John's Journey: immersed in culture

Jul 2 2008 By John Hugill, Uxbridge Gazette

HERE is a list of weird culture things that I've noticed during my two weeks in Nepal:

* cows sit in the road while munching on rubbish carelessly dumped there #

* people spit - a lot (and they really tend to phlegm it up)

* men sometimes hold hands while walking along the street (and, no, as far as I'm aware they are not gay or, indeed, drunk) 

*  the locals eat rice ALL the time, even for breakfast, and potatoes for that matter

* every driver seems to beep excessively.

Let me elaborate on this one.

It seems because the streets of Kathmandu, Nepal's capital, are so crowded with people that all drivers tend to do is speed down the smallest of alleyways while giving a little toot on the horn to warn the 300 or so tourists and locals in front of them they are coming through, whether they can get out the way or not.

At first, I just assumed the beeping was aimed mostly at me, on account of my fairly useless road sense. It happened when crossing Uxbridge Road in Hayes every week during my patch sessions, so I merely thought it was a case of history repeating itself. But no.

So, as you can tell, Nepal has been quite a culture shock for me. Much more so in Kathmandu than in the more rural areas we visited while trekking, which was great.

We had a really friendly 'guide', Raju, who told me about his arranged marriage and how he would be happy to show me a quite brilliant place to get a massage in Pokhora when we finally left the hills. I nodded politely.

We also took with us a cheerful porter called Nima, who carried my bag without any complaints at all. He was a very quiet chap. A very good listener, it seems.

Now we fly to Thailand.