Kathmandu, round two

Yep. That's right. I still haven't left Kathmandu.

I told you, it's a black hole.

In my defense, I've been sick. Seems like everyone in town has got a cough and I caught it. I've paid for my room and told the guy that I'm leaving first thing in the morning three or four times now. Not knowing if I was ever still in there or not, I had three people walk into my room and wake me up last night alone. I guess that'll teach me to lock my door.

One of the first things that kept me here was a benefit being put on for SathSath (sathsath.org) that a friend of mine was going to be performing in. At first I had just wanted to be around for it, then we started planning a shadow puppet show (I bought three ridiculous cat finger puppets) to introduce his act. It's a long and tedious story. I tried telling it once and didn't do an especially good job, so I'll skip over it mostly. The punch line is that the show was shut down mid way through at the encouragement of the guy who basically runs the neighborhood. His businesses were suffering for the night because everyone wanted to go to this benefit with entertainment and all-you-can-eat food. So my friend never got to play, except for a small group in a guesthouse room. It had been a good night until the owner of the place hosting the event was carted off by the police and the crowd was threatened for booing and jeering the police. I've been boycotting all of the businesses owned by the jerk in question. (There's a lot more to the story than I have space to elaborate here.) Which, today, means trouble finding a place to fill up my water bottle so I've been drinking tea, etc. all day :P

Then there were the ever-present Maoist protests. The Maoists just split from the government coalition not too long ago because their demands weren't being met and have been holding the country ransom since. They're picketing the government offices from 8am to 5pm (business hours), so the government has instructed their people to arrive at 5am so they don't cross the lines. It's been like this -- peaceful protests and nobody -really- wanting to step too hard on the toes of the other. There was a major (planned) protest yesterday that shut down transportation on the highway heading to the airport, which is also the biggest highway in general and is the route to most nearby towns. Supposedly they may be shutting down the borders at random intervals soon, so leaving the country will be a little like a game of "red light green light." A protracted wait and then a dash for the border town. In any case, it seems like both sides are pretty keen on leaving tourists out of it and things, though politically tense, seem peaceful enough.

I had agreed to go and help paint a nearby school/orphanage that some friends are working at today and stayed in town longer so that I could go and do that (not that there was any transit operating anyway), but I had trouble sleeping last night and wound up waking up after everyone had left this morning. So I'm cutting my losses and finally bought a ticket to get out of here first thing tomorrow.

My strength is returning, and now I'm back on the road -- this time to Pokara, the seat of the Himalayas.

For now, a couple photos:

I finally made it to the "Monkey Temple" that I mentioned before. This is a baby monkey that is about three seconds from being tackled by a much larger monkey.

Another from the same place, these are just two photos I liked.

In nearby Patan, I was loafing around in the main Durbar (Palace) Square and noticed three flattened bottle caps wedged into an old crack in the temple floor that I was sitting on. Imagine my excitement. Sitting there, toying with them, this kid and another little girl not in the photo come screaming by, throwing flattened bottle caps at random targets. Then, without my saying a word or motioning to him at all, the boy walks right up to me and holds up this enormous stack of caps as if to brag. I gave them one of the ones that I had found as a reward for making my day.

This photo is of the bus park that is normally _packed_ with screaming, honking buses. I mean scores of them. On the day of the protests I mentioned earlier, only Maoist-flag bearing buses were allowed through barricades. They would pick up bus loads of people and shuttle them to the protest. Great idea, no? Why don't we ever do anything like that?

And here are a couple banner-wielding Maoists walking through an eerily quiet street in the center of town.