Happy 2 Month Anniversary, and Over 1000 Hits, And…

Mauph Garnus!

I’m afraid it has again been a while since I’ve written a post.  And I can’t blame it on the internet this time — I’ve just been busy or exhausted.

In my last post I wrote that our stuff had gotten here.  We spent several days unpacking it, and we’re still straightening up the house even now.  It’s nearly done…

But meanwhile we’ve done other things, too.  I thought at the end of last Sunday that I could write a week’s worth of posts just about that day.  I still could, and might.

Meanwhile I’m distracted by today.

This evening we went down to Thamel to pick up some paintings we bought last Sunday and left to be framed.  They’re AMAZING — the artist is very talented.  His style is mildly impressionistic.  We were first drawn in by his painting of a tiny shack on a snow-covered mountainside, with taller peaks in the distance — a cloudy mist obscures the entire landscape, so realistic it seems about to pour off the canvas.  Then we discovered he’d painted another work of matching size and color and style, except of people in two small boats setting out on a misty lake.  And picture number three seemed the perfect fulcrum to place in the middle of the other two long paintings.  It’s smaller, more of a square, and depicts the sillhouette of a heavily-laden yak in the middle of crossing a rickety bridge over a cavern — still in the same eerie mist.

Yes, pictures are worth more than words.  We’ll unwrap & hang up the paintings soon — I’ll take pictures of them then, to post.

On a related note, if you’re visiting Kathmandu, and you go to Thamel, find you way to the 21st Century Art Gallery in Seven Corners.  It’s well worth it.

Seven Corners?  The area, on the …. west side (I think) of Thamel… in any case, just head straight in from the entrance by the King’s former palace and turn right when the road dead-ends by the Barnes & Noble Book (sic!).  Then, if you pay attention, you can notice the road zagging seven times in a row around (7) sharp corners.  Voila, Seven Corners.

Now, if you’ve ever spent time in the DC metropolitan area, you may know of another Seven Corners.  There it’s not just a line of 7 zags–oh, no!  Instead, there are honestly seven separate roads that all converge on the SAME spot.  The traffic lights there are the most bizarre things I’ve ever seen.  The traffic always has minor jams, and beeping horns; really, looking back, I’m amazed traffic moves through that intersection as well as it does.  There are several places where there’s only space for two cars between a row of stoplights separating the rival roads.  Some lucky people get to go straight through; others have the choice of not just right or left turns, but right-sharp or right-forward or left-sharp or left-forward turns.  The angles are just extraordinary.

The art gallery here nestles in one of the zags.  While considering the paintings, we spent a while staring out at the motorcycles zooming around the corners or the cars slowly beeping along or, most commonly, the wandering people.  And I realized something:  while the traffic in Kathmandu scared me when we first got here, now I think that when I return the traffic back in the US will positively terrify me.  Blood and bloody ashes, they drive so fast!

And in the US you can’t exactly duck out into the middle of the road and calmly hold out your palm, low, near your waist, in a stop gesture, and expect all the cars (and motorcycles) to obey.  That irratated me to no end when I first got here; now I’ve realized it’s just the way pedestrians get around.  My husband has been doing it for a while.  I did it for the first time today, when I was hurrying across the main road into/out of Thamel with the heavy painting.  And the traffic was already mostly stopped, anyway, all the drivers leaning on their horns in protest of a jam around the next corner, so the on-coming drivers resigned themselves to waiting an extra 30 seconds to scoot forward instead of taking advantage of the meter-long gap forming between them and the car they followed.

One more thing–for the first time today, I saw real Kathmandu cats!  I did glimpse one kitty while we were at Bhaktapur; I’ve glimpsed another one or two while we drive up and down the main roads, always in the distance and rapidly disappearing.  But today, while we waited for the shop owner to wrap up the paintings, I flipped through ECS, the leading expatriate magazine here — and glimpsed a blur shoot by my feet, from one open wall of the shop to the other (as I said, the store’s built into a corner — it actually only has two solid walls, and a pillar at the opposite corner to hold up the roof).

I blinked.  “I think that was a cat!  Or else a really large rat…”

My husband added, “It’s a white one!  And it’s over there!”

He pointed the opposite direction, and I was confused, until I watched the brown one I’d glimpsed go darting through with the white one after it.  And then it paused in the middle of the shop, and in a split second I wondered how the shopkeeper would respond to seeing a cat in the middle of his fine paintings store.

The cat froze, staring up at us with wild eyes.  In the same moment I noticed it wore a collar, and the shopkeeper glanced up from his wrapping and said, “Oh, that’s the neighbor’s cat.”

