Nepal - Kathmandu

Holy shit, we are in Nepal! It sort of hit us like a tonne of bricks as we left the airport. It was like being a rock star, only instead of legitimate adoration we were getting false praise and seductive offers (to stay at various hotels - I'm sure they would have offered us "a special price, just for us"). As usual, we got suckered into parting with too much money, but myeh, it wasn't so much money that we were out on the street for the night. But let's just say, 1000 Rupees is a very generous tip under any circumstance...

Neither of us were expecting quite what we've seen and done here. The first thing that hit me, and it hit me on the plane as we were landing, was just how old and bare (and at times collapsed) the buildings in Kathmandu are. We'd been to Cambodia and Burma, but this place is a whole new level of dilapidated. I really need to have a word with the guy that does the town planning. Somehow though, as a whole, it doesn't look ugly. Its a bit like a trip back in time to a chaotic, beautiful, simpler place. The legendary views we were expecting haven't really been on offer, because the clouds are hanging low in the air as is usual in the rainy season. We've been told the Himalayas will come into view near the end of the month, and we're looking for a nice new wide-angle lens so that we can take some appropriately awesome panoramic photos of it...

Personally, my time in Kathmandu was frustrated by the impending due date for what turned out to be the biggest, most frustrating assignment in my academic life. Research is boring. Really boring. And writing about it is even more boring than actually doing it. So anyway there I was, sitting in the middle of this beautiful exotic city, laptop at my fingertips, crafting this stupid clinical audit while Kelly and others were off experiencing life in a small village in the Kathmandu Valley. I did manage to see some stuff though; I got out to Patan, one of the three old cities in the Kathmandu Valley, which had some fantastic old temples and buildings, including one temple with 9999 little Buddhas carved into it. I also managed to see Swayambunath Stupa, more commonly called the Monkey Temple, a name given to it for the obvious reason that there are monkeys there. Lots of monkeys. Big daddy monkeys, mummy monkeys, little wrinkly baby monkeys, mischievous monkeys, dare-devil monkeys. They seem to live off the rice that people throw on the statues there. Its on the top of a hill near the edge of the city, so you get this fantastic view. I can only imagine how great it would be in the dry season when the snow-capped mountains rise up behind everything else and the sky is blue with streaks of white... but I'm pretty sure it would be mighty fine.

We had a few worried parents (four to be exact) after the Sunday bombings in Kathmandu hit the media in Australia. Just for the record, they were careful to avoid tourists. They were going for the monarchists, those evil bastards. I can assure you all that I am not a monarchist. I'm pretty sure the same goes for Kelly. It was a salient reminder of the instability of the country though. Its sad to see how this ongoing ridiculousness has crippled a country which could have remained the major trading route from China to India, and which could have enjoyed a rich income from its tourist trade.

The bus trip to Pokhara was at times breath-taking, and at times nauseatingly windy. Probably the goodbye drinks we had with Pete, Mike and Freddy (the first two seem to be following us like blowflies - now they say they're coming to Pokhara, sheesh) didn't help much. The road follows a valley carved by a river, so there we saw many children playing in the water, and people crossing precarious wire bridges. We ourselves crossed the river many times in our ancient bus, a couple of times over bridges that didn't seem as though they would hold our weight. We barely missed a dozen cows at different times, and we were repeatedly forced into the seat in front of us as the bus driver slammed his breaks on to avoid an overtaking vehicle coming the other way in our lane!

The important thing is, we're alive. Kelly has just started her volunteer work at the Children's Welfare Association, which is basically an orphanage for street kids. They have nothing there, even compared to the refugee school in Thailand, mostly because the CWA only just opened up a couple of months ago, in order to try to tackle the problem Pokhara was having with the street kids. Its not technically a school, just a place to stay, but most of the kids haven't learned enough self-discipline or the basic manners to be able to survive the regular school, so those kids get taught during the day, and Kelly takes the English lessons.

I had my first day at the hospital today, sort of. I went in, and everyone was more interested in just sitting and chatting to me than getting me involved in any actual medicine. I've doctors coming out the ears asking me about how to work in Australia! The teaching is run in English, and everyone obviously speaks really good English. One of the professors asked me if I wanted to "take food with him" at lunch time, so I had a really nice Northern Indian lunch. But I never saw a patient. They do "community medicine" work, which they are almost insisting I get involved in, where they travel to nearby towns and villages to supply health care. I'm not complaining, but I was planning on an anaesthetics rotation...

One plus is, I get the feeling that they aren't going to have a problem cutting my rotation a bit short so that we can do a decent trek in October.

That's about it for now. As always, we have our photos up on PicasaWeb. I've uploaded photos into the Burma, Thailand and Nepal albums, which also contain all the previously uploaded photos (but I haven't got around to copying over the comments I've made). I've put together a couple of photos from the Mae Tao Clinic, but be warned that there are some gory photos of penile surgery in that album. Don't blame me if you see things you wish you hadn't.