Day 45 - Nov. 29 - Good-bye Nepal, headed home

Faithful waiting for the high-ranking lama to arrive

Faced with a day of sitting - in airports and airplanes - I opt to take the hotel’s Heritage Walk with Aman.  It’s the same kind of walk as the first day with Rup, but in a different direction (at least I think it is) and with different explanations.  The narrow streets part is similar, but Aman takes me into the bahas, the courtyards running between streets.  Much quieter and no vehicles, with at least one small temple for offerings in each.  A space used to wash clothes, to dry clay pottery and let the children play safely.
       We walk through the fruit and vegetable market - several, actually - and Aman explains the vegetables I don’t recognize, such as a prickly cucumber they use for pickles... the same family.  Americans need “pretty” fruit, so they’d be disappointed here, but all I’ve eaten has been delicious.  Given Nepal’s different altitudes, and resulting different climates, there’s little they need to import.  Everything from corn (maize) to pineapples to cabbage to pomegranates grows here.  Wheat and rice. 

Goalamari

       At one temple there’s much activity because a high lama is expected; people are waiting, seated, or having free tea and whatever passes for cookies here.  On another street, Aman stops at his herbal doctor’s shop, where the shaman is treating a woman’s leg with some black paste, then taping it up.  (No photos allowed so his trade secrets, handed down from his ancestors, will be safe.)
       Aman buys some freshly fried goalamari (phonetically spelled from what I heard him call it), little balls of rice flour cooked crisp in a wok of boiling oil.  Just a few minutes is all it takes.  The lady drops them in, then flips them over, and presto!  A gift for the ladies behind the hotel counter, but they give me one to taste.
       While I’m finishing breakfast, Rup arrives.  I give him my jeans, socks and walking shoes.  He’ll find them a new home.  Then a lovely surprise:  he and Aman sit with me for nearly an hour and we just talk.  They have made all the difference on this visit to Nepal, with their knowledge and kindness.  I’ll miss them.
       But it’s off to the airport.  After almost seven weeks, the next bed I sleep in will be my own!  Paris, here I come!

Kathmandu from the plane window

Day 46 - Saturday, Nov. 30 - Paris

Arrive in Paris at 6 a.m.  The pilots made up time for our late start.  Nine hours is too long to be sandwiched in the dark in a middle seat between two big guys who never had to pee; that’s all I’m going to say about that.
       Nice conversation with the cab driver who is from Martinique.  He drops me at my door.
       Bed!  Sitôt dit, sitôt fait.  (No sooner said than done.)  I don’t remember my head hitting the pillow.