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The same night as my extended audience with the Indian military we met Sharad.  It had been a long day preceded by a number of other long days.  We had just entered into the area where we were having to deal with large amounts of Delhi traffic.

The Meerut area is basically one big military base.  Pete had managed to find a civilian-looking field 2 km down a small road otherwise lined with military bases.  Halfway to this potential camp-site, we stopped at a hand pump to wash, as is our custom.  We immediately attracted attention, and the men loitering in the street formed a crowd to watch us bathe, as is their custom.

Pete pumped for me.  Someone brought us a bucket (one advantage of bathing for a crowd, one of those people must have a bucket).  Halfway through the process, a man with a demeanor of calm intelligence rode up on his well-used bike.  Pete had actually met him before, briefly in town.  He observed us stripped to the waist, gathered around the pump, surround by a crowd of Indians and inquired what the heck we were doing and where on earth we planned to sleep that night.  We explained.  “Look,” he said, “this area is all military bases, you will find no area here. Come back to my house.  You can sleep in my house or put your tent in my yard or park, as you wish.”  He surveyed the crowd, and then added, “you can also bathe at my house.  This is no place to bathe.”

We looked at each other.  The words of the friendly officer who warned me against getting caught twice on military land rang in my head.  We unanimously agreed to accompany Sharad back to his home.

He lived in a nice neighborhood, in a new two story house with a huge gate, a garage and a real yard with real grass.  We met his brother, an engineering student, his father, a retired teacher who now oversees farming on the family land, and his mother, who makes great parantha.

Sharad and his mom served us the obligatory glass of tea.  We chatted.  His father told us about farming.

Sharad showed us a room.  His room.  “You can sleep in here, if you wish,” he told us.  The sky outside promised rain.  I was sick of setting up the tent.  The failed zipper on the screen often guaranteed plenty of mosquitoes accompanied us through the night.  We accepted his offer. Much to my guilt, he cleared everything out fo the room and set up three mats for us.

We went for a short walk through the rich part of town, an area famous as one of the richest neighborhoods in India.  Quiet, wide, car-lined streets reminded one of suburban U.S.  The huge houses looming behind their high-security fences, however, brought to mind America’s own wealthy neighborhoods.   Suddenly, all the lights blinked out.  Power outage!  We had become accustomed to these ever since we left Kolkata, but I was surprised to see the rich unexempt from this inconvenience.  Kind of.  Things quickly blinked back on as AC supplied kicked on and generators fired up.

The next morning, after a night of fitful sleep, we were treated to a meal of paranthas and bread and butter.  Sharad and his family saw us off, and Sharad even accompanied us to the main road.  The stay was just what we needed to recharge before heading into Delhi craziness.

“So tell me,” said the rotund man in sweat pants, “are you a spy?”  In other circumstances surely a laughable question, but he was an army officer and this was an army base.  I had wandered into this area looking for a campsite.  I made the mistake of assuming the Army would put a fence up around areas they didn’t want people wandering into.  I had ridden down an unmarked road, then stood around surveying an open area for campsites.  When some uniformed men ambled through the area, I waited for them, hoping to ask if camping was permitted so near the army base.  I had to wait a long time, for they walked slowly and not directly towards me.

Thinking of the wait, I responded with some annoyance: “If I was a spy, I would come here at night and not walk around in the open.”  “In fact,” said the officer, “this is just what I would expect from a spy, to walk around in the open.”  What could I say?

“Do you have a passport?” asked the officer.  When his subordinates had so skillfully apprehended me, they took care to separate me from my bike.  I explained that my passport was on my bike.  While we waited for my bike to be retrieved, we discussed ground hockey, a game my two interrogators were playing before they had the opportunity to play interrogation with me.

I asked what I hoped were un-spy-like questions about ground hockey.  “You don’t know much about ground hockey,” summed up one of the officers.  My effort to cloak my intelligence and set them off the scent had evidently been successful.

A soldier rode up on my bike.  I hate it when other people ride my bike.  A quick look at the mismatched straps on my bags indicated someone had taken the liberty to search it.  I retrieved my passport and examined the searched bag for missing items.

