PART 1 (NEPAL)

I started in Bucharest on an almost empty wagon, listening to a mid-aged woman teaching a younger lady on what there is to buy in the Istanbul bazaar, how to haggle and how to close a good deal with the merchants there. However, the natural touch of the Boshoprus Express made of wagons from Budapest, Bucharest, Belgrade and Sofia to Istanbul had been long lost since my last trip this way a few years back: there were only sleepers on the train now: as I was to see later on, some smugglers stack to buses, some others - to planes, while tourism did not make it for too many wagons and it demanded comfort rather than a rough, true experience.

Istanbul was crowded like always, with plenty of tourists and merchants, with its multilingual signposts and lines of people waiting to get a museum ticket. After walking for a while and a narghileh in a local cafe, I crossed the sea to the Asia side of the city, to Sabiha Airport, just to find a terminal filled with merchants and large parcels of merchandise: a Dagestan Air flight to Makhachkala was to depart in a few hours and almost all its passengers carried had bought in order to probably sell at home. While the large parcels they had were enough to fill an AN24 cargo version, their "hand luggage" exceeded a few times the weight limit most airlines impose on their commercial flights. Loud laughters, pumpkin seeds being cracked, the fast beat of music coming from someone's mobile phone, people sleeping on benches after a day's haggling over merchandise - without agreeing with smuggling anywhere and anytime, I can say that those people brought me with the feet back on the ground and made my Istanbul day.

After a short transit at the small and developing Sharjah Airport, I reached Kathmandu, at the foothills of the Himalayas. Crowded streets full of life, rickshaws, tuk-tuks, mobs of people everywhere, as well as merchandise being sold in all possible ways and places, all made it for a captivating atmosphere. After meeting a friend that had arrived the same way a week in advance, we had a walk across the old part of the city after sunset, for me to discover the curfew. The narrow, dusty streets with their picturesque carved wood balconies were even more appealing now than I was to find them in daylight.

Rickshaws and motorbikes were the only to break the silence of those dark streets, while one could but hardly hear fragments of discussion or laughter from the neighbouring buildings. A welcome lack of ordnung, the omnipresent unexpected, as well as the absolute silence - overwhelming noise contrast were simply fascinating in the old part of the city, with its narrow, unpaved streets bordered by clay houses.

The following day I discovered the rest of the city, with its temples and small deity statues appearing everywhere, with its busy streets and market corners, with different fragrances coming from here and there, with its endless lines of shops selling mountaineering gear, fabric, CDs, refreshments, tea, rugs, books, with its rooftop restaurants and spicy rice dishes. Central Durbar Square hosted a Maoist crowd that wanted to have the king abdicate and a new communist republic be created instead; large posters depicting Mao and Stalin were hung on Trailokya Mohan Narayan Temple, while the area in front of the Tourist Police office had been turned into an ad-hoc exhibition of fading pictures from the work visits paid by Mao to various regions of China, while everything was filled by a children band's singing. Coming from a former communist country, this cheap show granted an impression of deja vu that echoed back in the late 1980s. More than anything else, this smelt like China's quiet (as always) move, a country that was far from solving its own problems with Tibet, wanting to push it even further now, towards its weakened and poor neighbours. For a country like Nepal however, it was interesting, but not at all pleasant, to see that - disregarding of the backstage tricks - some people can still promote a nicely painted, already expired way leading nowhere but towards utopian dreams and disillusion.

The afternoon found us in Bhaktapur, which provided a welcome contrast with the big city. Nicely restored at the first glance and with a handful of rather persistent guides willing to show us their town at all (indeed) costs, the whole place was far more interesting at a second glance: narrow, brick paved streets hosted fine small houses that looked like leaning on one another, merchant families lived in the same rooms from where they were selling their products, while tailors had their sewing machines just on a table in the street or directly on the floor / pavement (where this one existed). To this, the many (otherwise finely decorated and impressive) temples were nothing. The many black pottery workshops added charm to the local community, with their products lying in rows (or piles) along the streets.

