MAY-A-2
THE TRANSITION FROM “DHARAM-02” CLOSED OUT IN DELHI
ON RETURN FROM AGRA,
TO “NEPAL-02” BEGUN IN KATHMANDU ENROUTE TO LUKLA
ON THE EVEREST TREK ROUTE
May 3, 2002
The All-day efforts spent in transit
to get from where I started to where I started!
Eight security checks, Four aircraft boardings, three deplanings and
two takeoffs later,
I am still where I had begun, until I arrive late and alone in a besieged city,
With a moribund tourism industry begging for customers
May 3, 2002
I have spent a very extraordinary day in transit, even by my somewhat adventurous third-world travel standards. I have put in a very full day from early morning to well after midnight in transit to turn out most of the time to be exactly where I had started at the outset! I have at last, just now, arrived in Kathmandu, and to my surprise, it closely resembles the city under siege that I had encountered on my final day here in 1999 when a general strike had shut down and paralyzed the city, with only the single mini-bus on the street labeled prominently “Tourist Use Only”: making its way through the deserted streets in a convoy of heavily armed police escort. I have now come full circle, and arrived near midnight---at last!—in a city with surprise roadblocks every few blocks, patrolled by camouflaged Army troops wearing masks and carrying full automatic weapons to intercept Maoist mischief-makers and cheering on the arrival of a very rare lone tourist into the deserted hotels.
The full story I wrote in serial letter D-1 as it unfolded, since I had a very full day in queues with a pen and stationery in hand, as I was shuttled back and forth through Security re-screenings and checks over again before a mysterious “technical glitch—don’t worry, everything is normal—but we are returning, back to Delhi’s Indira Ghandi International Airport which we have just now left where you can reclaim your luggage.” It surely was not a “mechanical” that had us pulled off the Indian Air IC 813—the infamous flight once hijacked on its return from Kathmandu diverted to Kandahar—since we actually did pull out o f the gate twice and actually took off on our way at last, when we were called back to re-land in Delhi. There was some high-level security breach, with a large dose of silent mystery and a complete blackout of any information whatsoever.
So, I have been on my own to fight my way onto another carrier, forfeiting the previous excess baggage payment I had made and then re-made, and losing also the two complete sets of extra fresh batteries that were pulled from my carry-on bag with assurances that I could claim them again from cabin personnel in Kathmandu, but since we failed to get there on the first three tries, my property disappeared in an India where the value of those confiscated items would be a week’s tips for the purloiner. And, now, in Nepal, at last, those same batteries on the exchange rate would have bought my visa, taxi ride in from the airport, tips and my tariff at the hotel I magically found after midnight with a taxi driver who leveled with me that I was the first fare he had had in 24-hours of working, since the tourist traffic has dropped to 15% of what it had been in 2001 before two big events. Those two events as everyone knows of the one—September 11—but the other also plays a role—the death of Shiva—the annihilation of the entire royal family by the spraying of automatic weapons fire by a distraught son who committed suicide even as the throne passed to him for the moments between his killing the King and Queen and taking his own life in one mad spree. All these events are an incredible sequence of what sound like evil hallucinations, but I can assure you from a full day working in the secret corners of these insecurities, that they are real enough in their effect on any kind of “normal” business, even in the remote and dicey corners of the world.
ARRIVAL IN KATHMANDU, A CITY UNDER SIEGE
KATH= 27* 43.06 N, 85* 19.34 E, which makes it 7,676 miles from HOME at 346*, 447 miles from AGRA at 257*, 557 miles from CHAN at 294*, 505 miles from DELI at 279* and 4,209 miles from FRAG at 346*.
It is a ghostly town. The shops are all boarded up and the lights are out, with a roadblock of armed masked men in camouflage uniforms carrying M-16’s with clips in place. I saw no one I knew and no one was holding a sign that said my name or Alpine Trekking or any messages left for me. I was at once set upon by several eager taxi drivers but told them I was being met. But, having met no one, one persistent fellow followed me around since I had gone to purchase my own-the-spot visa for $30.00 US and another $10.00 for some kind of tax, I told him it was all right if he wanted to pack up the bags I had just reclaimed, and pout them in his taxi. “How much to the Mansalu Hotel” I asked. “60 Rupees, less than five dollars.”