“Do you have any drugs?” he asked.  I launched into a long list of anti-diarrheal, anti-biotic, anti-histamine and other useful travel drugs.  “No, no no,” he smiled sympathetically at my naivety.  I assured him I had none of those drugs.  “Are you sure?” prodded the officer, “shall I put it through the X-ray?”  Where he had an x-ray and what made him think it would be of any help in finding drugs is beyond me.  As you wish, I told him.

I was being interrogated on an ant mound.  Huge ants ran up my legs and I had to brush them off and stomp my feet.  “Step away from that area,” kindly ordered the lower-ranking officer.

“Can I see that book?” asked the man in the sweats.  I had taken my journal out of my bag to see if my favorite pen was still attached to it.  I handed it over.  “It’s a bad habit, you know, to read other people’s diaries, but I’m just doing my job,” he said as he glanced cursorily at a few of the pages, searching for a legible section.  My terrible handwriting seemed to lessen his commitment to duty.  “Your handwriting is very poor,” he informed me, and handed the book back.  I craftily avoided telling him how I had slaved at spy school to develop my incomprehensible chicken scratch.

The passport and photocopies came back.  “If you want to camp somewhere, ask if it is a civilian area first,” the officer advised me, “if they catch you at night it won’t be like this, they’ll just throw you in the brig.”  “I really hope you are not a spy,” he continued.  “Now, I have a copy of your passport, so I can catch you next time.  This man will show you out,” he finished and rejoined the game of ground hockey, of which I was so poorly informed.

Even though they had foolishly led me into the center of camp, they took care to lead me out the way I came, through brush and down windy trails.  They wanted to keep the main gate of the the camp secret-at least until I rode by it the next day on the main road.  I returned to Pete and Drew more than an hour later than I was supposed to meet them.

Overall, I couldn’t have hoped for a better interrogation experience.  Everyone was friendly, even with the occasional jab or hard question thrown in. Perhaps they were paranoid, perhaps eager to exercise their authority.  I’m just glad they didn’t actually think I was a spy.  Even for adults, games are often preferable to doing the real thing.

In what was to become a common theme of the next two days, Ranjeet invited us back to his house for parantha. We had just eaten lunch, but no matter. FBR is always ready for second lunch. Ranjeet, an man soft-spoken enough to require many a ‘what?’ on our part comes from a line of cooks. His father cooked for a big hotel in Delhi, and now he cooks for an Indian restaurant in South Africa. He spend ten months out of the year there, earning the coveted foreign salary, and then comes back home for two months.

Ranjeet and friends with FBR (Ranjeet is in the middle in the white).

We happened to catch him while he was at home. After we had polished off many a parantha (delectable thin bread fried in ghee) Ranjeet took me to observe the village cricket match. The cricketers played in a bare field and dodged the odd tree looming overhead. There was an announcer-plugged in, and concessions complete with cold drinks and betel nut. A surprisingly sophisticated set-up for low scale sports.

A bowler at the more official of the two village games I attended.

We dodged around the open sewers to get back to his home, only to find Drew and Pete trying to sleep. Ranjeet went out again, this time to actually play cricket with a different yet even more informal village league. Ever since I began listening to the BBC, cricket has mystified yet intrigued me. The villagers played a fast paced game, more interesting than, what I’ve seen on TV. The folks involved in the cricket on that day tried hastily explaining this rule or that, but the game was too intense and my questions too complicated to lend easy answers. I can speculate why batsmen switch places, just as I can guess what makes an out, but how many outs each side gets is beyond me.

After cricket, night fell. “What would you like to eat?” inquired Ranjeet. We assured him anything would be ok. As we watched hungrily, a neighborhood kid deftly caught a chicken and held it squawking for Ranjeet’s inspection. To our great relief, it passed, and soon was flopping around in a pool of its own blood. We hardly ever get meet, and the chicken made our night. We busted out the music, while Ranjeet’s sister began bustling about in her red shalwaar kameez, preparing us yet another meal.

