“Yeah?” I rubbed my eyes, wondering where the hell I was, and then finally sussing it, “Any chance of some breakfast?”
My aim was the unmissable Shamba Ling Hotel in Boudha, a north-eastern suburb of the city, home to the holiest Buddhist stupa in Nepal, and one of the world’s largest, protected by UNESCO, so I guess the UN is good for something.
I was boosting my good karma, man, and to help that I stopped off on the way, in Thamel, a few Ozzy Osborne types drifting about, minus the bling, grimy and unhealthy, for a meet-up with my old friend and buddy Rads who had the goods, and, while he wolfed down a plate of momos (stuffed dumplings), barely chewing, kind of sliding them down like oysters, I slunk off to the karzee to roll up.
Rads had organised his mate, a taxi driver, to give us a lift and we got there in 15 minutes but it took us another hour to find the freaking hotel.
“Is that alcoholic?” I asked, with unintentional optimism.
It was lemon tea, but did remind me to pop down to the shops for a bottle of Scotch.
There were chambermaids in green dresses skipping around the roof, from washing line to wicker basket, dancing amid the laundry fluttering on a beautiful breeze as I looked out onto the Boudha stupa, bright orange in the sunset.
The best of the Shamba Ling was still to come, because their trump card stood in the form of Binod: tall, thin, moustache, dressed for the fifties, like a Hungarian; waiter extraordinaire. When he arrived at our table out on the patio, rain splattering heavily on the roof, I thought, ‘This is Basil Fawlty Junior’ and then he fired off his opening salvo.
“Should I ask, sir, if you would like a drink, sir? Or should I ask if you would like to wait for a drink, sir?"
There was a pause. I’ve got a feeling it was a pregnant one.
“Sorry?”
“Should I ask about the drinks, sir? Should I ask you for your preference, sir? Should I? Should I really, sir? Or should I not?"
“Right … erm …”
I’d been sampling Rads’ large lump of hash on the balcony, so this was proving a bit tricky.
“Should I come back, sir? Should I come back when you are ready, sir? Should I do that, or shouldn’t I, sir?”
“Yeah. Good thinking. Got a menu?”
“A menu, sir? Should I fetch it, sir? Should I?”
“Well, this is a restaurant, isn’t it?”
Cue manic laughter, bent at the waist, clutching a tray, knuckles white, mouth stretched tight, as if in agony, so wide open I could see straight down his throat.
“Hahahahah, sir. Should I say you are being humorous, sir?”
“I should say and you should get the menu, I’m starving.”
“Hahahahah, sir. Hahahahah! I should, sir. Yes, sir. I should not delay, sir, should I?” And with that he scurried off.
I couldn’t work out if he was taking the piss or not. When he reappeared, rigid in movement, stepping across the wet grass, then squirming on the spot, dry washing his hands, Basil-like, I decided he was being serious. He really believed that this was the way English is spoken.
“Should I ask if you are from Great Britain, sir? Or should I say that you are from the United States, sir?”
“You should say I’m from Great Britain.”
“Should I, sir? Should I really?”
“Yup, that’s the question, Binod.”
There were pork chops on the menu and therefore no case of ‘should I or shouldn’t I’ to answer: pig it would be, delicious with mashed potato and gravy. Enjoying the freshness of the garden after rain, the peace was interrupted by a cough and a question.
“Should I ask, sir, if I should take the plates away, sir? Or should I leave them on the table, sir?”
It was time to retire; Binod had worn us out, and time to pray that the electric blanket worked.
The next day, after a 'should I/shouldn't I' breakfast, wandering through alleyways to the stupa, storm clouds brooding above, saffron and crimson robed monks walking about, one of the Buddhists saw me, wide-eyed, and he smiled broadly and let out a jolly “hi!” It was a lovely start to the day.
From a rooftop café I sat back and enjoyed the rain, extra special after the parched desert. Thunder rumbled through the valley, like oak barrels pounding a wooden floor, and the white stupa was glistening after the downpour, turning duck-egg-blue in the weak sunlight before settling the day with a delicate yellow-orange tinge bringing the kids out into the streets, patting a shuttlecock back and forth, badminton replacing the October swings. Soldiers patrolled past them, armed with short, lacquered sticks.
*
Nepal is a country which really makes you want to walk, hence the copious trekking industry, and my feet were itching when we set off, tipping Binod well before we left the hotel, yet hoping to win it back in a wager we'd made. He'd gone down in my estimation when he had revealed himself to be a Chelsea fan - the English football club synonymous with boneheads, racism, violence, and, nowadays, money swindled from the Russian people - and we'd bet 100 big ones ($1) on that weekend's match - Arsenal lost, so I lost. Binod will have to wait for pay day.
“Should I say 'thank you', sir? Or should I say 'much obliged'?” was his parting shot.
After another chilly night – no heating, no electricity, spent almost fully dressed under the covers, followed by an amazing dawn, mist like cotton wool soothing the landscape - we positively leapt out of bed.
At breakfast I found out that the red dot that Hindus sport on the forehead represents fire, while the hair is water, and there’s some other stuff that passed me by because I became preoccupied with wondering why the waiter wasn’t saying, “Should I pour the coffee, sir, or shouldn’t I?”
