald tires is scary. A motorcycle in Kathmandu is vehicular danger on an entirely different level. Since  signaling never happens, it is a matter of honking and assuming someone else is going to slow down. I mostly concentrated on strategies for leaping from a crashing motorcycle as we drive on unpaved roads past the woman cooking corn on the side of the road, children in school uniforms, dodge a cow, chased by dogs, race to pass before being crushed by an oncoming truck, past the smoking pyres of Pashupati, past the tiny shrine to Genesh, through streets of crumbling houses and houses rising out of rubble into the dense thicket of Thamel. Thamel is the dream of many heavens. It is in Thamel where you buy the map fork the pilgrimage to the mountain, the armour to scale the mountain, emblazoned with mythical brands, like the flags of crusaders. In Thamel you buy  the image of any Hindu god, the compassionate Buddha,  or an organic curry. Tea, cloth, jewelry, rugs, Thanka paintings, phones, cameras, clothes, singing bowls, the Asia of the imagination, and everywhere the reminder of the great Himal in the distance. 

Nima and I strolling in Thamel.