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But where to start? Over the past two years I've been meeting expatriates in Central America, Europe, and now Asia in my quest for the perfect place to spend the next half of my life. I've long been curious about the special fascination that Californians have for Asia. In the 60s, hordes of spiritual seekers and hippies headed east and returned to the West bringing with them a new way of life. They imported Eastern-influenced music, yoga, medicine, religion, incense, philosophy, trekking, and long flowing skirts, beads, and various forms of fashion dubbed "hippy" in the Western Hemisphere. Thirty years later, Asia's influence on Californian culture is pervasive. .
"In a way I feel lucky to experience Kathmandu sans tourists, but under the peace and the beauty there is fear that is palpable - mostly that foreigners, whom Kathmandu has come to depend on in more ways than one, will not return." Four months later I write, "Is Nepal going down? An increasing number of expatriates are taking lifeboats out of Nepal. But others, like the orchestra on the Titanic, keep playing. The Nepalese, if the country sinks, will go down with her." Kathmandu, Nepal the Place Situated between China and India, the Himalayan Kingdom of 19 million immigrants shares over a dozen languages and at least two dozen different cultures. Tolerance and diversity are a hallmark of Nepal which along with a low cost of living, and its beautiful mountain setting, have made it the ideal expatriate melting pot. Nepal's capitol of Kathmandu has half a million residents with an expatriate community of approximately 2,000. The numbers are dropping rapidly due to political instability and a choking economy. Remaining expatriates are for the most part development project employees and volunteers. The rest are made up of foreign embassy employees, students, business entrepreneurs, trust fund babies, retirees, and part-time expatriates who divide their time between their home country or another expatriate haven. In the past 30 years laws have been passed which have made it increasingly difficult for a foreigner to become a permanent resident of Kathmandu. At present, one hundred fifty days per year is the longest period for which tourist VISA may be extended. Most expatriates get around that by getting work or student visas, both which require extensive documentation and lengthy hassles. A friend at the British Embassy told me that if he were considering coming to Kathmandu now, he'd probably not bother. "Things are changing so rapidly that it's impossible to predict what will happen." The Party Goes On I accompany Melissa, a yoga teacher, to the annual pre-Losar party at the home of Dylana, a nurse who lives half the year in Tibet providing pre-natal education to Tibetan women. In the large flowering garden surrounding her stately home, middle-aged and younger expats sit on blankets chatting. Inside the house Buddha Bar is playing on the stereo, and friends are crowded around a table with an assortment of food from Indian naan and dhal bhat, to pigs in a blanket and apple pie. I wander around the groups of graying friends gathered in various groups on the lawn to eavesdrop on what it is that the old friends are discussing at the first big expat party of the year. "So you’re back from England. How was it?" "Mom's worse than ever. Her hip never healed properly. Looks like I'll be going back in six months." "You're going to Bangkok? I’ll be there that week too! Let's meet for dinner...." An expatriate photographer from America is filling his plate and saying, "The galleys are out and the book should be at the publisher's by next week. Thank God. Money is tight. We're looking for someone to rent a room in our house." An attractive 30-ish woman says to a small group of women, "I’ve just sprung a consulting job in Vietnam with a Japanese Aid organization. I’ll be setting up women’s craft cooperatives. Work has all but dried up in Kathmandu." I meet Natasha, the owner of Wild
Earth, a Himalayan Herb Exporting Company, She’s just returned from a business
trip to India. In one hand she carries a paper plate bent under the weight
of food and in the crook of her other arm, a curly headed blonde toddler.
She sets him down and then herself on a blanket on the grass upon which
several ladies sit wearing straw hats. I’m sitting on the back porch
with Melissa when a 60-ish woman on her way out shakes my hand. Her tanned,
deeply lined face is framed with cropped silver hair. Melissa tells her
between drags, "I quite smoking months ago, but I'm being bad today." The
woman says, "I quit 2 weeks ago," and then whispers, "I've only sneaked
a couple of cigarettes and a joint a day since." Everyone seems to be talking
about either coming from or going home. A woman in her mid-fifties says,
"We go home, but we always come back because life in Kathmandu is just
so spicy."
My friend Steve, a long-time, part-time expat of Kathmandu, had warned me before I left for Nepal, "Kathmandu's a shadow of its former self." Later that night at the party, Big MarkTed says to me, "Kathmandu's not even a shadow. These are the end times." A local Nepali band plays rock and
roll. Aging hippies twirl unselfconsciously alongside young aid workers
and volunteers. A teenaged Nepali boy asks me as we watch the dancers,
"Why they dance like that? Don't they know no one dance with arms up in
air anymore?"
