James!

What are the odds that on my first trip to Nepal one of my good friends would be visiting also? I've no idea, but they can't be that high, which makes it really fortunate that James and I were able to meet up in Kathmandu for a couple days.

James's Nepali friend from Seattle, Anup, just got married and invited a group of his friends over for the traditional Nepali wedding. They arrived in mid-February and spent two weeks celebrating the wedding and sightseeing. I met them on Saturday just after they'd returned from Pokhara, a beautiful town in western Nepal.

In addition to catching up with James and hearing all kinds of stories, both ridiculous and horrifying, about his stay, his friends are quite interesting and fun. On Saturday evening, we went out to the swank Hotel Everest to have some drinks with some high school friends of Anup and Santtu, who is Finnish, but grew up in Nepal. It turns out that their high school friends are now all entrepreneurs--one of them owned the hotel. The service was excellent and the conversation gave those of us new to Nepal a view on what it means to be rich in a poor country.

Afterwards, we all went to Anup's parents' house over in the Dilli Bazaar neighborhood of Kathmandu, which is a little less hectic than Thamel, where I was staying before. Anup's sister cooked a traditional Nepali dinner, which was fantastic. They told me I was lucky to dine on Saturday because that is the only night that they include meat. After an epic stuffing, Anup showed us some pictures of the countryside until late, when we all retired to either the guest rooms or the hotel.

On Sunday, I had breakfast at the hotel with Tom while we waited for James to come over from the house. Tom knows this group from Seattle but is currently working for a Chinese manufacturer in a city close to Hong Kong. His experiences in China sound both exciting and painfully frustrating, but always entertaining.

When James arrived, he and I agreed to meet Tom for lunch over in Thamel and set out walking across Kathmandu to run an errand and do some shopping. After getting lost for about half an hour we eventually met up with Tom for a _very_ slow lunch. Afterwards James and I walked through a light drizzle looking for some interesting souvenirs. Our success was mixed and I think James gave up on some of the items he would have liked.

That evening James, Tom, Santtu, and I went out in Thamel. It seemed that we found the best places earliest in the evening--the venue selection seriously thins after about ten-thirty. Santtu stayed out for two places, Buddha Bar and J Bar, but things got strange after that.

Some Nepali men insisted that we join them dancing at our third stop. There was a strange improvisational battle going on between three women on a short stage and a group of patrons, who were all men, on the dance floor immediately in front. One man and one woman would face off, each singing a clever rhyming composition. Between each verse the women would sing a chorus and all the men would dance in a strange Nepali style, holding their arms out at shoulder height, dipping one shoulder towards the floor, and then turning in that direction. While I was trying to imitate them, I asked one to translate for me, but the lyrics didn't make much sense. I think that the singers were using a lot of poetic euphemisms, or my translator had no idea what he was talking about.

That place closed at about eleven-thirty but some of the men who were dancing wanted to take us to another place that was deserted and overpriced. After Tom got extorted in the rest room (I think they charged him about five dollars to let him leave) we left and tried to find another place. We started walking in search of another place but eventually took a circuitous cab ride where the driver took about fifteen blocks to drop us off one block from where we began (we complained and didn't have to pay). After the bum cab ride we decided to call it a night and headed back to Dilli Bazaar.

Tom and James flew to Bangkok on Monday afternoon on their ways home. After our goodbyes, I headed back to some budget accommodations in Thamel and booked a bus ticket to Pokhara for Tuesday.

James was definitely ready to head home. He'd had a bit of rough health in Pokhara and was generally tired of the developing world. It was therapeutic to vent with someone. Despite his readiness to leave, it would have been nice to hang out a little while longer.