Kathmandu
So, after a few days of rest and relaxation in Kathmandu, I almost feel human again.
Almost.
I did a bit of shopping, a bit of wandering around town trying to find where the hell Indian Airlines had hidden its office, and a bit of drinking and eating. In that order.
It took me three tries to find the Indian Airlines office. I needed to reconfirm my flight to Calcutta, and though I had three city maps of Kathmandu, and each map showed where the airline office was, each showed it to be in a different place.
Complicating things is the fact that Kathmandu doesn’t really have street addresses in the traditional sense. There are few street names, and no street numbers. Rather, Kathmandu is divided into districts; Thamel, Indra Chowk, Chetrapaty, etc., and almost every place is listed simply by the district it is in. My hotel, for instance, is the Nirvana Garden Hotel, Thamel. That’s it, no street, no number, etc. The way you find places is to wander around the district and ask people until you come across someone who knows the location of whatever it is you’re looking for.
The problem for me was that the Indian Airlines office was in either of two different districts, depending on which map you believed. And no one on the street seemed to have any clue where it actually was. This caused me a bit of concern because Indian Airlines is infamous for overbooking, cancellations, delays, you name it. And if I didn’t reconfirm 72 hours before my flight, well, it would be tantamount to dancing around in my underwear front of the check-in counter at the airport, sticking my tongue out at them and daring them to bump me. Not a smart move.
But after three forays out into the streets I finally found the carefully camouflaged office and got the magic stamp on my ticket that showed that I was a good boy and had made sacrifices to the gods of reconfirmation
On my last night in Kathmandu I went out for drinks with the director of the kidney film. Remember him? Well, Jaybi Rai, that’s his name, called me up and invited me out in appreciation for the bang up job I did dubbing Nepali gibberish for him. He showed up on his motorcycle and we did another mad dash through rush hour Kathmandu traffic to his favorite Korean restaurant where we downed gin & tonics, kim chee, and garlic chicken while discussing his plans to film his next magnum opus, an epic about the 1814 war between Nepal and England.
He told me he was going for the big time with this film, and was hoping to garner a nomination for a Best Foreign Film from the Academy. He had the budget, he said. All of a $100,000!
For some reason he seemed to think that I, as an American, knew all about how to get the attention of the right people in Hollywood. I tried to set him straight, but I got the feeling that he didn’t quite believe me, and was sure I could deliver the needed juice and was just holding out on him for some reason.
No really Jaybi, I don’t have Spielberg’s private number!
Anyway, the gin was pretty bad, but effective. So I elected to take a taxi back to the hotel rather than risk my life again on Jaybi’s motorcycle. See Vilma? I’m not trying to kill you. Really!
Anyway, this morning I checked out of my hotel and caught a ride to the airport where, as if to reinforce Indian Airline’s reputation, my flight was delayed by four and half hours. But to their credit, the airline put us all in bus and hauled us over to a nearby hotel for a buffet lunch. Then we hung around in some comfy chairs in the lobby until they hauled us all back.
Once back, we began the most security-conscious boarding process I’ve ever witnessed. First, our carry-on bags were searched and our checked baggage was x-rayed and sealed with a security strap before disappearing into the baggage handling black hole.
Then we walked through metal detectors and got completely patted down for good measure. They had separate men’s and women’s metal detectors and patters for that purpose. Once at the gate, they brought us out onto the tarmac so that we could identify our checked bags before they were loaded on the plane. And then, at the bottom of the loading steps, our carry-on bags were very thoroughly searched again and we were patted down once more for good measure. I’m not really sure just what threat they were trying to protect us from, but we didn’t blow up in mid-air, so I guess it worked.
So anyway, we landed in Calcutta after dark and I had one of those developing world, E-ticket, night time taxi rides into the heart of Calcutta. The driver, indeed all of the cars on the road, kept their headlights off while driving at breakneck speed, only turning them on briefly if something, a pedestrian, a cow, or a truck suddenly popped up in front of us. I tried to ask my driver just what the reason was that everyone drove around at night with their headlights off, but his English was almost as good as my Bengali, so it’s still a mystery.
The heat and humidity here make Kathmandu seem air conditioned in comparison. Even at nine o’clock at night the sweat is pouring off of me in rivulets. I can only imagine what it’s going to be like tomorrow when the sun comes up.
I’m staying at an old Raj-era hotel in the heart of squalid downtown Calcutta, and though I do have my own bathroom, I don’t think I’ll be spending any more time here than I have to. If you look up “decaying” in the dictionary, there’s a picture of the Fairlawn Hotel there. But it’s only thirty bucks a night (which is actually quite pricey for India), and comes with three meals (please God, no lentils!), so what the heck?
Tomorrow I’m going to go see about getting a train ticket to Darjeeling, which is back up in the mountains and should be cooler. And when I get back from there, there’s a four-star hotel with a room with my name on it somewhere in this benighted city. I’m counting on it.