As predicted, a group of questionable young boys surrounded us within seconds of alighting from the jeep.
“Where to sir? Kathmandu? Kathmandu? Come, we take you to the best place! Come with us sir! This way sir! That way sir!”
I didn’t hear a word of what they were saying. All I wanted to do was head straight towards this world-renowned travel agency that would deliver me to Kathmandu alive. Curiously though, as soon as these boys found out where we were going, they suddenly relaxed and coolly walked away. One boy volunteered to escort us right to the office, which apparently had the most hygienic bus to Kathmandu. He was slightly cross-eyed and wore his long hair in a ponytail. He also had an alarmingly high-pitched girly laugh and was as skinny as a sterotypical smackhead. Obviously, River had to get friendly with him.
“You are coming from Sikkim? I was in Gangtok just the day before. Great place, right?”
It didn’t help that he spoke good English. He led us down a dusty lane to a crossroad full of shops, none of which were open. I don’t know if it was just my paranoia or the truth, but the whole of Kakarvitta felt like a zombie town. All the locals walking by seemed empty and sedated. Perhaps, the heat was to blame. Thankfully, it didn’t take us very long to arrive at the rickety building housing our agency.
“Go up, first floor. Talk to the manager, I’ll wait right here.”
The boy stood back, which instantly raised my suspicions. As we were going up the stairs, I prepared myself to flee at the first sign of danger.
“River! Do not commit to anything! We need to double-check the prices or I’m sure we’ll get ripped off. Also, do not accept anything to eat or drink. Okay? And for fuck’s sake, stop smiling.”
“Fine! Calm down, woman.”
We turned to our right on the first landing and cautiously stepped inside a small but airy room. The manager was talking to someone on his cell phone behind a long neatly arranged desk.
When he sensed our presence, he swivelled his chair to face us. He was also in his early 20s, but he looked fairly healthy and had a comforting smile. His demeanour put all my fears to rest and within seconds, I was happily nodding away at everything he said.
“See, there are a lot of cheap buses here, but all of them are local, which means that they are going to stop at every little village on the way and will take 17 to 18 hours to reach Kathmandu. Also, the seats will be very uncomfortable. On the other hand, the bus we have is a special tourist bus. Obviously, it’s not as good as the Volvo in India, but better than these local ones.”
I cleared my throat to keep myself from laughing. It was so surreal to hear from someone that their country does not have the kind of luxuries that India does. I still can’t get my head around the fact that there are places in this world like Nepal, where people aspire to move to India to make it big.
“Our bus will take only 12 hours for the journey and you will be standing in Thamel early tomorrow morning.”
“What is Thamel?”
“Thamel is the main tourist area in Kathmandu; our bus will drop you off right there. Other buses don’t go into the city at all and you will have to take a taxi to reach a hotel, which will cost you another 300. So it’s actually the same.”
“What is the same?”
“The price. Local bus is 700, and our bus is 1000. But you see the benefits?”
His excellent English and suave manners had us convinced that he was the only person in Kakarvitta who had our best interests at heart. The others would just leave us in a ditch somewhere in the countryside. Needless to say, we shelled out the money.
“It’s only two now. The bus will leave at five. Why don’t you two go to my friend’s restaurant down the road and eat something? Don’t worry about your bags, just leave them here. The bus will come right outside this office.”
We were so under his spell that we actually felt grateful for his offer and gladly left everything with him.
In comparison to the overall state of Kakarvitta, this restaurant was ridiculously posh. It had an air conditioner, a huge flat screen television, a well-stocked bar, tasteful lighting and expensive wine. I felt out of place in my rags. But before we could do a volte- face, the waiters had pulled out the chairs and brought us glasses of water. We had no choice but to sit down and enjoy the Hindi movie on television.
I don’t exactly remember what we ate this afternoon, but I do know for sure that rice was involved because that’s what I choked on when the travel company’s manager barged into the restaurant and started howling at us for being unforgivably late.
“What are you doing? Still eating? Your bus is about to leave! Come on, let’s GO!”
We sprang to our feet and struggled to pay the bill while attempting to run outside. When I looked at the time, I saw that we still had half an hour. I couldn’t understand what the fuss was all about.
“Oof, you don’t know? Nepal is 15 minutes ahead of India!”
“What the hell? Why didn’t you tell us?” I yelled, despite being severely out of breath. He didn’t reply and kept rushing ahead. To make things worse, our special tourist bus was not standing in front of the agency office, so we had to run upstairs, grab our backpacks and run towards the real bus station of Kakarvitta. All this while, the manager and that cross-eyed fellow were running along with us, cheering on from the sidelines like we were in the last leg of a marathon.
“Yes! Come on, you can do it. Faster, we’re almost there!”
As soon as we found the bus, the conductor quickly dumped our bags in the luggage compartment at the back and the cross-eyed boy handed me another kind of ticket. “This is the travel insurance. If you die in a landslide on the way, the government will pay 50,000 to your family. Okay, bye!”
