The Sweet Smell of Dope

Like much of Serbia, Nepal had a healthy hemp industry in the past. (In fact last year the government tried to outlaw the plastic bags all merchants give you for your purchases in favor of hemp bags. The law passed, but without teeth so no one obeyed it.) This means even if marijuana is officially not legal, it's fairly easy to find the plants growing "wild".

I haven't smoked dope since it was de rigour in high school in the 1970s, and in all that time since never smelled a whiff of it while walking about US cities and towns. So the sweet smell of many Sombor streets on lazy Saturday afternoons in August and September were rather startling for me at first.

Cut to my current home office in Pokhara, a town where for many natives it seems every day is Saturday. There I am typing away diligently on my computer when, oh oh oh, there it is. A big cloud of 1970s floating in on the afternoon breeze.

If you like to eat your dinner at Pokhara's Bamboostan Tea Time Cafe, as I do, you may have noticed a metal placard nailed into the trunk of a huge tree directly across the way. "2005: Year of Drug Free Pokhara" it proclaims. I guess it depends on what you call drugs. Here the granny next door is puffing away at her weed pipe, but anything else would be out of the question. Happily, I've never seen a used needle anywhere here - unlike most European cities.

So the smell may be a little distracting from work sometimes, but you can't get uptight about these things. It's Pokhara. Relax, man!

Christmas Shopping in Pokhara Nepal: Land of a Thousand Pashmina

I thought I was so clever. Things you can buy in Pokhara for the folks back home are plentiful, yet limited in scope. To wit:

#1. Faux "North Face" hiking gear which has an apparent life expectancy in actual field use of about 90 days.

#2. Cheap Indian cotton clothing (including the stripy pants so awful even Lonely Planet advises against buying them) coughed up like a hairball from styles of the late 1960s and early 70s. Notably I've never seen an actual Indian citizen or a Nepali wearing anything like them.

#3. CDs and DVDs -- illegally burned copies of whatever aid workers and trekkers left behind in various hotel rooms over the years. Fairly literate and upmarket, few blockbusters but many obscure independent films. A steal at RS200-400, but breaking copyright is after all stealing, so one would not want to encourage it.

#4. Tibetan "antiques" birthed fresh daily from various refugee camps nearby. Rather cheerful, if dark colored, but not simple to ship as presents unless one has a supply of boxes and tape, which I somehow neglected to pack for this trip.

#5. Pashminas, Pashminas, Pashminas.

I use this as an all encompassing term for everything sold here that's pashmina-shaped, as much is not actually truly 100% from pashmina hair. One shopkeeper demonstrated a test today: light a Bic (or match) carefully on the tip of a bit of fringe. If it catches fire easily, it's definitely fake. If it doesn't, you know there's some new wool content, although not what type or quality.

Anyhow, because every other store sells pashminas, most of which claim to be made locally, and they're remarkably easy to pop into UPS envelopes and mail off home (one is warned against placing too much trust in the Nepal postal service - if it works, prepare to be happily delighted, if it doesn't, well that's what you expected, so no harm done), so I decided pashminas for all and sundry would be it this year.

Easy yes, but not a perfect solution, because how do you judge what color and pattern a giftee would prefer and what she'd abhor?

So I got clever. I emailed a questionnaire to everyone. All they had to do was hit "reply", check boxes to indicate preferences (ie. stripes, paisley, solid, embroidered flowers) , and type their favorite color. At the last minute I added one final question "Colors I never wear are: [ enter here]" and it's a darn good thing I did too because that was the doozy.

Save for my sister Rachel (thou shalt be blessed among women), nearly every single other person typed something like "Pink, yellow, bright colors" into the colors-I-hate box.

I set out shopping with some concern, for in a land of 1,000 pashminas there are very, very few that are not bright colors. The fact that 70% of my loved ones had specified "Brown" as their color choice made things even harder.

When you enter a pashmina shop and ask to see "all the brown you've got please" they look at you as though you're a bit sad. (The fact that I happened to be clothed nearly from head to toe in brown myself - which I didn't realize until later - didn't help.) Here, even the poorest, elderly women hobbling along on canes wear a wealth of colors layered against the fall air - reds, pinks, golds, you name it. How empty and dour our Western world must be, I could see their eyes thinking.

See I Told You Maoists Gave Receipts!

Freshly back from his Annapurna Base Camp trek, my husband brought me this as a gift.

Nature's Colonic

You know that character in 'The Devil Wears Prada' who says, "I'm just one stomach flu away from my ideal weight.'? Well, I hit my ideal weight yesterday.

My husband, on the other hand, who constantly eats street food, drinks water from the tap and wild streams, and in short does everything risky the guide books say you should never do when visiting Nepal, is hale, hearty, and bouncing with vigor.

I'd find the situation completely unfair and disheartening ... if I didn't look so good in my jeans.

In Nepal Girls Work While Boys Play

This is a fairly unusual photograph of children playing outside in Nepal -- because two of them are girls.

When you first get here, the whole children-in-public thing is wonderful. It's a pleasure to be surrounded by playing, laughing children everywhere. Makes you realize quite vividly how few American children play outside in their neighborhoods anymore. (They are in back, or in classes, or camps, or watching a TV or PC screen.)

Then you start to notice something odd -- those playing-in-public children, they are ALL Boys. Maybe girls play inside, but I doubt that seeing as how typical Nepalese homes have such dark interiors that most of the family spends all their daylit time outside.

Of course there are girls around. You see them getting on and off the school bus with ribbons in their hair precisely matching the color of their uniforms. (The school may not have any unbroken windows or heat, but by god those ribbons match!) You also can see them responsibly sheparding younger children on their way to somewhere - which is no doubt how my husband happened upon these girls with their brother. And you can frequently see them helping their mothers with laundry and chores outside the house, especially hauling up jugs of water from the lake.

Nepalese girls, even fairly small ones, are too busy to play. They are working.