First impressions of Kathmandu

It has been three weeks since I landed in Nepal, and I think the time is overdue for me to give a few of my first impressions of my new surroundings.

When we first got into the UN vehicle and left the airport, taking in Kathmandu was a shock, to say the very least. My head swivelled restlessly from side to side as I surveyed the packed streets with no semblance of order or rules of the road, the tiny, makeshift huts that passed for shops, the precarious buildings in extreme states of disrepair and the rats nests of wires wound around every pole with wide eyes. What have I gotten myself into? I wondered, involuntarily.  

Are these the kinds of places I am realistically going to have to go to buy food? A six month hunger strike seemed more fathomable to me at that point. Our guest house was in a nice area of the city, surrounded by embassies and expat homes – it is located on a mud road, wide enough for one car at a time that swerves back and forth to miss pedestrians, scooters and massive potholes (along with a few uncovered manholes). 

Allow me to give you a run-down of a few features of day-to-day life in Kathmandu. Let’s start with the traffic, shall we? I can describe it in one word: insane! The major streets are fairly wide (enough to fit two and half-ish cars across) with no lanes to speak of, nor apparent rules of the road. Instead, vehicles just go where they want and weave in and out of one another to get there. The flow of traffic is: everyone goes at whatever speed they want to (all different). The main intersections have about eight different ways of coming at them, and no traffic lights (actually, I think I have seen one set of lights...I’m fairly certain they were non-functional). Traffic police are dispersed somewhat randomly throughout the city and “direct” the traffic...sort of. They have helped us cross at times though, so they are definitely appreciated.

Every vehicle that passes anything (pedestrian, other car, truck, motorcycle, scooter, cow, bus, etc.) honks at it. Every vehicle! Every time! All the time! (Yes Dan, you were right about this). Even when walking alone down the side of a relatively wide, completely empty street a single passing car or motorcycle will honk as it passes, giving me a wide berth. As this point I am not certain if the honk is meant as a way of saying: “G’Day Mate,” “Watch out, I’m here,” or “Get the F*** out of my way.” These nuances of the honk remain a mystery to me.

The accepted manor for merging from a side street (all of which are dirt roads, only slightly wider than a car and a half) is to just start pulling out and creeping across...people seem to stop for this. To be fair: the speed of traffic is actually quite a bit slower than we would be used to in North America, so it’s not as abrupt as it might seem. This is also the accepted manner for crossing the street. Just go! The cars and vans and motorcycles and bicycles...they will all just go around you (in theory; currently, my best practices for street crossing is to sidle up to a local who looks like they’re about to cross and walk in their shadow). For that matter, this is how animals cross the street as well. And are there ever animals in the street!

Thus far, on the streets, I have seen: ducks, chickens, dogs, lots more dogs, rats (sometimes alive, mostly dead, being fought over by the aforementioned dogs), a few cats, dead crows, monkeys, cows, goats, and this morning one of my fellow JPCs saw an elephant as she was walking to work. I am a very deep and unhealthy shade of green over her good fortune at this. The most common is dogs – lots and lots of street dogs. They mostly sleep in the shade during the day. We have taken to naming the dogs along our street. Names include: Pharaoh for this really Egyptian looking one, Tripod for the three-legged German Sheppard and Shenzi, after the hyena in the Lion King for an especially scraggly, long-haired one. When the sun goes down though, the dogs come out for their nightly mass street dog convention and ultimate fighting championship. Luckily, I am a pretty deep sleeper.

All these animals are not just found along the sides of roads or on tiny side streets. I have witnessed both dogs and cows literally laying down and resting in the middle of major roads, looking completely calm and unfazed as speeding cars pass all around them. Everyone just moves over for the animals, as for every other obstacle on the road. In fact, I watched two cows cross about six lanes of traffic the other day. I should really make an effort to try and ask them how they did that, come to think of it! 

So, with a traffic situation such as this, how does one get around safely? Well, safety is a relative concept around here, so let’s not spend too much time dwelling on that. There are several options for “public” transit here (I say “public” because they are privately owned and operated as there are no city busses). If headed into the centre of the city for some evening entertainment (about 5km from my apartment) you could take a taxi for around 250-300 Rupees ($2.75-3.25 Canadian). OR for a more colourful option you could stand along the side of a major road and wait for a jam packed white cargo van looking thing to drive by with a young boy hanging out the side of the open sliding door yelling locations quickly in Nepali, hope that you flag down the right one and squish in for 15 Rupees (16 cents).

Our group of six did this one evening. We got some weird looks from the locals, and I think I might have caught a touch of TB from the elderly woman hacking up her lungs 3 inches from my face, but it was sort of fun at the same time. The tension was broken when the driver tried to ask us for 900 Rupees and Tanya yelled out: “Noooo,” very good naturedly in a way that said You’re silly, and we’re not stupid! Everyone burst out laughing then, driver included, who told us it was worth a try.

There is also the Tuk Tuk, which is an even smaller, more packed, three-wheeled version. They look a lot like they could be cardboard boxed perched on top of slightly overgrown, motorized tricycles. We have yet to try this, but trust me: it is on the list!

In terms of getting where you are going, that is quite interesting and hilarious as well. If we were able to give cabs addresses and have them take us to said addresses that would be easy, but that’s not how they roll here in Nepal. Most streets don’t have names. People find their way based on regions and landmarks. On our first day we received directions that included: “Go west to the end of this street, then take a left. Follow it straight until the banyan tree, where you should go around it to your right...” So at this stage we can never truly be sure where we are going to get dropped off, and if we can expect to be able to find our way to our destination from there. It certainly makes getting around interesting.