Well, that certainly set the mood for the journey. In our flustered state, we didn’t even notice that the bus we were getting onto was identical to all the local buses. Inside, we found our seats right at the back and they looked like they were one step away from falling apart. Finally, the heart of the matter was revealed when the engine came to life and I felt like I was holding onto a dying man fastened to a pair of roller skates. We had been duped, quite royally at that. Kathmandu was definitely going to cost us our spines.
Dead Man Coughing
That which does not kill only makes us stronger. What an astute observation by Nietzsche. I wonder if he was on a bus in Nepal when he came up with that. Nowadays, when I hear people whining about the puny, little bumps on Indian roads, I tell them to take a vacation in Nepal. The roads in India are buttery slopes compared to the ones in this country. However, this minor detail is not an issue for Nepali bus drivers, who barrel over the ditches with unflinching ferocity, flipping over passengers like pancakes. Every time we were tossed into the air, six inches above our seats, we never knew whether we were going to land back into them or if they would be missing altogether. I was ready to call it quits after the first ten minutes, but then I looked out of the window at the vast and deserted countryside and realized we had no other choice.
Surprisingly, the rattling of our internal organs was not the worst part of the journey. In fact, we got used to it after a few hours and I even attempted sleeping at one point. The real pain in the arse was this old man behind us, who was determined to cough his lungs out by the end of the night. Every breath he drew in was a harbinger of death and doom. His phlegm reeked of rotten eggs; it had the density of lead and the semblance of algae. “WHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAWWWW WWWHHHHHH” he began with a roar and continued till his vocal chords were about to rip. Now and then he also punctuated his dirge with the revolting sound of hawking and spitting.
“AAAAACCCCKKKKKKKKK THOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO."
Sometimes, I wasn’t even sure whether he was spitting out of the window or at the back of our seats. I didn’t dare to find out.
As I relive the horrors of that night inside my head, I’m amazed that we lived to see another day. Not only that, we also had the mental and physical fortitu
de to do it all over again. Oh yes, we got on Nepal’s buses several other times, because unfortunately, Nepal doesn’t have any local trains. We didn’t know this at the time, so at least we could console ourselves with swearing that we were never doing this again.
The dinner stop at a dhaba brought us some respite from our misery. I wasn’t hungry at all and didn’t even bother getting down. Everybody else did, including the driver and the old man behind us. The sudden advent of peace and stillness had such a soothing effect on my nerves that I opened my window and drifted off to sleep. And of all the things I could’ve dreamt about, my mind chose to tease me with visions of arriving in Kathmandu. I woke up, covered in sweat, when the bus stopped moving again. I was horrified to see that only three hours had passed since dinner.
I peered out of the window with groggy eyes to figure out why, but I couldn’t see a thing. The night was opaque and we appeared to be parked next to the highway for no discernible reason. The minutes dragged on and turned into an hour, but nothing happened. I heard whispers that there had been an accident up ahead, but all the other buses were speeding right past us, so that couldn’t be right. Apart from the fact that we were not moving, there was also something else that didn’t seem right.
“Oh my God! Do you realize that no one is coughing behind us?” River sat up straight. “Oh shit, is he dead?”
That was it. That’s why we weren’t moving. We had a dead man on board. We turned around to check his vital signs, but there was no one in the seat! His luggage was still stuffed underneath, but its owner was missing.
“How mysterious! Where did he go?”
As River and I speculated about his fate, an hour turned into two. Then finally, at about midnight, another bus sluggishly pulled up next to us. All eyes were glued to its front door, from where a tiny figure stumbled out and hopped across the road towards us. In the glare of the headlight, I recognized the tiny figure as the missing coughing man. He climbed back into our bus and immediately began swearing at the driver in Nepali.
“Harami, kukur ko gu, randi ko chorro…"
Bastard, dog shit, son of a bitch. I was able to interpret all of his cussing for River despite the thick accent. But as soon as he quit swearing, I was lost in translation. He continued his harangue while walking down the aisle and threw nasty, accusing glares at all of us as if we had conspired to abandon him. And within seconds of sitting down, he unleashed his wrath upon us with a terrible bout of hacking and spitting.
His ingenuity was legendary. I couldn’t even begin to understand how he had managed to hunt us down in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night and in the middle of dying a slow painful death. The telepathic bastard! If we didn’t hate him so much, we might’ve offered him a high five. Instead, we spent the rest of the night twisting and turning in our seats, fuming over the folk music blaring through the speakers. The driver had switched off the overhead lights but he kept the music going because… fuck knows!
Dawn took its own sweet time to get to Nepal and put an end to this harrowing night. The violet outside my window turned a pale grey and stayed that way for a long while. I wasn’t particularly looking forward to the next day, but that changed when I heard the sound of gushing water. As the sun rose, I saw that the muddy ditch next to the road was actually a swift river. A thick plume of mist swirled right above the surface, mirroring the river’s movement. The mist had such a defined shape and veneer of solidity that even my sleep-deprived mind had to sit up and take notice.
The air was cool as we crossed the plains and were now snaking around wide green hills. The gradient wasn’t as steep as in Sikkim but it was still a pretty sight compared to the dusty roads running out of Kakarvitta.
