Kathmandu Home Life

Overall I spent about 3 weeks living with Shiva and his family on the outskirts of Kathmandu in the town of Phutung.

My arrival into Kathmandu was a bit of a shock. Looking back at it going from the obsessively cleaned and organized streets of Japan to the hectic bustling of Nepal was not the best choice for an easy transition. I arrived to Kathmandu at 11:30pm though my body felt like it was 2:30 am. Bleary eyed, I still had to get through a confusing immigration gate, buy and install a new sim card, get cash, and hail a taxi to my hotel for the night. I was a little overwhelmed to say the least. I had done my research and already downloaded the taxi apps to avoid getting scammed. The first app I used seemed like Uber which was a good sign except all my drivers kept cancelling and cancelling for 20 minutes. I had already left the airport to meet them which meant I was being approached by about 20 taxi drivers asking if I have one. Some of them were more forceful than others. Just 24 hours ago I was in Tokyo where the waiters would bow to guests! I realized there would be an adjustment period.

Well eventually I get my taxi driver after standing in what felt like a very sketchy area for 30 minutes. We drove through the dark neighborhoods of Kathmandu to the hostel. In my current state I think "what have I gotten myself into". The city could not be more intimidating to a solo traveler like me.

I arrived at the hostel without incident and so survived my first evening. the next morning my only goals were to get to an ATM (and not get skimmed) and get a taxi from the city center to the town of Phutung to hopefully meet with Shiva, the organizer of the work exchange. The 5 minute walk to the ATM was an excellent introduction to the insanity that is the streets of Kathmandu. The streets are suddenly narrow and covered in trash/animal feces. The road is clogged with cars and bikes all constantly honking. There are no traffic lights. Drivers just follow a general guideline for a lane and weave in and around everyone, honking their horns to avoid crashes. This results in the most overstimulating environment I've ever been in. The pedestrian crosswalk was my first real challenge. I had to watch several groups of locals navigate first before I was comfortable enough to tailgate the next group. I'm used to cars STOPPING for pedestrians in the PEDESTRIAN walkway but thats not how it works here. You just have to walk through with confidence and the literal flood of traffic will part around you. You have to have faith (and stare the drivers down) while walking across. In this unfamiliar country, just a 5 minute errand counts as a stressful adventure.

After the ATM, I hung around the hostel for a few hours waiting to get a taxi. The owners was extremely friendly and I was able to chat with other guests which made me feel better when they assured me that "yes over some time you will get used to the streets". With the Hostel owner I got into the first of MANY discussions on how to get their child into a US university.

The owner arranged a taxi for me to the town of Phutung to meet my host Shiva. The taxis here are a unique experience. It is impossible to put a seatbelt on and you'll be flying around in the back as they make their way over potholes and between trucks with reckless abandon. Despite confirming the price 3 times with taxi driver beforehand, he still tries to overcharge me at the destination. Everything is just so cheap here that most westerners don't even realize they're getting scammed. I paid $10 for a 30 minute taxi ride when really it should've been $5, big whoop.

Waiting at the meeting point was also a point of anxiety as Shiva hadn't responded in a few hours and I have very bad cell service in the area. I've been dropped off seemingly in the middle of nowhere with my bag, standing across from the local school. I got there early to be safe which meant I spent 30 minutes being stared at by every single person walking by. I don't think they ever get tourists coming up to the small town! I don't know what I was expecting but Shiva arrives roughly on time ON A MOTORCYCLE. Just what I needed in this stressful situation. I had NEVER ridden a motorcycle before, much less in the most chaotic city I've ever been to, and definitely not with ALL MY LUGGAGE. Luckily with my backpack I'm able to hold on for dear life for a short 5 minute ride to his home. Later on, Shiva and I had a good laugh about this when told me that when he first saw me I looked absolutely terrified.

