During the approach to Nepal I am reminded of a study once conducted to disprove the phrase, "as flat as a pancake". According to this study, if a pancake were actually the size of the world, the Grand Canyon would be no wider than a sidewalk crack when compared to the ten-mile, deep crevasses in the pancake. Mt. Everest would become a foothill next to the atmosphere, popping pancake peaks.
As we get closer to Katmandu Airport my view of the Himalayas rising above the clouds makes me think the pancake study is stale, pure lunacy. Take any other mountain range, place the base of the mountains at cloud level, make them more extremely vertical, and that is what the pancake flattening Himalayas look like from the plane.
Katmandu is a city filled with an exotic mix of people. Tibetan refugees and Nepalese workers looking for jobs mix with tourists on their way to a trek and others seeking everything from enlightenment to drugs. Pagodas with seemingly shrunken doors and windows compete for space next to the temples of every size and shape.
Arriving during the culminating week of Tihar, the Hindu festival of lights, the low hanging sky above Katmandu reflects the rainbow of colors from thousands of light below and the air resonates with the sounds of random firecracker explosions. On the ground, the electric lights flicker as the local power grid struggles to support the demand created as more and more lights are brought online.
Shop and homeowners decorate the entrances of their buildings with colorful candle and sand creations. Groups of children and the occasional adult roam from one shop entrance to another singing traditional songs. Occasionally, larger groups accompanied by two-sided Nepalese drums and instruments that look like a violin carved out of a gourd drown out the background cacophony of firecrackers and honking taxi horns. This combination of color, noise and caroling blends together to create an surprisingly welcome and comforting atmosphere.
As I return to my hotel I encounter a large group of Nepalese women and chaperoning men singing traditional songs in the street. Since one of my goals on this trip was to expand my understanding of local music, I grab my computer and begin recording the group as they continue singing songs in the middle of the street.
While packing up my computer, one of the men approaches and asks me if I wanted to record a good Nepalese folk singer. "Sure" I say, and after saying my good-byes to the group in the street, I follow this man down unlit alley ways, ducking through passageways that weave wildly under the stacked housing. Eventually we emerge into what appears to be a hidden courtyard. There at 11:30 PM stand a group of about 20 men, many of whom appear to have been drinking for most of the evening. In the middle of this group stands Rakesh, the Nepalese folk singer.
I unpack my computer again, and begin to record as Rakesh delivers an impressive solo performance in the alleyway, where the only light is from the faint blue glow of my computer screen. After he finishes, I approach Rakesh and offer to record more of his singing. We agree to meet at my hotel the next day.
The next morning Rakesh arrives at my hotel and we recorded a number of Nepalese songs. After a few hours we mix a CD. He was so grateful that he invited me to visit his village outside of Katmandu for the final celebrations of Tihar.
Rakesh is a twenty-year old who left his village looking for work in Katmandu. He lives in a one-room apartment sandwiched between two other apartments housing his sisters, uncles, nieces, and countless other extended family all of whom have come to Katmandu looking for work. Although he is currently out of work, Rakesh said that he had previously held jobs in restaurants catering to Western tourists. Unfortunately, those jobs only paid the equivalent of about twenty dollars a month, not even enough to buy his own guitar.
The following morning he brings me to his apartment, up steep steps past his uncle, aunt, sisters, and half sister from his brother's second wife who is taken care of by his other brother...and so on and so forth. Eventually, everyone ends up calling everyone else his sister or brother - including me.
The final day of Tihar includes a ceremony where the sisters of the family give the brothers a flower necklace reminiscent of a lea, a circle with holy water, burn incense, and a bindi of colors to place on his forehead. All of this is followed by a traditional Nepalese lunch of buffo, rice, pickled vegetables, and dal. In return, the brothers, in a simple male fashion, slip the sisters some cash. Since I had now become one of their "brothers" I too was included in the ceremony and soon found myself sitting silently as the sisters placed the bindi on my forehead. When they were done, I followed the lead of the brothers and emptied my wallet for my giggling sisters.
After meeting Rakesh's local family we left Katmandu to visit his home village where I would meet more family. To get there we traveled on something that was a bus in name only. A more accurate description would be large cargo container sitting on a diesel engine.
The route from the city soon degraded into impossibly narrow, cliff hanging, mountain dirt road. Due to the lack of available air pockets and foot space on the bus, we road for half the trip hanging on to the open back door with one foot on the back step, fireman style. Potholes and road washout bounced us off of the foot stand leaving us to hinge our weight onto the open door.
At frequent military checkpoints intended to sniff out ill intending Maoist everyone had to exit the bus, zigzag past machine guns and sandbags, and rejoin the bus a few hundred meters later. Eventually we would reach the village on top of the hill (anywhere else besides in Nepal this massive hill would be called a mountain) and repeat the ceremony we just experienced in Katmandu. After the ceremony I drove his motorcycle along harrowing cliffs and past horned cows to the "hill" top where a Thai Airways plane crashed in 1992 on a flight between Bangkok and Katmandu. At that time, my next planned flight was between Bangkok and Katmandu. Sometimes I still wake up with my hands in a tight motorcycle handle grip.
Upon my return to Katmandu, as I prepared for my trek into the mountains, I decided a little nightlife was in order. Having lived exclusively with the locals for the past week, I thought it might be interesting to visit both a western-style bar and Nepalese club.
In the western-style bar people danced to beat-driven music blended with a world music melody. As the evening progressed the more and more clothing was shed until the dance floor was filled with gyrating bodies clad only in tank tops and belly revealing jeans.
At the Nepal bar, none of the women danced, only men. Instead of electronic music there was traditional "dohori" music played by men on a harmonium, drums, and sung by two women. All of the performers were sitting nearly motionless. In dohori music females and males take turns singing verses using the same melody for hours. The men and women sing using a Nepalese version of call and response forming hour-long conversations in verse. Sometimes the music would stop leaving only the voice, distorted by an overworked sound system. Then suddenly, the harmonium player would yell, raise a hand like a starting gun, and start playing excitedly. After much drinking, the men in the audience would gyrate in front of each other occasionally hollering an ecstatic "woooooo, yahoo". They would dance affectionately with each other, sometimes spin around, and always use hands as the primary dance movement, as if "vogue-ing." The microphone is passed around the bar with the singers eager to respond to and/or joke about the last verse. As I left the bar I was thankful to get away from the monotonous repetition, but found it almost impossible to stop repeating the melody in my head.
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