the country of calvinball

[joshua0]

During my time in Nepal, I came to think of it, sort of, as “Whose Line Is It Anyway, the country”; the more time I spent there, the more I came to realize that, well, there are no rules, and the points don’t matter. And just like a good Calvinball game, we came out ahead, with a final score of oogy to boogy. By the time I got on the plane to head home, there was nothing on earth that could surprise me, or Kempy for that matter. I think we hit peak surprise somewhere in the middle of the trip, but it’s hard to know exactly when.

* * *

When we landed, we were picked up from the airport in a car by some folks from our guide service. They were eagerly holding a sign awaiting one Mr. Joshua Wose, and took us to our hotel (the illustrious Skyline Hotel, in Thamel), where we got a chance to meet with Dipak, the owner of Trekking Planner. (We liked Dipak; if I had cause to go on another trip to Nepal, I would probably work with Trekking Planner again.) Dipak introduced himself, and rapidly informed us that there was a problem: by some confluence of a holiday and President Xi Jinping’s anticipated arrival, the trekking permit office would be closed for the day, and we were supposed to get moving the next day. The only way to make our permits would be for him to hold onto our passports for the duration of the trip, since the permit office needed originals, and for us to travel the county with photocopies instead.

Kempy was, understandably, none-too-thrilled about this. I had prepared for some level of absurdity, but someone asking us to hold onto our passports less than an hour after we had entered the country seemed a little excessive. We decided it would be better to go in search of breakfast first, and meet with Dipak afterwards.

* * *

A few days into the trek, we still had no news about our permits. When we arrived in Jagat, that was to be our first permit checkpoint, but the ever-upbeat Binod noted there was nothing to worry about: he had the permits on his phone! There was a heated conversation between Binod and the permit officer, and to our teahouse we went for the night. We had a vague sense of wonder as to what the actual solution was; we assumed that it presumably entailed some money changing hands, in addition to the permit.

A few towns down the road, in Philim, it seemed like this strategy worked less well. There was another heated Nepali conversation when we arrived at the checkpoint, and a little while later, Binod walked out of the checkpoint, and without a word, went blasting into town on a quest. Kempy and I looked at each other and shrugged. This was Nepal: what were we to do, anyway? Half an hour later, he arrived again, this time, magically with a piece of paper in his hand — to our astonishment, the permit had been materialized by way of putting his phone into the only photocopier within a two hour radius, and the world’s sketchiest permit now bore our names. The permit officer dutifully stamped it, and away we went.

Somewhere around then, in my diary, I wrote: “Do you think it’ll get weirder?” I don’t see how it could. We were settling in, but each one was still at least a little bit of a surprise.

* * *

When the end of our trek came, it was unusually difficult, as Binod told us, to get a Jeep to take us from Jagat to Besisahar — and then, to get a car from there to Pokhara. It was still Tihar — more or less, the Nepali analogue of Diwali — and so all the Jeeps were either taken, or not driving that day. But nonetheless, we got into our Mahindra-brand Jeep bright and early that morning. Along the way, we picked up some additional cargo, all heading towards Besisahar: to start off with, the daughter of the proprietor of the teahouse got in the Jeep with us, sitting in the front between Binod and the driver!

We stopped a few times more. As we made our way through a town, we pulled over to pick up some bags of grain to take back with us — and a few rupees for our trouble of carrying them. They went in the bed of the Jeep, and bounced around over the rough road. A half an hour or so later, we also stopped to pick up a woman who was looking to go back to town for the holiday! She, too, went in the bed of the Jeep. The road was a little smoother for a while, but given some time, she, too, bounced around over the rough road. She turned somewhat green, and then decided to part ways with her breakfast. Kempy and I, seatbelted in, were unsurprised both by the pickup and the subsequent breakfast departure.

When we arrived in Pokhara, we discovered that not only was it the festival of Tihar the day before, but it was also the festival of Tihar that day, and that indeed, we would have some trouble going skydiving the next day, for it was also the festival of Tihar the next day, too. Tihar is a five day holiday, but as it turns out, this year was a little bit special. There had been a petition of the government to extend Tihar for an extra day, and while we were in the high country, the government relented, and gave the entire country an extra day holiday.

Kempy’s godfather, “Tommy Sherpa” (the nickname given for his propensity to spend time in Nepal, and the friends he had made while he was there), happened to be overlapping our time in Pokhara. This ought to have been a surprise, but at this stage, how could it possibly be? We were interested to note, though, that Tommy Sherpa was surprised that there was an extra day of Tihar. How could he be surprised by that, we wondered? Maybe he had spent too much time in America recently. Could you imagine the American government announcing, two weeks in advance, that Presidents’ Day was actually to be two days, or that Independence Day was actually going to be both July 3rd and 4th? At this rate, it seemed like a perfectly normal Nepali thing. Why not?

* * *

By the end, it was refreshing how we settled into the impossibility of surprise. I could tell you about getting to the airport in Pokhara for our Buddha Air flight back to Kathmandu, and nobody being at all perturbed that our IDs were wrinkled black and white photocopies of American passports. Or, for that matter, my flight out of Kathmandu, where my gate was assigned half an hour after the flight was scheduled to take off, and where they didn’t bother to scan my ticket or anything like that — they just glanced at it, and waved me in the general direction of the airplane. But the thing was, all of it was exactly the way it was supposed to be.

* * *

When I got back to my normal life, this lack of surprise was quite an adjustment. Here I am, back at home, and it suddenly seems like it takes effort to roll with the punches again. But, I’ll remember still, though, that Nepal was the mysterious Calvinball land, where nothing that happened while I was there could surprise me.

Well, almost nothing. I came home to discover, a day or two later, that while I was away, my girlfriend-of-the-time had found that she shared a Slack with my ex-girlfriend from ten years ago, and that they had gotten to chatting about me. I thought nothing could surprise me about Nepal, but that one sure did. But anyway, that’s a story for another time.

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(images shot on Portra 400, and on Ilford HP5 Plus.)