I leave Kathmandu in one week, but nostalgia has already set in. For three months, I walked from my room in Thapathali, across the Dhobi Khola, through Buddhanagar to the blue gate of the Jagaran Media Center. I’ve grown familiar with this commute: I know where last night’s rains will puddle, I recognize the calls of the vegetable sellers, I know by sight the dogs that hang around the butcher shop. I am no longer just a visitor; an abbreviated life has taken a shape here.

This existence will end soon and I’ll return to a life already in progress in the United States. I’ll have pictures and movies to show friends and family. They’ll ask questions and I might develop a few anecdotal travel stories. Perhaps in time I’ll even pine over the restaurants I frequented on Naya Baneshwor, even though I once found a cockroach leg in my after-dinner sugar cubes. I wonder: will I miss the sound of dogs waking me at night, of children playing, of traffic horns? Will I miss the smells of masala and tumeric, of shit and urine, of black tea and motorcycle exhaust?

Those Nepalis with enough English vocabulary ask me what I like most about Nepal. I’ve answered with vague foreigner responses like the food, or the mountains, or the people. They usually smile and our exchange ends there. I don’t explain that I have come to know the real struggles of individuals who I had not known a few months ago. Nepalis who have become friends of mine have invited me into their lives, if only for a brief moment, without the fear of getting hurt. For us, we have a friendship with a set beginning and end, formalized with plane reservations, foreign investments and university semesters. The opportunity to know, to connect with someone if only briefly who would have otherwise passed through this life unknown to me on the opposite side of the world, will remain with me forever.

It’s difficult to write anything definitive about this country on a postcard. It’s beautiful, but terribly polluted; it’s friendly, but distrustful; the food's delicious, but repetitive. I’ve had a life take shape here, and made some amazing friends, but I leave all that in six days, after almost three months of building it. I wonder what parts of this life I will take back with me to DC. I wonder how I will remember this years from now.

I stand on the shores of the Seti River in Doti. A woman passes me by with a sandbag balanced by a strap across her head. She wears a red sari and gold jewelry in her nose and ears. She looks familiar, I know I’ve seen her face before. Prakash turns to me and asks, do you recognize her?

A little further downstream, I am lead to a man’s home in a mostly Dalit settlement. The path is narrow and slippery. On the front steps of his clay hut, his sons lay straw mats. The man call us prabha and malik, referring to us as gods and lords. As I sit, Prakash turns to me and asks, do you recognize him?

I know the woman with the gold jewelry and the man who calls me god from Devin Greenleaf’s photographs and blogs. Devin visited Doti last year as the AP fellow. His pictures were the first images I saw of the Nepal I was to visit this summer. I am astonished those images and stories are alive before me. To find these particular individuals in a region like this is incredible. They don’t even have electricity here.

When Devin came last summer, the woman was hammering rocks by the shore of the Seti River. She made 15 rupees a day, almost 7 dollars a month. Today, she hauls bags of sand more than two kilometers along the river from 6 in the morning until 7 at night. She’s not sure what the sand will be used for, she says with a shrug. Maybe buildings, maybe a bridge. She does make almost 100 rupees a day now, though her knees and back hurt more.

The woman’s fifteen-year-old daughter, who Devin had found out was attending school last year, is now married. Her mother thinks this is best for her, even though she had to drop out of school. He is a good boy, after all.

Phagire, the old man, plays the drums for us. His music is to give energy to laborers during the harvest season. Like most in the settlement, he doesn’t work for money, only grains. This year there were two deaths in the settlement, so he could not play the drums during the harvest season as tradition dictates. I walk back through the narrow and slippery path with his loud and constant pounding in my ears.

I’m in a pharmacy fifteen kilometers north of Nepalgunj in a dusty travelers’ town named Kohulpur. Bhim Nepali, the journalist we have come to visit, brought us here an hour ago for Phoebe and now I am back to pick up the medicine and pay the bill. Nepali’s eat rice twice a day, with stewed vegetables and daal. Outside of Kathmandu, this is the only option for hot food. Despite the fiber supplements she took three times a day, Phoebe’s stomach didn’t digest all that rice and for five days her system refused to move things through. She spent yesterday lying in bed.

I scan the bill, which comes to 330 rupees, a little less than five dollars. I look down the list of items: the taking of blood pressure, a urinary sample, a pink substance he told her to swallow in the examining room that looked like pepto bismal and now we must pay for the entire bottle. There is also a pile of other pills and bottles he is stuffing into a bag for her to take: a chewable tab for stomach worms, a sheet of pills for something called gastric, a bottle of liquid for what I think is heartburn and a few painkillers. These are the medicines he says she must take to cure her of her disease.

A woman sits with her young daughter behind me. The girl has a lump the size of a golf ball on her neck. She waits for the doctor to finish with me before he can call her into the space behind a bed sheet hanging from the ceiling that serves as the examining room. An old lady sits next to her with a bandage around her eye and another around her ear. A few others sit on benches close by. I can sense their attention in our exchange and the doctor’s growing impatience with my questions. Perhaps he is not used to patients challenging his choice of medicines.

A few weeks ago, after experiencing mild stomach agitation and headaches, Prakash had gone to see a doctor in Kathmandu. The doctor suggested to eat more hot Nepali food. This doctor had given the same suggestion to Phoebe. Perhaps this is the cure for most illnesses here? Wasn’t all that rice a source of her problem?

Prakash acts as translator, but in English the doctor tells me I have two options. One, she could take all these medicines and be cured tomorrow morning, or two, she could go to the hospital. The choice, he says, is mine to make.

As I walk back to the hotel empty handed, I hope perhaps the doctor’s simplification comes from the fact that English is not his first language. Surely he’s not so browbeat with those Nepali who rely on his medical knowledge to keep them safe from illness; those Nepali who might not have as much education as I do, or might not have the reasoning to ask simple questions or the courage to disagree with supposed medical authorities.

