Life

During this last week of Lhosar (which lasts from the Full Moon until the New Moon…i.e. two weeks), I began to appreciate a new shortcoming to my digs at the Lotus Guesthouse. Being run by the Tabsang Gompa and situated in the middle of Kathmandu’s most prosperous Tibetan district, my room was surrounded by no less than three gompas…with a further four within 5 minutes walk. I started waking up at stupid o’clock (4am most mornings) to the sound of horns being blasted and gongs and drums being thrashed frenetically by devout monks. Prior to my sojourn in Bouddha, I’d always been well-enamoured of Buddhism and admired its proponents for their peace-loving ways. A week of waking up at the crack of dawn in a gelid bedroom (my monastery-run guesthouse suffered from damp as well as noisy neighbours!) soon had me cursing ‘those bloody monks!’ with a full spectrum of profanity.
None of this, however, affected my burgeoning relationship with Dawa and, on the Wednesday, she insisted on taking me and Edd out for dinner to celebrate the New Year festival. Hospitality is a strong part of the Buddhist tradition and, as we were guests in her country, she insisted on treating us to dinner and showing us a good old time. I met her at the Stupa in the evening and she really did look beautiful in her traditional Tibetan dress. After three chora (one chora is walking a complete circuit around the Stupa) surrounded by smiling, happy Tibetan pilgrims, we had a quick drink in one of the roof-top cafes before heading over to Thamel to join Edd for dinner at Yin Yang. A tasty dinner was followed by (the usual) beer and pool at Tom & Jerry’s – a very pleasant way to spend the second New Year of my trip. After such a pleasant evening, we all arranged to meet again for dinner on the Friday.
Come Friday, Dawa and I had been expecting Edd by 7pm and I began to suspect that he’d succumbed to Nepali time (on Nepali time, 10 minutes late is still 5 minutes early!). I was enjoying Dawa’s company sufficiently to be only mildly concerned by Edd’s failure to show at the agreed time and, having left messages for him at likely locations, we ate alone. He eventually turned up over an hour late looking rather distraught and only stopped long enough to tell us what had delayed him and to arrange to meet us for a much-needed drink later on. It seemed that the school trip he’d been on that day had been led by a complete idiot who had somehow managed to lose two of the children. Edd and Colin (another young English volunteer) had managed to prevent yet more missing children by staying with two groups who’d been too exhausted to climb the 2700m Pulchowki that had been the day’s aim. When they had reconvened with the teacher and the rest of the children at the bus it became apparent that two of the younger boys who had been with the teacher had failed to come back down from the summit. A frantic, but darkness-curtailed search had not been successful and, eventually, the rest of the group had been forced to return to waiting parents. Being their first school-trip as responsible adults, Edd and Colin were obviously very upset and unable to help feeling partly responsible. As I explained to them, if the teacher in charge had refused to listen to any of their suggestions and had been the last to see the missing children, then they were certainly not responsible. I had strong urges to go and find their errant colleague and punch his lights out – not only for losing two children, but also for causing such distress to this pair of utterly blameless and very likeable young lads. Edd and Colin were due in school the following morning for a parents’ day and would be unable to find out any more until then…so we did the right and proper thing and got totally shit-faced.
The following morning, Dawa and I got up late and spent a fruitless couple of hours looking for a computer repair-shop for my ailing laptop. It was the first really hot day of what had now become Spring and the excessive number of Everests from the night before were really taking their toll. With the heat, the effects of pollution and noise seemed to intensify and in the end I was only too glad to jump on a micro (minivan / bus) with Dawa to get out of the chaos of Kathmandu and head to the Botanical Gardens at Godavari. After almost three weeks in the stench and hassle of the city it was pure bliss to sit on green grass and hear the sound of running water and the wind whispering in the trees. Lying there in the sunshine I could feel the stress of city life ebbing out of me and my energy levels being replenished. It seemed a shame to have to go back into town but we’d made arrangements to meet with Edd and I was keen to find out what had happened with his kids…so off to Tom & Jerry’s we went.
I could see immediately that Edd was in better spirits when we met him and it turned out that both the boys had been found unharmed. Nevertheless, one boy had collapsed, exhausted, by the side of the road to be discovered by the army late at night; the second had managed to find his way to a village, where he had been given food and shelter by a generous local family until the following morning. Edd and Colin had made their school’s headmaster promise never to let the irresponsible teacher lead another school trip again. For once I was left thinking that Asia’s lack of health & safety laws had some serious shortcomings…