Fruit sellers in Kathmandu
Fruit sellers in Kathmandu
During my stay in Kathmandu in January 2006 I did a great deal of walking. I found that this was the most effective way of getting a feel for the city, its people and its culture. On several occasions on this blog I have written about the vast array of shopping opportunities in the city. (click here)
Wherever you go in the city you will find street stalls selling all kinds of food. Many use a simple bicycle for transport of their wares, often converted to a stall in some way by using a piece of wood or a box to help store the items for sale.
As shown in the photo, bananas are a common item for sale. Bananas in Nepal are often far superior in taste to those we can buy here in South Australia, but not as nice as those I tasted in Thailand. Mandarins in Nepal seem to be excellent in quality also.
Street scene in Kathmandu
Street scene in Kathmandu Nepal
The above photo shows a typical street scene in parts of Kathmandu, Nepal. Narrow laneways lined with such a variety of stores as to be somewhat overwhelming to the first time visitor. One shop is selling grain, such as rice in bags, the next is selling pashminas, the next a variety of vegetables and then you get a bookshop and a motor bike repair shop next to each other.
In front of one shop there is someone sitting on the path selling fruit, perhaps just bananas. Passing by you see a 3 or 4 wheeled bicycle converted into a mobile street stall selling popcorn. Across the street is an up-market restaurant alongside an internet cafe.
Actually, as I look at the photo above more closely, it is not really typical of many of the lanes of Kathmandu; there is an almost total absence of people! The streets are usually a frenetic bustling of humanity. I must have caught a brief lull in the traffic.
What a mess in Kathmandu
Building in Kathmandu
Kathmandu is not the cleanest city in the world. That is one fact that hits you immediately upon leaving the airport. In fact, even as you are landing and as the plane taxis to the terminal. Crashed helicopters and broken down planes line the runway and nearby hangars.
In central Kathmandu one is faced with a great variety of building styles. Some are ancient, many hundreds of years old and quite magnificent. Others are broken down wrecks that deserve to be bull dozed. Some are modern, spacious and beautiful.
One of the older buildings in Thamel caught my eye for another reason. The telephone and electricity supplies in Kathmandu are obviously struggling to keep up with the demands of a city trying to emerge into the modern world. In the photo above you can see that the cabling for electricity and telephone supplies can be a little chaotic at times. (Click on the image to enlarge – you will then see what I mean.)
Despite the chaos, life does go on. Phone calls can be made reasonably easily. Electricity is supplied where it is needed – most of the time. Internet connections, though slow and erratic, can be used.
It just demonstrates the pains of an ancient city struggling to emerge into the modern world.
Book Review: Against a Peacock Sky
Against a Peacock Sky written by Monica Connell. Published by Penguin Books (Viking) in 1991.
Monica Connell grew up in Northern Ireland and is an anthropologist who went to live in a rural village in Nepal. She lived and worked for two years with a Nepali family, sharing their celebrations, their hardships, their food and their hard labour in the fields to provide a subsistence living. One family took her in, sharing their everyday lives on a very personal level with her, allowing her to virtually become one of the family.
Monica witnessed first hand the villagers’ way of life. She learned how to care for the animals, how to plant and harvest rice and the best way to hunt a boar. She relates the significance of their many religious ceremonies, beliefs and festivals. She relates – without any hint of being judgmental – the importance of various customs employed to appease the local gods in order to have a successful crop or produce healthy animals.
This is a fascinating account of life in rural Nepal as it has been for many centuries and had remained largely untouched by outside influences. Here and there in her narrative, however, there are hints of change in their somewhat cloistered existence. Outside pressures were beginning to show. For example, one young man finds work building roads in nearby India, and he leaves permanently. The old ways were beginning to change, and I suspect if the author returned to that village today there would be many more changes apparent.
I would suspect that this book is now out of print. I bought mine via the internet as a used copy after I had experienced a touch of Nepali life when I went to visit there in 2006. To read more of my impressions of life in Nepal, go to the Contents on the sidebar, or click on several of the Categories, also on the sidebar.
Picnic at Kapunda
Yesterday I wrote about our recent short holiday in Clare. Travelling to and from our daughter’s place in Clare we can take several different routes. We usually have a few biscuits or fruit and a thermos of hot water so we can stop for a picnic somewhere along the way. On many occasions we have had a picnic lunch. This has quite often been at Angaston, a delightful little town in the beautiful Barossa Valley, a world famous wine producing region. There is a lovely shady park (for when it is hot) at one end of the main street.
This time we changed our plans. We decided to stop at Kapunda, another delightful small town just north of the Barossa Valley. It’s just over an hour’s drive north of Adelaide. Kapunda was once a bustling copper mining centre but now serves the surrounding farming community.
We went for an exploratory drive around the town and discovered a delightful little park where we could have our cuppa and a few biscuits for afternoon tea. We hadn’t even sat down at the picnic table provided before being descended upon by an army of ducks heading hopefully in our direction. They were to be sadly disappointed; no biscuits today. We had to be careful of the six fluffy baby Eurasian Coots skittering around our feet begging their mother for food.
Read more about the birds we saw on the article Birding while travelling on my Birding blog.