Slow and Steady Wins

After sitting through a 2 hour delay at JFK and straining to maintain my sanity while listening to my plane neighbor praise herself in “saving Africa and therefore the world” by volunteering in Tanzania for two weeks, I finally arrived in Kathmandu. I was expecting an everyday looking airport, with a bundle of stores, lounges, and outlets contained in a glass infrastructure. Instead I was greeted with a sticky post-rainstorm air, a simple building with low lighting, and outdated security systems. As I retrieved my belongings and exited the airport, a swarm of Nepali taxi drivers attacked. Pushing through all these men, I finally found a sign with my name and rushed over, hoping to be rescued. My escort guided me to my designated taxi, and once I was in, started to demand money from me. “Give me money,” he said. “I want the money.” I thought they didn’t tip in Nepal with the exception of restaurants? As he aggressively demanded money, I repeatedly said no. Why the hell would I tip someone who was already paid to do something as simple as walking me to a car? Unsatisfied and clearly pissed, he called me a bitch and slammed the door in my face. What a great start to Nepal.

The first night was also shitty. Weaving through the terrible traffic in my taxi, I finally showed up to my guesthouse room, complete with a made bed, slightly dirty bathroom, and two cockroaches. Ideal room, really. Catching up with a traveler I had met back in Japan for a bit helped, but little did I know that curfew was 10:00pm, a.k.a. I would be locked out and pounding on the door for an hour before I could re-enter my room. The bus ride from Kathmandu to Pokhara the next morning had started out fine, until the man next to me took off his shoes and started using his saliva as lubrication for a DIY foot massage. Desperate times call for desperate measures, I suppose.

This sounds like a terrible start. Even writing these first two paragraphs makes me have a sour taste in my mouth. But I am here to tell you that despite this I have grown fond of this country. As soon as I arrived in Pokhara, the country had won my heart. Or maybe just Pokhara. In contrast to Kathmandu, the air is cleaner and the traffic is safer (although still not the safest). Pokhara overall is just more appealing. My first few days were spent on my own and therefore a little lonely, since Couchsurfing, my key social media platform for meeting other travelers in the area, did not seem frequently used in Nepal. I am quite fond of being by myself, but after a while I start to crave the prescence of other human beings. Desperate, I went on Tinder, rewrote my mini-bio to say that I was only looking to meet people and none of that “something more” jazz. After some back and forth with an Australian volunteer named Tobi, we had decided to meet for coffee briefly. Little did I know Tobi was a scrawny, short, insecure Nepali dude that used his Australian friend’s pictures to feign his identity. He begged me to still hang out with him, as he came a long way and was too late to go sailing back across the lake to his home. I told him to drown in the lake :). Moral of the story, don’t use Tinder. Just give up trying to meet strangers using apps. Or give up meeting people in general.

My sanity returned once I met my fellow volunteers at the orphanage, and for the first time since landing I finally felt myself settling into a community. The children are crazy and adorable, as all children are, and I seem to be making connections with them regardless of the language barrier. Most of my days are spent preparing the children for school in the morning, lazing around for a few hours in the afternoon, and helping with homework after they come home from school. I feel like I am not backpacking, but living here. That being said, everyday isn’t a crazy, dense, adventure-packed day like it usually is, but there have been a few times I have ventured out of my neighborhood to explore.

With my wallet running dry, I was determined to skip the taxi and walk from random destination to random destination. In a grand total of 12 miles, I witnessed the Nepali landscape transform from a hustling polluted city atmosphere to seemingly untouched, steep, grassy hills sprinkled with farming shacks and wild goats. I stopped by a Tibetan refugee camp and sat down with one of the shopkeepers, listening to him explain the principles of Buddhism as well as his take on the current situation of Tibetan exiles in Nepal. With no concern for time, I bid the shopkeeper and his mother goodbye, played a strange version of hopscotch with the village children, and stopped by a few more houses to talk to the locals and let them run their hands over my half-shaven head in amusement. None were interested in my money - they simply wanted their story to be heard and wanted to speak with this curious foreign face. Barely anyone could understand English, and I know only five phrases in Nepali. Time and time again, I have seen myself faced with language differences, but I realized at an early age that communication transcends words. Even in speaking the same language, feelings and intentions are often misunderstood (a lover's quarrel for instance). Perhaps it was difficult to get messages across with these people, but that really just made things more interesting, as we had to get creative with charades and doodling in order to convey the right ideas. Tourist activities such as paragliding off the top of Sarangkot may be exhilarating and picture-worthy experiences, but I think there is more beauty in getting completely lost in the personal stories of the everyday Nepali local. Time grants me the opportunity to explore a foreign country in ways I haven’t before. What once felt like a doomed trip has become an slow and steady way of digging deep into the beautiful, rich culture Nepal has to offer.

#travel #backpacking #Nepal #adventure