We asked the villagers gathered around us to sing a Hindi song. One man finally burst forth with a slow tune. His big eyes held mine as his prominent facial features exaggeratedly expressed the emotions embedded in the music.

Song from the man with big eyes.

We played another song, but the villagers wanted to hear a faster song.  Faster, faster, faster.  Drew did his best, but soon we were out of fast songs.

FBR song (recorded live in Chalu).

A huge Indian double-headed drum showed up, and the crowd urged a young man sitting near us to pick it up and play. He slung the shoulder strap over his head, and used the double-ended drum sticks, one in each hand, to knock out a great Indian dance beat. Two slinky men in tank tops leapt up and sauntered about the circle. They gyrated their hips, painting circles in the night with their huge belt buckles, and carried the crowd to hysterical acclamation.

The kid with the drum and a dancer.

Drum beat.

The singer urged us to dance. I was dead tired. I did not want to paint circles in the night with my ass. I skipped about half-heartedly. It was almost ten at night, and we still hadn’t eaten. The drummer was even slowing down. The singing man was calling us frauds. What? We couldn’t figure out what was going on. Perhaps my lackadaisical effort had failed to impress. I faded in and out. An argument seemed to ensue.

Luckily, our host came to the rescue. “Do you want to eat now?” he asked. We responded with enthusiastic affirmation. Suddenly a huge pile of roti (non-fried flat bread), salad, and plates of steaming rice and-oh boy oh boy- chicken curry appeared before us. We enthusiastically dug in, savoring the meal as we had relished few others.

After we ate, it was high time for bed.  Ranjeet gave us his bed, despite our protests.  We collapsed into it and slept fitfully.  The next morning, it was more parantha, and we said good bye.

I did not, but I should have dreamed of how many parantha I will have to make random people I run into in the U.S.  The idea of hospitality in the classical sense, the hospitality that saved Odysseus, that rules nomadic culture, that has smiled upon FBR so brightly of late, no longer seems to exist in the U.S.  Before this trip, I would never imagine inviting strangers into my house.  Now, however, I can’t wait to go back and begin repaying all of this kindness.

China will always hold a special place in the hearts of FBR.  We were all quite saddened to hear of the terrible earth quake which befell Sichuan earlier this week.   While we did not pass through Sichuan on this trip, all of us had been there previously, and have connections their with both places and people.  We are in the process of establishing the wellfare of those we know.  In the meantime, we would ask everyone to keep the people of South West China in their thoughts and prayers.

In the 90’s Nepal fell victim to that most dreaded leftist political phenomena: the Maoist insurgency.  For more than a decade the countryside suffered the fate of those trapped in the crossfire.,  Maoists demanded food by night and the government punished pro-Maoist behavior by day.

Hostilities ceased between the government and the Maoists two years ago under a UN brokered cease-fire.  To everyone’s surprise, the de-militarized Maoists won elections to select a committee to rewrite the constitution.  The wildly unpopular King of Nepal seems on the verge of being deposed.  Nepal is in for some changes.

Among the Nepali people, relief is palpable.  People gladly rinse their hands of strife and happily see tourists return to all parts of the country (before they were restricted to government-controlled areas).  However, as we bike, I’m not sure how to feel.  We pass  numerous army bases on the road.  Though the firefights ended two years ago, you can practically smell the smoke in the air.  Loops and loops of razor wire defend the perimeters, stacks of sand bags and metal plates reinforce guard houses, and men, their hands stroking the barrels of mounted heavy machine guns peer out at us. 

We’ve conversed with stick-wielding members of the communist youth league.  They seemed friendly, but we also hear reports of stick-armed youth savagely beating the undeserving.  While biking past a camp of demobilized communist soldiers, I greeted a procession of well-heeled officers marching in the road.  They glared back stonily and did not reply to my “Namaste”.

Fortified snow mountains in Pokhara.

“The Maoists threatened voters with violence if they were not elected”, one shop owner told us.  Others have echoed this information, though most everyone we talk to was not personally threatened.  People we talk to can speak English and live in cities, whereas the Maoist’s domain is primarily the countryside.