Small clusters of primitive-looking huts were scattered all over the hillside and the valley slithered in between like a worm. Men with heavy loads on their backs were carefully walking down its crease to begin their day’s work. However, all my enthusiasm faded when I heard that we were running about six hours late. The scenery outside suddenly became drab and depressing, my stomach and my bladder screamed in protest. The promised land of Kathmandu seemed just as far away now as it did last night.
I looked at River with resigned eyes and found him seething with anger, not annoyance or discomfort but pure, burning rage.
“This is ridiculous! We've been on this bus for 14 hours already and we still have 6 more to go? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
His reaction threw me off completely and instead of frowning, I smiled. This was the first time that I'd seen a chink in River's armour. So far he had behaved admirably for someone from a first world country. No whinging about the toilets or the jeep rides or the food. Every time I had the urge to moan about something, I had to hold myself back and think, if River can be okay with this, then so should I, goddammit! Nevertheless, I was happy to see that he was human after all. It’s okay to be human once in a while.
As the day wore on, the desolate riverside gradually got more and more crowded. A shitload of other buses appeared out of nowhere and men stood along the edge with their backs towards us, pissing into the river. Sometimes, I honestly worry about the fact that no matter what we women do, this world will always remain a man’s urinal. All he has to do is turn around. The good old penis envy surged within me as I looked at these men disposing their fluids while whistling a merry tune.
After a bit more homicidal tossing, I finally got to stretch my legs and eat something at another derelict shack. This place had no electricity or concrete walls or even a proper floor; it was simply made out of mud. Sewage water was flowing freely from the sides; dishes were being washed right at the front door. It had started raining a few minutes ago and the thatched roof was leaking. It was hard to work up an appetite at such a venue, but after straving for 18 hours, sanitation was the last thing on my mind.
The inside was equally glum and suffocating. Many people were crammed into the small space. For 50 Nepali rupees, we could eat as much dal-bhaat as we wanted. But contrary to the usual buffet system, here we had men walking around with big buckets, dishing out steaming piles of white rice like machines. They couldn’t care less about where the rice went and yet they never missed a plate.
From here on till the outskirts of Kathmandu, the journey was bearable as there was more tarmac on the road than potholes. Although, when we were finally getting into the city, the road disappeared one again. The houses turned into hovels; there was dirt and brown slush everywhere. It was raining cats and wolves. Big fat rivulets of garbage, piss and shit were flowing down the road; everything was either broken or about to fall off. The traffic had also quadrupled and we were now crawling along at 20 kilometres an hour, perhaps even slower.
There was no sense of finality even when we did get off that bloody bus after 20 hours of shuffling. It was quite evident that we weren’t exactly in the city yet; the bus had left us lingering somewhere around the periphery. I swear, if I could, I would’ve boarded the bus right back to Kakarvitta just to beat the shit out of that jeep driver and that con-artist who had sold us the tickets to this ‘special hygienic bus service’. To top this betrayal and the onslaught of torrential rain, I discovered that my backpack was completely soaked despite being inside the luggage compartment. Then the local touts swooped in on us like vultures before we could find our bearings. I was so pissed off that I battled my way through their nonsense like a mad woman and began marching towards the first street I could see.
River and I vaguely recalled the name ‘Thamel’ and we went around asking people if such a neighbourhood actually existed in Kathmandu. A listless boy sitting outside a closed shop hesitantly pointed us towards what he must’ve guessed was Thamel. After following his directions for a few minutes, we came to a crossroad and stopped to confirm from another woman if we were going the right way. This woman was even more hesitant than the boy and told us to go right back to where we had just come from. Three more women joined in the conversation and they all had different op
inions on which way we needed to head. Clearly, everyone in Kathmandu was insane. I was sure that if we asked another person about Thamel, he or she would certainly point up towards the sky. So we stood in the middle of the street, helplessly listening to these women bicker among themselves till a slightly plump bespectacled man with a flowery umbrella in his hand called out to us loudly.
“Come with me! I’m taking the bus to Thamel. I’ll tell you where to get down.”
“Thank fuck!” I exclaimed and like a pair of lost kids in ajungle, we began following his rotund belly without any questions. A few moments later, he entwined his fingers with those of a tall handsome man. They swayed their arms together in a loving we- just-got-married sort of way. Perhaps they had; I didn’t ask. Nepal is exceptional in its open embrace of all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities. The country’s constitution (whenever it’s finished drafting) has promised to give marital rights to all its citizens, regardless of their sexual orientation. Sadly, in India, section 377 of the penal code, which criminalises homosexuality, was recently reinstated by the Supreme Court despite countrywide protests. So who knows how long it’ll take for the marriage thing to go down.
Deep in the Heart of Thamel
Our first jaunt in Thamel consisted of getting soaked in the rain, jumping over puddles, diving into narrow alleys and trying to dodge this junkie who kept hounding us with his stash of excellent hash, opium, ketamine, acid and a catalogue of prostitutes. Basically, whatever our hearts desired, he could give it to us at a reasonable price.
Special Lassi Page 12
