Day trip to Thamel

All the guidebooks assume one is staying at Thamel, and give directions starting from there. They say things like “you’ll come out onto the main road” and don’t indicate where to leave the main road if you’re coming from the opposite direction.

I was about 12 before I grasped that “north” was not the same as “straight ahead.” The concept of reversing directions also took me a while to master—i.e., when you’re returning, you turn left where you turned right on the way there.

Even though I now have a theoretical grasp of these concepts, I still assume on a subconscious level that the universe turns with me, which makes me a poor finder-of-places and a terrible video game player.

For once, however, I reached my destination as easily as planned. Thamel is about 4 km from Bodhnath, but it felt much longer. No wrong turns, maybe because I'd forgotten until I got there that I was supposed to get lost.

I immediately hated Thamel. The guidebooks deride it as a tourist ghetto, so I thought it would be like a mall, with clean bathrooms and places to sit down and rest. It is like a mall, but it’s noisy, crowded and brimming with pushy touts. Lots of people with face masks to block out the bad smells and the pollution. My snot is black tonight.

One comforting moment: I came around a corner and discovered that Alyssa and Kevin have organized a Monsoon Wine Festival. Thanks, Kilroys!

Ate lunch at a rooftop restaurant. A young woman in a sari stood over me and watched me eat. Whenever I looked up, she stared deeply into my eyes with a big grin, and said something that sounded like English might sound if seperated from the mother tongue by millions of light years.
Tried to practice Nepali on her, but her expression never changed. Finally realized she didn’t speak Nepali either (or else mine is so bad that she didn’t recognize it). Gave up after a few minutes. Wished she would stop watching me eat and go away.

Asked at a travel agency about going to Muktinath. They said, best to buy the Pokhara-Jomosom plane ticket beforehand because it’s the peak season.

Many Thamel stores are expensive even by Western standards—cheaply made shirts for $20 or $30. I did get a couple of things I needed, like notebooks and gloves.

Started raining on the way home, and I really did get lost this time. So I got a taxi. He said 150, I said 100, we settled for 120 and that turned out to be the very last money I had in my pockets!

Got dropped off at the entrance to the stupa, but no kora tonight—it rained hard for an hour and I was soaked during the 5 minute walk home.

Lately I keep seeing dead rats on the road. A large live one was running around in the garden this morning during breakfast. I cannot think of rats as furry friends no matter how hard I try.