As we walked a long ridge, warmed by a January sun, the clouds parted and the Himalayas appeared, majestically, much as a movie star making an unexpected appearance among civilians. This was the Langtang range (not summitted until 1978), with Everest about 50 km further, deeper inside the Massif, where the snow was now falling in metres per hour and the rivers were iced solid. On a rocky cliff we basked like lizards, ate some lunch and smoked some hash, gazing in silence at one of the world’s most incredible sights.
A plantation of trees that I hoped were Pipals – the tree that Buddha meditated beneath – but weren’t, led us down to the hamlet of Dilkot and there we boarded a bus, transported up the final hill, sitting on a pile of potatoes, amusing the school kids in smart uniforms, with a Maris Piper up my arse, to 2195 metre high Nagarkot and the glow of the heated Club Himalaya Hotel. Yippee! After 3 nights under cold sheets, I stood in my underpants below the air-conditioner, wallowing in warmth, tinged with guilt at the thought of most of the nation shivering below. At some point a porter even turned up with hot water bottles. Or did I dream that?
Out in the sticks it soon becomes obvious that it’s the women doing the work – in the house, in the fields, collecting wood - while the men stand around gambling, playing board games, doing nothing, losing everything, not even noticing young girls staggering past carrying huge containers of water, barely spilling a drop. The Maoist government could start with rallying a peasant’s army, not for war, but to clean up the environment, which is littered with plastic, blighting the land that made Nepal’s name. But they don’t; they just sit in high office bickering and bitching with other male-dominated parties, doing nothing, getting Jack Schitt done.
“The capital of England is London and the capital of the Netherlands is Amsterdam,” he continued. “This is my house. Do you want to see it?”
“Sure. You a tour guide?”
“Yes, I want to be.”
“You can practice on us, ok?”
It was a neat little one storey, one roomed mud hut with wonky corrugated roof and two holes for windows at the front, which, with the door in dead centre, made it look like a face. The tour didn’t take long around a dirt floor, two beds and cooking utensils stacked in a corner. The remains of a fire lay in a square bricked area on the floor.
“Nice place,” I said. “What’s your name, kid?”
“My name is Buddha,” came the answer. “Buddha Bika.”
I blinked and he showed me a shallow hole next to one of the beds and said, “Every day Jesus comes out of this hole at six o’clock in the morning. Never at six o’clock in the evening.”
“Oh yeah? Does he say anything?”
“No, he doesn’t say nothing. He smiles at me and my brother and my mother.”
“That’s good. Where is your mother?”
“She’s in the town. She will come home at five o’clock. That’s a pig,” he continued, remembering his tour guide duties, as a black-haired porker snuffled by, followed by a troupe of piglets.
“Mmmm,” I said, “Breakfast.”
“No, not breakfast. We don’t eat it.”
“What do you do with it then?”
“It lives. It’s an animal. We can’t kill it.”
“How old are you, Buddha Bika?”
“I am 9 years old. I think you are 27 years old.”
I laughed at his assessment, almost 20 years off the mark.
“Thanks, Buddha Bika. Show us around the village, huh?”
It was an entertaining tour – “This is a shop. This is a hotel. This is a chicken. This is my friend" – that ended at The Hotel at the End of the Universe where a Scot was drinking whisky and staring at his phone, an Ozzie was sick while staring at a phone, and a Swiss girl sat mute, back to the mountains, no phone to stare at.
I guessed Buddha Bika hadn't eaten much that day so I treated him to lunch and he plumped for a chocolate and banana pancake, which he ate heartily, informing me between mouthfuls that the Maoist government had closed down his school so he studies at home by "looking at the tree and sky."
At 4.50pm he shot off to meet his mother at the bus stop and help her carry her bags to the house with a face that Jesus visits and Buddha watches over.
The days in Nagarkot passed in sun-kissed bliss, wallowing on the Himalayan balcony, smoking spliffs, and in the evening, when the delightful waitress Binita told us that she was afraid when she walked home at night, we accompanied her down to the darkened village, only to find the hotel gates locked on our return and it was a leg-up onto a wall and a climb back inside. When I told him, the hotel manager laughed, “You’re not the first.”
*
It was sad to leave that place but the downhill jaunt, that turned into a serious trek, thrashing back foliage with a stick, on the look-out for snakes, and, wistfully, tigers, to Bhaktapur took us past an army barracks and then a sub-tropical rhododendron then pine forest where we came across a hunting party with a huge shotgun, then, finding a road after 5 hours, a bus dropped us off next to a pond full of carp and turtles in the red brick, medieval town and it was another night in a heatless room, albeit with two hot water bottles.
Bhaktapur is one of those towns where the eyes don’t know where to settle. After the hustle of the cobbled streets; sacred cows; goats; Buddhist Mohicans; kids waiting nervously for exams; a clematis covered police station; drunken porters prostrate on the ground; stone elephants having sex; Chinese tour groups; a wedding procession with brass band; the preserved medieval core is a welcome patch of serenity with temples and shrines and squares galore, bathed, as ever, in orange light.
Not really a museum type of guy I was still fascinated by the National Art Gallery, empty other than us, swastikas painted on the floor (Hitler stole the symbol), and a collection of tantric sex paintings - early porno - dating back to the 12th century. After a thorough examination, it appears that not much has changed in the world of nooky since then. They even had condoms, of a sort.
Finally it was back to Kathmandu for a final night in Hotel Tibet and the nearby Yak Bar beckoning me in, and the next day, boohoo, a sad departure from a land that so many have fallen for. Shame about the government, although that can be said for most parts of the world.
Should I go back, sir …? Of course you should. I could/should spend years there.