News from my neighborhood...
- Part of the zoo wall collapsed. I wasn’t there when it happened, but rumor has it, it was quite epic. Some say the brick wall just collapsed. Others say that a car tapped the wall and it folded. Another said that the car slammed into the wall and it fell over. Anyway, we at the hostel are just glad that it was the wall encompassing the bird exhibit, not the tiger…
- Dashain is just around the corner—it starts today in fact. This festival is the biggest one Hindus in Nepal celebrate. It honors the goddess Kali, consort to the divine destroyer. Its one of the few times a year some people eat meat. Anyway, the city has been extremely busy, shops have been having sidewalk sales, and ATMs are consistently running out of cash or breaking. While I was blessed to arrive at the ATM when it had just been stocked with a new cash supply, another friend walked all over Patan trying to find one that worked and had cash. I’m told that the Valley will be pretty empty in a few days time, with everyone leaving to their home village to celebrate.
- A Newar drumming ensemble that processes outside my gate at 6AM has consistently woken me up these past two weeks. There’s a video posted on my Facebook page of their short parade.
- There’s a stretch of road near the hostel that has been informally labeled “New Thamel.” Thamel is the traditional tourist hotspot in Kathmandu, with pricey restaurants, souvenir shops, and seedy guesthouses. This road in Patan has the pricey restaurants and a few more expensive stores, but no seedy guesthouses that I can see. The interesting thing? Nepalis are the ones who most frequent this strip. Some hostel mates and I went to the Golden Dragon restaurant for dinner last night—actually a very cheap Nepali establishment with REALLY GOOD momos!—and as expected, we were the only foreigners. On our way back, we decided to splurge and get dessert at one of the fancier places—cheesecake (for about $2.60) and lemon curd (for about $2.25)—and low and behold, we were the only foreigners who stepped into THOSE places too! I’m consistently amazed at how Westernized some of the more lucrative Nepali families are; the youth culture in the city looks in a lot of ways like the youth culture in the West. My hostel mates and I ended our evening by laughing ourselves into stitches from watching the Hindi film “Aladin.” I would highly recommend it to any of you. Here’s the website, and according to my mom, it will be available in Netflix soon: http://aladin.erosentertainment.com/
