Getting Settled

Taryn and I landed at Kathmandu Tribhuvan Airport a little after 8:00am on June 13^th. As we exited the plane onto the runway and waited to board the bus that would take us to the terminal we took in the incredible mountain landscape. I couldn’t help but be totally overwhelmed by a mixture of excitement and nerves as the reality of the situation finally sunk in.  To be perfectly honest I had been avoiding thinking too much about it, and at that moment I wasn’t able to any more. Okay, we’re here, I thought to myself. Six months. I wonder how this is going to go. I looked over at Taryn to gauge how she was feeling about it.

            “It’s like we’re in a totally different country,” she exclaimed. I instantly burst out laughing.

            “Actually, that’s exactly what it’s like.”

            “You know what I mean!” I did. And after the 35-40 hour long journey we just took, I could completely forgive her difficulty in expressing herself. It broke the gravity of the situation in my mind though, and then I was just having fun again. I realized that we would be just fine.

Taryn and me in the back of the UN car leaving the airport

The UN vehicle that met us, bright and early that Thursday morning, at the Kathmandu airport delivered us to the Black Pepper Guest House, where four of the six JPCs in Nepal had reserved rooms. While a little pricier than many other accommodation options (at $15/night) it had a great location, at only a 10-minute walk away from the UN compound, and that was a big priority for us. After checking-in, the temptation to just crash was great; however, Taryn and I promised we were going to keep each other awake despite our chronic lack of sleep over the past two days, in order to push through the jet lag and get adjusted to the 9 hour and 45 minute (that’s right) time difference as soon as possible. I have to say,  I think we did quite well on this front, and were trucking along with life in Nepal time almost immediately.

With four days until we were set to start work, Taryn and I managed to pack enough into our waking hours to ward off the threat of napping, including: searching for apartments across the city; eating dinner in the dark due to load shedding (scheduled brownouts that roll across the city to conserve power) at the guest house with fellow JPCs; walking into the city centre with Tanya (another JPC) and her husband Micah to see Kathmandu Durbar Square and peruse the stores of Thamel (tourist district); and even meeting some of our soon-to-be UNDP colleagues for drinks at a swanky hotel with Sean (another JPC who had arrived much earlier and commenced work already).

Early in our apartment hunt Deepak, the owner of the Black Pepper insisted on showing us the apartment he has for rent in his building down the street. We went along to be polite, as Sean had already scouted out this option for us and we agreed that, at $1500/month, it was much more expensive than we were willing to pay for accommodation in Kathmandu.

Have you ever seen the TLC show Say Yes To The Dress? If you have then you know, all too well, that moment when the bride-to-be puts on that dream gown that’s out of her budget “just to try on” and inevitably falls in love with it. Well that’s basically what happened to Taryn and I when we saw this apartment – it was our own Say Yes To The Apartment. Damn it. We spent the rest of the morning with Sean looking at a number of other options with various real estate brokers, but none of which were as nice, as comfortable or as close to work. Then the justifications started…

“You know, I feel like it will be easier for us to adjust to living here if we’re going home to a really comfortable place at the end of the day!”

“I mean, it’s probably not necessary, but it’s nice to know there’s a 24 hour guard…”

“At least all of the rooms are pretty comparable, so it’s not like one of us would have the master and someone else a shoe box!”

“Everything is included as well, you know, not like some other places where we would have to pay extra for gas, internet, the generator…”

“This one would be turn key, we have to factor in the expense of staying in the guest house until one of the other less expensive places would be available, after all!”

“It might be a little more expensive, but everything else here is so cheap. It might be worth it to splurge a little.”

Living room

My room

All met by a chorus of agreements from the others. It was clear that we all had our hearts set on it, but didn’t want to come right out and say so directly. We nonetheless remained in agreement that $1500 was simply way too much. It seemed as good a time as any to test out those bargaining skills we kept being told we would need. After some careful math and budgeting we decided that the absolute highest we could afford to pay was $1100 monthly. We put on our best poker faces, talked about how much more cost effective some of the other places we saw were and tried not to betray how much we wanted to live in the apartment while negotiating the price with Deepak.  

View from my bedroom window

After going back and forth a couple of times we were able to settle on $1100/month – the only thing he wasn’t able to include for that price was the daily cleaning service, which would be an extra $30/month if we wanted it, we assumed we could survive without daily cleaning. Upon agreeing Deepak said the magic words: “You can even move in this evening if you want, we just need an hour or two to do some cleaning.” We happily skipped up to our respective rooms to pack, and within a couple of hours were loading our bags into the Black Pepper’s little red van and moving into our new home. The day before work started, it was perfect to feel like we had somewhere to hang our hats and weren’t going to be living out of suitcases in cramped, shared guest house rooms anymore. Also, it doesn’t hurt that our new place is swanky.

3 months rent -- 315,000 Rupees

Once we got all our stuff into the apartment Deepak invited us across the street to the Black Pepper Pub at 7:00pm for some drinks to celebrate.  A couple of drinks ended up being a seemingly endless flow of beer and food to our table while Deepak regaled us with interesting stories and tidbits of Nepal culture and history.  

He also insisted that we call him at any time, for anything. “If you maybe go out at night some time and you need ride back, just call me! We have this van and we can go pick you up so you all come back safe and together. Really. Call me for anything!” He also invited us to his niece’s wedding later that summer, exclaiming that he thought it would be nice for us to experience the Nepalese wedding with the party and the ceremony. Who could say no to that? These are all just examples of the incredible warmth and hospitality that most Nepalese people have met us with since our arrival, but more on that later. 

Oh yeah, and we ended up keeping the cleaner…I know, I’m never going to be able to go back to Canada. 

View of Kathmandu and Himalayas from our rooftop patio