Given that this is essentially a travel blog, and that I have not been travelling, I can excuse myself for letting this blog lie idle for the best part of two months. At least that is my excuse. Being settled in one place has given me the opportunity to just be and live and work rather than the roaming that peppered my life the last two years. When you are constantly on the move, exploring different places, meeting new people, eagerly soaking up the culture, there is a bounty of stories to choose from - when you are living like a pseudo ex-pat, it is easy to settle in to daily life and then the streets that once seemed alien and exciting are just the way home.
You soon get used to living in a place that once seemed so different. The piles of rubbish in the gutter, the cries of vendors pushing bicycles full of fruit, veg or household goods (not dissimilar to sound of the rag-and-bone man pushing his cart through my neighbourhood in London), the incessant nocturnal barking of dogs, the stench of waste floating up from the river - these things all become familiar, become part of the local neighbourhood.
I live in Thapathali, a neighbourhood in Kathmandu on the banks of the Bagmati River across from Patan (also known as Lalitpur) which is actually another city.
Life in the city continues to be noisy, dusty, crowded and polluted. The traffic can be pretty ridiculous during the day (although with the ongoing petrol shortage, there is a noticeable decrease in the amount of vehicles on the road at the moment), and then not long after nightfall, the streets empty, as even in the capitol city everything shuts down. The early night mentality is compounded by the lack of electricity which, for most people, leaves evenings lit by candlelight and of course, no TV, music or other electronic entertainments that are taken for granted elsewhere. You can also find the quieter side of the city by simply diving into the back streets off the jammed main roads.
my local cobbler in one of the back neighbourhoods
Kathmandu and Patan are full of a lattice of tiny lanes, some paved, some not, some incredibly picturesque, which you could easily be fooled into thinking were pedestrian thoroughfares until a motorcycle comes beeping through or even a little Maruti/Suzuki taxi (no wonder they are all so small).
I've taken to going for walks around the maze of little winding alleyways behind our house - partly as I hadn't been getting any exercise sitting at my desk all day and partly to get to know the neighbourhood a bit. (Not leaving the house for days on end made me start to feel like I wasn't in Nepal at all!).
As with any place one spends an extended period of time in, existence takes on a different shape. I rarely do any sight-seeing. It is easy to stop noticing the small temples at every turn or not bat an eye at walking out into the chaotic traffic when crossing the road (it is the only way to get anywhere). When you are a 'foreign' local, you soon find the ex-pat community, where life could be considered a bubble compared to that of a Nepali living in the city - but a life it still is. Who is to say it is any less 'real' just because it is accompanied by certain comforts? There is a new food delivery service, clearly geared towards the ex-pat community - Foodmandu (a bit like Pink Dot in the States) that picks up food from the fancier restaurants and delivers it to your home (although I haven't used it yet). Computer repairs, dental appointments, plumbers, where to find good cheese, dinner parties (and planning the use of the oven around the load shedding/power schedule) all contribute to the feeling that I am home. At least for now.
A little over a year ago I wrote a post about Kathmandu as I started to get to know it. It is interesting to see what I saw then compared to now: http://mirandatravelsblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/march-in-dusty-city-of-gods.html
momos
momos