It struck us as odd that the Maoists, who had started the insurgency to begin with, were rewarded for their violence with a win in the election.  Peter has expressed concern that an inherently violent organization, such as the Maoists seem to him, can only have complete hegemony as its end goal.  He remains pessimistic about the past and future elections in Nepal leading to peace.

However, most Nepali people, so glad to be done with war, have placed great hopes in the future.  They remain guarded about the Maoists themselves, but most want to see if the Maoists can follow through on promises to reduce corruption and implement a more federalized system of government.

I’m sure we can all join the Nepali people in hoping not only for peace, but for successful development.  Given the possibilities at the moment, however, possibility might well have to include more bleak options.  Let’s all hope against those, and pay close attention to Nepal, lest it wind up another lost country in strife.

Drivers on the subcontinent fling their high-decibel horns carelessly.  On nearly deserted roads, they shatter the peace by announcing their presence a few meters behind you, actually announced two minutes earlier by the roar of their engines.  They honk at hopeless traffic jams.  In place of power to change road conditions, drivers substitute the bravado of a loud sound, hoping it drowns out their impotence.

Honk, honk, honk! (courtesy Pete)

Horns have been with us since the beginning of the trip.  We’ve always had the Japanese motorcycle horn, feared for its dissonant and terribly annoying chords.  The chords are meant to ransack your attention and do whatever necessary to make it stop (get off the road, drive into the ditch, lob grenades at the source of the dissonant notes).

The old taxis in Kolkata, on the other hand, blast melodious chords at you.  It’s no wonder the folks of that city are so unresponsive to these pleasant sounds, so easily confused with a church choir or Brahms requiem are they.

Most distinctive to the subcontinent are the bus and truck horns.  Not only are they inevitably the loudest, but they blast out multiple notes; they come close to playing short ditties at the traffic situations or pedestrians they are meant to correct or warn or banish off the road.  Some horns rush up and down part of the chromatic scale—like a crazed organist.  Others play simple melodies.  “C,C,B,C” cried one horn.  Others low more complicated melodies.  Sometimes I’ve heard the first few notes of a particular horn and prepared myself to hear the Star Wars theme song, or perhaps revelry.  Other horns tend towards Happy Birthday,

Thank you for bearing with me.  These words will never make it to the eyes of the drivers of India and Nepal.  Thus this blog is merely a cry in the wilderness, unnecessary noise in the universe, and a bluster I substitute for my inability to do anything else.  In the final analysis, I am little better than the horn blowers themselves.

While working our way out of the Himalayas we paused for a break near a small shop.  A man wearing a tank top and orange shorts initiated a conversation, and we soon found that he had spent the previous six months as a guard for a DEA (the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency) compound in Kabul. His slight build and easy manners belied his military training, but speckles of spit forcefully punctuated his more emphatic points. 

Trained as a commando in the Nepali Army, Saraj found ample work opportunity after he quit.  His employer is ‘Global Logistics Security’ or some other equally ambiguously named international private security company.  His co-workers come primarily from the U.S. and British special forces, who swell the ranks of private contractors supporting low troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Saraj is by no means the only Nepali lending man-power to the U.S. war effort.  We met another gentleman in Eastern Nepal who had spent a year in Iraq working as a cook.  With domestic salaries low, many Nepali men flock to the Middle East, Malaysia and other places with higher pay rates to cash in on globalization.

There’s something odd about the U.S. looking outside of its borders for manpower for its wars.  Before the collapse of the Spanish empire, they began outsourcing important trades like ship building to other countries.  They became lethargic and unskilled, while their neighbors built up their own empires through crafty use of revenues coming from Spain.

The wars the U.S. currently fights seem managed by bureaucrats who’s ideology finds little root at the grassroots level in America.  They push the affairs of the country in a direction most citizens do not wish to follow.  Perhaps our the shortage of soldiers to execute these wars should be an indication of the lack of support they have.  However, the bureaucracy simply looks outside the borders of our country for manpower, and continues trudging in the same direction, sustaining conflicts their own citizens refuse to support with their lives.

