Ari's Planet

I take the flight from Chengdu to Kathmandu. I am tired, hardly slept the night before, kept up by a persistent cough, pollution. I sleep through take off. Half an hour in to the flight, bright light wakes me and I reach to close the shade. Arrested. Beyond the plane stretches a plain of clouds, soft, billowy things, they stop at a range of mountains. I cannot sleep through this. One peak stands above the rest, a single cloud forming from the wind rushing past it, as it rushes past, a pebble in a stream. Could this be Everest? No, it is too soon.

These clouds are poetic, lovely, inspiring. They are a collection of water vapors, molecules, quarks, maybe they are a manifestation of 248 points. Any order I impose on them is a construction of my eyes, maybe time is a construction of our attempt to make sense of these manifestations. There is no sense to be made of things, anything I could say about these clouds lapping mountains, changing countries, borders splitting peoples, would be irrelevant.

In front of me a man reads the China Daily, "Crackdown on Bogus Reporters: authorities building databases of foreign journalists for reference". We pass over mountains, descend, trees, streams, wilderness. We land. I am excited to be in Nepal. My head hurts, I am dehydrated. In China, they seem not to believe is selling drinks in airport lounges. The exit forms all say China on them, and I remember that we did not clear customs or immigration. In fact, we are in Lhasa and my headache is due to dehydration, fatigue, altitude. Here, we clear immigration and board for the second leg of our flight.

I sit next to a Nepalese official with their civil aviation program. He says we will pass Everest soon. There it is, a large mountain range. People rush over from the left side of the plane, shove their cameras in my hand. I repay them with beautiful shots of the plane's wing, Everest through a smudged window. The haze of the Kathmandu valley is obvious. We land, clear customs, and immediately people want my money. One young fellow offers a ride to the city for 100R, compared to the 400 they want at the official counter. The cab fare ends up being 200R, but he honors the agreement and makes up the difference: is this a clever ruse to lure me in or is he truly honest but clueless about cab fares? He does this every day, he must know the true cost of a cab.

I drop my bags and follow him to his office, where a couple of tour packages are described. A full trek of the Annapurna Circuit, guide plus porter, transportation, food, etc. would cost $1200. Too much. Now I am really tired, no lunch, flight. I just want to make it back to the hotel room. Everywhere they are hawking treks. It is annoying, I just want to walk. Kathmandu is noisy, dirty. The sky is blue: it is many times cleaner than China. At ground level it is noisy, there is trash in big piles, cows, shrines. The people of this place are separated from the Chinese peoples by big mountains, it is more like India.

I wander around the city, through Durbar square. Every city with a king seems to have had a Durbar square, which means something like Palace Square. I just missed the fall lantern festival. Someone runs up to me, tries to sell me a guided tour of the square. I already have to pay 200R to walk around. He wants another 500, we agree on 300 (I only have 500 on me). A quick tour, then I mention I'm hungry so he suggests a place. Follows me there as I get cash (there is a guard at the ATM and it's on a main street so I'm not too worried). We go into the restuarant and, after we order, he suddenly announces that I should be paying for his half. I say that you have to say before that you want someone to pay, you cannot say after, I do not agree. He cancels his order. He is very sleazy. Eyes me the whole time. I do not trust him. I eat my food and do not offer him any, there is no reason to, he has betrayed my trust and lied. I do pay for the tea we ordered, then he tries to weasel out more money from me, restoring his original rate. Again, I say you cannot do this. Then he decides he wants a tip. This is my first day here, maybe tipping is important in Nepal, so I pay him 340R in the end. This scene will repeat itself, with variations. That is not interesting.

In the square there is a bodhi tree. It grows around a small shrine. Inside the white shrine is another brick structure around which the roots also wrap. On every shrine there is red paint, food offerings, flowers. People touch the red paint to their heads, bring offerings. Around the square there are temples, shrines. A young girl is a living goddess. The Kama Sutra is carved into posts. A goat is a living manifestation of Shiva. Shiva himself stands in gaudy paint, smeared in oily colors, rice, flowers, candles, smoke, incense, bulls. Dogs roam the streets. In the Barnes and Noble bookstore there are shelves of books promising enlightenment. On the TV there are channels, ads. In the street, the cars and motorcycles honk, weave.

