Grub at Home: Chicken Masala Curry

Well, I've finished writing about my trip, and Grub Club is disbanded for the summer (until I get paid again, actually).  The question of what I'm going to write about til then is one that I've given some thought to over the last week as I've been shuffling around my apartment, bored (no money and no friends is not a good combination).  Finally, I decided that I should do some cooking posts.  See, I hate cooking for myself.  It's fun to cook for others - it means there is a purpose behind all the toil - but if I don't have money to go to a restaurant, most of the time I just cook pasta, because it is pretty much the simplest thing in the world to cook for one person.  While I HAVE eaten pasta for a month straight (when I was an indigent immigrant the 6 weeks before we first got paid in RAK), I'd rather shake it up a little, and writing about it here gives some purpose to the toil.  And it just so happens I have some recipes I am dying to try.

So without further ado, I give you chicken masala curry, as taught to me by the boys in the kitchen at Monumental Paradise.  When there's an inset photo, it shows what it looked like when they cooked this dish.  Today was my first attempt, and it was not bad, but it needs some work.  Here's what you do: start with a little sunflower oil in a pan (I didn't feel like buying more oil when I hardly cook, so I used the olive oil in my cabinet, and I think that was okay).  Throw in some cumin seeds, a bit of cinnamon bark, one crushed cardamom seed, and a bay leaf, and start it heating up.  Julienne-cut a small onion and add it to the oil and spices, and let it caramelize.

While it's doing that, chop up a chicken breast and when the onion is done, add in the chicken and sauté it.  I cut my chicken much smaller than they did, because I like smaller pieces.  While it's doing that, add 1/2 T garlic/ginger paste.  They pre-made their own.  I took one piece of garlic and an equal-sized piece of ginger and pressed them, and that seemed to work pretty well.

You'll need to julienne a medium tomato for the next step, and a little bit of spicy green chili pepper (I forgot the pepper today).  Add these when the chicken turns a nice golden brown.

While all of the above is simmering, you're going to add about (and this is a very rough approximation...I think I had a bit too much of these spices today because it was definitely a little spice-ish) 1/2t turmeric (that's the orangey one, if you bought all your spices from a guy on the street in Kathmandu and they weren't all labeled), 1/4t dried chili powder (or you can try taco seasoning, if that's the closest you've got...not that I would ever do something like that...), 1/2t cumin powder (which is the brownish colored one and also smells like the cumin seeds you added at the beginning), 1/2t chicken masala, 1/2t meat masala, and 1/4t salt.  Keep lowering the temperature as you add these.

When you get to the end of ALL the above instructions you're going to add some water.  Maybe about a half cup - I put in a whole cup and it had to simmer quite a while to get the right (ish) consistency (like I said, it was a first attempt and it wasn't quite right).  One thing I forgot to do, as you can tell from the finished picture is add cilantro (coriander), in spite of the fact that someone planted a bunch of it down in the school greenhouse while I was gone.  You need to chop up the leaves of about 4 sprigs, and add half of them at the very end of cooking, and the other half as a garnish on top.  It wasn't nearly as painful as I was afraid, although I haven't gotten around to cleaning the dishes just yet.  And speaking of which...

I want to leave you with an idea of what my mother had to deal with, as I was growing up and beginning to cook.  I am not the neatest person when it comes to the kitchen.  At the beginning, everything is nice and neat, but then I start cooking and it's like Pandora opening that damn box.  At the end, there are ingredients scattered everywhere and I've used at least half of my utensils.  Sometimes there's food on the floor - this time I managed to keep my mess on the counter.  I would like to say that now that I'm all growed up and on my own, that I clean everything up right away...but the honest truth is that living alone means there's no one to witness your bad habits.  We will not be speaking of this again...just know that I've never had bugs, so let that suffice as witness that I'm not that bad.  Really.

Hunting Enlightenment

(Or: You're Being Stupa'ed)

I've finally come to the conclusion that this post is not going to write itself, and I've put it off long enough.  I don't know if it will be my normal, high quality writing or not (stop laughing - inappropriate jokes aside I've gotten a lot of nice compliments on my blog.  Yes, they were all friends.  No, I don't just think they were trying to spare my feelings.  Anyways). 

