First Days in Kathmandu

I've been here 3 days now, but it feels like much longer. I am loving it and am already starting to feel at home in some ways! Because I arrived after dark on Saturday night I wasn't able to gather much of a first impression, but when I climbed up on the roof of our hostel the next morning I was exhilarated to find myself in the midst of so much action! The houses are all jammed together and all the neighbours were out and about washing clothes, sitting on balconies and walking down the street selling fruit or offering repairs of some kind or another. The hostel where we're staying this first week is in Kalanki, a quiet neighbourhood (only after having ventured up to the main street and elsewhere in Kathmandu have I come to think of it that way) in the west part of the city.

The main street running through Kalanki is louder and more bustling than any place I have ever been. I could've used about 10 more eyes to take it all in when Lison (a volunteer from France) and I first went to explore on day 1 here. On top of all the cars and buses rushing everywhere in sheer chaos, the sides of the street are packed with shop after shop, side by side, each taking up only about 6 ft x 6 ft of space, but overflowing with items looking to be sold. Each of these shops specializes in usually just one thing, so we'd walk past raw meat sitting on a counter then see a wall full of shoes and the next second barrels of fruit. It goes like this past carpets, medicine, seeds, purses, vegetables, spices & powders, jewelry, fish and on and on. All the while as you walk you're dodging aside for motorcycles and taxis trying to squeeze around each other, tripping over stray dogs and ducking under overhanging items or umbrellas. That first day was a lot of fun. It still is, but at least now I know what to expect when I step outside.

There are 9 of us that started in-country training together on Monday and we'll be at the volunteer hostel for one week before going to the village of Lamatar for 2 night and then Royal Chitwan National Park for a few days in the second week. After that we each go to our own projects with our separate host families. There are also a number of short-term volunteers that are in and around the hostel coming and going at different stages in their projects. This first week we are doing language lessons 4 hours a day and have most of the afternoon free to explore around Kathmandu wherever we want. It's been surprisingly easy to get around either by local bus (with no schedule and only the guy hanging out the window calling out the name of its destination to use for a guess if it's the one you want) or by taxi (20 times more expensive to get to Thamel at 200 rupia if you bargain right, but as that translates to just $3 for 5 of us to cram into it still feels well worthwhile). Either way, given the apparent absence of any sort of traffic rules and excess of speed / carelessness about the proximity of other vehicles, I'm tempted to feel like I'm taking my life in my hands each time we do this. However, these drivers are professionals and I'm sure if they thought it to be unsafe in any way they would've installed seatbelts. So, with that in mind, I'm able to sit there calmly as we careen full speed on the right-hand (wrong) side of the road toward an oncoming bus and swerve only at the last possible instant between the cow and the barefooted guy on the bicycle.

In just 3 days here, I've already been able to see a million different parts of this city! Everywhere we walk is an adventure, and moments of clear skies have given way to great views of all the surrounding tall, steep, green hills. After having seen the same forecast on my BBC Nepal homepage every single day for the last 2+ months, I was expecting life here to feel just as dark and drenched as those images (below) appear:But the monsoon so far hasn't been quite as relentless as that picture suggests. Sure, there have been heavy downpours every single day, but there can be long patches of relief between them and, until today, they had all conveniently coincided with the times we were planning to be outside anyway.

Today, however, was a very different story. After enjoying sunshine and blue sky for a couple hours in Thamel, the rains abruptly started in full forced and we darted into the first restaurant we could find, soaked to the bone within seconds. We tried to wait it out a bit thinking it would lighten up and were in some ways successful as the rain was a bit lighter half an hour later. But when we emerged it was to find the street replaced with a river and waded through knee-deep water for about 20 minutes before managing to catch one of the suddenly very much in demand taxis. We saw once guy unknowingly step into an uncovered drainage hole and sink past his waist. We happily paid 300 rupia for that ride back.