The Underbelly

I have been walking around the dusty streets of Kathmandu looking at the mountains surrounding us and I am excited we are going to get out of the city. It’s a good place - temples, Nirvana cover bands, Italian trekking legends, monkeys and chanting monks.

 

However, I am at that point in the journey where I am feeling half immune and half cynical towards all real and faux friendly encounters.

 

The first part is the haggling. Today I managed to buy a necklace for 120 rupees that was originally offered to me for 900 rupees. It’s dumbfounding how low one can go and still I was probably still taken for a fool, but that is par for the course. Makes me feel like an idiot for all the other times where I started the haggling process at half the original offer price. I sincerely don’t mind paying a few rupees extra because it simply does not hurt me, but I don’t like the idea of being ripped off quite so severely.

 

What is harder to deal with than being a silly white girl in a bazaar are the people who at first sight don’t want to sell you anything but who still on this white girl like flies on shit. We have met so many great souls on temple steps, cafes, half way up windy mountain roads and last but not least we recruited a bunch of guys we met in an internet café to storm into the Air India office with us to help resolve some ticketing issues which turned out to be unresolveable. But the staunch “by the bible” and no room for thinking bureaucracy is a whole different, hilarious topic. So, generally I would say the people we have met on this trip have been my favorite part of our travels so far. For all the greatness though we have also been cheated, hassled, taken advantage off and then taken for the scenic route some more. It is tiring to go through conversations about where we are from, where they are from, how many cousins they have, how we met and our romance history in detail for hours on end sometimes only to find out in the end the person really just wanted some cash. Now I don’t blame anyone for trying to get a dollar out of us. Afterall we have a dollar and it shows, but it’s hard to differentiate between people who want to chat and people who want to cheat. In half the cases where someone talks to us, at some point they will pull me aside (maybe because I am a girl they think I am nicer? They are wrong) and say with a serious and pained face that they are really strapped for cash and can’t I shell some out. I do believe they are strapped for cash but I don’t believe my one dollar charity will solve their problems.

 

Then there are the fake sadhu’s and the million street kids. Today in an attempt to be nice to some kids who were hanging out with us and who were pretty smart, scrappy and generally great we took them to a store to buy them some cookies and water. The whole store was full of candy and crackers and little packets of chocolates. However, because we were treating the kids asked for this ginormous dusty Quality Street box of chocolates the size of a tractor wheel which must have been sitting on the top shelf of the store since 1964 and in all seriousness thought we’d buy it for them. They probably could not even have carried it. I bend over laughing and then bought them some stale lemon cookies as revenge.

 

Now I am sure they too were strapped for cash and I am also sure they would have shared with their brothers or cousins, but I could not help feeling irked at once again being taken for a cash dispenser at the slightest gesture of good will. Maybe because there are so many kids who look like they could use a truckload of cookies and there are so many open hands directed towards me, there is so much need and poverty and so many people who are smiling yet desperately need help, I feel tempted to just shut my eyes towards the whole thing, shut it and them out and keep walking.

 

I won’t because that means I’d miss the good parts and the great people too, but it’s getting to me.