Kathmandu

We have arrived in Kathmandu, capital of Nepal, to begin our trekking adventure. It’s a fairly typical Asian city that has been catapulted into modernity and is not coping particularly well. Town planning, such as it is, is entirely reactive to problems and town planning, as we know and love it, is an art that has eluded the great and the good of Kathmandu.

The people are very welcoming, having had (and still have) a close relationship with the British. I suspect it is somewhat akin to the British/US ‘special relationship’ in which we look up admiringly at the Americans and they look dismissively down at us. But the good news for us Brits is that practically every signpost, every advertising hoarding, every shop, hotel, bank and restaurant announces itself in English first and not always with Nepalese subtitles. For a country with such low educational standards (48% literacy rate) it is surprising how widely English is spoken.

Politically, the country is going through great changes as it moves from being a monarchy to a republic. It seems that the Chinese-backed Maoists had been fighting a civil war for some time when, rather helpfully, the crown prince (allegedly) gunned down his father, the king, his mother, younger brother and another 9 members of the royal family before turning the gun on himself. I say allegedly because the official enquiry into the killings found that the ‘automatic weapon had been discharged by accident killing 12 people’!

Two of the survivors of this massacre were the king’s brother, Gyanendra, and his son, Paras which led to local suspicions are that they arranged it all. However, other theories are that it was arranged by the CIA, the Indian Secret Service (if that isn’t an oxymoron) or aliens. Frankly I am surprised that no-one has tried to feel the collar of the Chinese.

The up-shot of this little family difference was that the ‘shocked’ people demonstrated their disgust and the new king abdicated. The Maoists ceased their civil war and joined the new Government and, hey presto, everyone’s a winner!

The only fly in the ointment is that, 3 years on, the politicians still cannot agree a new constitution. Apparently (and this has been independently confirmed by a member of the God squad who took it upon himself to answer to his vocation by converting us to Christianity), the Nepalese are not much good at working together. However, this could apply to the politicians the world over – how many years is it since our glorious Government began the reform of the House of Lords? Ten?

Inevitably there has to be a ‘Yak and Yeti Hotel’ in Kathmandu and a very nice man called Jeevan has arranged for us to stay there. It’s full of trekkers and climbers, from those who felt that a mooch around the rose gardens is a serious workout to the chisel featured Everest summit aspirants. A circus of nylon backpacks, huge duffle bags, technical clothing and boots is ring mastered by a select band of gurus who cater for every need.

We began our stay with a visit to some of the fabulous sites around town guided by an earnest chap called Rajendra who wished to be known as Raj. As we set off, he machine gunned facts at us: Nepal is 885 km long, with an average width of 191 km, it has a population of 30 million and is 65 times smaller than China with whom it shares 1,111 km of border… He kept this up for some time after our eyes glazed over and, I assume, he was quoting directly from the ‘Federal Republic of Glorious Nepal, interesting facts to throw at foreigners, for the use of’. If we popped our heads over the parapet by asking a question, it only invited another burst of facts in reply: ‘Nepal has 8 of the 14 mountains in the world that are over 8,000 metres. The Himalayas has 47 mountains over 7,000 metres and 153 mountains over 6,000 metres.’ To put this into perspective, the highest peak in the UK is Ben Nevis at 1,344 metres and the highest peak in Europe is Mount Blanc at a paltry 4,810 metres.

The other thing that Nepal has lots of, we learnt, is water. It is the second richest country in the world for water resources being bettered only by Brazil. There are more than 600 rivers coming out of the Himalayas, hundreds of glaciers, huge valleys that are sparsely populated and massive changes in elevation. Scientists estimate that Nepal has the capacity to generate 80,000 megawatts of hydro electric power (UK power demand is around 40,000 megawatts) but only 1% of this power is being exploited. What could be easier than using but a small part of the environment to meet the energy needs of the country in a clean, green way?