He made a sound between his teeth, a kind of “ttsshh” that I’ve heard other Nepalis make to various animals, dogs and cows and even goats; I’ve yet to figure out whether it’s supposed to be a shooing or summoning sound, though I suspect the former.

The cat started a little, then finished observing us and went to sulk on the front step of the shop, twitching its tail and staring out at the traffic with much the same mild interest as we must have displayed a moment before.  It was quite a pretty cat — a mottled golden brown, with sharp features, so that it reminded me of an Abyssinian.  It was quite skinny and on the small side, with yellow-orange-green-tinged eyes that were a little wild, but its evident ease with not just people, but strangers, proved it was happy enough.  When it discretely turned its head back enough to inspect us, I carefully blinked at it.

The cat’s eyes widened more, and it involuntarily jerked its head a bit; I’ve learned this is the cat equivalent of a start.  I read years ago that to blink at a cat is a way to tell it “I love you;” since then I’ve read other sources that interpret the gesture as sending more of a message of, “Hey, I can take my eyes off you for a moment; I trust you; and I’m not staring at you, planning to attack you; you can trust me, too.”

I lean toward the latter explanation as better depicting what goes through a cat’s mind.  After all, cats don’t need to blink to keep their eyes moist, and usually don’t, unlike humans; it makes sense they could develop meaning behind the simple movement.  And they clearly interpret the motion with a strong meaning; I’ve seen multiple cats start that exact same way when I first carefully blink at them, and I know my own pet cats always snuggle closer and purr louder, and start returning the slow blinks, when I blink at them.

In fact, the first time I ever intentional blinked at one of my pets, the same day I first read that the gesture could have meaning, I did it to an elderly cat I’d had for years.  And immediately her eyes widened, and her ears perked, in an expression that I can only describe as shock.  For a long moment.  And then, slowly, carefully, she relaxed and returned the blink — and then turned her face clear away.

So maybe that first book’s interpretation was right.  I’m not sure you can find a closer parallel in non-human relationships to the awkward moment when a usually distant family member suddenly says, “I love you.” and the other member, startled, replies with a careful, “I love you, too.”

In any case, today’s cat then glanced away from me, too.  It didn’t return the blink.  But its muscles relaxed some, and it stopped discreetly peering at us.  Instead it just cocked its ears toward the traffic, until it abruptly took off down an alley after something that caught its interest.

See?  I still like to write.  There’s plenty more to say about life in Kathmandu.  I have more pictures, too.  I intend to return to posting more regularly — then, hopefully, my novelist tendencies won’t spill over to my blog!

Novels are going well, by the way.  Six and a half still unpublished.  (Sigh)…

Nepali of the day:

mauph garnus:  I’m sorry!  Excuse me!

painting:  painting

pasal:  store

mahongo:  expensive

sasto:  inexpensive

dherai mahongo:  way too expensive

kati rupiyaa:  how many rupees?

yo kati rupiyaa ho?:  how much does this cost?

yo:  this

tyo:  that

Busy Weekend

I know, I’m getting worse about regularly making updates.  I’m getting too adjusted to living here.  When getting out was a challenge, I had plenty of time at home to take pictures out the windows and fiddle with loading the pics into my camera and picking out my favorites and coming here to write posts around them and…

Well, now I’m unfortunately a bit busy.  Or fortunately — this is an amazing place.  It’s incredible to explore.

Though it’s becoming enough of “home” for me to forget more often to actually take the camera out with me.  So maybe no pictures again today — and I’ll just write briefly, because I’m also a novelist in my spare time, and I’ve promised myself that in 14 minutes I get to go edit drafts.  (Hip, hip… why is no one celebrating with me?!)

Anyway:

On Saturday — yesterday– we walked farther than we have since we arrived in Nepal.  We actually reached the point where we could see the individual trunks of the trees covering the hill beside The Pretty Mountain Hill.  In fact, we ascended a fair bit of The Pretty Mountain Hill itself.

Not to say we did any real trekking.  Our “long” walk was an hour and a half out and the same back, all along the road, straight up Maharajgunj and whatever comes after it up toward Shivapuri National Park.  We didn’t actually reach the park, either, though according to the map I checked today, we actually got very close to its borders.  We even reached the tree line, and for the first time in three months I could look up at normal-sized, refreshingly looming, trees over my head.

Many houses, and the side of the road, in Kathmandu have fruit trees.  Admittedly, near Thamel and the King’s former palace there are some nicely tall trees, too.  But I grew up playing in a forest.  Life seems more natural to me when conducted in the shade of protective trees.

