this is the truth:

i speak ten words of nepali, twenty if you count numbers, which i don't. until very recently, i thought nepal was basically india, but mellower. which was to say, watered down. i'm ashamed of that now. i don't actually understand what's happening here. oh, i've read books about nepal's history and i read the newspaper and i listen to people and i try to understand; i could even say a few things in a conversation on current events that would be "true," but they're not my truth. at the end of day, the protests going on now tell me which neighborhoods to avoid, and not much more. i often feel like a fake. i eat in too many ex-pat restuarants--not backpacker hang-outs, but this might be worse: places full of nicely dressed thirty somethings with real lives, real jobs, drinking red wine and eating green salads. they're doing good or they're doing harm. i'm not sure which i'm doing, if either.

the truth is, i'm a beginner and it's hard to start over. "you speak nepali?" people ask me, without fail, everyday. "no," i tell them. "i speak tibetan." which is irrelevant. the answer should simply be "no." or really, the answer should be this: no, but i love your country. i don't know it well--i acually don't know it at all--but i can't tell you how much i want to know it. no, i don't speak your language, but i think i could learn it if i tried, and i don't feel that way about most languages. i think i can HEAR it. and no, i don't know my way around this city, but i go somewhere alone--somewhere new--almost everyday, and sometimes i get overwhelmed and occasionally i get lost, and almost always i find myself in endlessly thick traffic, cursing myself for ever leaving patan, but i do it again the next day. do i miss india? yes, a lot. does being here remind me of the tiny bits and pieces of of south asia i DO know? less and less everyday.

and i wouldn't it out loud, but this is true, too: i have a favorite neighorhood street dog. he's short, muscular, and his ears stand up in two wide triangles. he's old but he's healthy, and he has a friendly face. i look for him near the stupa when i leave my apartment in the morning. i know almost exactly where he'll be. it isn't much, it's almost nothing--but it's a start.

This is what you can expect:

No day will ever go the way that you've planned. Nothing simple will be simple, nothing straightforward will be that. There will be traffic jams with exhaust fumes so thick you can't see your own hands (especially when you're already late). There will be an endless string of no's before you ever hear a yes. Not a single person will have ever heard of the place you're trying to get--most especially, not the taxi driver who agreed to take you there. The meter will always be broken, the restaurant will always run out of the thing you most crave, the street dogs will never stop giving birth to puppies so painfully helpless that you, too, are rendered helpless, and you will never stop wanting to take them home. On the most important day of the your week--your month, your year--there will, without question, be a bandh.

But every now and then, a complicated thing will come easily; there will be no explanation. You will be wandering a dirty, motorcycle-jammed street in search of a glue stick in a world that seems void of glue sticks and you'll stop, hands on your hips, to find yourself in front of a store that sells nothing but glue sticks. Which do you want, madam, Big Size or Small? And on the walk home, glue stick in your pocket, you're hungry so you buy a bag of Moong Daal, and you wonder why you'd ever want another snack besides Moong Daal. Or you get up early early early in the morning to hang your laundry in the sun on the roof, only to find out that your early isn't early enough--the mothers and daughters and didis at all the neighboring buildings got up to their roofs first--and you have a wordless ritual with them, t-shirt, jeans, underwear--everything on the line, and black crows circling overhead.

The tongba--boiled water and Tibetan millet, gives you food posioning. The green salad does not. Go figure. The boy in the leather jacket who asks for your phone number turns out to be a journalist; he wants to talk politics. The middle aged man who you pass in your neighborhood reaches around and grabs your ass. You spin, fast, and yell at him but he keeps walking like nothing happened, and then you're the angry foreign woman yelling at no one, so you turn around and keep walking too, red faced, indignant, already late to work.

When you need a pick-me-up, you can always get your eye brows threaded. Fifteen rupees. When you're cold, there won't be any hot water. The woman who sells ticket to foreigners at Patan Dhoka will call out to you as you pass each morning--ma'am!--and when you turn, she'll recognize your face and wave you through; you can go in free because you live here, but she'll ask you again tomorrow, no matter how long you stay.

A vacation in Goa.

I'll start by saying this: I'm not on vacation in Goa. But I'm thinking about it. Fantasizing, even. My flight back to India is booked--all I need now is a train ticket to Mumbai and a bus ticket to the beach. Or maybe I'll splurge and fly all the way. And what will I do once I get there? It'll look to an outsider observer like I'm doing nothing, but it's everything to me. I plan to lay on a lounge chair on the beach, reading novels and drinking smoothies, and when I get hungry I'll eat fresh fish or veggie burgers, and when I feel the need to move around I'll take walks, and when I feel the need to move around faster than that I'll go for a scooter ride, and when I feel an urge to be social I'll hang out with any number of friends who plan to be in Goa, too (not on that list but want to be? come to Goa for Christmas and New Years!) and then, just when my life of luxury, leisure, and blatant tourism is starting to get annoying, I'll fly back to the states. Perfect, huh? I think so.

Not that things are so bad now. But I think the Kathmandu pollution is giving me a throat infection. And I rarely sleep more than five hours a night (for reasons yet unknown, but I'm starting to suspect the barking dogs). And my horoscope in the Kathmandu Post today says that my life is spinning out of control and I don't posess the ability to slow it down. And I almost never do anything that's not connected to work. But actually, all that said, I'm pretty happy. And when things feel hard--when the traffic is so thick I think I'm going to be in it for the rest of my life, for example--I remind myself about Goa, and I feel a lot better. (Man. I don't think I've been on a real vacation in at least five years... This better live up to my expectations).

Time to go find out if my ATM card is working again. For some reason, my bank in the states refuses to believe that I actually want to access my money in Asia. A crazy concept, I know, but a girl's gotta live somehow, right?

Love and love,
e.
p.s. Jai mata ji (in case I was sounding jaded).