I have to hand it to Lonely Planet (who should be hot on Coke's tail in offering me a sponsorship for my blog), they had no end of cool things to go do and see in and around Kathmandu.  Except for the minor omission of cooking classes in their courses section, they gave me plenty to keep me busy for the six or so days I actually had in Nepal.  On my first day back from Bhutan, I decided I would visit a couple of these sites on the way back from the airport, Pashupatinath and the Bodhnath Stupa.

 

Pashupatinath is a UNESCO World Heritage site, but you can't actually go and see the temple.  Which, considering the number of Hindu Temples I saw in the six days I spent there, is probably okay, because there is more to Pashupatinath than just the temple.  There are lots of shrines to Shiva (Pashupati is one of his incarnations, as Lord of the Beasts).  There are also lots of sadhus, wandering holy men who will let you take their photo for a little tip in their begging bowls (I hadn't exchanged money yet - I didn't have anything for them, but there's a photo of one on my Freak blog).  There's also a river running through the site, the Bagmati River, which is apparently as sacred in Nepal as the Ganges is in India. 

And of course, no sacred river would be complete without burning corpses.  Seriously, though, here at Pashupatinath the banks of the river are where cremations are held.  The prime spots are right outside the temple, but apparently that area is reserved for the royal family.  Lonely Planet said not to take photos, but the college student who was trying to get himself hired as my guide (again, see the bit about not having any money - I had to borrow the 1000 rupees to get in from my driver - although I wish I could have hired this guy...he looked just like a Nepali version of the PE teacher from my last school, Iron Man), told me it was okay, and the back of the ticket simply said to be respectful and keep your distance when taking photos.

I looked around Pashupatinath some, but here's the thing: I'm used to being conspicuous.  A ginger outside of North America or Europe has no hope of blending in, and when she's tall and kinda fat and vampire-pale, people will rubber-neck to get a good look.  But I've gotten used to it, to the point where my other Western friends are more uncomfortable about the stares than I am.  But at Pashupatinath, I realized something:

I feel ridiculously conspicuous at a Hindu temple at 8:30 in the morning.  And so I didn't stay very long; when I came back to the car, the driver was surprised I was back already.  But there you go.

Also - monkeys make me freaking nervous!

From Pashupatinath you are a mere stone's throw away from the Bodhnath Stupa, so we made a stop there next.  I got my first look at it from the plane as we were taking off for Bhutan, and it looked HUGE.  In fact, it is the biggest in Nepal and one of the bigger ones in the world.

And, according to my faithful Lonely Planet, this was a magnet for people looking for enlightenment.  Forgive me for saying so, but those people were idiots (people in general are idiots, if you ask me, but after being left to my own devices here in UB for nearly a week after three weeks of flying solo, I am almost ready for some idiots...almost). 

However, Bodhnath was a pretty cool place, and I feel FAR less conspicuous around Buddhists than Hindus.  Don't ask me why - I don't know, and no, I'm not about to go and convert.  In addition to the fact that I am pretty committed to the religion to which I already converted, white Buddhists are just annoying.  I mean, it's hard to take them seriously.  This is probably me being racist or prejudiced or both, but there's something about whitebread crackers claiming to be Buddhist that irks me to no end.  I don't have this problem with Islam...

At any rate, it was neat to have a look around Bodhnath and it's little community, built in a circle around the stupa.  It has it's share of Tibetans as well as backpackers, and it was a small bit trippy, to say the least, to see businesses catering to one next to monasteries and temples for the other.

Bodhnath is not the only big-ass stupa around Kathmandu, and to be honest, not even my favorite.  Swayambhunath was another magnet for freakin' hippies looking to get enlightened, and it is one you could see from my penthouse suite at the Monumental Paradise, thanks to it being situated on a hilltop in the western part of the city.  It's at least a 3 kilometer walk out there, but it was early and the last day of my vacation, so I decided to hoof it.

I don't know if you can see the monkeys perched on the wall at Buddha's back, but there were even more damn monkeys at Swayabhunath.  At least this time I was warned.  Swayambhunath is better known as the monkey temple than it is by its actual name.  Anyways, two things you need to know about monkeys: don't make eye contact, and don't make the crinkly sort of sounds that wrappers make when you undo them.  If you follow these two simple rules, you will probably not be mobbed by a bunch of flea-bitten, rabid freaks.