Other features of the Kathmandu streets: they are hectic, crowded and incredibly polluted. I cannot tell you how many times a big truck has driven past me and completely coated me in thick, black exhaust. Besides the air pollution, walking often turns into a game of: can you avoid the mounds of animal feces and piles of garbage between point A and point B? The Bagmati River, which separates Lalitpur (where I live) from central Kathmandu, has 300 tonnes of household waste dumped into it every day. Every! Day!

Environmentally, this is horrifying, but even worse than that is the fact that Kathmandu’s poorest people live beside the river in makeshift huts, constructed mainly of old clothes, garbage, tarps, signs and other debris. Poverty is extreme. Nepal is one of the top 10 poorest countries in the world, with 25% of the total population living below the poverty line (on less than 63 cents per day). Of everything I have encountered here, it is the most shocking thing to be confronted with. Watching people working so hard, for such long hours to make so little gives you the kind of rotten feeling in the pit of your stomach that doesn't go away, especially when you think about the fact that most people at home pay more for their cable and internet in one month than a lot of people here could hope to make in a year.

The biggest adjustments have been in the basics of living: food, water and electricity. We had a hard time at first figuring out what and where it was safe to eat (vegetables are generally out unless you wash them in iodine for 30 minutes yourself), but now we have a few local haunts for lunch and dinner. Despite the hygiene caution, we eat out a lot because everything is cheap. Lunch on a daily basis costs about $3 and we have relied on reputable restaurants for the most part since arriving as we’re just starting to gain confidence in our ability to properly wash and prepare vegetables without giving ourselves a bad case of the runs. Clean water is another concern we have been faced with.  Generally speaking: water is not to be trusted in Nepal. Even sealed water, in bottles from shops must have their seals carefully inspected so as to ensure they haven’t been refilled with filtered tap water.
Everything is dusty and dirty because of the air pollution, so the fact that your bottle is dirty looking when you pick it up doesn't necessarily say anything about what’s in it. As a matter of adjusting I have already gotten sick a couple of times from the local food/water. I think it’s all part of the process of slowing turning my stomach into a cast iron machine. It’s happening now though, I even ate salad at a restaurant without having to spend the entire next day in the washroom last week! Progress.The last thing is the electricity. The government of Nepal has a system of “load shedding”. This means that scheduled power outages roll across the city for about 8-10 hours per area on a daily basis. We are pretty spoiled at our apartment, and have a backup generator, which means we don’t often lose power for very long; however, we have, on occasion, had to prepare food or eat in the dark. Thanks for the headlamp Assia! It has proven quite handy at times.

Finally, how could I call myself Canadian and not talk about the weather? It’s bloody hot! The Nepali’s don’t seem to think it’s too bad, but I am from the great white north, and 30 degrees with 75% humidity every day has turned me into a sweaty, partially melted mess with an intense, frizzy afro most of the time. I have given up on the idea that I will ever feel truly clean during this monsoon season. Oh, and monsoon, that’s another thing entirely. It rains every day, even when it doesn't look like it will, trust me: it is going to rain! Hard! We made the classic mistake of going out for lunch without our umbrellas or rain boots on a particularly clear, lovely afternoon and ended up having to rush back to the office for a meeting amid a torrential downpour.

            “Close your mouth,” Tanya yelled to us as we ran down the street trying to dodge calf deep mud puddles. Best way to spend an afternoon, you ask? Slowly drying under an air conditioner over the course of a two hour meeting, only to realize you are coated in a thin layer of grit from the air pollution that washed down on you in the rain.  

You would think that with all these changes I would be hit with massive culture shock, but that hasn’t been the case. On the contrary: I LOVE IT HERE! One thing that really struck me within my first few days of arrival was that in spite of how incredibly different things can be from one place to the next, people are essentially the same. We humans all essentially need and want the same things. We haven’t been treated like we’re so different by people here, and I realized: it’s because we’re really not. We have been met with nothing but friendly attitudes, smiles, gracious hospitality and fabulous senses of humour. Everywhere I go Nepali people are smiling and giggling together and with others. Almost every conversation I have involves laughter. It’s hard not to be happy amid that.

Nepali culture is not abrasive. Perhaps I find that because we’re in the big city so people are more used to accepting westerners, or perhaps it’s their genuinely kind and gentle demeanours. It’s not as conservative as we were all preparing for. It is a conservative society; however, people seem very accepting of differences. They may think some things are strange, perhaps about the way we dress or act, but we don’t get harassed. I go out running in my lulu lemon shorts and people stare curiously at me, but that’s about it. The only thing I am not going to get used to is people calling me maam everywhere I go.

Good morning maam.

Hello maam.

Coffee maam?

Good evening maam.

I am not important enough to be called maam!

Perhaps I’m still in the honeymoon phase, but I find it amazing how quickly one can adjust to new things and come to love them. I already feel at home here. The mud road with massive pot holes, and a menagerie of dead and living animals along the side of it, is just “my street” now, the same way Lisgar or Woodland were my street before. The little huts with random samplings of dusty products and piles of veggies lining the precarious shelves are just my local shops where I buy eggs and beer now. Everything that shocked me and made me wonder what I had gotten myself into a couple weeks ago has come to be the new version of my cozy little existence.

I do get irritated by some things at times, of course – and the suffocating humidity and pollution that leave me in a constant state of sweatiness don't exactly help. Also, I have seriously started to consider Dad’s suggestion of just screaming “HONK” right back at cars when they wait until they’re just in front of my face and lay on the horn (as if I can’t see them approaching on the empty street or am even moderately in their way), especially when I've had a couple drinks the night before. However, at those times, retreating to the roof of my building and taking in the amazing view of Kathmandu with a cool beverage brings me right back to my happy place. All in all: life is good.