Dispatch One

Now, before I attempt to be interesting or insightful – patience, people – I shall outline the what, where and why of my stay in Nepal, from 12 June till 12 September.

I landed an internship in the Kathmandu office of Himal Southasia magazine. The landing process was a puzzlement to many back home. How did it happen to me? It frankly wasn’t the done thing, like working for the local paper or, at a stretch, corrupting – sorry, teaching – little kids in Malawi. Well, it all happened very quickly. I got home one evening and there it was, the internship, perched on my doorstep, staring dolefully at me. I had to accept it. Okay…so I spotted an add on the Himal website and responded with one of those ‘I would kill a baby to work for you’ emails. Easy as that; go try it.

Himal Southasia is a high-brow, English-language, political-cultural, awesome-excellent magazine, covering the entire South Asia region, whether the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, Naxalism in India, Maoism in Nepal, or whatever is actually happening in the Maldives. Himal has an ideological basis: regional unity, and the integrity of South Asia as a cultural and geo-political unit. You can improve yourself by reading their articles. Here’s a nice link: http://www.himalmag.com/. Click on it.

Now, before I get into the blog proper, I must state that I am here in Nepal to nurture my mind, not my soul. I abhor hippies; I think men wearing beads should be shot; I shall embrace neither Hinduism nor Buddhism; I consider yoga to be a singularly vile activity; and I have no intention of finding myself whatsoever.

And the blog’s title, for those who wondered, echoes the words the first modern-era Nepali King, Prithvi Narayan Shah, during the 18th century: ‘Nepal exists as a yam between two boulders,’ referring to Nepal’s age-old vulnerability, being wedged against the two ‘empires’ of India and China. An elaboration on the cultural and geopolitical implications of this vegetable metaphor will be delivered in a future post.

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The flight from London: not much of interest here. The transfer at Delhi was, however, bizarre. In most national airports, getting your boarding bass for onward travel is simply a matter of rocking up to a desk and presenting your passport. In India, you have to earn the privilege. In Indira Gandhi airport I fell victim to the national sport, bureaucratic ping-pong: I was bounced from one clueless official to the next, and waited in a succession of rooms, with the vague hope that I’d eventually end up on an aeroplane. I got chatting to one of my co-sufferers – a Nepali journalist, it turned out, connected to a Nepali-language tabloid in Kathmandu. He gave me his card. So, there I was, scoring contacts before I’d even arrived.

The Kathmandu airport is the quaintest I’ve ever seen; a tiny, largely empty red-brick thing, resembling a high-school gym. No duty free shopping here. It sees no more than a couple of dozen international flights in-out each day, and locals graze livestock on nearby grassy patches, animals occasionally ambling on to the runway. Karma was waiting outside, waving a sheet of paper reading ‘Been’ – me. Karma is a friend of Ben Ayers, the chap whose apartment I’d be renting during my time in Kathmandu. Ben, according to the Porters’ Progress website, is ‘a writer, activist, amateur climber, performance artist, conservationist, part-time farmhand and founder of Porters’ Progress, a Nepali NGO dedicated to improving the lives of trekking porters.’ Quite a fellow. But I’ve never him; we got in touch through a friend of a friend of my mother’s.

The flat is rather a coup. Basic, certainly, but with a roof-top balcony and a million-dollar view over Kathmandu and the misty hills beyond. Suresh was there to meet me – my servant boy. I’ve always been a colonial fantasist – my wet-dream is to be warped back and made a tea plantation owner in the West Bengal Hills circa 1920, replete with baggy shorts and a pith helmet – so being cooked for and attended to by a cheery native more than fitted the bill. He explained, in limited English and with the help of Karma, that he’d be around twice a week – Sundays and Wednesdays – to cook, shop for me, gather my laundry and clean the flat. After Karma left, Suresh told me a little about himself: ‘I come from village, in hills. My family very low. We have no so much land. I am first to leave and come Kathmandu and try get education.’ He had another job as a cook in a guest house, I just about gathered, and learnt English at some college in the evenings. He’s twenty, like me, and possibly the sweetest man I’ve ever met. We shall get along famously.

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Now, I haven’t taken you quite up to the present. And I have described virtually nothing of Kathmandu. But the evening wears on and I grow weary. Suffice to stay, I’ve started at Himal and explored Kathmandu a little further. All is well and good, and I’m negotiating the power-cuts like a man. Expect an update soon.

All the best.