20 Minutes Around the neighborhood

BLOG ENTRY 1 9/22/08 11am

There is nothing like a stream of cold water pouring down your back to bathe and wake yourself up in the beginning of the day. When I first got to my flat here in Bhat Bhateni, Kathmandu, Nepal one week ago the miniature hot-water-heater above the toilet was broken. Since then it has been fixed but I have yet to use it. I rather like the chilly water and the hot-water-heater takes twenty minutes to get ready anyways.

This morning I woke up and did some yoga and stretching in my bedroom, then I walked up stairs and greeted to sun on my flat’s rooftop. The view from the roof is not spectacular but one definitely gets the feeling that they are right in the middle of a big city, and that is where I am. Kathmandu with a quickly growing population of 1 million is one of three bigger cities in the Kathmandu Valley. A couple days ago I had hung up some laundry after washing it by hand under the same faucet that I bathe with (the showerhead is useless) and forget to bring it in before it rained last night- typical evening and nights showers for the end of the monsoon- but I was surprised that by 9am the powerful sun had already dried most everything.

Waking up at 8:30am like I did this morning is rather late for these parts and by the time I was done with some exercises on the roof John, another Fulbright Fellow who is my roommate for the time being while he finds a flat to make his own, was already cooking some breakfast. Ducking under a grapefruit tree hanging low with heavy green fruit I walked out of my typical little gated complex of five or so apartment buildings to my small neighborhood street. Directly across the way are two small shops that seem to do the same thing- sell kaajaa (food that does not include rice) and chia (chai / tea). They are tiny little shacks with a cozy atmosphere. Walking another 45 seconds down the street I pass two tailors working with old fashioned sewing machines with foot power capability (the city looses power about 36 hours/week) and a little general store selling packaged candies, drinks, soaps and other small goodies. The little corner store had people crowded around a small table drinking tea and chatting. I took a short cut down a small alley way hardly wide enough for a bicycle passing another tailor, a little western style bakery (muffins and shitty white bread) on the left and a small Indian restaurant on the left.

This alley takes me to the main street of Bhat Bhateni where I took a left next to a huge tree on a rock stoop, the base of the tree stained red from people doing puja (Hindu / Bhuddist religious worhip ceremony). Past the tree on the right hand side of the road is one of the most expensive restaurants in Kathmandu. The Roadside Cafe sells wood-fired pizza, hummus, and some Nepali snacks (I had the pasta pesto there which really wasn’t any good, but the pizza I tasted was excellent). Just across the street from The Roadside Café is a daadaa, a public water tap. Any time of the morning, day or evening you walk by there will be men, women and children bathing, washing there clothes, and filling up water jugs in stone open room fixed below the road where sometimes creepy men stand above and overlook the women bathing with a towel around them.
This busy street is loaded with traffic and movement. At any given time on any street there can be any or all of the following: pedestrians, bicycles, motorcycles, huge buses, small minivans, cars, took-tooks (small three wheeled automobile used for public trans), dogs, goats, cows, chickens, and of course trash. Its hectic, loud and scary at times with large plumes of black diesel fumes clouding the streets from the old vehicles in a country with next to no emission standards. There is no real order to the madness. For the most part people drive on the left side of the road but there is a constant battle for position on the streets and it is a constant colorful swirl of all forms of human transportation. It is incredible how many people fit into the public transportation vehicles. A small mini-van I road in the other day somehow crammed in over 30 people packed like sardines standing and leaning over each other, even hanging outside the side door. 12 rupees to go just about anywhere (70 some Nepali rupees to the dollar).

I walked past the couch mender, more tailors, an internet café, small shops a couple schools and many piles of trash to get to a small shop that I knew had the veggies I wanted to buy just a minute or two down the road. This shop like most others are small and open air with an array of goods sprawled out on the ground or behind the counter. I picked up two bitter gourds (I doubt you have ever seen this really bitter squash in the US unless you go to a south-asian market), two large cucumbers and a few tomatoes for 30 rupees (about 40 cents) and walked the other way back home.

I walked by another Fulbright friend named Eli who was on his way to the office, he gave me a fresh muffin from that bakery and said we might see each other tonight. Eli is studying the transition from Monarchy to Democracy currently taking place now in Nepal and thinks that drafting a constitution here will be no easy or small task, but more on that later. Again I walked past the water tap, but passed the alley this time to stay on the main road. Less that a minute walk from small alley a more major intersection. Standing at this intersection, before you is a large mall where things have fixed prices (so there is no bartering and haggling which is otherwise the sometimes fun and entertaining norm) and you can find just about anything under one roof. Its not a mall or even a huge department store by western standards but it is a very new and big shopping experience for Nepalis and the whole complex was started by one Gurung (ethnic group) woman as a small shop like any other but developing over the last 25 years to now have escalators and four stories of clothes, household goods, electronics and foods.