Maybe this situation is more a sign of the global times in which we live.  Wars without outsourcing may be as impractical as manufacturing without a global supply chain.  I’m afraid I, for one, will remain ill at ease having my countries dirty work be done by non-citizens.

Published in the Livingston Enterprise May 6th, 2008.

Bike trip pauses battle with Indian traffic to smote rural poverty 

    Three gaudily decorated trucks careened down the road towards me.
Behind me, a cacophony of deafening horns indicated another convoy
fast approaching from the rear.  The road being barely wide enough to
accommodate two trucks, I had to jump my loaded bike off the pavement
and onto the rock and refuse-strewn shoulder.  The trucks roared past
me, not slowing a bit.  I regained the road, only to be forced off a
few moments later by more trucks.
       It took us little time to discover biking on India’s national highway
was no fun.  For a major road, the traffic is light, but passing cars
leave no room for bikes.  Luckily, India has a considerable network of
small roads that wind casually through the countryside.  On these, we
could take time to enjoy the fresh green rice paddies gliding all the
way to the horizon, the huge trees standing protectively by the
roadside, and the small villages clinging to high spots.
       Because it is impossible to legally bike through Myanmar, we
reluctantly boarded a plane in Bangkok, Thailand that took us across
the Indian Ocean to Kolkata, India  We intended to push as far west as
possible.  Although other routes to Europe from Thailand exist, they
would involve considerable time, and would have forced us to bike over
the Himalayas in late winter.
       Flying meant missing out on the gradual changes to which biking had
accustomed me.  While I missed easing into Indian culture, I wasted no
time appreciating it.  Kolkata, unlike most Chinese cities was never
razed to the ground and rebuilt.  Decaying stone buildings erected by
the British connect one with India’s past. Rebuilt fifties-style
automobiles serve as taxis, and streetcars, rickshaws, bikes, ancient
buses and motorcycles compete with pedestrians for street space.  Few
cities possess such energy as Kolkata’s bustling thoroughfares and
back alleys.
       The women of India wear the most striking fashions I’ve seen on the
trip.  Bright saris and shalwar kameezes in pastels and neon colors
set women apart from the drab clothes of their male counterparts.
However, it seemed the women were always on the move.  They rarely
paused in their march through the streets.  They never sipped chai
from the many stands around which men constantly gathered.
       In Southeast Asia, women were almost always the owners or proprietors
of restaurants and hotels.  However, in India, I rarely talked to any
women, because men exclusively worked in the shops and restaurants.
Women, it seemed, remained at home, and I only saw them on the street,
hurrying from one place to another.
       After acclimatizing to our new environment, we set out on our bikes
to visit a friend of mine doing development work north of Kolkata.
The organization with which he works, Street Survivors India, is run
by a woman named Shabnam Veraswamy.  This woman, with her perfect
English, staff of workers, and private car, seems out of place small
Indian village.
Her organization aims to increase quality of life in the countryside
by providing education and work opportunities.  They focus on women,
who not only usually take more responsibility for raising families,
but are more vulnerable to exploitation due to the patriarchy still
alive in parts of India.  By increasing their knowledge and
self-reliance, Shabnam hopes to help not only them, but to raise the
standard of living for the whole village.  She saw in our ability to
play music an opportunity to widen the horizons of village life.
Consequently, we found ourselves on a stage in front of the Street
Survivor’s compound, lit by lights powered by a generator thumping
away nearby.  Sound equipment amplified our voices and instruments so
the crowd of villagers could hear us over the generator.  Ironically,
despite our location in the middle of the undeveloped Indian
countryside, it was our biggest and most technically sophisticated
concert.  Between Shabnam’s spirited explanations of our mission and
the novelty of watching foreigners, we held everyone’s attention until
a storm threatened rain and everyone retreated to shelter.
Later, we visited the Jalgriti School, another Street Survivors
project, and one of the best hopes for empowering the girls and boys
in the village.  It was the first day of school.  Crowds of excited
children strolled about the grounds in their snappy brown uniforms.
Younger children wailed their anxiety.
The school had not yet hired a music teacher, so we filled in by
playing for the music classes.  We gave those children brave enough to
try brief lessons on how to play the instruments.  They impressed me
with their excitement and intelligence.  It occurred to me that many
young minds would go to waste were it not for the school.
Regretfully, we took our leave of Katna and headed back on the road.
Though we felt welcome and helpful in the village, we still had a long
way to go.  Our mission is not to fully understand one area, but
rather to better comprehend many areas, so we returned to do battle
with the horns and exhaust and baroquely bedecked trucks.  Now,
however, we had a much better appreciation for education’s role in
beating back rural poverty.