Not that I have too much of a problem with a roof here at the edge of the city.  Our house is taller than any surrounding trees and most surrounding houses.  But that also means the view is incredible in every direction — a ring of towering hills, endlessly interesting with the shadows of clouds.  Nice!

So.  Five minutes to our deadline.  I’ll jump ahead to today — this was shopping day.  After fencing (holding the pommel of a foil is much harder for amateur novelists and frequent blog-posters who have been typing too much for too long and have mild carpal tunnel… I think so, anyway.  My fingers don’t like being that cramped!  They get used to it and never want to stretch out again!)…

…anyway, after fencing I had a day of shopping.  A very successful trip, full of uniquely Kathmandu items.  To be brief, in the form of a list:

–A large cushion with irridescent purple/gold threads, with a traditional “endless knot” design.

–two bead necklaces

–two small paintings, 1 large one

–a small hand prayer wheel with intricate designs

–a banner of 25 connected Tibetan prayer flags

–a small Krishna & small Ganesh statues

These join our lamp shades, namaste signs, hand-carved chess sets, little Buddha, pashmina, two skirts, and hand-woven alphabet scroll.  (And tea and incense, but we keep using those.) Even if we had to leave Kathmandu tomorrow, as long as we could take our current belonging with us, I could prove that we’d been here.

…Oh, and we ordered a beautiful, durable metal swing made by the ironwork shop right next to our house.  It will be ready Friday!

Whoops.  Despite how the current song (Timberlake & Madonna) are insisting I’ve got 4 minutes (“to save the world”) I’ve actually gone over my limit by three minutes.

Back to endless editing!

Thamel

Today we met a group for lunch at the Imago Dei restaurant. It featured some interesting variety on the menu, everything from broccoli soup through chicken alfredo to taco wraps and mutton kabobs. This is pretty typical for Kathmandu; tourists and foreigners frequent restaurants that are reported by word of mouth as good and safe. In return, the restaurants seem to like providing an eclectic menu of foods popular with foreigners.

Everything was very good. The cheesecake for dessert was excellent, too, and described by one long-term resident of our group as “the best in Nepal.”

Afterward a few of us walked around the wall of the former king’s palace (there are plans to turn it into a museum) to Thamel.

Thamel is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Kathmandu. Basically, it’s one long shopping district along narrow roads; shops sell everything a tourist could desire to carry home for proof they’d visited Nepal. Buddhist thangkas, Hindu statuettes, Pashmina shawls, Gurkha khukuri knives, and carpets of intricate design… you can find multiple shops selling them all, in Thamel.

Unfortunately we forgot to bring a camera with us, so I don’t have any pictures of my own yet. But to keep this post from remaining sadly pictureless, I found an image from wikipedia licensed under Creative Commons–ie, reusable for free, as long as you don’t try to pass it off as your own. So if you want some sense of Thamel, you can try to read all the signs and understand what’s happening in the picture.

A view of a typical street in Thamel*

Except the picture can’t capture everything. For one thing, not only people and motorcycles meander down the roads, but angry beeping cars as well. Pedestrians are wise to cling to the walls as they walk, and unhurriedly move over when loud beeps grow louder right along with engine sounds. Too, most of Thamel doesn’t really include sidewalks, although occasionally something like them exists, uneven rock or asphalt or brick at the edge of the road. You have to watch your step. Not too many dogs wander through the streets in the inner part of Thamel, but occasionally there are some, or random garbage. And what with the monsoon, there are frequent puddles.

But I have yet to see a single cow within Thamel itself. Probably they think it’s too crowded.

The drawbacks are minor. The shopping is fun. Intricately carved wood, sticks of incense, book stores with clever names like Barnes and Noble “We sell good books” and Walden Book… the variety is endless, and quite Nepali.

We managed to resist buying either used or new books (we rarely manage a trip like that!), or a beautifully carved wooden bowl that nevertheless seemed a little high, at US $50. But we found both a small and large chess set, each unique, and incense and tea, and a better map, and several paper lanterns with popular local designs: a pair of fish, the eyes of Swayambhunath, and Tibetan mantras. They’re all beautiful, and weren’t expensive at all, at 3 for 200 rupees–roughly US $3.

I’ll take and post pictures of everything, eventually. For the moment, for more information on anything, you might want to read wikipedia:

Thangkas

Khukuri

Swayambhunath

Meanwhile, as we acted like tourists, the Nepalis held an important event: the election of their first president. But they aren’t yet through counting the votes, so more on that later.

* This image was originally posted to Flickr by mckaysavage at http://flickr.com/photos/56796376@N00/492181084. It was reviewed on 00:53, 9 October 2007 (UTC) by FlickreviewR, and confirmed to be licensed under the terms of the cc-by-2.0.