Pollution

The River Bed
Shanty Town on the River. Yes, People live here.

The Woman sitting on the ground is selling snacks.

Every vacant lot doubles as a dump.

Goods going to market on unpaved roads.

These men are making new mattress to sell.

These are the ordinary everyday scenes of life in Kathmandu. You may be able to click on these and explore more deeply.

I'm back from Nepal and am slowly digesting this surreal journey. This wasn't an ordinary trip for me. This time I felt you with me and I was trying to be the conduit for your senses. I took photos for you, and narrated the details of my experiences to you in my mind, jotting down notes occasionally. I wasn't as much in Nepal as I usually am; this time I was like a spectator watching myself travel through Nepal.

A discussion about pollution was not really the way that I wanted to begin describing Nepal to you, but it is the current reality of Kathmandu, and I want you to experience Nepal as if you were traveling with me. It has been a few years since my last visit to Nepal, and pollution was the first most portentous assault on my senses when I arrived. It has always been dirty in Kathmandu, filthy really. The dirt from unpaved roads kicks up into the air and even the hairiest nostrils can't keep it from getting into one's lungs. This time, however, the exhaust fumes from vehicles mixed with burning trash piles, including plastic, burned my throat and stung my eyes and left me choking. Every evening I spent some time hacking up the dirt and blowing black mucous from my nose.

With a few years passing since my last trip to Nepal, I could more easily compare how shockingly gritty life had become in the valley. Every day, a brownish haze hung in the air over Kathmandu. Above the haze the Himalayas were still visible, but as our plane flew lower, the Himalayas faded and were barely perceptible. I didn't see them until I was well above the valley again. Years ago, I could at least catch a glimpse of the snow covered peaks from time to time within the valley.

Exiting the airport, I was greeted by the usual crowd of hopeful taxi drivers carrying hotel signs. There is always the chance that someone might arrive in Nepal completely unprepared--that is how I arrived the first time, 18 years ago. But that type of rambling world traveler is not as common as they were before our great travel fears and the economic crisis. I was graciously received at the airport by one of my shipper's chauffeurs. It is not quite as glamorous as it sounds. Still, it was a relief not to have to haggle over a taxi with broken seats and no suspension immediately after the exhaustion of a two day journey from the other side of the world. Someone did grab my bags without asking me, and then they asked for money after having carried the bags a couple of feet. I know the drill. I could have said, "Put them down!" But, I didn't. I gave him a few rupees and settled into the truck, happy to be on terra firma once more.

Plastic bags and candy wrappers, snits of rubber and string and paper covered the dirt outside of the airport where grass used to grow. I would often see cows wandering the streets here in the past, but I saw none the day I arrived. Instead, I saw women with small children peddling snacks to the locals. Their open baskets of roasted soy beans and nuts were unpackaged and open to the elements. They sat amidst empty cigarette packs and trampled plastic water bottles, more plastic bags, broken bits of brick and general rubble. Their children crawled over them next to the busy road. Motorbikes, taxis and trucks wailed on their horns, shrieking without restraint into the ears of these children. The children were deaf to the cacophony, absorbed in playing with balls made of black rubber bands, sticks and dirt.

One old woman sat on a hill, her cloth-covered bottom sitting in the dirt, her top open, exposing her breasts. This is not a common sight in Nepal. People are modest here. The elderly woman sitting in filth with her breasts exposed was an image that haunts me still. Perhaps she was out of her mind with no one left to care for her. Only tenuously here, her body was in the material world but her soul had moved on to the next plane of existence. I have seen the look before, in places of great despair.

Lament for Kathmandu, by Butternut Squash

Oh Kathmandu!

Your holy rivers overflow with human excrement.

What demon has treated you so cruelly?

That unholy stain, damned spot!

A poor washer women beats her clothes on a rock

in fetid water.

To my friends in Nepal, I love you, and I know that this is not all that Nepal has to offer. But it is the truth that postcards and pretty pictures never tell.