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scrambling over eggs

1/29/2013

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One of the most interesting places to be in my opinion is the breakfast buffet at five star hotels in developing cities. Being the only place for any businesspeople of note to stay, it’s a hotbed of (possibly shady) commerce.

Being invisible in my journo-casual attire, I can move unnoticed among the tables, which mostly consist of fresh-faced financiers and entrepreneurs attempting to court jaded, weather-worn locals with marketing phrases they really don’t care about.

They’ve been joylessly doing business in a virtual war zone for decades. I’m not sure I’d open with agencyspeak blabber about catalyzing demographic sea change and brandvertising.  You can tell that these young sales guys are corporate cannon fodder, sent in to see if it’s worth their bosses slumming it for a couple of weeks to tie up the big bucks.

There’s usually a high level of escort presence, but Kathmandu seems weirdly puritan about things courtesanal. If they want big business, then surely that’s a pill they’re going to have to swallow. What corporate drone is going to want to live here without hot and cold running cheap prostitutes?

Meanwhile, over egg-white omelettes, a cacophony of trans-adlandic accents vie for attention. The Americans, English and Australian commercebots all sounds the same – neutral TV tones via California, London and the Pacific Rim.

A Canadian junior executive tells an ill-advised story about buying pharmaceuticals in Thailand. “You can get the pharmacists there to write you a prescription,” he says, with wide-eyed wonder. As I recall things in Bangkok, you just walk in and buy whatever you like – the paperwork part just seems unnecessary if it’s being written by your salesperson. In any case, he was sold Tramadol for a minor back pain, and was horrified on Googling it to find out that it was an opiate derivative. A life of heroin addiction narrowly swerved, there.

The audience of locals seem unimpressed, given that pharmacies here seem to operate out of the front of houses, even the idea of paperwork in any form seeming laughable.

The young sales people press on, relentlessly. This is early days. A capital city with mud tracks for roads is still pre-capitalist-frenzy. But get in now, and the riches could be yours. Condos, malls, Kathmandu’s first Starbucks. A whole world of delights. Close that deal, young grasshopper.


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peaking too soon

1/28/2013

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Pokhara, Nepal.

Yesterday I did something I never thought I’d say I did. I hiked in the Himalayas. Alright, for two hours. In the foothills. BUT STILL. It’s quite impressive for an adventure-sports-phobic city kid like myself.

I didn’t really even want to do it that much, but in the end that seemed churlish. I woke up at Tiger Mountain Lodge in Pakhora, a rickety mountainside town around 30 minutes flight via shaky prop plane from Kathmandu.

I was the only guest in the place, which is a kind of an upmarket hideaway, and so had that weird thing where there’s lots of staff with nothing to do but watch and note your every move. You can’t pick anything up beyond cutlery without someone dashing over to snatch it from you lest you expire under the strain, which is alternately luxurious and exasperating.

Dinner looked to be a tense affair as I dined alone with seven bored waiters intently gazing at which vegetable I was going to fork next, but thankfully I was joined by the ultra-charismatic and indelibly posh general manager.

As little as I have in common with the upper classes, the ones that aren’t massive racists are always consummately charming and very entertaining to listen to and actual, dyed-in-the-tweed gentlemen do conversation incredibly impressively, it has to be said.

I retired early and woke up to the sun poking over my wooden deck and onto the awe-inspiring canvas that was the snowy tops of the local peaks, each around 7-8,000m high, the most satisfyingly mountain-like one being Machapuchre (Mount Fish Tail).


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With a morning to kill and a bored guide loitering in the lobby, it wasn’t long before I was whisked off to meander up and down the slopes. They were pretty gentle, to be fair, and I only lost my footing and looked like an ungraceful clodhopper around five or six times.

The guide, Harry, did promise a menagerie of wildlife, though in the end, this was limited to our companion, Boss Dog (a dog), and the goats and cattle kept by the local farming community.

Each family had a small holding, and we rambled through their property, though Harry said it was alright. To be fair, they all came out and waved and said hello, the adults in Nepali (‘namaste’) and the children in English.

It’s hard to talk about the appearance of people living in what the west would term simplistic living conditions without coming across as patronising, but it was striking that even in these rural habitats, the children were heading to school in pristine uniforms, and the women were all working their corners of the hillside in beautifully coloured sari. I wanted to take pictures but then wondered how I’d like it if some idiot was pressing his lens into my daily routine.

Not much, is the answer.

After a couple of hours – me sweating buckets, Harry lamenting that we only had time for ‘a very light stroll’ – we (I) called it a day. I was so awestruck by the backdrop of spectacular peaks and I wondered if seeing that every day made you take it for granted. I asked Harry if he even noticed the mountains any more.

“Yes, of course. Each day brings a slight difference. The shadows and colours change with the sun. It’s always changing.”

I guess nature of that scale and majesty is almost impossible to take for granted.

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