Back to the topic at hand, though - enlightenment.  I must have gotten-lightened by climbing all the stairs to the top of the temple (see what I did there?)  They go up, and up, and up, and are much steeper (and scarier!) than what I climbed at the Tiger's Nest.  I am not the most graceful person, as some of you know, and I clung like hell to that handrail, because if I fell on these stairs, I was going to keep going for a long ways!  It didn't seem like that long or that hard a hike, though.  It didn't feel as long, for example, as all the stairs up to my penthouse, which is not actually true, but there were lots of good photo opportunities along the way.  A couple of Nepali girls and I had a good laugh at each other for huffing and puffing up those stairs.

Finally, the top, by way of a great thunderbolt!  No, not one of the Divine Madman's - a dorje.  This is one of the major symbols of Buddhism and you will find a giant one right at the top of the stairs.

Swayambhunath is an amazing place to visit, not least of all because of the view you get of the entire Kathmandu valley from the top, but if you want my opinion (and I assume that you do, since you've stuck with me through this post to the bitter end), visiting Bodhnath or Swayambhunath or even the freaking Dalai Lama isn't where you're going to find enlightenment.  Travel is great - it's the air that I breathe, it's the reason I do this sometimes really ridiculously painful expat thing - but for most of us, it doesn't make up the majority of your life.  Going and meditating in an ashram for three months might help you find some clarity, but guess what?  All the big problems you left behind in wherever-the-hell-it-is-you-come-from are still going to be waiting for you when you get back.  Maybe Siddhartha Gautama found his sitting under a bodhi tree.  But he was already on a path.  Maybe Christ found his while he was fasting in the wilderness...again, he was on a path.  Find your path, people...otherwise all the great sacred spots in the world are just going to be a bunch of photo opportunities.  And while you're on your path, help some people out.  Because as annoying as people are, you'll like yourself a lot better if you're nice to them.  End rant.

Flied Rice

I was going to write you a nice, tongue-in-cheek blog about enlightenment today, but I'm too exhausted.  I ran a miracle mile yesterday to make my flight back to UB in time to say good-bye to Five and nearly had a breakdown in the Beijing airport.  I even yelled at a very nice Pakistani kid with the same name as an elephant from a children's book (not Elmer, btw), who was just trying to be nice to me.  I made it back and saw her off, and today I am playing tour guide to a girl who's here from Korea for Naadam, which is also quite tiring.  Perhaps I'll write about that too at some point.  But for now, you're getting a food blog.

I was a little concerned about the food in Tibet.  From what I had heard, bringing a variety of food to the plateau was just about the best thing China has done for Tibet.  Still, I wanted a Tibetan experience, and I told the Energizer that I wanted to eat at Tibetan restaurants.  The first place we stopped, on the way from the airport to Tsetang, she ordered me some pork fried rice, while she and our driver had noodles.  There was hot sauce on the table, which made me pretty happy, and I was just deciding that Tibetan food wasn't all that bad, when I came across the fly in my rice.

The lack of bugs is one of the things I have taken for granted in Mongolia.  I plan to appreciate it all the more, now that I'm back.  Anyways, never let it be said that I'm too picky an eater.  When you're in Tibet and ready for adventure, are you going to whine that there's a fly in your food and embarrass your guide and the cook?  Nope.  You're going to lower your standards, pick the fly out, and keep right on eating.  And here's my little plug for the Coca-Cola company, who should be contacting me ANY DAY NOW with the news that they want to sponsor my blog...if you want to make sure you don't come home with any parasites, be sure to drink coke when you're on vacation and the sanitary conditions are less than favorable!  Coke kills 99%* of bacteria and other parasites that may live in third-world countries.

Yeah.  That's totally why I've been on a bender for three weeks now.