His home was quite nice and with no other volunteers I found I had my own room all to myself. I'm so grateful for my purchase of earplugs before this because the neighborhood dogs would have their own fight club throughout the night and early morning. As I learned, blackouts are also just a fact of life and we averaged about 2 power outages every 3 days the entirety of my stay there regardless of rain or shine. Luckily they never lasted more than an hour or two each time. During my stay there, I was invited to visit their cousins on the other side of town which was a fun dinner to be a part of and a chance to talk to some more young Nepalis. I should mention that walking to the other side of town is an adventure of its own. The rain and resulting landslides wiped out the main paths and there were really no roads in the first place. Without locals I really didn't know how to get from place to place.

I also quickly realized that this was more of a homestay and not a work exchange. I had visions of going on hikes around Kathmandu and taking photos/videos and maybe some social media stuff like the work exchange listing said... but no. I kept on asking Shiva questions about services I could provide and how to help with his website which he just brushed off. It was fine by me as I was just paying 5$ a day for food and lodging! The only work I did for him was going on his free Kathmandu walking tour and taking some photos for him to put on online reviews (pretty sure that's not allowed)! But I wasn't going to complain about having lots of free time to relax in my room .

During this time I was also trying to plan my entire time in Nepal as well as the next few months. This is where I realized that my hopes to visit Mongolia or Kyrgyzstan were dead on arrival due to poor knowledge of their weather (can only visit in summer otherwise its too cold). Planning in the macro can be quite difficult sometime! Looking at 2-3 month span of time and trying to maximize my time in it. This is where my perfectionist tendencies can be both a curse (when tearing my hair out trying to plan despite all the unknowns) or a blessing (when it works out). However after a few days I rewired my expectations and rewrote my plan to instead spend time in Australia and New Zealand to fill up the Oct-Dec gap in my plans (which did in fact work out).

Next after that was the logistics of what to do in Nepal!? I realized that this was not like other countries where I would be comfortable "figuring it out" and traveling alone in such an unfamiliar place, I wanted plans to be more put together. I settled on doing Chitwan National Park, a budget safari destination near Kathmandu, then visiting Pokhara and doing a shorter 4 day trek in Annapurna called "Mardi Himal", and then the 3 passes trek which is essentially Everest Base Camp on steroids. If you tell me that a version of a trail exists which is longer, harder, with better views, and less people; I'm choosing that every time. I also decided to hire a tour package through Shiva's company to both help him out and help me deal with everything while ensuring more safety and oversight in the mountains.

I also spent this time to keep myself in shape to be prepared for all the hiking (and stave off all the muscle loss from lack of meat!).

Food was a bit rough. They ate almost exclusively dal bhat which is rice, lentils, and vegetables. To a chicken and rice eater like myself it was not ideal. For them, chicken was a treat about once every 3 days. This also lent itself to my weight loss in Nepal! During one of the festivals, the mother of the homestay who was the exclusive cook of the family left to visit her family. In her stead I decided to share my own culture and cook chicken and rice! Their son around my age Sabinayan, who became a friend of mine, and I hiked up to town to visit the local butcher and buy some chicken. I learned that they don't do chicken breast here they just slice up the chicken bones and all and you just have to eat around the bones (which got OLD fast). But it was really fun, I had a little cooking course teaching him how to cook chicken, then we played some American music for him that he hadn't heard yet.

Fastforward to my second short stay with the family after coming back from Everest, I had another week at the homestay again all by myself. During this time the family was less busy so we were able to relax a bit more and play board games. A popular game in the region is Carrom, a version of hand-played pool. We also played Monopoly too which I one both games of back to back. Sabinaya was really fun to talk to, also interested in Computer Science and I was happy to talk code with him as well as give advice on employment in the field, even though I'm unemployed myself! This was a really nice week and involved lots of playing with the younger son, and I was also able to send a bunch of the good photos I took on the trip to Sabinaya who was remaking his father's website. So in the end I was able to fulfill my goal a little bit on helping out with my photography.

Overall it was the perfect environment for me to unwind after an intense Japan trip and a crazy 3 passes trek while still getting to experience the life of Kathmandu and be social. The villages of Kathmandu is just one of those places where as a foreigner it can be a hassle to move around but I was quite happy just to lay around.