While the lights are on: A Contradicting Happy Note

Having browsed through blogs related to Nepal, I suddenly feel a little sorry that in my notes I am not in a similar manner able to share the exiting elephant safaris, the thin air of the Everest base-camp, the adrenalin rushes of the para-gliding adventures, or the crazy hazy night-lights of Thamel.

I seem to have been slipping more and more into the wrongs and the even more wrongs that puzzle me, puzzle this country.

I realise that the the pictures I am painting may appear gloomy, although it is not, not at all, entirely as black and white a way the world refelcts on my lenses. Perhaps I am just hopelessly affected by the reporter's disease of 'good news is no news'. Thus I have dipped myself in a bath of curing liniment and am changing the tone slightly. At least for this one.

Getting out of Kathmandu is always refreshing, but this time it was simply the best: Two ladies, two kids, a lot of food and accessories from games to umbrellas packed into the coolest van ever, and off we drive. Surviving the maddening traffick of Kathmandu where the only rule is to let the biggest go first and in which the worst chaos is created by a traffick police at work, we head towards the northern hills along the windy, bumpy roads leading towards Tibet.

The stops for biscuits, drinks, views, water springs, even the stops to collect hats the fellow-passengers have dropped along the road, delay us but all we have is time and the road ahead. Reaching the more remote, the surprise on a face of a young Nepali selling tomatoes along the road in the middle of nowhere when a van of white women pulls over, is definately worth remembering even months after. The faces of the armed police at road stops drop, and while recovering from their shock of having seen a female driver they forget to search our house on wheels for a possible load of Sal tree, commonly smuggled to China. Not that it would have been worth it, we are simply enjoying life as it appears after each steep turn of the road.

Towards Tatopani (Cold Water) a perfect spot for dipping in a fast running water awaits the pack of travellers. All the million little streams running down the majestic mountains collects into one huge monster of a river which gives us an ice-cold embrace we welcome as a bliss after many sweaty, although happy hours of chats and sing-alongs in the scorching hot van. Standing in the stream, the fine sand under our toes disappears within seconds, probably only to eventually end up to the countless construction sites of Kathmandu.

But Kathmandu is only a distant memory. Our moment turns into a self-made lunch under a shack buil on the river bank, followed by peculiar exercise of collecting all the left-behind flip-flops we find on the beach into a long line of abandonment. The quickly rolling clouds of the starting monsoon suddenly burst, forcing us to escape the newly-found beach life, and into the heavy rain we drive, a few kilos of sand stuck into the folds of or soaked pants, shirts and hair.

When the beating rain, already dripping through the seals of the windows, stops visibility we pass a non-cultivated paddy field cum our camping spot. Later that night, after a simple but one of the tastiest dinners ever prepared, in the kitchen section of the van, after the chilling out with a few card games, stories and a bottle of wine earlier cooled down in the cold of the river, I step outside, and stand not only in the rain water gathered and risen up to my anckles but more importantly in the midst of the perfect dark, in the lap of the mysterious mountains.

As I watch the only sources of light against the hips of the mountaisn, the last of the home fires slowly die and turn into the flickering lamps of the hundred fire-flies, I cannot but believe in good.

A child who has had an opportunity to shower under the pouring skies of the top of the world, a paddy field as their smooth marble floor and the clouds as their shower curtain, a crab crawling by their feet like a bath toy, they can - in reference to the last posting - after all, turn nothing but good, respectful beings?