White Scarves at the Gate
Sitting in Kathmandu airport. The trip home starts now: KTM to Bangkok, Bangkok to Narita, Narita to SFO, SFO to Detroit. A lot of sky between me and whatever comes next.
Before I got to the airport, Kazi and Jyoti both gave me white scarves. I didn’t know what they meant in the moment — just accepted them and tried to keep it together. I looked it up later: they’re called Khata. A Tibetan Buddhist blessing scarf, offered as a gesture of respect and goodwill and safe passage. You give them at arrivals and departures, at important meetings, at moments that matter.
Kazi gave me one of those.
Here’s the thing about Kazi: he could have just been a guide. He was a guide the way a surgeon is just a guy with sharp tools — technically accurate, misses everything important. Kazi was patient when I was frustrated, calm when I was scared, funny when I needed it, and relentlessly competent at every moment in between. I’d call him a friend. I mean that.
Pat — traveling with Pat is its own experience. The man has stories. A lot of stories. He’s a bit like Cliff Clavin in that the stories are real and detailed and it’s genuinely hard to push back when you haven’t lived the things he’s lived. Is it occasionally grating? Sure. Is it also, when you step back, pretty great to be around someone who has done that much and seen that much? Also yes.
The flight back to Pokhara from the mountains was the kind of thing that makes you understand why people say inter-country flights in Nepal are an experience. Technically, security on these things is a loose concept. The views, however, are the opposite of loose — they are precise and enormous and make you feel correctly sized.
Last night in KTM: Durbar Square, some Chinese food, Tom & Jerry’s bar (lame), then G’s rooftop terrace (not lame). Bargaining in the morning — got a cashmere sweater and a carpet. My bags are now so heavy they should require their own boarding pass, but I’ve got good stuff. Good stuff for me, specifically. Everyone who was expecting a gift is going to have to come to terms with the fact that I have a carpet now.
The shits arrived last night. I’m choosing to blame the beer.
And somewhere between Pokhara and KTM and right now in this departure lounge, I’ve been writing something. For Arielle. A Sinterklaas poem — which is a real Dutch tradition and which I am apparently now participating in from the departures terminal of Tribhuvan International Airport. It’s not great poetry. It’s honest poetry, which is the only kind I know how to write.
Around the world and up the hill
A chance meeting just past bamboo
That is where my path found you.
She watches Monty Python. She likes to hike. She said perhaps.
Nepal gave me altitude sickness, panic attacks, infinite stairs, garlic soup, a bucket shower that felt like luxury, the best card game of my life, and a Dutch woman who may or may not be the most interesting person I’ve ever stood outside a hotel with at 2AM.
Not a bad two weeks.
Kazi — if you ever somehow read this — thank you. The scarves are in my bag. I’ll know what they mean now.
