It's sad really, how things change so quickly in life. I know that my time in Nepal changed me, but I sometimes have a hard time channeling that change here in normal American society. Upon arriving home to the states I went through a bit of reverse culture shock, and felt like I was annoying everyone around me by constantly wanting to talk about Nepal. After the initial readjustment period I felt myself falling back into my old ways. Not entirely though, and I didn't actually feel anything, I just noticed every once in a while when I thought about Nepal, and what I experienced there, then I would tell myself again and again that you are better than this now, you are a more enlightened person now. I don't mean to come off conceded when I say that either, its something you'll only really understand if you've been through it yourself I guess.
Anyway, so somewhere in all of this thinking tonight I got out my phone and went to youtube and proceeded to find a suggested video called "Rickshaw Run - India Visual Vibes." It looked intriguing with its image of brightly colored rickshaws, and as I watched even more memories started to flood back. Faces of the children I loved and the people that became oh so familiar that I would look for them as I passed them in the streets every morning on my way to school. I miss all of these people with a complete aching of my being, even those I never had the honor of talking to. I miss the smell of the temple with all of its burning incense that I would walk through every morning and every afternoon. I miss the chorus of dogs that would sing me to sleep every night as they paraded down the dark streets in tough gangs.
As I watched the youtube video I also thought about seeing people exactly like the these that were recording this one. These people hiding behind their cameras, be it snapping away bits of memory, or recording every passing face, they gave me this sort of funny feeling. Like I wanted to both laugh at how silly they looked, scold them for looking ignorant, and take a picture of them taking a picture. For some reason that exact action legitimized my feelings. I wanted to capture them capturing the "poor, unfortunate natives" to show them how it feels. It was like I wanted to subtly and unconsciously make a statement towards them. How does it feel? I know I shouldn't feel above these people or angry at them in any way because they aren't really doing anything wrong, or aren't doing anything they would understand as being wrong, but after being there a while, and I mean really being there, your eyes begin to open. You start to look at people you used to see as "just like you (aka Western like you)," as being oblivious to what they were snapping pictures of.
One such occasion I remember quite clearly, and quite comically, is the perfect example of exactly this. I was traveling on the bus to the start of the Annapurna Circuit Trek in Besisahar, a 9 hour journey from Kathmandu where I lived. I was traveling alone and sitting beside a nice Spaniard, that was also alone. A few hours into the trip I was feeling terribly ill so I decided to take some Bonine, motion sickness medicine that I was unaware was NOT non drowsy. This induced severe sleepiness for the rest of the trip, that I later on realized was linked to my taking the medicine. We would take a pit stop every few hours then I would get back on the bus and immediately pass out, and I mean immediately into a coma-like state, then I wouldn't wake back up again until the next stop. This was all so disorienting, as you can probably assume, me checking my watch and realizing I had just been asleep for the past 3 hours without noticing.
Anyway, on one of these stops I was shaken awake by the sudden slamming of our breaks. I oriented myself, peeking out the dirty window onto a small hill parallel to our bus. Another side note you should know is that there are lots of asian tour groups in Nepal, and I mean like Japanese, Chinese, Korean kinda asian. This hill beside our bus held probably the best tour group of that kind I had yet seen in Nepal. There they stood, resembling a fumbling flock of excited penguins, perfectly fitting the stereotype in their little sweatpants with rubber bands on the bottoms and windbreakers, topped off with oversized visors and sunglasses. Each pair of tiny hands clutched large-lensed cameras, the newest of their kind, snapping away thousands of pictures a second of literally everything in their immediate perimeter. One such man wandered a little ways from the pack and proceeded to gawk at our bus for a second. I don't know what was quite so shocking about it, because I am pretty sure I had just seen them all stumble out of a nearly identical one but he decided it was the perfect photo subject. He then took out a camera with literally the biggest lense I had ever seen and took about half a million pictures of our bus, and each and every one of its inhabitants through the windows. Watching him do this was like watching a comedy show. I don't know if it was my extreme exhaustion, or extreme boredom, or a combination of the two but I couldn't stop laughing. It was just too perfect, not only did he have the unnecessarily large camera, but two more of assorted sizes hanging around his neck. As he leaned in closer to our window I got the sudden urge to take out my camera and lean out and take a picture of him. I really wish I had though, just for the pure irony of how stereotypical he was, combined with the confused reaction it probably would've induced upon him.
Here are a few visuals for the said stereotype I am trying to convey above.
p.s. This is not meant to sound racist in any way! It is all said in the name of comedy.
p.s.s. I am of asian blood.
Well, that is all for tonight folks, I should really get to bed if I even want to think about waking up for zumba tomorrow morning :P
Namaste and love you all <3