Well, they don’t. Kathmandu has a demand for 1,000 megawatts of electricity but has less than 700 megawatts available. Power cuts are part of everyday life that everyone has come to accept. As a result, there are thousands of petrol driven generators everywhere, pumping out carbon into the atmosphere to keep businesses running. As we walk down the road, almost every shop has a generator thumping away on the pavement. It’s neither clean nor green but, worst of all, it’s entirely unnecessary. According to Bimal, a local businessman, the reason no plans are in place to build any hydro electric stations is that the politicians won’t trust one another to be responsible for tenders to build new capacity. So, nothing is going to be done anytime soon and, in the meantime, the city’s generators add to the city’s pollution problems that are of biblical pestilence proportions.

The pollution is most noticeable at night when every oncoming car’s headlights look as if they are emerging from a swampy mist. Nepal’s vehicles, and to be honest they are no worse than anywhere else in Asia, pump out great volumes of noxious, thick black smoke whenever they are required to work hard – which is most of the time given the topography. When we get caught in one of these death blasts all we can do is to cover our eyes and try to hold our breath, praying to survive long enough to breathe normally again.

And the pollution isn’t just in the air. For a real shot at depression we only have to look along the rivers which are used as the city’s waste disposal system for all rubbish and effluent. Essentially, there isn’t a refuse collection system, there aren’t any refuse or ‘recycling’ stations and large parts of the city has no sanitation whatsoever. No westerner uses tap water for cleaning his teeth.

At this time of year the river water is hardly flowing and a walk along the river bank ranks as one of the most unpleasant experiences I have ever encountered. The smell was not for girls. One reason why the monsoon rains are so welcome is that they cleanse the city.

But it’s not as if nothing is being done. Oh no. On Thursday morning we saw part of the army standing several ranks deep, all armed with short brushes made from reed. They were to be joined by the Prime Minister, no less, in a very public attempt to clean up the Kathmandu valley. ‘What do they do with the rubbish they collect?’ I asked our guide, Raj, ‘Oh, they throw it!’ he replied as if it were the most natural thing to do. I could just imagine the Nepalese chucking hundreds of black bin liners, overflowing with rubbish, over the fence into India. And not expecting their neighbours to have any suspicion where it all came from. Perhaps the Nepalese take a bit of headed notepaper from the hotel room of an American, complete with his home address, and plant it in the rubbish. Everyone blames the Americans.

The upshot of all this is a high child mortality rate, especially among females, and an average life expectancy of 62 years (but the average age is 20). The attitude of the man in the street doesn’t help; a typical response is a shrug of the shoulders and the phrase ‘khe garne?’ (what is there to do?). It is a frustratingly common phrase, not just in Nepal, but all over the world and I came across it most often in South America, many of whose cities are blighted by similar environmental problems. Part of the difficulty is that, here in Nepal, the Gross National Income is USD 240 per capita with 82% of the population living on less than USD 2 per day. Not surprisingly they look to the West for leadership but all they receive are lectures.
But on to a more pleasant subject, Kathmandu’s history. Here is a poem that Debbie happened across that neatly sums up the city’s rich heritage:
Streets of silver, streets of gold,
Abodes of gods and kings of old.
Ancient temples, lamps and bells,
Royal halls and magic wells.
Crooked houses, narrow ways
That course with life on market days.

This heritage was born in the golden age of the ruling Mallas between 1250 and 1750, when the rivalry between local kingdoms was often expressed in the arts and architecture. The ornately decorated buildings and opulent temples built in the main squares bore testament to the fabulous amounts of money spent by rulers desperate to surpass one another. Most of these buildings still remain as a legacy to the wonderful craftsmanship that created them. They are to be found in the three Durbar (Palace) Squares that were once the centre of three separate kingdoms but have now been swallowed up by the creeping tentacles of Kathmandu as the city expands.

These Durbar Squares are where the kings were crowned and exercised their powers. Their palaces have great lengths of intricately carved wooden windows and lattices that traverse the buildings. The great doorways are usually protected by lion and adorned with carvings of gods. It is usually possible, supposing you have the encyclopedic knowledge of Indiana Jones, to tell which king was responsible for building the palace because there will be a 20 metre high column outside on top of which is a statue of the relevant king as the living embodiment of one of the gods (often Vishnu).

