There are certain bars scattered around the world that have a certain vibe: an air of heady expectation rippling through them, anytime; a steady stream of expressive punters, dressed down, attractive, chatting and laughing easily; good tunes seeping from speakers; and when you’ve got seven tonne elephants plodding by, down on the street, as quiet as mice, this bar was most certainly one of them.
Taking a seat and ordering an Everest beer, Santos, a drunken Nepalese, bumped into me, almost toppling over, reefer dangling from his lips. More elephants trumpeted contentedly from distant stables, on a bed of straw for the night, while tigers prowled the jungle floor for deer, or anything else that looked edible.
The drunkard Santos garbled some nonsense in the language that only drunkards understand, apparently forgetting the joint in his mouth, so I extracted it and took a long drag as the palm fronds, at head height, gently fanned away the heat of the day. A look of surprise came over his face, narrow eyes attempting to focus, sobering up just a little.
“Hey man … where you from?” he slurred, and it’s a good job that I have a strong enough grasp of the English language to reply.
“The jungle.”
“Yeah? Me too!”
From that moment on the bar seemed to melt into one. Joints went round, came back, and went round again as more were rolled. Two absconding English guys turned up, former soldiers, whose names now escape me, taking a roundabout route on migration to Australia, although I got the feeling they were in two minds about that, and, later, Santos reappeared, the second coming, somehow making it up the ladder with a huge bag of grass in one hand and a couple of German chicks in the other. The jungle was becoming multi-national. There were other characters who passed through, players on the jungle stage, but by that point they were just darkish shadows with hazy faces and unfathomable personalities, leaves dropping from trees. The Jungle Joint boss got his guitar out and we all sang and danced and spilled our drinks, the wooden planks creaking and rocking, and an old lady came up the ladder too and shouted, “Who want momo! Who want momo!?”
Christ knows how we made it back to the Jungle Hotel, a good mile away along the pitch black track, dense undergrowth on either side, hillsides matted with webbed tree canopy enveloping all beneath, waterfalls pouring through ravines. There are beasts in there; some big and dangerous, some small and dangerous, but I woke up late yet alive in the steamy morning, pretty much lunchtime, the pockets of my shorts crammed with dried jungle ganja and sipping jungle coffee I rolled one up in the deserted jungle restaurant – all the guests out on safari in search of invisible tigers – trying to piece together the events of last night while the waiter asked, “Do you have elephants in England, sir?”
“None that I recall.”
The thought of at least five hours on a bus bouncing along the jungle highway, diving into every pothole known to man and woman, didn’t appeal so I booked $75 tickets on Buddha Air and the 40 seat propeller-driven plane lurched skywards, jungle below, fine views of the Himalayas rising from the clouds to the north, and 25 minutes later we smacked down onto tarmac at Kathmandu airport, screeching to a halt, burning rubber, a long way from the terminal building, and where we got off, walked through a creaking iron gate and out onto the city street.
“Want some hashish?” was the first question one of the gaggle of taxi touts asked, and so the rest of our time was spent in the Garden of Dreams, an oasis in coloured, joyful madness, the eyes of children peeping out from darkened shops, gigantic, leggy white European trekkers photographing the stupas and shrines, dressed in ethnic clothes that I've never seen the locals wear.
The following morning was spent rolling up on the balcony, puffing away, watching the school kids exercise then pray on the yard beneath the hotel as great tresses of purple clematis ruffled on the Himalayan breeze.
Gotta love Nepal.