The next morning we left for Pokhara. With rather narrow and always crowded roads, Nepal was not - thankfully - a country one could quickly cross. The irregular road was always filled with rickshaws, cyclists, pedestrians, bulls, goats, dogs, motorbikes, buses, cars, carts, parked vehicles or street vendors and their customers. With an early start that allowed us to avoid the bad traffic later on, our bus ran with an average speed of 30 km./h. The bus was full, with seats being arranged everywhere, while we sat on a wide pillow placed around the bus gear. More passengers filled the hallway, while our luggage was placed on the roof, with even more passengers sitting there as well. It was welcome to leave comme il faut Europe going back to imperfect humanity, back to a place where, even though life is not easy, people could still laugh, cry, smile or loudly shout, hence showing their being alive...

The scenery along Trisuli Valley was beautiful, with small, reed covered clay cottages, with steep slopes and a magnificent green-blue river rushing over large stones. Located on a lake shore, Pokhara was a resort at the foothills of the Annapurnas. I did not like Pokhara at all, with its cluster of restaurants, hotels and souvenir shops. It provided however a few decks from where one could rent a boat and row away, across the large lake, hence breaking from both the resort and from its lifeless, exclusively tourist-meant noise. In the evening we wanted to go to Tansen, but there was no bus going there along the straight road until the break of dawn. So we took a bus going around, via Mugling, that was to reach Butwal after a 10 hour ride. Once again, our bus only left when absolutely full both with people and luggage or merchandise. We took times at sitting on, under or by our backpacks, holding the broken seat of the one in front of us not to crash our feet, while every break was as welcome as stretching out, drinking some chai and rushing to the forest could be. The very crowded bus was however as colourful as possible; it was not the only one like that. Every vehicle, from the poorest bicycle and rickshaw all the way to vans, buses and trucks were painted in bright colours, with designs that most times included some of the symbols employed by temples. At their turn, some temples, as well as religious statues depicting various gods were painted in bright colours, best showing, together with the loud, fast beat of the music and with the virtual rush everywhere, the extent to which these people wanted to live and show their love for life. This marvelous feeling overshaded by far the omnipresent poverty or any political and economical issue we would make jokes of.

After a few stops, we reached Butwal with the dawn, where we changed for another bus to Tansen. With fine narrow streets, almost no tourists at all and small shops selling everything, Tansen was like a fresh of mountain air between buses. The town had a charm of its own, with its Bank Street named like that because of the only bank in town it hosted, with its decaying durbar damaged by Maoist riots, with its laughing children going to school up the hill. We had a few delightful, fat and simple momoch, joined by a cup of great chai in a mid-aged woman's very small cafeteria that also served as her house.

Without speaking any foreign language we did (which was comforting for once), she used to sleep on a straw mat-covered wooden board placed by the basic table and benches customers would use at daytime. A few household items on the narrow shelves of a rudimentary closet and not two things of a kind, a modest glass-covered counter where she had her pastry to sell, as well as a small back garden hosting the toilet and some poultry, this was all her universe, but I would dare say she had more than us.

We went down the hills from Tansen, across some fine scenery, getting to Lumbini in the afternoon, in the place where Buddha was born and which hosted many Buddhist temples now. Hosted by an extensive, relaxing park surrounded by a savannah-like area with many bulls around, Lumbini was welcoming its guests with a quiet smile inviting to meditation and peace. No chorus, organ, priest or imam was breaking the silence, while a few lamas were quietly walking around Maya Devi Temple. I did not feel Lumbini as a place where people go to stare at man-made buildings in admiration, but rather as a place where one goes to find himself and his path.

Another foggy morning and we left, destination India. With a change of transportation in Bhairawa, we reached the border by rickshaw. The border line was actually more like a cluster of shops, with merchants, truck drivers and their vehicles, peasants, school children, rickshaws, motorbikes and cars, all mingled in, all freely coming and going, while no-man's land between the two countries was inhabited by a herd of goats and some children playing in the dust. One had to ask (or carefully look) for the Nepalese and Indian immigration offices, which were crowded between many outlets selling a wide variety of goods from plastic slippers to biscuits.

A couple of forms filled in and we were out of the Indian border post... (click here for the sequel)

THE NEPALI SECTION (you are here)

THE INDIAN SECTION