10 Years From Kathmandu
3 Dec
I just filled out a form for the State Department and it made me all nostalgic. I won’t be offended if you ignore this:
10 years ago, I muscled my way into a study abroad program of epic proportions–which was my entire purpose in going to college in the first place. I flew from Pittsburgh to LAX, where I promptly managed to lose all my CDs somewhere between meeting up with my American classmates and boarding our flight to Osaka. (I had Oasis’s newest, Standing on the Shoulder of Giants, in my discman at the time and bought a bootlegged copy of the Manic Street Preachers’ This is My Truth, Tell My Yours when I got there. Some things never change.) And that’s how September 2000 saw me touching down in Kathmandu.
Utterly fucking clueless–I’d never even been further west than Chicago, and in the other direction, the world beyond the Atlantic might’ve been an elaborate and pretty lie, for all I’d seen. I was aware of this cluelessness, I took most of the advice I was given by Those Who Knew Better, but I definitely didn’t grasp the full scope of my own youthful idiocy. I mean, whatever, I could see Mt. Everest from my roof on a clear day. I didn’t even mind hauling my ass out of bed at 6am for meditation every morning, I was so happy there.
… well, most of the time I didn’t mind. That’s effing early, man, and there’s no drinking age in Nepal.
It also says something that when it was “independent study” time for the program, 4 of us decided we’d do ours in Tibet. We took the 5 day drive along the Friendship Highway from Kathmandu, stopping in various towns overnight to see the sights along the way to Lhasa… without knowing how we were getting home, exactly. A friend of ours from Boudha back in KTM was a travel agent, and she was going to Lhasa at the same time–we knew she’d sort us out. But my poor mother nearly had a heart attack when I described this plan to her, and I couldn’t figure out why.
I started to figure it out when I noticed how much army was crawling all over the place across the Chinese border. Then I got freakishly (if briefly, thank Christ) ill in Gyantse because I wasn’t drinking enough water. See what I mean about being clueless? We were at 5200 meters above sea level earlier that day (Gyantse is at 3,977m–the highest point in the Rockies is 4,401m), and all I could think was that I didn’t want to have to piss at the side of the road. Well, that and that it was too pretty to be taking time to drink, of all silly things.
Hey, Little Katey, you’re not a Sherpa. Newsflash.
In spite of some equally audacious side-trips, everything was as perfect as it could’ve been. But it’s been 10 years this month since I came home from that first time. The memories are still super-vivid–I only realized it’s been that long because I just filled out the form to renew my passport so I can go visit my in-laws after the new year.
I’m 30 years old.
God, I was a dumb kid. It’s at once reassuring and infuriating to think that I still am. 
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Now playing: The Beatles – In My Life
via FoxyTunes
Well, that sounds much more epic than the time I went to B.C. with one of my best friends and we backpacked & hitched for 4 months when I was 19. But yay for misspent, idealistic, wanderlusting youth. Indeed, some things never change. I just renewed my passport too
Epic indeed. I long for adventure, but get it mostly through the ‘net, now.
Er…passport. Gotta renew that…
Jealous. I was in Nepal for two months earlier this year and loved it. It must have been awesome to study abroad there for a term or two.
Mary, I dunno, hitchhiking is pretty fucking nuts! (Also, awesome.) Gotta love our misspent, wanderlusting youth… where would we be now if we hadn’t spent it so badly?
Aaron, that’s about as close as I come these days too. In theory I still get to go to India every other year, but hanging out with the in-laws isn’t that adventurous. (They do, however, humor me and take me to random temples in the middle of nowhere. That counts… right.)
Hey, Ahimsa! I haven’t been there since 2002, when I went back for a research project. It was a great time–intense, but great. What were you doing there–just traveling or there with a specific aim?
We’re all dumb, it’s the good ones that can learn ; ) Hell, if I didn’t have Ying with me I would be USELESS in Hong Kong.
I went to Pokhara and did some trekking for a month or two. I had to get out of Kathmandu on May 1st when the redshirts shut the city down.