Kathmando's and Don'ts

Just minutes after I posted about the cancellation of our trip to Nepalgunj, the Peace Corps staff announced a new three-day trip to Kathmandu. We were so happy! This past Tuesday, the 26 of us piled into a tourist bus for the three-hour drive to Bhaktapur, one of the three royal cities in Kathmandu Valley (the other two being Kathmandu and Patan). We’d previously stayed in the outskirts of Bhaktapur for Initial Orientation, but now we would tour the ancient heart of the city.

Traveling to Bhaktapur—and really going anywhere in any vehicle in Nepal—is no walk in the park. In fact, transportation is one of Peace Corps Nepal’s greatest safety concerns. First, there’s the state of the roads: aside from those in and connecting major cities, the majority of Nepali roads are windy, narrow, unpaved, and unkempt. In many spots, there isn’t enough room for two vehicles to pass simultaneously. During monsoon season, some of the roads become literally impassable by water. Erosion occasionally causes landslides that either block or destroy roads, depending on where they occur. Limited lighting along roads makes for poor visibility.

If there are rules of the road, they are rarely followed. Except in some parts of Kathmandu, traffic lights are virtually nonexistent. Turn signals are used so scarcely that it wouldn’t really matter if they didn’t exist. Drivers turning onto roads, rather than those going straight, often claim the right of way. Most roads lack dividing lines or lanes, and passing slower vehicles is done frequently and daringly. Cars and buses barrel down the hill, honking around corners to alert oncoming traffic of their presence. Bus drivers often work with one or two others whose sole jobs are to collect the fare and ensure that the bus doesn’t hit anything. In addition, drunk driving, overcrowded vehicles, and poor vehicle maintenance compound the risk of accident.

And accidents do happen. On a weekend hike with her family, a fellow trainee spotted people emerging from a bus that had just gone off the road; luckily, everyone was able to escape without serious harm. A current volunteer’s village was recently struck by tragedy when a jeep went over the side of a cliff, killing several (including his neighbor). On the way home from a group trip to Melamchi we came fairly close to a head-on collision with another bus, stopping just a few feet from its front windshield.

One of the more peaceful views from the bus ride

Nevertheless, we made it to Bhaktapur unscathed. With its many temples, shrines, and monuments, Bhaktapur is a very popular tourist destination—foreign spending accounts for 60% of the city’s revenues. Nepali art and architecture here are highly intertwined, with intricate woodcarvings covering many of the doors and windows of the ancient buildings. Walking through the city was a strange experience for many of us: viewed as tourists, we were not stared at for the first time in months. When shopkeepers and street merchants tried to sell us their goods in English, we responded in Nepali, much to their surprise and delight. As white people who speak to the language, we are regarded as neither tourist nor Nepali. Our position as both an outsider and an insider will have a profound impact on our work, and is one of the reasons Peace Corps is a unique organization.

 

That night, we stayed in guesthouse near Thamel, one of the more touristy parts of Kathmandu. Our bus arrived in the early evening, giving us some time to eat and explore. After being in our isolated, traditional villages for almost two months, the freedom and possibility of a big city felt both exciting and strange. We could choose from a variety of foods (rather than twice-a-day dhal bhaat), drink (without being judged), and blend in. Over the next few days, we enjoyed Tibetan, Italian, American, and Middle Eastern cuisine. After a few days, however, some of us found ourselves actually missing our family’s dhal bhaat.

The next day, we participated in an “Amazing Race” designed to familiarize us with traveling to important places in the city independently. These included a travel health clinic, hospital, bus station, and finally the Peace Corps Office. Though my team didn’t win, traveling around the city was a fun and invaluable experience. In Kathmandu, public transportation consists of taxis (a little expensive for our budget), tempos (or tuk-tuks), microbuses, and buses. Riding these last three can be a real adventure: after flagging one down and asking whether the driver can take you to your destination, you climb on board the (sometimes still-moving) vehicle and try find some space amidst the other jam-packed travelers. During busy times, up to 25 passengers made be found in vans designed for fifteen. But the tight space also has its benefits, especially given Nepalis’ friendliness. Even with our rudimentary language skills, we made fast friends with a number of our fellow travelers.

We spent the rest of that day and most of the next receiving trainings at the Peace Corps Office, an unmarked, highly secured, and very beautiful estate that the Peace Corps is renting from a wealthy Tibetan merchant. Highlights from the next two days included an office tour, a flu shot, pizza, a Halloween cake and Snickers bars (as well as bobbing for apples, at the request of some trainees), and a talk by Jim Fischer, one of the volunteers from the first group of Peace Corps Volunteers to work in Nepal. His stories and pictures resonated with some of what we’ve experienced so far, and also excited us for the two years to come. I bought and read his book, At Home In the World, which contained a lot of useful information about what life in the Peace Corps is like in Nepal.

Other notes from Kathmandu:

My computer is fixed! Brought it to the Apple Store, where they plugged it in and it immediately started charging. I felt like an idiot, but am relieved to have my computer back.

We returned from Kathmandu as a group of 25, one short of the number we arrived with. For a number of reasons I shouldn’t discuss here, another of our members has gone home. Again, we hit another emotional low as the some of the harsher realities of service continue to sink in.