From the original itinerary:
April 24: Today you can pick up your start number in the Kathmandu Guesthouse and ask any questions to
the organization. The rest of the day is free at leisure. A good massage in one of the great massage parlors in
Thamel is recommended.
With it being a “free day” I thought I’d try and post a few stray photos that I snapped but never really found a place to post within the attempted structured narrative of the previous blog entries. Since every time I walk or run the streets I see stray dogs roaming like me, I thought I’d begin with this shot:
I feel like this should be my New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest prompt for RunKevinRun Dot Com readers (all six of you!). But, shrug, who wants to be bothered sending me an email with the subject line: “2018 04 23 RKR Cartoon Caption Entry”?
So here are a few I came up with:
- I hate a dog that can’t hold his liquor.
- They must have really tied a leash on last night!
- Dog tired, sure, but wait ’til the hangover…
Here then are just a bunch of random photos from Nepal… or what I like to call JABORPFN for short.
Ya know what, I’m going to stick with calling them strays. I think these are all-new (to you) but a few may have made their way into a post previously, or in alternate angles/takes. Some even may have made their way to Instagram or Facebook previously but not onto the site proper. So if you’ve seen any of these before it’s probably because you’re a Run Kevin Run SuperFan.
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During the Lost Patrol “Hike” through the Kathmandu Valley yesterday, we chanced upon this place. “You can go inside,” Ari told us. And you could, sorta. There was a skylight, though not original, as created by the 2015 earthquake. And the museum itself was a tight squeeze for the “docents” and a couple of guests; it was downright claustrophobic when 20 or so of us tried to squeeze in. But I liked that this first Nepali home with electric light has a lion sconce outside with an Uncle Fester-ian lightbulb in its mouth.
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I’ve mentioned the paucity (or frankly non-existence) of traffic lights in Nepal. Islands at intersections are befitting of their name as sometimes they’re the only safety in the Frogger mad dash to get across the road. Sometimes they also serve as an operational guardpost for the white-gloved traffic cops signaling which “lane” can go (lane being an entirely relative term — when I asked Gobi, the local tour operator, about which side of the road cars drive on so I could run against traffic, he originally said they drive on the right… only to be corrected that in Nepal they drive on the left. The short, short answer is they drive wherever there’s space). Sometimes there’s advertisements on the columns marking the safety “base” of the island in the sea of traffic. I particularly liked this one for the local police.
I can’t decide how to parse the structure of the phrasing. I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be reassuring, “Police! My friend!” It’d be as if you were to say, “it’s good to see you, Police, how have you been?” Or maybe it’s “Police My Friend” in the old George Orwell 1984-style “inform on your friends,” “loose lips sink ships,” etc. Or maybe it’s a combination of all that and more. Maybe it’s a teaser for the greatest Nepali Buddy Cop Movie ever made — Police My Friend, starring a streetwise cop paired with the Yeti to solve mysteries. I bet I could sell that to Nepal-Flix, an imaginary Netflix subsidiary.
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Speaking of subsidiaries… I don’t know if this is the HQ for the Carolina Alumni Association Kathmandu Club, but I really, really want to believe that. Also, I think it’s safe to say the Yeti is a Roy Williams fan… and a fan of the oldest state university in the US of A. Go Heels.
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Wandering the streets looking for dinner options, I came across this place.
Click on the image and you’ll probably be better able to read the tag line: “It’s Nepal’s 1st recycled and re-used cafe & bar.” A few questions popped into my head. Is the menu just a list of leftovers? Or is there not a menu and it’s all served Omakase stlye — the “chef” just wanders around to the other cafes and bars and whatever half-eaten entrees are on the table he or she sticks into a doggy bag and presents it to the patrons? The mind boggles.
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I really hope he has a bumper sticker that says, “My other steam roller is a car.” Also, I imagine him pulling up for carpool and the pickup rider doing a double take. The driver then saying, “This is how I roll!”
That’s a terrible joke. Just terrible. I should send it in to Blondie.
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Inside the Healing Bowl center where folks had their chakras harmonized, this was taped to the wall.