There is another middle-aged woman with a thin braid emerging from an otherwise conservative hairstyle who arrived twenty years ago. She tells me she traded in the life of the white picket fence for a life of authenticity. "Now I look at my friends who went the 'safe' route, and suddenly they're the insecure ones. They're getting divorces, changing jobs, and reevaluating their lives." Around midnight, the host, Ron, introduces me to a tall German man named Ike, who is on his way out and will give me a ride home because there are no taxis. Through the now empty streets of Kathmandu we bounce along and navigate the narrow curved lanes of Kathmandu in his freightship-like automobile, a 1958 Mercedes station wagon. A group of young armed men in camouflage with fingers on their triggers are blocking the road. We stop. They peer in with flashlights. I hold my breath. Ike growls in a clipped German accent, "Yeah? What do you want?" They wave us on. "Wow," I say. He says, "Those boys wouldn't know what to do with a gun if they had to use one." The Maoist Effect on Shangri-La Two months later: Things have changed since last month when I emailed friends and family a message that in part said, "Don't worry. The Army wants the Maoists, and the Maoists want the army, not us." The Maoists have recently made it clear that tourists are targets as well. There's word that foreign owned Five-star hotels will be bombed. In this gruesome clash in which at least a dozen on either side of the skirmish die each day, we are no longer simply spectators. The Maoists have scheduled their third bandh (a strike in which all businesses must close) in as many months. The daily news reports are increasingly gruesome: a busload of civilians burned to death here, bodies found with limbs hacked off there, 84 army soldiers killed here, 50 Maoists killed there, and in the past two days, talk of a Maoist scheme to overtake the capital of Kathmandu. Army personnel with guns are everywhere through the city. Barbed wire blockades are at every corner. Guns are propped atop sandbags surrounding the palace. We turn on CNN and BBC. The airways are full of reports about the Israeli - Palestine conflict. Not one word about Nepal. Two evenings ago, Nika and I ventured into Thamel and found its streets teeming with the white faces of foreigners. A relief. How bad could things be if people weren't staying away? What if they called a war and no one came? Maybe Nepal's coma of the past two months was just the normal slow period for a seasonal resort. But when we emerged from the Maya Cocktail Restaurant at 9 PM we found the streets empty again. Inside the Full Moon Bar, foreigners sat on cushions around low tables drinking and talking in subdued voices. "This place reminds me of an opium den," Nika whispered. By 10 PM, the bartenders were closing the windows, and pulling down the shades. The music was silenced, lights cut off, candles lit -- an effort to make it appear to the army patrolling the streets below that the Full Moon Bar was acting in accordance with the State of Emergency curfew. Inside the feeling was clandestine, secretive, Prohibition style. Word was going around that the Jump Club next door had been closed down the night before with the butts of army guns. And so some 30 foreigners and we chatted conspiratorially, under hushed lights, behind locked doors in a stifling, humid cloud of smoke. At 10:30 PM, Full Moon's owners went from table to table blowing out candles. "Party's over. Time to go home," they said. As the bandh grows nearer, people in Kathmandu are holding their collective breaths … the showdown between the Maoists and the government is just days away and already the Maoists have begun their offensive. What to do? I cannot sleep. Should I get the heck out of here? Or should I stay because I am a storyteller and this is where a story is unfolding. I climb out of bed in the wee hours of the morning and pack two bags. One with the things I must take with me and one for the things I can live without. But what about the parties night after night throughout Kathmandu which seem to be increasing in number and joviality in direct proportion to the danger? One night, at a very crowded Jump Club (it reopened the next night), I ask a BBC producer and Kathmandu expat, "Should I be worried?" He says, "There is absolutely nothing for you to worry about." Schizophrenic. Eat, Drink, and Be Merry for Tomorrow We Die. The Orchestra on the Titanic. Ike, the same man who drove me home from the expat party two months earlier is moving into our compound the day before the bandh. We three women are relieved to have a man aboard. Ike was the original driver of the hippie bus between Amsterdam and Kathmandu in the 60s. He's lived in Kathmandu on and off ever since. Like many expats he maintains a home in his country of origin, but calls Kathmandu home. He's seen frequently about Kathmandu riding his classic motorcycle with a long scarf wrapped about his neck, and a black helmet held together with black electrical tape, and goggles. Ike owns a hotel in Chitwan with a Nepali partner, but when the Maoists blew up the Chitwan telephone transformer last month, he threw in the towel and closed the hotel. "I've had it," he told me. "I'm going back to Germany. This government is a kleptocracy, and the Maoists are finishing it off ..." He says, "I'm German. Nothing can change that. It's who I am and who I'll always be no matter where I live. But I'm an international citizen more than anything else, and I'll miss Kathmandu." (He plans to return in four months.) The army is everywhere, aiming guns
over sandbags, putting up barbed wire barricades at street corners, patrolling
every inch of the city with fingers on the triggers of their rifles. I
ride through Durbur Square with Minie on a sari-hunting trip. I tell her
I'm scared. She says, "Robin, relax. You're in Kathmandu! Look around you
and realize how lucky you are to be here. Don't waste your precious days
here worrying about something that may not happen." So I take a breath
and look around and it is pretty amazing. We're bouncing along behind our
driver who peddles furiously past thousands year-old temples, past old
Newari houses, past women sauntering by in vivid saris.
And so that became our backup plan. If we had to evacuate, Nika, Lorie, Ike, and I, and the staff, if they chose to join us, would walk for three days to India. Read Part Two of 'Kathmandu, Expat
Haven Or Paradise Lost?' by Robin Sparks Next Month in this magazine.
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