Not the Middle of Nowhere
Welcome to my random musings about the world, on a weekly-to-occasional basis.
Where we are: We’re in Dubai for one more weekend, before we pick up the pace again for a few weeks in East Africa. This has been a restful and productive break. I wrote this essay back during the holidays, while we were in Nepal. Sitting at breakfast that first morning in Kathmandu, I could feel my preconceived notions being up-ended, and I felt compelled to write it down (this happens to me all the time—apparently I have too many preconceived notions). At the time I thought the essay was kind of boring, but I’ve found myself thinking about it a lot since then, so I figured I’d share it with y’all.
Not the Middle of Nowhere
On our first morning in Kathmandu, I sat at breakfast marveling at diversity.
In my mind, with a long history of reading travel books about ‘exciting’ and ‘remote’ adventures, Nepal is located precisely in the middle of nowhere. In the kind of travel books I’ve always loved (with titles like No Touch Monkey! and Sand in My Bra and Avoiding Prison and Other Noble Vacation Goals) there’s almost always a moment when the author finds themselves experiencing various kinds of misery in a long-drop toilet in the Himalayas.
We got a glimpse of Everest from the plane, so I’ve ticked that box. And we did encounter some pretty dire toilets in Pokhara, the small town we visited for a few days in the Annapurna range. But now we’re in Kathmandu, in a very comfortable Hyatt.
Looking past my bowl of muesli, I see several middle-aged Chinese men, who look to be starting or finishing a trek, based on their high-tech athletic clothes. There are some Tibetan Buddhist monks, a flight crew, two young Japanese women, a group of four Sikh couples, a young Black man with a young South Asian woman, and a very affectionate middle-aged couple made up of a white man and an Asian woman. There aren’t a lot of children, but there are a few. Lee said a large (and loud) group of American tourists ate and left before I arrived—I believe they were on a Road Scholars tour of Bhutan and Nepal.
The range of clothing is fantastic. The man across from me is wearing jeans and a turban; his wife is wearing a truly beautiful salwar kameez made of floaty chiffon in shades of butter and pale turquoise. Another man at their table is wearing a Nehru shirt. I’m wearing shorts and a sleeveless blouse; there are sweaters and puffy jackets and hiking pants. Most of the young women are wearing the kind of urbane black outfits that young women in big cities tend to favor. Another young woman is wearing bright blue and white checked pajamas, complete with the hotel’s disposable slippers. I see several ponchos and one fleece vest and at least two variations on Buddhist robes. And there’s a solitary white man with a long, curly beard, waist-length dreadlocks held back with a crocheted headband, and what looks like a black union suit under a tank top and running shorts.
How did all these people, with their wide variety of clothing, wind up in this place I’ve always thought of as the middle of nowhere? Nepal is exotic and distant and difficult to get to, I thought. When I think Nepal, I think Everest and base camp—turns out you don’t actually have to hike two weeks with an oxygen tank and sleep in the snow to get to Kathmandu. You just have to catch a taxi from the airport. It’s not even all jagged mountains and deadly avalanches—turns out there’s a national park that has rhinos and crocodiles. The trees around our hotel are full of the most beautiful green parakeets, and I haven’t seen a single yeti (except our flight on Yeti Air). Who knew?
And all these people, with their gloriously diverse sartorial choices? Nepal has two borders—one with India, one with China, the two most populous countries in the world.
I guess it’s not the middle of nowhere after all.
Take care,
Lisa
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