The temples are more magnificent. Always built with a long staircase leading from the ground up to the abode of the gods. Perhaps the most striking is Nyatapola Temple, the highest in all Nepal, that has a staircase adorned with lions wearing bells, elephants with floral saddles, griffons with horns and with a couple of goddesses thrown into the mix at the summit. On top of all this is the temple itself that overlooks the rooftops of much of the city.

The most unusual temple is Batsalyadevi, which is relatively modest in size, but is where, according to legend, Shiva and his ‘girl’, Pavarti, would go for a good bonk. It seems that even the gods have to find somewhere away from their parents’ house to be naughty.

Kathmandu can also boast a living goddess called Kumari. She is a young girl from the Newari caste who must pass a large number of physical requirements in order to be selected. She and her family then move into a house in the centre of town where she reigns as a living goddess, appearing in public intermittently, until she reaches puberty when she reverts to being a mere mortal and another is chosen to take her place. Unfortunately, to marry someone who was Kumari is considered unlucky and will lead to an early death. Apparently, former Kumaris end up living in the U.S. where they can marry and where, if they select the right city (New York, Atlanta) their husbands will almost certainly die young thereby confirming the prophesy.

We also visited a very holy Buddhist temple called Swayambhunath (no, I can’t pronounce it either) that is known as the ‘Monkey Temple’ because the little blighters roam everywhere, stealing food from the unwary and generally infecting the whole site.

The area centres around a huge white dome that has the eyes of the Buddha watching in every direction, and is topped by a golden spire. All around the dome are smaller buildings, mostly places of worship where offerings are made and sacrifices given. In many places there are rows and rows of prayer wheels that are constantly being turned by passersby. I am told that one turn of the wheel is equivalent to saying the prayer 10,000 times. How good is that? Imagine being a Roman Catholic and getting 10,000 hail Marys completed in an instant! It certainly makes sinning more attractive.

Despite all this sightseeing, we have come to Nepal to do some trekking and we were to learn that our preparations had not gone as well as we had planned. A kit inspection with our Everest expedition leader confirmed that we had all the right equipment to spend time on the world’s highest mountain (other than sleeping bags which we always planned to acquire in Kathmandu as they are cheaper) but we would also need pretty much exactly the same stuff for our Annapurna trek which we had planned as a warm up. This was a problem because on Everest we would have porters to carry anything that we didn’t need for the day but around Annapurna we were planning to trek by ourselves. There was no chance of getting all this wonderful kit into our 45 litre backpacks.
This was very irritating. We could easily have bought bigger packs had we realised but there wasn’t any helpful information anywhere that could have avoided this tragedy.

So off we went to the shops to throw some money at the problem. Fortunately, Mountain Hardware and North Face, two extremely respectable brands, have outlets here that actually sell genuine stock (it’s all made in next door China anyway) at considerably lower prices than in the UK. So, for example, the sleeping bags which are UK 620 each at home are a mere UK 420 here. Thus for less wedge than I would have spent in the UK I became the proud owner of 2 sleeping bags, one 70 litre rucksack, a pair of warm trousers for Debbie and three tubes of sunscreen. Perfect. Our second large backpack was kindly lent to us, in a misplaced bout of magnanimity, by Jo Chaffer, who would be leading our Everest Expedition.

However, another upset was to come, this time from my stomach. I blame it on a lunch of spaghetti bolognese in which the meat was over spiced. A schoolboy error in this part of the world. I had been feeling steadily worse during our shopping spree and when we got back to the hotel a bottom explosion heralded the start of a long night of intimacy with the toilet.

I was now too-loose-to-trek and there was no chance of leaving the next morning at 7.00am for the start of our Annapurna adventure unless I could have a toilet strapped to my backside. We were forced to delay our departure for 24 hours by which time I had to be recovered or left behind!

Kathmandu
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