Travel Sick

Ok.

So I am sitting here in Java (my local internet café) and for the first time in 3.5 days I feel like it is ok to eat something. One thing I have discovered from my travels is that when you get sick. Do. Not. Eat. Anything. At. All. The only thing that food will do is feed whatever is making you sick in the first place. So I spent the last 3 days eating almost nothing. I say almost because on day 2 I tried a little bit of food and found it to be a mistake.

Today marks day 10 of my travels. 10 days back home doesn’t really seem like a lot. But here… time takes its time. It is really odd, because when I am walking around going to all these ancient sites in Nepal and walking through the old city, it seems like an hour passes too quickly. But the minute someone tries to pass off some worthless piece of plastic as an “antique” that 10 second interaction feels like it takes forever. If you walk for 10 minutes through Kathmandu you will have this conversation 10 times.

Street Vendor “Hey, Sir!” “Hey, Sir!”

Me: “No thank you.”

Street Vender: “Very pretty, you take look”

Me: “No thank you.”

Street Vender: “You want Knife/Chess set/Flute/Violin/Purse/Taxi/Rickshaw?”

Me: “No thank you.”

Street Vender: “Where you going?”

Me: - silence – (Never tell them where you are going, they will always try to suggest somewhere better)

Street Vender: “Very good deal! I make you good deal. Only X Rupees.”

Me: “No thank you.”

At this point it is usually best to cross the street or weave through traffic to escape. Oddly enough I find myself missing the subtle advertising of America. Where I am staying in Kathmandu is the embodiment of commercialism. I also miss the subtleties of American drug dealers and pimps. I am offered Marijuana, Hash, Cocaine, Heroine, and Prostitutes whenever I am not having something else sold to me. I really miss Bahktipur, where the woman’s center is. Things are much quieter there. The people are also more friendly.

Its odd how that works, the less people are trying to sell me something, the more friendly they seem.

So I was supposed to start working on some projects for Citta this week while Michael is up in Humla, however I ran into a snag. Tomorrow the festival Tihar starts! The entire country is going to be basically shut down for one week. From what I have been able to gather from people is Tihar is a festival celebrating siblings, specifically sisters celebrating brothers. During this festival all sisters are supposed to give their brothers some kind of charm that will provide good luck for the upcoming year. (I don’t know what it looks like yet, but I bet by tomorrow I will have seen enough of them) So apart from some other work I have to do, It looks like I will just be hanging out in the Thamel section of Kathmandu for a few days waiting for this festival to end so I can get back to work.

The reason I haven’t really uploaded any new photos is because it takes about 10-15 minutes to upload one picture. So when I have a chunk of time to just sit at a computer at an internet café and watch a status bar slowly slide toward 100% I will be sure to show you some of the sights I have seen.