Well, a new country then


By and large, Nepalis like Indians . Many look like us, speak like us, eat like us, mostly they feel a great sense of kinship with us.  One day, on one bus ride from Kathmandu to Pokhara, we had to cross a 100 year old bridge which had crossed its expiry date just the week before. Imagine that – bridges come with expiry dates.  Weirdly, an advertisement for a Nepali life insurance company was painted on the wall at the start of this bridge.
A board at the start of the bridge said as much in Nepali = the bridge is weak, has developed cracks, and only one vehicle can pass at a time.  By now, this bridge had become a traffic bottle neck. On each end of the bridge a bunch of cops would streamline vehicles and allow one vehicle at a time, and what was left unsaid was – travel at your own risk.

At times like this, (and many other times before and later), somebody would stop to bemoan the state of  Nepal and how this had come to pass and how there is no hope for the country and invariably tag India along.  ‘ Both countries, so much corruption, nothing can happen in Nepal, its like India, our leaders are corrupt  and eat up all the public  money’.   And the usual. Unlike Indians though, they actually have genuine fondness for the old monarchy, that was wiped out a decade ago,  a huge conspiracy theory in itself.
Many Nepalis have at some point traveled to India, as tourists, for a job or as  student s and are very familiar with our language, our film stars, our movies and culture.                     One  night at a cafe, the cook stopped by our table to talk about India, his experiences, food, how except for UP and Bihar, Indians are by and large honest etc and let slip that he had tried very hard, but in vain, to date or marry an Indian girl while in India. But there were some very serious issues. One was the complete lack of interest on behalf of Indian girls towards Nepali men. Many Indian guys had scored with Nepali women, but it was fairly difficult to get Indian girls interested in Nepali men, he said. The other objections were less  fundamental but more dramatic. Indian women get to keep the title to their property, post marriage as well which he said was unfair – after marriage, both partners should get equal rights to the property.  ( I have no idea if that is true). Also Indian women, he said, did not contribute to the income of the house.  Nepali women did all the house work and had a day job to earn additional income. Indian women just expected too much, he said.  ‘They look at the bank balance before they look at the guy”.  He probably told us all of this because we were Indian women, apparently traveling alone, although we had made it amply clear there was a very huge group waiting for us back at the hotel.

Anyhow his monologue continued and then for some reason, he began comparing women from all the other countries he had been to. “Indonesian women are very nice, straight forward. If they like a guy, they dont stop to look at other things. True, they are a bit dark, but they are very good of heart”. Here, laughter just came. Needless to say, we did not return here. Although, he was a great cook. The grilled fish, spinach soup, fish soup and the lemon tea we had that night was our first awesome meal of the trip, even if it was a non-Nepali meal. I did not much like the traditional Nepali food. They probably feel the same way about our roties, but the Dhido , even if it is very healthy, takes a lot getting used to.
Food is expensive.  Mother was aghast when I told her that . When she was there, a kilo of ladys finger and brinjal cost less than Nepali Rupee 1, which is almost free for Indians because of the conversion rate. But that was two decades ago. Now, on the tourist circuit, the prices are hedged for a European tourist, counting in Euros.

We barely interacted with Nepali women. In fact, the only Nepali woman we saw who made an impression was on first day on the Indian side of the border. A chap was sitting on the last seat smoking a cigar and a Nepali women took him to task, loudly and boldly. Although it made no difference to the smoker chap, it prompted the wimp of a conductor to put up a token request asking people not to smoke inside the bus.  Our guide book pretty much said the same thing. Nepali women do not hesitate to make a great fuss when they are right, but for various reasons we saw very little evidence of it on the trip.

Most of our interactions were with Nepali men who had ample experience in dealing with tourists. One chap we met would greet us only with a loud , jovial, ‘HI, how are you’ followed with a ‘ had good sleep? Good rest?” – the latter greeting for some reason tickled me to no end.  It is a country which has exploited its tourist potential almost to maximum capacity. People are very sweet and  like any other touristy place, try their best  to rip you off politely and promptly.

But on most days it did not even feel like a foreign country.  They have seen our hindi movies, their buses have our latest songs. One young fellow  we met at Chitwan National Park  was a huge salman fan ( = because salman is  so handsome). Salman is a huge name in nepal, much like how Rajnikant is in japan. Local stores have ‘best of salman khan’ CDs. Dabang probably could have recovered all its money in Nepal alone.

Nepal is excellent for adventure sports. According to my friend, it offers stuff for tourists which almost no other National park in India offers. Chitwan for instance offers jungle walks, and overnight stays in jungles. Paragliding over the Annapurna is a popular thing that tourists do and for that reason alone, I think I could make another trip to Nepal.

We were able to only do  the elephant safari. On the second and the last day at Chitwan, as we were on our way into the jungle on an elephant, a lot of Japanese tourists went crazy with their cameras. Some of them waved to us, and we promptly waved back. I like to think that many Japanese family albums will have our pictures – of our mahout, our 20 year old female elephant Maruti, my friend, me and this French-Portugese engineer tourist, now working in China, who was on a Nepali holiday.

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