Anyways, the fly in my rice aside, I didn't have as hard a time eating in Tibet as I was afraid of, and the yak momos (steamed dumplings) were mouth-wateringly delicious.  The worst that I can say about it is that it wasn't as spicy as I like my food, but that's alright, I was on my way to Nepal.  I told you before that Nepal is a lot like India, and it is.  You eat a lot of curry and daal and basmati rice in Nepal.  One of my more recent goals in traveling is learning how to cook a variety of dishes, and since Lonely Planet totally failed me this time - tsk, tsk - I asked my hotel, and they offered to teach me to cook whatever I wanted.  The problem was, I didn't KNOW what Nepali food I wanted to cook, so they suggested a chicken curry, which I jumped at.  Evil's maid tried to teach me almost this exact dish when I visited her in Hyderabad, but I didn't go and buy the spices or anything, and then I lost the paper I wrote everything down on.  Oops.  This time I bought all the spices before I left Nepal, so there should be a whole lot of chicken curry in my future.  I hope my favorite Indian takeout place here in UB, Hazara, won't suffer too terribly when I stop calling them every week.

Besides the great Nepali food, Kathmandu has an excellent range of restaurants.  I was in heaven when I came across the Maya bar in Thamel.  Real Mexican food?  Shut up.  The salsa was really spicy, and served in bowls made out of leaves that had been molded and pressed in that shape.  Impressive presentation, Maya.  Their burritos were mediocre, but the virgin strawberry margarita more than made up for that!

Not far away was Yin Yang, a Thai restaurant, which I stuffed myself on for my last lunch in Kathmandu.  Their spring rolls were more like the egg rolls I love to get from the Chinese place my family goes to back home, which suited me perfectly well, with a peanut dipping sauce that was just a little bit spicy.  The panaeng gai curry and rice was amazing, and between that and the spring rolls, I couldn't finish, which was a little disappointing because it was SOOOO good.

Finally, let me tell you about the food in Bhutan.  If you look into traveling there, you'll find out that it costs a whopping $250 per day, which seems really expensive.  However, that cost covers just about all your expenses.  You'll have to pay for soft drinks and souvenirs, and that's about it.  And when they feed you, they REALLY feed you.  I was embarassed by how much food they brought me - as if I could eat all that!  And in spite of all this, when I saw Five yesterday she was shocked because I seem to have lost weight.

The staples of the Bhutanese diet are red rice (I'm not sure what makes it red, but it doesn't have anything added to it, it just is) and chilli cheese.  This is just about the best thing I've ever tasted.  It's green chilies and I don't even know what kind of cheese, but it burns a hole straight through you.  I may have been a dragon in a former life, because I'm very happy when I feel like I can breathe fire, and that is exactly what chilli cheese does to you.  And the best I had the whole time there was at a farmhouse after a hot stone bath, but that's a story that belongs elsewhere.

*I may have made this number up, but the fact remains that I've never gotten a parasite.  Apparently alcohol is good for the same thing, but it NOT good for good little Mormon girls.  Coke is not effective against food poisoning.

Getting Wood

I mentioned on Monday that the cities of the Kathmandu valley are sort of like a living museum, but I don't think that really sums up just how marvelous they truly are.  In addition to the brick and stone and metal used, they incorporate a lot of woodworking.  In fact, as you look at them, it almost seems as if someone decided it would be offensive if they just put a plain piece of wood in wherever it was needed, so they carved the hell out of everything. 

See what I mean?  Take a closer look; it really is stunning how much detail they put into everything.  Those wooden pieces coming forward are called roof struts, and help to support the weight of the roof, which if you can't tell from looking at the picture at the top of this post, is REALLY heavy.

But what you may have noticed by looking at the roof struts above (if you followed directions and looked really carefully) is that there are little erotic scenes on them.  The guy in the red shirt above is telling his nice Chinese tourists about these so-called "kama sutra" scenes, and how the one they're looking at is a good one if you have back problems.

Chances are that the carvings are not there for recreational purposes (after all, do you really need to see how cows get it on?  Assuming the artist has actually depicted them accurately...after all, he posed the elephants in missionary position, and I'm pretty sure that's not even possible).  If I had to venture a guess, I'd say it probably had something to do with the study of tantra, which is a part of Hinduism and Buddhism both - after all, they have this kind of work on the temple group at Khajuraho - but don't quote me on that. 

The famous peacock window - carved from a single piece of wood

For whatever reason they've included erotic scenes in their carvings, these are far from the artists' best work (trust me - I'm an art teacher and I had to learn all about proportion!)  Bhaktapur is the town best-known for their woodcraft, and Domestic Goddess really loved it, so there was no way I was missing out.  And what should my helpful Lonely Planet reveal but that one of the guesthouses, the Nyatapola Guesthouse, was owned by a family of woodcarvers, and they offered workshops!

