Pictures of Kathmandu
Here are some recent Hallmark/National Geographic moments I was able to witness in Kathmandu. All right, so they don't all qualify.
-Watching a mongoose slip underneath a neighbor’s gate and proceeding to make himself at home in his garden.
-Being slightly sluggish from the sudden spike in temperatures. It is getting much hotter now. Add a thunderstorm for good measure each week, and you will have produced the perfect formula for the reproduction of mosquitoes.
-Drinking rice liquor that tastes like licorice and is almost the nastiest stuff I have ever tasted, second only to some ‘mehia’, a figwine in Morocco.
-Starting a hash run right at the Bagmati river a week ago. Not a good idea. The strip along the Bagmati river featuring dozens of shanties is the most appalling portrait yet depicted of poverty in my experience. How do people ignore that stench?
-Barely seeing the mountains from my house for days. As the weather changes, so does the haze.
-Witnessing the spectacle of twenty crows cawing over a catfight, the crows neatly divided into two camps rooting for each feline. All were probably united in the belief that the killing of either opponent would have produced an easy meal for them. It didn't happen. There's still no free lunch, crows.
-Seeing a man lying butt-naked early in the morning on one of the main drags of Kathmandu. I still have no idea whether he was alive or not. I’m guessing he probably was – the absence of flies was rather conspicuous.
-Reading about a man in Chitwan demanding compensation for injuries sustained after being upended by an elephant, owned and trained by the park authorities. The park refused remuneration, claiming the man had been drunk.
-Finding a hole (not just a pothole, but literally a hole) in a paved road the circumference of a saucer filled with weeds and twigs. I’m going to go out on a limb(better than a twig) here, but I think that you might need something a little sturdier for oh, say a five ton truck.
-Watching an army of (big) ants making quick work of a lizard killed by the cat. They say vultures are nature’s undertakers, but I dispute that. Seems to me they have some serious competition in this neck of the woods. That lizard was so quickly dismantled I didn’t see a speck of it anywhere later in the evening.
-Looking at the pride my son felt after having just learned to jump.
-Watching the monkeys at a cafe near the Monkey Temple perform their balancing act on the telephone wires. No wonder the cafe actually had cages at their windows.
-Watching a mongoose slip underneath a neighbor’s gate and proceeding to make himself at home in his garden.
-Being slightly sluggish from the sudden spike in temperatures. It is getting much hotter now. Add a thunderstorm for good measure each week, and you will have produced the perfect formula for the reproduction of mosquitoes.
-Drinking rice liquor that tastes like licorice and is almost the nastiest stuff I have ever tasted, second only to some ‘mehia’, a figwine in Morocco.
-Starting a hash run right at the Bagmati river a week ago. Not a good idea. The strip along the Bagmati river featuring dozens of shanties is the most appalling portrait yet depicted of poverty in my experience. How do people ignore that stench?
-Barely seeing the mountains from my house for days. As the weather changes, so does the haze.
-Witnessing the spectacle of twenty crows cawing over a catfight, the crows neatly divided into two camps rooting for each feline. All were probably united in the belief that the killing of either opponent would have produced an easy meal for them. It didn't happen. There's still no free lunch, crows.
-Seeing a man lying butt-naked early in the morning on one of the main drags of Kathmandu. I still have no idea whether he was alive or not. I’m guessing he probably was – the absence of flies was rather conspicuous.
-Reading about a man in Chitwan demanding compensation for injuries sustained after being upended by an elephant, owned and trained by the park authorities. The park refused remuneration, claiming the man had been drunk.
-Finding a hole (not just a pothole, but literally a hole) in a paved road the circumference of a saucer filled with weeds and twigs. I’m going to go out on a limb(better than a twig) here, but I think that you might need something a little sturdier for oh, say a five ton truck.
-Watching an army of (big) ants making quick work of a lizard killed by the cat. They say vultures are nature’s undertakers, but I dispute that. Seems to me they have some serious competition in this neck of the woods. That lizard was so quickly dismantled I didn’t see a speck of it anywhere later in the evening.
-Looking at the pride my son felt after having just learned to jump.
-Watching the monkeys at a cafe near the Monkey Temple perform their balancing act on the telephone wires. No wonder the cafe actually had cages at their windows.
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