I was awake this morning at 5:30, which doesn't make sense either from the direction of my jetlag (that's about midnight in England), or from my usual sleeping patterns, but there you are. I at least fell asleep at a reasonable time, so I got a decent amount of sleep. At 6am the bells at the Catholic Church nearby rang, which woke the roosters, who in turn, woke the dogs. Yesterday, I blissfully slept through all of that.
So I start day 3 in Nepal. Here's my impressions so far.
Kathmandu airport is fairly basic, but seemed organized compared to the chaos in Delhi, where I transferred. My flight in from London was late, which caused me to miss my flight to Nepal. It's already confusing, because generally anyone entering Delhi airport is arriving in India, and must pass through customs. They don't have a good system set up to transfer people to another international flight. However, as I didn't have an Indian visa, I couldn't enter the country (to get my luggage or to the check in counters). So an airline agent took all my documentation (tickets, passport, etc), and ran around and sorted me out. In the end it was a bit nerve wracking, but quite easy for me (I just sat and waited), and I arrived in Nepal on a different flight only an hour later than scheduled.
As we descended into Kathmandu, I got my first view of the Himalayas. White capped mountains in the distance, with green mountains in front. Spectacular. And then we descended through the cloud/smog into Kathmandu, and they were gone. A tantalizing vision of the beauty of Nepal that I look forward to discovering.
Fortunately, I was still met at the airport in Kathmandu, despite my not being able to contact them about the change. Joyce, the orientation coordinator for International Nepal Fellowship (INF), met me, along with Roz, the Australian who arrived before me, and our Nepali driver. We then drove to Joyce's house. Driving in Kathmandu is an adventure – much like driving in any city in the developing world. It seems like complete chaos, yet everyone seems to get where they're going. We were told it was much calmer than usual, since it was a holiday, and fewer people were out. Kathmandu is very busy, with people and vehicles everywhere. Entire families travel on the back of a motorbike, and weave in and out of everything else. It's also very dusty, and rather run down – clearly a place where many people live with very little (alongside those who have quite a lot).
Joyce has a lovely spacious house, which seems similar in style to the type of house I've experienced in central and south America. This means that it's cold – these houses are built to keep out the heat in the summer, and are quite chilly in the winter (even when it's sunny and warm outside). However, we have power when we arrive, so we can turn on the heater. Kathmandu, as of January, is short on power, so to minimize the load ('load shedding'), everyone loses power for 6 hours a day, in two separate 3 hour sections. The timing of these power outages changes from day to day, but is scheduled ahead of time so you know when it will happen. It seems a strange contrast, such highly organized power outages. In Canada, power outage, is by nature, nearly always due to some unpredictable circumstance. Here, everyone lives with it, and it seems to effect things very little.
Roz and I were glad to finally meet Vicki at dinner. She was our primary communication point in Nepal before we came, who answered all our questions, and reassured us when our visas weren't ready. It's interesting to meet someone who you have communicated with only electronically. I also was surprised by a phone call from Catherine-Anne. C-A is a friend of mine from Toronto, who arrived in Nepal with her husband Clayton, on the day I was originally supposed to arrive. She is doing a 4 month placement for her Master's degree in public health in Kathmandu, but previously spent a year in rural Nepal working as a nurse with INF. Wonderful, but somewhat strange to get a call from a friend from home only an hour after arriving at the place I'm being put up in Kathmandu.
After my overnight flight, I slept well my first night. Which was good, because we have a busy schedule getting oriented at the Kathmandu INF office before leaving on Saturday for Pokhara. We were warmly welcomed at INF, and were given lots of practical advice up front – getting us set up with email and internet, finances, and sorting out the lasts bits of our visas. We also got to meet everyone in the office, divided about half and half between Nepalis and ex-pats, including a couple other Canadians. Everyone seems really friendly and welcoming, and it's too bad that I won't be around in the capital longer to get to know them better.
We went out for lunch to a local cafe, locally famous for it's social action – it hires primarily deaf staff. With much hand waving and pointing, we ordered mo-mos, Nepali dumplings (similar to Chinese dumplings – boiled meat filled shells), that were delicious.
Catherine-Anne met up with me after my busy day was done, and we took a taxi to Thamel, the tourist market in Kathmandu. There you can buy anything, narrow streets jam packed with people, shops and restaurants, as street vendors and beggars. We had dinner at the Third Eye Restaurant – where you could get a mix of Nepali, Indian and Western food. We sat at low tables on cushions. I had a Newari (one of the main ethnic groups in Nepal) platter which was wonderful - dal, rice, takari (curried veg), curried lamb, sag (cooked greens) and rice pudding. It was a lovely way to end my first full day in Nepal, discussing impressions and experiences of Kathmandu with a friend.
No comments:
Post a Comment