India is a large country. Although I am certainly proud of this fact on most occasions, today it seemed painful to be living here. I chose to go to Nepal because it is our neighbor. A neighbor, to reach whose capital city it took me eleven hours (there were times when I had reached Amsterdam from Hyderabad faster than this!). And what a journey it was! The Hyderabad to Delhi flight pilot made me wish that I wasn’t born. And the Delhi to Kathmandu flight pilot made sure that my 150 buck sub that I had for lunch between the two flights came out of my guts in the reverse direction. If I had the power, I would make these pilots drive through Hyderabad on a motor bike through the whole summer.
I landed in Kathmandu at about 4pm IST (Nepal happens to be 15 minutes ahead of us) and was received by my travel agent at the airport. He was not only amicable but treated me with all the respect given to a firangi traveler.
By the time I checked in to the hotel, dropped off my luggage in the room and tried to wipe away every speck of dust visible to my naked eye while drawing a comparison between this hotel and the ones back home, I was ravenous. So I decided to venture out.
What I experienced while walking the streets of Kathmandu for the very first time surprised me. This place is so much like any Indian city, yet so different. I have been to quite a few cities in India, yet I haven’t found sidewalks lining both sides of the road in any of those cities. I was also surprised to see that almost every other person on the street looked like my neighbor back home. I guess I expected everyone in Nepal to look more or less like Danny Danzongpa.
The youth in Kathmandu is a perfect combination of western culture and Indian tradition. They are religious yet extremely fashionable. The temples here are swarmed by college goers and you seldom find teens without the sindhoor on their foreheads. Yet the way they dress and walk beats their counterparts in most Indian cities. They are not brand conscious, but they know how to carry themselves. And the best part is that no one bothers to even look at you. So wear what you want to and do what you feel like, and be at peace.
After walking the crowded market streets for about an hour, hunger and fatigue took over me and I headed back to my hotel. It was then that I discovered that all star hotels are the same when it comes to food and bathrooms. They all have tiny bathrooms and mysterious showers. They serve ridiculously expensive and extremely bad food (your mother being a great cook doesn’t always help, you know!). Yet, need makes you do things you never thought being capable of. So I showered in their tiny bathroom, ate their ridiculously expensive food and went to bed.
I have never been to Nepal..but..It seem to me that you have describe Nepal as it's..
ReplyDeleteKeep traveling