So how is it here? The climate must be hot? Laid back atmosphere? Maybe it's a paradise on the earth? Dude, make your own paradise, there aren't ready made ones on a sale! Or as someone said it, if you wanna view a paradise, look around and view it :) I mean this is just one Asian city, not a paradise much more than any other place in the globe. But I kinda like this, to a degree at least.
I've been staying all these four weeks in Thamel which is the tourism center of Kathmandu. This is crazy. Just like all the tourist trap areas tend to be in these corners of the world ;)
Craww craaawwww (birds)! Feeeeeewww (a motorbike bypasses you in 5cm distance). Troottroot (horn of a car)! Wroooom (car bypasses you 3cm distance)! Madam yes (vendor)! Psst hash (marijuana seller)! You like smoking (another marijuana seller)?! Yes please come in madam (vendor, again)! Riksa riksa helou riksa madam yes riksa (riksa guy)! Wroooom (more traffic)! Wofwof (some of the many street dogs)! Cra-cra-cra-cra-craaawwww (birds)! This is how it is when you'll close your eyes.
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| This what I first saw of Shiva Ratri, the white department |
Open your eyes and you'll possibly forget about the noises.. What do you mean now..? I mean there are so many of these noise makers in the view that the visual side will take over the attention of the auditive side of reality. Specially because most of these noise making objects will catch your attention, no matter you wanted it or not. Look, you don't wanna get ran down by a car, you don't want an Indian guy bump into you in a crowd (at least if you are a female, because his intention might be to squeeze some of the feminine parts of your body just while passing by!), you don't want to get ur toes under a riksa's bicycle wheel, you don't wanna step into a hole in a street, you don't wanna get in too close contact with the marijuana sellers.. At least I hope so! :) Hmm, at least I don't want to :p Just a couple of days ago I was just about to punch one them. Even though I tend to be strictly against violence. First he was telling me that bullshit about hash, I told him to NOT TO BOTHER ME. Then he told me that maybe i want a massage? Ok. Now let's take notice of one thing, this is not Scandinavia, this is Nepal, where the culture is pretty similar to india. Specially what it comes to sexuality and communication between men and women. There is not such a thing as massage between male and female (yes, I am female and the grass seller of the story is male). I translate what he said. The audible version was: you like massage? The meaning of it is: I wanna fuck you bitch. So no wonder I already considered hitting that dirty bastard, but ended up just telling him a bunch of rough words and leave my violence karma clean white ;)
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| The music department of the festival parade |
So the Thamel area is quite crazy. Every street is full of shops. Little shops selling variable quality of Western styled Asian spirited clothes, brass statues, singing bowls, more and less original pashmina shawls, 100% yak wool shawls (made of 100% acrylic), felted bags and other handicrafts, trekking items, silver and artificial jewellery, tours, flights, couries services, foods and fruits. Fruits are one funny show here. For example bananas cost normally 20-25rupees /6pieces, but be a tourist with a white face and your price for the exactly same thing in Thamel suddenly is 40rupees, hmm? Well I of course refuse to pay that tourist extra and tell them in hindi (which most people here understand a litlle at least, and since my Nepali is still almost zero, then the most convincing option to show them I'm not a totally unexperienced tourist is.. Hindi!) that it's no way, I pay you absolutely no more than 30rupees and thats it.
And the food.. All kinds of so nice food is available. There are lots of restaurants, prices for mains between one and five euros. Most of the places have good food :D which is really nice of course! One of my very favourites at the moment is a place called K2 which is selling a nice variety of Tibetan, Chinese, Nepali, Indian and Western foods. My very favorite so far has been wonderful Tibetan bread with honey. Oh boy! Last time eating that the honey was just running everywhere. I was literally covered with the running golden honey. I was thinking that how will this end omg what a mess...... But the napkins they have are the Asian type. Very hard, not soft and brittle as the
Western ones tend to be. So somehow I actually managed to get most of the honey off from my fingers, palms, wrists and arms... I was reliefed. And absolutely delighted because the fresh pancake like bread with some rosmary in it was just so good. So good. So goooooood **love**
One food story is of course the supermarkets! We in Asia love and adore all the Western items!! Specially if they are well covered with plastic and have a label of a supranational brand on it :) Oh my God. The tiny supermarkets are selling everything from organic teas to Western chocolates and cookies to butter and soymilk. And everything properly wrapped in plastic. At the counter there normally are two workers. One who is taking your money. And the other one who is packing your plastic wrapped items into a plastic bag. We love plastic <3 hehehe...