I guess many folks have inspirational quotes tacked up on our office cubicles. This one that seems to imply the a power over death itself. And that seems a bit, um, terrifying? There’s something about seeing the words “through sound I can kill what is live” in a Healing Studio.
Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis “the wise?”
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It’s important to hydrate here. It’s dusty and hot and, well, I’m supposed to run a marathon and all. So I’m glad this exists:
As opposed to, ya know, “unhealthy water.” Makes me wonder if I have to specify when asking for mineral water in the restaurants here if the options are sparkling or still, healthy or unhealthy?
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Storefronts in Kathmandu:
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I posted the marked up photo below to instagram and really felt like I nailed the caption. It’s one of the prouder writerly moments I’ve had of late so I’m posting it here to me ol’ blog. That sounds writerly, yeah?
Anyway, the caption should read:
If signs could cry over their failures, this one would weep tears for days.
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My friend Reda from Dubai is here running and her friend Justina came to cheer her on. They’re both great and I’ve been lucky enough to occasionally get lunch or dinner with them. Last night Reda was craving Momos and I happened to have passed a street lined with a couple of places I thought about checking out. We instituted a Mo Mo Crawl, having a couple of plates of the Nepal dumplings at one place, then trying another restaurant’s variation. At one stage we found out “buff momos” that we thought was just a typo of “beef” was actually shorthand for “buffalo meat.” I also realized Diet Coke is an expensive habit to have here in Nepal.
We’ve taken to calling ourselves The Mo Mo Gang and have recruited one and maybe two other people to join our next round.
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I picked up my race number this morning. Tomorrow we run; tonight we momo some more. We mo momo? I dunno. Or should I say, I “done-momo?”
Terrible. Just terrible.
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So I saw this kid pouring out his juicebox, presumably for his homies. I passed him and then turned around to watch what happened next. His mom encouraged me to take a picture… which I did..
…and then she asked if I could buy him some baby food at a local store. That seemed legit rather than asking for money… so she took me to a specific store and ordered two boxes. I didn’t have enough rupees to cover the cost of two (1800 rupees per box) so I had to tell her I could only do one. She seemed disappointed but what could I do? I did buy the kid two more juice boxes, one for now and one for later as that was some ridiculously small amount. I asked for a photo afterwards and though she offered to take me to her home for a cup of tea with her family, I declined.
As I walked away, I found myself wondering if I got scammed, if she was just going to take the box of baby food formula back to the store and split the cash. But even if she did, hopefully the kid got something. It’s what? Seventeen bucks American. I’m trying not to let my cynicism get the better of me… and yet… I don’t know. Sigh. Am I trying to rationalize low-balling her on the baby formula to one box only? I feel very conflicted.
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When traveling, I sometimes think I’m trying to be a big game hunter. Not of animals but of the perfect shot, the one photograph that perfectly captures the trip in the moment or that fulfills the vision I had in my head for what the trip was meant to be.
I’ve repeatedly tried to capture the Raiders of the Lost Ark vibe of a visit to Nepal. With my eBay purchased replica headpiece to the Staff of Ra (with printing on BOTH sides thank you very much), I kept trying to get that perfect shot. I’m still on the hunt and clearly it seems like I won’t ever get it. I’ve tried close-ups of the headpiece, selfies of me, had other people snap a shot of me, and they all look… well, not as I imagined. I’ve even posted a few previously on this blog and to social media. But here are a few alternate cuts.
I guess hope springs eternal and I’ll keep trying. But this may be one case where reality can never match up with the fantasy. See also: Gosh… I’m trying to button this with a funny line. I had originally typed this:
See Also: My entire history of romantic relationships. SELF-DEPRECATING BORDERLINE SELF-PITYING ZING!
But I deleted it. Then I control-Z’d it back into existence so I can point out that I cut it. So if I undo the cut and then post it… was it ever really cut?
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And now a moment of NON-Zen. Here’s what it’s like to walk the streets of Kathmandu for 62 seconds:
I do wonder if this is also a preview of what it’ll be like during tomorrow’s marathon. I guess I’ll know in… 13 and a half hours from… now.