Lost in Kathmandu

 Lost in Kathmandu

Lost in the maze of winding, narrow streets, more like alleyways, and bounded seemingly everywhere by tiny, open-air shops in three-story buildings, with motor scooters - “scooties” - flying by.

Lost in the traffic jams, streets with no apparent lanes, just many scooties weaving through the pedestrians, the trucks, the busses, the rickshaws, the large tricycles carrying produce, or long lengths of bamboo, or whatever else to transport by pedal power.

Lost in the language of the scores of ethnicities inhabiting Nepal, some with Oriental features, others not, all speaking different tongues.

Lost among the tangled, overhead power lines “garlanding” every pole, old lines never removed, and the stray dogs inhabiting most every street.

Lost among the flickering lights of power outages, brief but frequent.

Lost among the street vendors hawking their wares, following you down the street to make a sale, and the bent backs of old women carrying large loads.

Lost among the ancient temples topping every hill, with intricate wood carvings adorning them, one termed the “monkey temple” for its resident animal.

Lost in a festival  procession of women clad in the bright colors most Nepali women wear, with pots on their heads, a ritual to honor ancestors. 

Lost in the clouds as we scaled a high mountain in a cable car, and in the views of cloud-veiled Himalayas.

Lost among rhinoceroses, a mother and baby, which came within a few feet of us on a jeep safari, and the baby elephant we watered by pouring water into its trunk at the elephant rearing station.

 

Lost among the crocodiles plying the same river we did in our dug-out canoe, thankfully after croc meal time.

Lost among the squalor of the many poor Nepalis, who often leave their home country for promised work, only to be exploited by human traffickers.

Lost? Well, yes, we found ourselves in a land far different from home, every moment new to us Westerners, mind-boggling, intriguing. And found - inside - a purpose best exemplified by our hosts, two Americans who work there to arrest the traffickers - really slavers - and save the children who are the traffickers’ targets. To our hosts, whose names I do not mention for their protection, as Nepalis say, “Namaste, I bow to the divine in you.”