I didn't have enough time to do a workshop - I was on my way to Bhutan the next day - but they invited me to visit their shop and see the tools they use, which are all traditional, hand-powered tools.  I saw the finished products in their showroom (and in my room, which had a traditionally crafted bed, which didn't look like anything special, but I really did sleep well on it!), and couldn't help but buy myself a few souvenirs.

My visit there also made me feel like an elf amongst hobbits.  The doorways are not made for tall people.  The rooms in the guesthouse are not made for tall people either, and the shower...well, only my family will get this reference, but it was like taking a shower in Great Mom's house.  I had to stretch my back some before trying that!  But the shower was hot, the family was lovely, and the room was clean and cheap, and if I can make it back to Nepal I would LOVE to come back and stay longer, doing a workshop along the way.

A Freak on Freak Street

Once upon a time I used to write a comic strip called "Freaks."  A guy I used to date called me that occasionally, which I took as a compliment, since I've always been a little weird.  However much I pride myself on being a black sheep, though, on the Kathmandu "Acceptable Range of Normality," I think I fall well within the mean.

Of the places I've been this summer, Nepal is the least like I expected.  I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting, but it's kind of the black sheep of Himalayan countries: too hot and noisy to fit in with its siblings.  In fact, it's much more like India, but still distinctly different, in a way I can't quite put my finger on.

Well, like calls to like, and Kathmandu is definitely a backpacker town.  Not just run-of-the-mill backpacker, though.  Hippie backpacker.  I've lost count of how many dreadlocked heads I've seen in the five short days I've been here.  Kathmandu's been a hippie stomping grounds since the 60's.  Rooms were cheap, dope was even cheaper, and Freak Street was the center of it all.

In addition to meeting all of my standard requirements (cheap, safe, clean, and convenient, in that order), the Monumental Paradise, where I'm staying, also had its location on Freak Street going for it.  While Thamel has taken over as backpacker central, it's not close to Durbar Square, no matter how many hookah bars it has.  So this is where I've been staying.  For my last two nights I've rented the penthouse ($21 per night!)  As I was tromping up the stairs this morning, I found myself wondering what the HELL I was thinking.  The rooftop is six floors up, and then you have to take another spiral staircase up to the crow's nest, which is where I'm staying.  There's no elevator, so the porter who carried my suitcase sure earned his tip today.

View from the top

On reflection, though...totally worth it.

Of Gods and Men

It was my first day in Kathmandu, and I'd just purchased my ticket for Durbar Square, which included getting it specially extended so I could come and go as I like for the whole time I was there.  My hotel on Freak Street assured me that I could simply show their business card and they'd have to let me through so I could get back to where I was staying (but c'mon guys, I'm an art teacher, and conservation doesn't pay for itself...it would be nice if my students in years to come could come and see all these wonderful temples and sculptures).  Anyways, after getting the ticket a very helpful guy (who I soon came to realize was trying to sell himself as a guide) let me know that the Kumari was about to appear in her courtyard, and so I ducked into the Kumari bahal (house or courtyard) in Durbar Square.

The Kumari Devi is a young girl who is meant to be a living incarnation of Durga (another incarnation of Kali).  I first read about these girls (most Newari villages have a local Kumari, although the Kumari of Kathmandu is meant to be the most important) on The Longest Way Home.  You are not supposed to take photos of her - in fact, the man at the Kumari bahal made everyone put their cameras away before she came to the window - but she is dressed up a lot like the little girl pictured above. 

I've thought it was really interesting to see the relationship between the Nepali people and their religion.  Or rather, religions...Buddhism is fairly prevalent here as well, and in fact, Lumbini, which is on the Indian border, is the birthplace of Siddartha Gautama (better known as Buddha himself).  Buddhism is sort of an off-shoot of Hinduism, and they have a long history, which is not always peaceful, but they seem to have found a way to live together, and not only are there similarities in iconography and ideology, but you'll find sites of both coexisting peacefully side by side.  I think the other three major world religions - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - could learn a lot from their example.