Before Kathmandu, we dived off the perfectly good main highway and headed for the bush.  We traversed good roads and bad, but wound up on terrible roads.  The rocks projecting out of the surface often bounced the fun right out of riding.

While the jolts tormented our joints, sunsets fired narrow draws with the soft warm light of molten metal.  Narrow terraces dived steeply down thousand foot hills.  We had airplane views of the landscape earned by the sweat of our constant climbing and descending.

The Nepali people also sent us on roller coasters.  Children followed us up hills, panting their pleas for money, chocolate, food into our annoyed ears.  We could not escape, the hills were too steep, the children too determined to milk us into compliance.  Before, we had encountered beggars only in cities, but here normal children with houses and fields and parents harassed us to no end.  Our respect for the people diminished.  Before, we held their tough mountain culture in high esteem.  After several kilometers of mobile begging, we began to reassess the impact of tourism.

The children had been taught to beg.  Tourists (that terrible T word!) had pitied their slightly dirty clothes or tough lives.  No doubt, they have tough lives.  However, handouts haven’t helped anyone; they only breed dependence and encourage roguery.

Goofing around, not begging.  Hooray!

The children made me sick.  We tried to discourage them with words, by begging back to them, by pointing their behavior out to their parents.  Our efforts to rid ourselves of the beggars sometimes only rewarded us with rocks lobbed harmlessly by small hands.  Harmless maybe, but it is, as they say, the thought that counts.

Later we found we’d been biking on the road to Everest.  Not all kids begged.  Some unquestioningly threw their shoulders into the trailer and helped us push it up the hills.  Some merely ran alongside, happy for the unique experience-as were we. To them we will be grateful, but as for the others, they make me ashamed for my fellow travelers who have so carelessly bred dependence into a people and erected a hopelessly tall wall between me and kids who-save for their eager greed-I might have had a chance to befriend.

Perhaps I am a callous, hard-hearted miser.  The number of requests and demands and complaints I often receive in touristy areas have encased my compassion beneath a thick crust of suspicion.  Yet, I still struggle to treat people with respect, even as they cling to me and block my path.

We met two gentlemen, Andrew and Jesse, in Kathmandu who worked for a Christian service organization called Word Made Flesh.  They have committed to three years of service in Kathmandu, providing physical and spiritual help to drug users, victims of prostitution, homeless children and the infirm elderly.  Only in the country for a few months, they already have a truck load of emotionally heavy tales.  It is no half measure of faith that compelled them to come.

Over lunch they related their own struggles to see Christ in everyone who approached them, from drug dealers to beggars to sales people.  This sentiment resounded with me.  Not everyone is a Christian, but there is a fundamental act of metaphysics in the manner in which we approach each other.   “Seeing Christ” in a person guarantees a failure to objectify.  Christian or not, objectifying people serves only to degrade them, to isolate yourself, and to fail to create a connection, and denies people their spiritual autonomy.

Through a connection of Andrew’s, we met a pastor in Kathmandu named Mani.  We shared dinner with him, and he in turn invited us to a prayer meeting with a few college students to whom he ministers.  I found not the calm bible interpretations I expected, but instead challenging questions from the pastor and his students.  For an hour we talked about the reasons for the trip, difficulties we experienced, and happy moments, both spiritually and otherwise.

What humbled me was the belief held by meeting participants that they could learn something from us.  I suppose I pompously inscribe opinions into this blog, but to have someone actually ask me meaningful questions about my experience was illuminating.  Such experiences would be impossible without first shedding prejudices and opening one’s self to what someone has to give one, not what one wants or expects.

