8

8

Time has come to leave Delhi until I return at the end of the trip to head home, In a word, pollution, which makes it so difficult to even be outside for any length of time. In fact, from my hotel window, the buildings barely a mile off are all but invisible.
Rather than stay in Delhi for another two days, as I had planned, I'm taking advantage of cheap air fares and debarking for Kathmandu. Maybe, up in the mountains, the air may be clearer. Of course, if Kathmandu is in a valley....
On the front page of the sports section of the IndiaTimes, is a photo of a golfer at a tournament not far from where I was yesterday. As I sit here, hacking and sneezing, even inside the hotel, II have no idea how anyone could have spent, and probably will spend today, playing while holding one's breath for four hours.

Like Jerusalem, Delhi has it's own smells. Even the taxi to the airport has the odor of curry.

I don't know exactly what you think when someone pops the word " Kathmandu" up in front of you , but over here, people think "Las Vegas". How about that? Casinos and everything!
Maybe Circque du Soleil has a branch over here.

Good guy at the check-in counter, a Sikh, who, when I asked if I might have window seat, said, "oh, you want to see some mountains!" I laughed and said I had come a long way to see "some mountains".
The next counter over is a flight to Kabul, Afghanistan. Yikes. Although no one looks any different than the passengers in my line.

1 hour and 10 mins. to Kathmandu, but over the Himalayan mountains!

Impetuosity spices up the curry of travel.

Some part of me thinks that if I'm not exhausted, in a good, over-stimulated , way, then I might as well have stayed home.
I'm not a blasé traveller, I don't always get it right the first time, but even after more than 50 countries, crossing a new border gives me goosebumps.
Standing in a bookstore, I notice a woman looking for a novel and I see "Shantaram", a book I tell everyone about, and so I recommend it to her, especially because it takes place in India. It turns out that she has been living here for a while and has heard of it.... Sounds like that what she has heard probably is not her cup of lapsang suchong.
But anyway, we start chatting.
She has two children who go to school up in the mountains where she also lives, but she (her name is Kai) is having visa problems and must needs go out of the country and apply to re-enter from Nepal, having to leave her children temporarily. Crazy. But she seems to be quite the experienced ex-pat and is only mildly exasperated.
She wants to know if the social and political climate back in the U.S. if as nutty as it appears in the press in India. I have to admit that it probably is, malheureusment.
She's originally from the San Juan islands north of Seattle and is a Democrat!
One thing that seems obvious to me, having seen The U.S., Switzerland, and now, India is that no country is trying to solve the myriad problems in the modern world the way America is. Switzerland and India have much more in common: public transport, universal healthcare, international outlook, many people living together in a small place, apartments. America continues to believe that It doesn't have to live by the same rules as everyone else.
There just is so little concept that we all share a common fate.
For how much longer?

Out the plane window, peeping up through the clouds, are mountaintops! It's not out of the realm of possibility that one of the peaks might be Mt. Everest. In fact, Everest is the name of my hotel in Kathmandu.


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