Sunday 28 April 2013
Feeling poorly
Sunday 28th April
I'm not sure there will be much of interest in today's blog as all three of us woke up with sore throats, coughing, sneezing and feeling hot. We were due to go to the Tours office for a lesson in traditional Nepali cooking. On the menu was momos, the little dumpling balls filled with minced chicken curry, dhal made with yellow lentils in a watery broth, rice and a vegetable curry. Honestly, we really felt collectively so unwell, that we couldn't face being in a gas fired kitchen in 30 degree heat with no aircon so we cancelled. I have been in my room, reading the paper and catching up with mail etc.
A group of Australians had been at the hotel for the past couple of days before flying home. They had been trekking at the Everest base camp for a couple of weeks. Apparently it had been bitterly cold and they had all, without exception, had the runs. They put it down to the Sherpa helpers building fires with "yak shit" and then cooking the food straightaway. Anyway, they had collected together all the leftover medicines, toiletries and bits and bobs they had, for us to take to the orphanage clinic. They also left 900 np rupees (about £8) in small denomination notes. We have decided that we could buy all the children at the orphanage an ice cream with this.
Over the past two weeks I have been jotting sundry things down as they occurred, so this would perhaps be a good place to tell you about them to fill up the space.
On the trip to buy medical equipment, we drove past a run down building with big gates. Ganesh told us that it used to be the army barracks but was now too small and run down. The soldiers either live at home or in lodgings in Kathmandu. If there is a riot or another incident requiring their services, someone runs up a big tower and blows a trumpet. Similarly, in Bhaktapur, there is no fire service but lower down the hill there is a large water tank which looks like an open air swimming pool. The water is green and rank with piles of rubbish at one end. If there is a fire in the town, and there surely must be sometimes because of open fire or gas ring cooking, the temperature and the fact that there is so much wood in the buildings, they use the water to throw over the fire. How they get enough of it up the hill beats me.
Like every other nation, the Nepalis love their football. They have a league but not a national team and when the championships were on TV last week, our guide, Ajaya said he stayed up to watch although Nepali time is 5 hours ahead of the UK. In the hotel the TVs are a bit old fashioned and analogue but there are plenty of channels. Inevitably lots of them are in Hindi which apparently most Nepalis can follow. There is a crackly National Geographical channel, a couple of movie channels, where, even though the films are American, they still put English subtitles at the bottom. Why? There are of course lots of Bollywood films and I do like the dancing and costumes though the amount of moue-ing and head waggling that goes on makes me dizzy. There is also a programme which looks a bit like a game show and although there are advert breaks, there is also a bar of adverts scrolling continuously across the bottom of the screen, a bit like breaking news on Sky. Naturally the BBC have their World News but it is focused largely on eastern Asia and there is CNN, the American news channel, which is largely focused on itself.
Did I tell you that the whole of Kathmandu gets 10 hours of power cuts every day? There is a published schedule so you are in with a fighting chance if you are organised. The hotel has its own generator so that during a power cut, you still get one light and one socket functioning per room. Sadly that light is not in the bathroom as I said before and the bathroom is windowless. Of course, you still get unscheduled cuts as well.
Photos today are of random street scenes etc.
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