The cities of the Kathmandu valley are sort of like living museums.  Everywhere you look there are temples and shrines to one god or another...and there are lots and lots of gods.  There are the major ones - Krishna, Vishnu, Shiva, Parvati, Ganesh, etc - and their many, MANY avatars and incarnations.  With so many shrines and altars, some aren't even much used anymore, except as staging grounds for open air markets...and sometimes they are used for both. 

Finally, let me leave you with a "DAFUQ?" moment.  I already told you about the Kumari, and the idea of having a god living among us is just not something us Americans are used to.  Then I went to Pashupatinath yesterday, and I found Hanuman.  Seeing a guy in full monkey-god costume was a trip for me, but the Nepalis barely batted an eye.  I wish I understood them better - maybe in my next life.  Or rather, contract.

Santeria

As much as I hate tours, the fact that I was being led like a lamb to the slaughter had the benefit of giving me time to think about what I was going to write, and how I was going to write it.  I'm not quite sure how to proceed with talking about the days I spent in Nepal, because by comparison, I was like a chicken running around with its head cut off.  Which is, considering these bloody similes, maybe the best place to start.

So I don't, in fact, practice santeria (and neither do I have a crystal ball, and a million tugrugs ain't a million dollars but I've damn near spent all of that, anyways) - long breath while I recover from my Sublime-inspired birdwalk - however I do practice Christianity, a religion that has its roots in Judaism, which DID, at one point, perform animal sacrifices and, in at least one event recorded in the Old Testament, human sacrifice*.  I always find it interesting when Westerners get squeamish about the idea of animal sacrifices.  We like to think we are civilized, and that that is SO far removed from who we are as a people, but it hasn't been that long since Americans burned witches at the stake, or hell, since Shirley Jackson wrote "The Lottery."  So when my reading of Lonely Planet's Nepal guide revealed a temple where blood sacrifices were performed, I decided a visit would make an interesting blog.

First, a little Hindu theology 101.  The temple in question is dedicated to, quite possibly, the most bloodthirsty of all Hindu deities, Kali.  Hindu gods seem to have no end of incarnations, and Kali is one of the incarnations of  Shiva's consort (Shiva's a dude, which makes Kali a chick, if any mere mortal has the balls to call her that).  Some of her incarnations are peaceful and benevolent - I like to think of that as the way a teacher may be all kindness and jokes with one class and a hardass with another class - you gotta know what the situation calls for, and sometimes it calls for a bloodthirsty demon slayer.  Like in most religions, a sacrifice to Kali is meant to invoke her blessings on the supplicant.

Dashinkali is a working temple, which means that non-Hindus are not allowed to go in.  There is a platform closer to the temple where apparently you can see a little more of what's going on.  Whether out of respect or, more likely, squeamishnness (I'm pretty sure they don't sacrifice cats, but what if they did?  I would NOT be down with that), I didn't really try to find my way to the platform.  Before I came, though, I found the blog of a guy who did, though, so when I can find it again, I'll have to put it on here, in case y'all are really interested.

To get to the temple was another one of those kind of harrowing rides around the valley.  The roads are narrow and partly unpaved, with lots of switchbacks, not to mention it's the rainy season so there's a lot of mud...that sort of thing.  It would have taken even longer to get there if I hadn't had my taxi leave early; the traffic had become much worse by the time we were on our way to Patan.  From the parking area you follow a path through the trees, lined on both sides with vendors selling, among other things, offerings for the goddess.

I'm sorry, I thought you said we were going to Washinkali.  I've changed my mind.

In one of the internet cafes I was using while I was blogging about Tibet last week they had statistics about which temples in the Kathmandu valley allow blood sacrifices, and which ones only allow plants.  It also had a quote of how many animals are ritually slaughtered each year, and was meant to encourage tourists to visit only "green" temples.  I don't remember those statistics; suffice it to say that it was a LOT.