After an therapeutic hour of meaningful discussion, I found myself recharged and ready to confront whatever sort of person Nepal might through at me next.   We all felt especially great after the pizza Mani procured for us.  I guess the positive truth I gained from this experience was a little hospitality goes a long way.  The children of demands left a bad taste in my mouth, but my palate was cleansed soon enough with tomato sauce and cheese.  I can only hope other travelers on the road to Everest have the gumption to act responsibly and the luck to find those authentically friendly Nepalese who make an experience truly meaningful.

Pastor Mani (middle holding daughter) with FBR and local students at a prayer meeting in Kathmandu.

Typical of any time we tried to stop and rest in the plains of Nepal, we couldn’t get away from people. First, the children showed up. They clumped around one of us as we sat on the ground, reading or writing, and would suddenly rush to their next victim with no apparent reason. They sniffled loudly, placed their hands on our shoulders to lean in for a closer look, and demanded I show them the postcard I had tucked into my book for safe keeping.
Later, adults drifted through our rest area in the trees. They paused to watch us at a respectful distance, a few spoke a few words of English.
During the day we cycled through several groups of kids. In the late afternoon, we found ourselves speaking with a semi-circle of villagers. One younger man had the build of a boxer, and constantly smiled to reveal his white teeth. His mother constantly giggled to reveal her delightful personality. They asked if we wanted to stay in the village. We protested the normal protestations: we’re a big group, we have lots of crap, it will be troublesome for you. We received the usual answer from the shiny-mouthed would-be host: no problem. “First,” he said, however, “you play music.”
So we got out the instruments. No sooner had we commenced, than a bus stopped alongside the road. Its occupants wandered out and joined the concert. The bus people were city people and spoke excellent English. Our would-be hosts were country folks and spoke a little English. In between songs our hosts lost interest in the long complicated questions put to us by the bus people. Then another bus stopped. Was this a publicized concert? we asked ourselves.
Later, the buses left, but our hosts were gone. We were led to the village by a child. We stowed our bikes in the goat pen. A high school student offered to take us around. He introduced us to various important personages, the old village deputy, the part-time football (soccer) coach.

We wound up at the soccer field, which was being prepared for the district tournament to begin the following day. Andrew wowed everyone with his soccer skills. Then he brought out the frisbee. Hordes of little urchins chased after the soft arcs it made in the sky. They bit and kicked and fought like wild cats or she-devils or politicians or things even worse than that for the privilege of throwing it lamely into the ground.

After dark, on our way back to the village, the former police officer blew sweetly acidic declarations of brotherhood at me. “Do you like to drink?” he asked me five times.
We paused for water and instead ate dinner. A huge crowd formed a circle. The drunk constable danced. “Now you dance Nepali,” everyone ordered. The constable escorted us one by one into the circle. We tried to follow his dance moves. He girated his hips, wiggled his arms, performed great swan dives on the ground. With me he did a flip, a move I determined not to follow. Hoots and giggles followed guffaws and titters. I got the feeling the constable did this with all the foreigners who came to the village.
We finally made it back to the home of our friend of the bulging biceps and giggly mother. “You eat cow?” she had enquired earlier. We had hoped against hope and indeed, there in the plate was cow. It was the first meat we’d had in a long time. The previous dinner left us quite stuffed, but we gobbled this one down nonetheless, even the seconds our smiling host refused to rescind once she had the pot dangling over our plates.
That night, while our bikes displaced the goats, we displaced our hosts as they had given us our beds. This was the second time this had happened in Nepal. We were touched. We also considered our previous dinner of an ambiguous nature. The villagers were certainly entertained. We were not exactly humiliated. Everyone left happily. Perhaps that is the final measurement of cultural exchange.
The next morning, when we tried to leave without breakfast, the woman who had kicked herself out of bed and spent her beef on us smilingly thrust two huge fruits into my hands. If I ever return to Jamnivas I know who I will be most eager to see again.