A man grabs rice out of Shiva's mouth, hands a bit to his son. He is loudly scolded, chased. Is Shiva mad? Will he vent his retribution upon the people? It is just as well that the hungry man was chased away. Stone Shiva needs the food much more than he. A man appears with parrots, parakeets, songbirds draped over his shoulder, existing in tiny cages. A dollar for a photo, 1500R for a parrot. he imitates the goat I am photographing, the goat with a red dot on its head, like the red dot extorted from me on the street which is not a blessing but a curse.

There is harshness. A bookstore with books of enlightenment. Statues to be appeased. Endless gods. Buddhism is Hinduism's younger brother. Endless channels on TV. Endless rows of products. Things and more things. People and more people, animals. Lies upon lies, delusions of every billion that have ever lived. I can see people renouncing this, to live out their own delusions alone, apart. My eyes are the delusion of a probability of evolution, one way in which a cloud made sense to an ancestor. Enter the cloud and it is fog, a matter of perspective. People are empty, hollow, full of energy, ambition, greed. They dance, and it could not be more obvious, power, lust, sex. Why say the Naxi way is any better, these are just accidents, versions of ways in which resources are pulled from the earth in the name of love, power. As if these things were new. Here a six-pointed star lies beside a swastika, the world does not implode. Look for enlightenment in the Buddha, burn your incense, it is only your life burning away, your lungs filled with smoke.

In Bahktapur they also will guide you, for a price. As soon as I pay the ticket fee, a man comes up. I say I do not want a guide. No no, he is only an art student with some spare time and wants to practice his English. We wander around a bit. He takes me to a thangka factory by the square. They show me some thangkas. I am unmoved. It is fine work, but what is the source of this wheel of life? This special knowledge? This is gibberish. I say I will not buy. We leave. I am upset that he lied to me, pretended he did not want gain, I despise liars. The price is not rupees, it is a much higher price, it cannot be made up by rubbing dots of paint.

I hang around. Kids are playing during recess. They run on multiple levels, their gray uniforms, red sweaters. Skip rope, chase, scream. They are children here, just as the teachers are slow, ambling, boring adults standing around in their colorful garb. Again I am approached. This time, I say I do not want a guide and will not pay for or buy anything, but if the wants to follow me around that is fine by me. I take my time, hours, following the walking tour of Bahktapur. Cars, buses, motorcycles: I say it is very harsh. A bell and a sculpture, paint on a wall, an impromptu painting of great harmony. Fabric dyed black drying next to a green, algae filled pool. Cremation along the banks of a river, the family waiting for the dead to be transformed to ash, shrines, paint. Pottery being fired, a black dog lying in warm gray ash. My "friend" takes me towards the thankga school. I tell him I was there earlier, he is very disappointed. He is soft spoken and patient and I am disappointed that he also lied to me. In the square, he tries a new ruse "I need a dictionary". What kind? An English-Nepali. I tell him I said I would buy nothing, what is so hard to understand about this sentence uttered at the start? I tell him he is clever, he can find a dictionary. He is very disappointed, tries over and over again. Finally he gives up. Another liar. His compatriots try to get me to give them money, they are revolting, sleazy, I get a bad feeling and decide to leave immediately.

At the bus stop, I try to organize a taxi ride, end up meeting a friendly fellow from Spain. We have dinner, go to Patan the next day. Here, we agree, the architecture is even more spectacular. I am excited by the light and the people. Resolve to return again the next day to get more pictures of these beautiful people, objects. By evening Nepal has given me a gift and I am ill. In the morning I buy more water and oral rehydration salts (ORS) than I could possibly need. Move to a nicer room, with a bathroom and a TV. Spend the day hidden inside, follow the protocol to the letter (ORS, loperamide, ciproflaxacin, rice), by the next day I am better. On TV, they have finally discovered part of the game being played out with the US dollar as the world shifts to a basket of currencies for pricing oil rather than the dollar, years after the fate was clear, as if this is news, as if this is surprising, yet fail to connect this to geopolitics. Neither have some realized their deceptions yet, colorful stone altars, words in prayers, movements of a dancer.