Since I started off by talking about sacrifice and the Judeo-Christian tradition, there IS a story in the Bible about two brothers who performed sacrifices.  And it even involves one who offered plants, and one who offered animals.  God wasn't pleased with the plant sacrifice, and that brother got around to blood soon enough.  On the other hand, as I mentioned before, we've evolved, sort of, or perhaps been taught that it's better to sacrifice your selfishness and willfulness to something greater.  I don't really know anything about Hinduism, other than a few names of deities and holidays, so I don't know if a sacrifice has less meaning if there's no blood involved.  But that moment when I thought about the idea of sacrificing a cat gave me a whole lot of pause.  Is it okay to sacrifice an animal as long as it's not cute and fuzzy?  How about as long as it's not a person?  As an outsider, I probably don't have any business having an opinion one way or another, but it turns out I kind of do.  And this blog has kind of gotten away from me, so we'll leave it at that.



*No, not Abraham and Isaac.  There's another one.  Trust me on this.

Parting Shots and Starting Thoughts

My last night in Tibet I stayed in the shabbiest hotel - one star, and I'm surprised Zhangmu's Sherpa Hotel managed that! - I have ever had the misfortune of sleeping in.  Thank goodness I was so exhausted from the night before, or I might not have been able to sleep at all.  It was supposed to only cost me 100 kuai, but a bunch of Indian tourists got there before me and took all the cheap rooms, so instead I ended up in a more expensive one, which even after getting a discount from the proprietress was the same price as the 3-star place I stayed in Shigatse.

Zhangmu is one of the strangest towns I've ever visited.  It's the Chinese border town, and built going down the side of a ravine.  The Energizer asked me if it looked like Korea, and I had to admit that the buildings bore a strange resemblance to some that I'd seen in smaller Korean towns in the countryside.  She explained that there'd been Koreans settled here in the past.  The town itself wasn't much to look at, but the descent into it from the plateau was gorgeous.  It had slowly been getting greener, and then toward the top of the ravine turned to the most verdant mess of ground cover, with waterfalls breaking out of the rock at random intervals.  By the time we got to the town, there were trees and it was humid as hell.  The Energizer says this is what eastern Tibet looks like, over where it adjoins Chengdu.  Apparently a lot of Chinese tourists like to visit that region.

The next morning I made my third border crossing by land (which seems to me a lot more hassle than air crossings for some reason).  It took a long time to actually get down to immigration.  The streets of Zhangmu are narrow and clogged with tour buses and Nepali trucks.  After we got fairly close, our driver parked and said goodbye, then the Energizer and I went on down where seemingly MILLIONS of people, mostly Indian, were milling about in a rough semblance of a line.  The Energizer found me the back of the line (sort of) then went off for a while.  When she came back, she moved me to a group with some other Western tourists, which I was led to believe I'd been given permission to join, and then she went away again.  A few more minutes later she came back and ushered me to the front of the line.  Don't ask me how all this came to pass - my best guess is that she's so chipper and energetic - not to mention rare, because guiding seems to be more of a male occupation - that people just give her what she wants, because this was not the first time I saw her twist people to her will.  Somehow I went from the end of the line to through immigration before the people I'd been standing behind had moved ten feet.  And then she was waving me on my way across the bridge to Nepal.

Yes, we drove over that.

That was strange in and of itself.  When you get to the Nepal side, they just let you through.  There is no officer standing there checking everyone's credentials.  If I'd wanted to, I could have walked right past the visa office and no one would have stopped me (of course this might have proved problematic when I tried to LEAVE the country, but still).  They gave me my visa on the spot, and then I had to go find transportation to Kathmandu.  Lonely Planet said it would cost me 350 to ride the bus.  Even as early in the morning as it was (probably 10:30 when I left Tibet, but 8:15 when I entered Nepal...no, the bridge wasn't that long.  Tibet, as well as all of China, is on Beijing time, which means I've been suffering from a mild case of jetlag despite not having been on a plane in nearly two weeks) it was hot and humid, and I decided I'd take a jeep, if I could find one to share.  And it's a good thing I did.  For the second time in a week, the rain had caused road problems, and it was a little scary going over places where there'd been landslides, not to mention that the roads were so rough that I was NOT feeling well by the time I finally got to my hostel, the Monumental Paradise on Freak Street, at 4 that afternoon.  In fact, the roads were so crowded, and the air coming into the jeep so polluted from big trucks belching black smoke straight into the window, that I was worried that I was wrong, thinking that Nepal was going to be the best part of the trip.  Find out one way or the other tomorrow...