There are a few billboards at the intersections advertising antidandruff shampoo and White Mischief Vodka- “A little mischief, a lot of fun!”. Across from the mall and the billboards is the main mandir (Hindu temple) of the Bhat Bhateni neighborhood. There are a few ornate buildings and intricately carved and colored statues of gods with people handing out, doing puja, praying or just walking by. This is a medium-small mandir, but walking along the street, one frequently encounters mandirs stained red and other colors with people maybe doing puja, they range from a small statue the size of your hand built into the side of a wall or building, to a small brick room with a ganesh statue in it built under a gnarled pipal tree which looks hundreds of years old (like a mandir just down another street), to a huge temples considered word heritage sites.

I turn right at this intersection and stop briefly at a shop that sells fruits and vegetables. I have become friends with the family that owns the place. Every time I walk by they have a friend or customer sitting down and chatting. Whenever I walk by they invite me to sit down. Usually they will feed me fresh papaya, bananas of various assortments, pomegranates, carrots, and apples at the shop while we chat (they even had me over for dinner the other night- but that is a whole other story), but this time I just sat down a minute or two and then left telling them that I was cooking breakfast. I walked away with some cilantro they gave me for free- they have given me so much, they are so friendly, its incredible!

Walking away from their produce shop I am soothed by smell of incense burning at the mandir across the street. Within seconds the calming cent of incense is replaced by a thick, pungent aromas and a noisy machine rattling as it grinds spices of turmeric, coriander and cumin in a tiny shop with three women dressed in red saaris, squatting as they wait to by their share. My apartment is just a minute or two walk from the produce shop and along the way I poked my head through a open air curtain into a small restaurant I have been going to for khaanaa (food that includes rice) to say hello to the super friendly short and stout didi with a traditional nose ring (didi meaning older sister- everyone is either your younger or older brother or sister). Here they serve dal baat, the traditional Nepali meal of rice, lentil soup and vegetables eaten with the hands, of course food is not really considered food culturally and linguistically unless there is a mountain of rice on your plate. It’s a great place to eat as much as you want (they serve you as many times as you please) for 50 rupees (65 cents), and meet local people. The didi gave me a huge smile and asked when I was coming next as she washed saag (vegetable greens) under a faded poster of Avril Lavigne on the wall behind her and a funky feathered chicken scurrying at her feet.

Just around the corner some people said hello to me as I walked by. The two guys were standing in front of the neighborhood barbershop, one of them had shaved my beard the other day and they recognized me and asked how I was, have you had tea this morning, have you eaten yet? No I said, I was about to cook. I asked if they had, no they had had tea and kaajaa, but no food; they would soon go to the room they share nearby and cook and eat dal bhaat. At their barber shop a beard save is available for 30 rupees I got this combined a good face wash /message and mediocre back, head, arm massage- 45 minutes 100 rupees. Around the next corner I turned left into my gate shuffling by the white dog that is always hanging around at the foot of our gate. There are stray dogs everywhere sticking to their own territory and they are most active at night.
By the time I got back to the flat not more than 20 or so minutes had passed since I left to buy the vegetables, and I could have made it back in less. But what is the hurry? its nice having things close and friendly people all around. No one ever seems to be in a rush here and I am trying to get on that wave length- so different from the busy nature of American life.

John was adding beans, peas, tomatoes, and potatoes to the pressure cooker, later adding freshly stoned ground garlic-ginger-hot pepper paste and turmeric fried in pungent mustard oil. The 25lbs stone I bought for $3.50 is a great thing to have to grind spices and fist size rocks of pink Himalayan crystal salt sold in the bazaar. I cooked the bitter gourd with fenugreek, onion, and turmeric, cut up the cucumber and we made an acchar- a freshly made condiment also called chutney; although we think of chutney as a pickle here the two words are synonymous and can mean either. The acchar was of freshly ground coconut (I drank its water yesterday), lime juice, cilantro and salt. We ate the delicious meal with churri, a crunchy pre-cooked, flattened and dried rice popular for kaaja. I don’t know if I will ever be able to make food taste like the Nepalis do. I know how they cook, but there is just something they have, the right touch, the experience of cooking dal bhat their entire lives, that makes there food such as incredible experience to eat.