Let’s go! At very high speeds, we slalomed in and out of the blocking road gates set up to slow us down for the examination by the army and police, who peered into the vehicle to see my European face, and waved us on. We left the dome light on, and the headlights off, so that the guards could more clearly see me in the front seat and my Action Packer taking up the whole back seat. At each point we slowed to have the suspicious police stop to ask us some brief exchanges before seeing me, and recognizing a blonde head and a Western clothes and waving us on.
The driver told me how grateful he was to have me here, since he had been up before dawn this morning and try9ing to work hard, but I was the first faire of the day. The troubles have caused such a problem that the tourism is down over five times, and officially it is less than 15% of what it was in 2001 before the events in US September 11 and the June assassination of all the royal family here. He wanted to take me to his friend’s hotel, “Don’t worry, there will be room, since there is no one staying there and he will be happy to have the business even this late tonight.” I said that I could remember last time staying at the Mansalu, and that if that is where my friends were staying, I would pack out and remain, but if they were not there, I would continue on and check out his friend’s place until I found out where my contacts were who had no idea if I were still stuck or whether I was in the area. I had just spontaneously remembered the name Mansalu, and the Limpyat area where it was located. The streets look like the after-curfew nights I had been driven through Beirut. The only things moving were a few dogs in the street, and pop-up soldiers who were in camo and black face masks, who seemed to appear like jack in the boxes as we rounded each turn near the Royal Palace where I remembered I had walked when here last time. No joyful tourist visits there or nearby there now, and especially at night!
We reached the Mansalu, and the hotel door was locked. A porter answered, and I carried my daypack up to the desk and asked if my friends were here. I mentioned the names Bruce Bonnet and Jennifer, and he did not understand but went to the Guest List and turned it over to me to look at. After turning the pages the right way round, I noticed that there were just seven people registered in this hotel---the first was a Dr. Glenn W. Geelhoed, and the others were the rest of my group. “I am home!” I told the taxi driver. I had no Nepali rupees, so I gave him his five US dollars and then another one of the same denomination. I thought he would follow me to my room and tuck me in for his effusive gratitude; times are tough!
I started unpacking the things I will leave in the Mansalu, and the fewer things I will carry up to Lukla, within the fifteen kilos limit, with a separate allowance for the medicines and some surgical kit I had brought like the pulse oximeter and stethoscopes. The rest of the stuff will be expendables like my film and tapes and then a large batch o things I will need for the trek here and also for the continuing treks this year in the High Himalaya, which I will return from KAT to DEL and leave both duffel bag and Action Packer there for the two next trips, and return with my day pack and exposed film.
`It is about two AM, a long day for a short trip in statute miles. But, I will meet the group at breakfast tomorrow. They have come on one of my favorite airlines Singapore International, which went from New York to Frankfurt, of all places, on its way to Singapore and then back up to Katmandu---go figure! But, I will then take them—all of them first timers, and a mixed group of firefighter/paramedics from a Cleveland volunteer fire department (3) a single medical student senior from Indianapolis, Jennifer, a pediatric Intensivist from Wisconsin, and a junior PT student---and ==trekking with us all the way to the top, Nepal’s premier female climber, Nimi Sherpa!
Later tomorrow, we will all meet her husband, Lakpa Sherpa, the other half of the supreme climbing couple in Nepal; I will tell you of the two Buddhist and one Hindu temples I had visited before and which will be visited with a group who have never seen them before—and I will be right in there shooting colorful pictures also, since today is Saturday and it is a holiday holy day for the Hindu and a school holiday for the kids, so the night time dream world of armed guards stalking empty streets will be dispelled by a splash of colorful life in the very subdued capital city of Kathmandu.