'What are you doing online? I thought you were going to be here in two hours!' I replied.
'No, I LEAVE on the 25th. I arrive on the 26th, stupid. Don't you read your mails?'
'Oh, er, OK. Any tips of what I should do till you get here?'
'You're in Kathmandu man, its amazing! Just go out of the hotel, turn left and follow it down. See what happens'.
I wasn't too upset that Mark was a day later than anticipated. I needed another rest day, and I knew it would be all go once he arrived.
Many people for many years had raved about Nepal. Apart from the traffic, Kathmandu seemed to entice nothing but good comments. I left the hotel and turned left with an attitude of 'go on then, prove it', almost not really wanting to like the place.
Within a hundred yards the tourist ghetto of souvenir tat and textile shops was behind me. There were no European faces at all, just crowds of smiling Nepalese.
The road narrowed into a lane, and the buildings seemed to tower over me. They looked old, the woodwork was all a very dark brown almost black with age. Windows and doors carved into intricate shapes. The bricks were slimmer and longer than normal more modern bricks.
It reminded me somewhat of old kung fu films, set in ancient China. It felt much more Oriental than Indian.
Small shops peeped out of the of the old facades. Some of them pharmacists, some shoe shops, some clothes shops. But mostly there were butchers shops, proudly displaying their produce on tables outside.
It always has fascinate me how different cultures treat and prepare meat. For many, slaughter is almost a ritual or religious job, in some cultures, it is a very low caste job, in ours for instance there is an obsession with hygiene and animal welfare.
It affects how the meat is actually prepared. For some cultures, knives are not part of the cutlery set, so meat is chopped to size in the butchers shop. We are fussy about bones in our food, so it is often filleted.
How it is stored, how it is packaged, where it is sold, how it is then cooked, how it is served. All are really intriguing points of cross cultural understanding.
When night had fallen, I took another stroll, and found flesh of another kind on display. The signs were quite discreet at first, inconspicuously placed next to a barbers sign, or a restaurant advertising.
'Dance Bar', or 'Dance with Shower', or 'Girl Bar Dance with Shower'. They read.
Very quickly a seedy side to the Thamel district started appearing. 'Come in, come in, just looking' one of the men outside called to me. 'Best Dance, lots of girls' another called. Meat street of another kind.
As a red light district goes, it was not as in your face as Amsterdam or as lurid as Bangkok, but seeing the furtive men ducking in, it still left a slightly sour taste in my mouth. I had not seen this side to any of the cities I had visited so far, and hoped that it would be the last.
However, on first impressions, I liked Kathmandu. A blend of oriental and indian atmospheres, a capital city that had not lost its character, an old city still thriving and living. I was not hassled unduly for anything, the traffic was not as bad as I had feared, the climate was cool but not cold. I could feel the magic of Kathmandu settling over me.
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