Before Kathmandu, we dived off the perfectly good main highway and headed for the bush.\u00a0 We traversed good roads and bad, but wound up on terrible roads.\u00a0 The rocks projecting out of the surface often bounced the fun right out of riding.<\/p>\n
While the jolts tormented our joints, sunsets fired narrow draws with the soft warm light of molten metal.\u00a0 Narrow terraces dived steeply down thousand foot hills.\u00a0 We had airplane views of the landscape earned by the sweat of our constant climbing and descending.<\/p>\n
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The Nepali people also sent us on roller coasters.\u00a0 Children followed us up hills, panting their pleas for money, chocolate, food into our annoyed ears.\u00a0 We could not escape, the hills were too steep, the children too determined to milk us into compliance.\u00a0 Before, we had encountered beggars only in cities, but here normal children with houses and fields and parents harassed us to no end.\u00a0 Our respect for the people diminished.\u00a0 Before, we held their tough mountain culture in high esteem.\u00a0 After several kilometers of mobile begging, we began to reassess the impact of tourism.<\/p>\n
The children had been taught to beg.\u00a0 Tourists (that terrible T word!) had pitied their slightly dirty clothes or tough lives.\u00a0 No doubt, they have tough lives.\u00a0 However, handouts haven’t helped anyone; they only breed dependence and encourage roguery.<\/p>\n
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Goofing around, not begging.\u00a0 Hooray!<\/p>\n
The children made me sick.\u00a0 We tried to discourage them with words, by begging back to them, by pointing their behavior out to their parents.\u00a0 Our efforts to rid ourselves of the beggars sometimes only rewarded us with rocks lobbed harmlessly by small hands.\u00a0 Harmless maybe, but it is, as they say, the thought that counts.<\/p>\n
Later we found we’d been biking on the road to Everest.\u00a0 Not all kids begged.\u00a0 Some unquestioningly threw their shoulders into the trailer and helped us push it up the hills.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
Perhaps I am a callous, hard-hearted miser.\u00a0 The number of requests and demands and complaints I often receive in touristy areas have encased my compassion beneath a thick crust of suspicion.\u00a0 Yet, I still struggle to treat people with respect, even as they cling to me and block my path.<\/p>\n