...inhale, exhale

I am offered hashish several times a day. It is not surprising, for with my white skin and long beard, I fit the bill. But it does get frustrating and causes me to wonder: do people really smoke this much weed here? I get the chance to ask one such salesman, and from behind glazed and restless eyes he told me he makes a sale a day. It is evening and the shops are closing. Lights disappear around us and the grating clack-clack-clack-clack-clack of closing metal garage-style doors ricochets around us. I am surrounded by rickshaw drivers who think my interest in their language to be most amusing. They tell me about their families and their tough life; I listen and nod and agree, "that is hard." One tells a joke at the expense of our high friend. He tells me his name and everybody breaks out in laughter. I take it to mean some expletive and I chuckle with them. Even Mr. Gonga is laughing. He agrees with his nickname. 

One-by-one the men ride off to make some money and I hop in Ganesh's for my first rickshaw ride. He was married at nineteen, has two kids at home and rents this rickshaw at what I assume to be a barely profitable price. His lips part in some fatherly pride as he tells me about his children and they expose a gap between his front teeth. His smile is so genuine, and I am easily won over by the simplest of stories; I pay too much. 

But there is a truth here, that when we sleep in the nicest of hotels and eat at the most exclusive restaurants, when we take long, hot showers and travel by comfortable buses and breathe only cool conditioned air, we don't really ever visit a place. We only look at it through glass, lenses and pricey Ray-Bans. The shop-owner sells us something to take home as a reminder of the place we never really visited to tell people stories of food we didn't really taste and people we never really met. Somehow we think the photo album is more real than the actual moment, and so we separate ourselves from everything foreign around us, capture it in some electronic cage void of real memory. After all, if I take the picture now, my brain knows it doesn't need to use energy to store the memory; the camera is doing it for us. And so we are brainless people with tacky clothing walking around experiencing what one could have from the National Geographic special at a much cheaper cost. 

But this is not the case when you stand on the corner and say "What's your name?" in their language. The dimples in your cheeks prove you are genuine and the young man feels so much more human. We exchange those simple looks and touches that affirm our humanity. After all being American is only different from being Nepali in gross possession. The windshield only separates socio-economic status--little else. 

My internal struggle with this idea really heightened on my way to Chitwan. This jungle/national park/reserve sits in the south between Pokhara and Kathmandu and boasts the pleasures of sunsets, elephants and safaris. Bonnie and I came this way to see those great--almost mythological--creatures that reach the west in those dense, jungled stories of Rudyard Kipling and George Orwell. To get there we walk to the bus, reaching the station in Kathmandu a good half-hour early. Typical Americans. However, when we arrived, we were informed that, contrary to what we were told when we scheduled our tickets, there were no buses going to Chitwan. We complained, made two phone calls, weighed our options all in a few minutes and were ready to call it quits on going south when the man working for the bus company descended from the bus. 

"We have bus coming. You will meet half-way and switch, no problem. You can go to Chitwan, no problem." Satisfied, we climbed on board and were off in another hour. Typical Nepalis. We arrived at the place to have some lunch and switched buses and found that the company had summoned an entire bus--one of those big Greyhound size buses--to take the two of us to Chitwan. We felt guilty as the driver hopped in, groaned the engine to go, and took off. We couldn't help but feel like spoiled American tourists. We would have been happy with something much smaller.

And as we passed bus after bus after hitch-hiker our guilt only swelled. We found out that the reason buses to Chitwan had been cancelled was because some members of the Young Communist League were arrested and thrown in jail and their brethren wanted them released. So they began a strike preventing anyone from entering or exiting the area. Anyone except tourists, that is. So Bonnie and I, in our enormous vehicle, squeezed through rows of parked vans and buses that stretched for miles, full of sweating passengers looking uncomfortable. Our air conditioning, however, prevented any heat from creeping in and, though slightly delayed, we made it to Chitwan before the rain. Our bus was surrounded by hopeful taxi drivers who were equally perplexed by the number of passengers on board. In shame we hopped in a jeep and bumped away to our hotel. 

Back on the bus, while we were miraculously making our way through the line-up, we saw UN vehicles maneuver past, following military jeeps with camo-covered men with guns. A small man stood in his gray tank-top holding the hammer and sickle flag. We had to kick it in reverse at one time and were continually stopping and going. One of the men on the bus, the only hop-on we took, looked back to Bonnie and I.

"This is Nepal" he commented between a nod of his head left to right. And then he chuckled in a kind of shoulder-shrugging way, and turned back to the front. I looked out the window. No it isn't, I thought. Nepal can't be me sitting on this huge, cool bus, passing Nepali after Nepali trying to get home. 

Nepal is Kumar, my young friend in Ghandruk who works hard every day and goes home to his new wife. They live simply and joyfully. He takes a break to get me a Sprite and answers my questions about the rituals and traditions in Nepali weddings. Apparently a party is all they need to live together in matrimony. He gives me his name and addresses me as such when he sees me descending the next day. Kumar! I take a moment to respond to the gift. He has no idea what Facebook even is and so I tell him I'll come over for dinner the next time I'm in Ghandruk. We part ways and I reflect on how far one has to go to find someone who doesn't know what Facebook is. 

Nepal is the sweet woman from Pokhara who cooks me Dal Bhat (Rice and Lentils). I sit on her dark kitchen floor with her son and eat with no utensils. She stuffs me and I tell her how delicious it is in Nepali. Mitocha! Deri Mitocha! I invite her two grandsons to go to the river with my friends and I and we play for hours, jumping from rocks and flipping off of my shoulders. 

Nepal is her son who sits with me and drinks milk tea or takes me "fissing" by the lake, or climbs with me early in the morning to a Buddhist temple high above Pokhara. We boat there and back, and make time for a quick mid-lake splash. We've become brothers now, and our love for one another continues to grow. 

Nepal is Santos, the drunkard in Ghandruk who laughs heartily, smiles widely, and somehow makes it through each day. We have mostly incomprehensible conversations about life, and often settle on taking silly pictures. 

It is Jayaram and Pema and Ohm and Krishna who sell their various goods to us or just enjoy our company as we sit and speak with them. It is the sweet family of five who feed us Pullow and Rice Pudding out of their poverty to bless us and the time we've spent with their children.

It is Suman and Bhim and every other waiter or busboy or taxi-driver, friend, neighbor, stranger or rickshaw driver who serve us with a smile. They each have names and in asking what they are one begins the simple conversations. 

And in those, one really finds Nepal. One meets it, sees it, and says "This is Nepal" and means it. I have some pictures to remember these people with, like the ones posted here. And I have many memories to go by, as well as the stories I've written down to revisit in the near future. And as my last week here ticks by, I know I can leave having really breathed Nepali air.