My favorite food shopping scenes so far has been the vegetable shop and the fruit wala. Its just like in India. Fresh veggies/fruits, locally grown, non of them is wrapped in plastic neither imported fom Spain ;) There are fruit sellers who sell bananas, grapes, oranges, apples and sometimes pears too. Most of the fruit sellers here like carrying their shops with them and move up and down the street. They have built a fruit basket on a bicycle, so it's easy for them to drive away just when you are about to grap a bunch of bananas for yourself... I wonder if it's because they are hoping to get the fruit hunting customers desperate while trying to find the fruit guy? From a desperate customer it's easier to get a bit more extra charge :D
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| The festival poster |
The vegetable shops are more often like 'real shops' either in a building like a small kiosk, or just a table under a tent. Something like what we used to have in Finland in market places. Even smaller veggie shops exists too which they do take along with them. It might just be one basket carried on the top of the head with a lot of shouting. Why shouting? Well you gotta advertise your products of course! My habitué veg shop is just a bit more luxurous place. They even sell some fruits their! Yes! I can get my bananas from the same shop without the desperate fruit guy hunting episode! Plus that the bananas are 20rupees per six pieces in my favorite veg luxury shop. Not 40rupees like the moving guys always tell me.. Most of the times the veg shops never sells any fruits, except the tiny limes (which you will get only from the veg shops, the fruit guy won't have limes).
The first time visited my favorite vegetable shop was interesting. I walked to the shop. It was difficult to figure out whether I should had entered or tried to do the shopping on the outside desk. There where three or four persons in the shop, all of them looking somewhat flegmatic and not present at all. I told them namaste, hello, hi, I want to buy this, hello hello, but nobody reacted. So I just stepped into the shop and started to pick up this and that and this and that :) When my hands were absolutely full of this and that, somebody finally decided to help me out by putting the veggies on a scale to see how much I should pay for my green fresh desires.. The story ended up nicely, the shop people were smiling and looked like they were happy I had bought my foods from them. Funny it is :) I have ended up to buy my vegetables from there all the time :D My next green desire dream is to find Kheti Bazar. It is the only(?) organic food market in Kathmandu. I will certainly tell you about it later!
Look now, i was supposed to tell you about kathmandu. So far what i ve been writing about only food :) :D
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| The red department |
Anyway, now shortly about Shiva Ratri, the festival of Shiva, which we celebrated here two weeks ago. Festivals are important thing in Indian culture. I know, this is Nepal, not India. But there are many similarities in their cultures anyway. One is festivals. At the time I lived in Kolkata they had all kinds of festivals all the time. A festival or two every week. Each of them lasting few days. At the time of the festival nothing worked the way expected like offices, posts, public transportation or other cervices. For every festival there were huge preparations. They built up all kinds of temporary temples and decorations just for that certain event. Before every festival (which means actually all the time) there where poeple going from door to door and telling everybody to give money for the festival preparations. They even had name lists with them to write down who had given money and how much. Everyone HAD TO give money for that. I refused, I said no, I didn't open the door, they didn't like it ;) And i was thinking. I was thinking of how much energy they used for making the festivals, making the decorations, getting everything together, begging money for that. And I was thinking everything that didn't work well their just because nobody was putting any effort into it for getting it to work. And I was thinking how greatly they could improve so many things in their lives and in their country by putting all that energy into the things that didn't work so well :) That was an interesting question. The things that didn't work so well, nobody cared of those, it had always been like that, you could anyway somehow manage with it, so why on earth even to think how it could be better..?
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| The gray department |
But the festival! It happens now, it is something that has always been there, it is something that has always been put effort into, just because it has always been like that :) And what special happened in the festival time then? Of course every festival had its own special theme, but the most common combination was: decorations, some small devotional arts (music mainly), festival market (with all kinds of vendors selling all kinds of things), nothing worked normally/properly (because of the festival) and people came out of their homes to check out the festival decorations and wander around the festival markets. So many beautiful decorations.. What did they do with them after? I don't know exactly. I was told they ended up into river Ganges, I was told they would be taken to a museum abroad. Im sure many of those divine decorating efforts ended up to the divine lap of Mother Ganga.
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| The kids' department |
But our Shiva Ratri here was nice and simple. Everything seemed pretty normal except a few beautiful and noisy parade on the streets with a lot of music. They also gave posters to people. The poster was telling in Nepali language about the origin of the festival and Shiva himself. That morning I woke up quite late, got out of the door and almost got run down by the festival people :D I ran back to my room, took my camera, and yes :) This time i have some visual proof of Kathmandu and the festival for you..
The legend s tell shiva used to smoke marijuana. People in Nepal and India are somewhat familiar with marijuana. And on Shiva Ratri everybody smokes. That's at least what my local friends here said me again and again. They said they smoke on the festival day because of respecting Shiva. Well that's a nice excuse, yeah? :) At least ten days before the festival the main topic on the discussions was ”after so and so many days is Shiva Ratri! Everybody smokes! Then you smoke also? We smoke together!” My answer to all the discussions was always the same: ”Sorry but I don't smoke, thanks” I really have no interest in putting myself into the state of mind and energy the people are after smoking ganja. It's so not. Last season. If even that! ;) So i had a non smoking Shiva Ratri with some extremely stoned people all around, whose phones were ringing all the time and every time there was some friend with whom they had to go to smoke some. It's so funny. Afterwards one guy reported me he had two days serious mari hangover. No wonder. I wonder it really wasn't more than just two days? :D
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| The festival parade car |
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| And there they are! Shiva and Parvati! |
Om Namah Shivaya!
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