It’s overcast and grey this morning, but so far no rain. Shiba, the manager of Radio Jagaran, tells me with a smile that it has not stopped raining for five days, so we must have brought the nice weather with us from Kathmandu. I look up at the clouds and smile.

The vehicle we take to the settlement will only start by pushing it. I lend a hand along with three others and once the motor catches, we all jump in. The twenty minute ride takes us past fields to villages of clay huts and thatched roofs. We turn off onto a dirt road and soon stop in the middle of a wide expanse of rice paddies with a few huts off in the distance. Once out of the van, I’m startled by the serenity and quiet.

We pass a group of men and boys sitting in the shade of a guava tree. They nod as we step around their stares. We come across a family waiting for us outside their hut. Raya, one of the radio journalists, gestures to a small girl clutching the hand of a woman next to her. Her hair is tassled and she wears a white dress that looks a size or two too small, even for her small frame. Raya says in a low voice, that’s the girl.

The family offers us water, and we exchange some small talk. Prakash and I then lead the mother away from the courtyard. I carry the camera and he asks the questions: Have you noticed any change in your daughter? How has your relation with the village changed? Who have you told?

Some of the villagers hear a video camera is in the settlement and they gather underneath the huge bodhi tree where our van is parked. We walk back to meet them. Men opine about the matter, women clean pots and pans from the water pump and children play in the tall grass nearby. The sky has remained overcast, but the rain has held up. Raya points to another girl, just as small, who is washing a dish by the water pump. It happened to her, too, she says. The same boy.

I’m overwhelmed with responsibility. As a white man, I am perceived in this country as someone with the power to do something. My camera is proof of this. After all is said, I am the one people look to for answers, for plans, for resources. I understand this from the eagerness in which Nepalis receive me into their homes: I am the first to receive a glass of water, even before those who are older. The reverence I get when I enter a place of business: owners abandon other shoppers to assist me. The respect I receive when I visit a village, the village elders always invite me into their home for tea. The hope I see in the eyes of those who have been victimized.

It is difficult to comprehend the helplessness a mother must feel whose six-year-old daughter was raped by a 16-year-old who lives in her village. The powerlessness of not getting any support from the police. The vulnerability of opening up her life to a foreign man with a camera so that she might have some hope of regaining any kind of justice for her and for her daughter.

The burning ghats along the Bagmati River are no more than elevated stone tables. Today is Saturday, a holy day for Hindus, and there is a waiting line to burn the dead. JB and I stand 20 meters away on the other side of the river, but I can still inhale the smoke, although I try not to think about it.

Do the families of the dead bring their own wood to burn or do they buy it here? JB seems to think they could do both, but he’s not sure. There is a large market outside the gates of Pashupati where I saw flowers and trinkets for sale. I didn’t see any wood, but maybe you have to ask for it. The same might be for the orange cloth the body is wrapped in.

I hear a cry from across the river. I watch two men support a woman as she circles a body, five, six, seven times. She is incapable of supporting herself. A wooden coffin sits next to the pile of wood. JB thinks the box was used to ship the body to Nepal. There are many Nepali who work overseas, he explains.

There are people, like JB and I, taking pictures. I hear the shutters open and close; open and close. There are vendors selling juice or snacks. If we climb the stairs there are chairs to look out across the river into the temple and down onto the ghats. We decide to climb, for a better view of our surroundings.

Bhola and Dipendra, two Dalit journalists who I’ve traveled 10 hours to visit, share mangoes with me this morning. I am told I will never eat a mango like the mangoes I will eat in Saptari. Two kilos sell for 50 rupees from piles stacked higher than the children who sell them. I eat mine like an apple before I board a bus to a Dalit settlement 10 kilometers away. We eat food now because we will not find any this afternoon at the settlement.

The bus, like all of Saptari, remains wet during the entirety of the monsoon season. The man next to me drips onto the floor. I don’t mind being wet, but I am concerned about the equipment we carry: two professional video cameras, one professional digital SLR, and two point-and-shoots - totaling 20 times the average Nepali’s yearly income. I could also put it this way: the average Nepali would have to work 20 years saving every rupee to afford to carry the equipment at my feet. Which could break if gotten wet.

We reach the mostly Dalit settlement and the news of our arrival spreads quickly. Bhola, Dipendra and JB, carrying the still cameras, begin to snap pictures of children, who have now flocked around us. They crowd around to see their image appear on the LCD screen. Phoebe and I film the journalists taking the pictures. The whole production is a meditation on image creation. Who has the right to take these pictures? Do we, as white American filmmakers? Do they, as Dalit journalists? Is this exploitation? Is this representation?

A villager who Bhola knows gives a tour of the settlement, and we carefully manuever through the mud from last night’s and this morning’s rains. My boots submerge to the laces, Phoebe sinks to her ankles. We move slowly with the video cameras and the villagers find this hilarious. They point to the side of the path we should walk on, they offer their hands to help us through, they debate which way to take us, they watch our progress, they make side bets as to who will fall.

A woman wants to speak with us. She brings us to her house and tells us her husband has been killed by rebel fighters two months ago and her children are now working to support the family. She cannot find justice from the police. She speaks Madhesi, which Bhola and Dipendra translate into Nepali to JB, who translates into English to us. These translational hurdles are difficult for the details, but she could be speaking any language. I can see, hear and feel her pain.

We leave the settlement after a few more visits with villagers. By this hour, the sun has come out and the day has begun to get hot. We trek back through the mud out to the main road and sit in the shade of a large mango tree. Dipendra says buses pass by every ten or twenty minutes, so we won’t have to wait long. As I wait, I peel another mango.

There aren’t any seats left on the bus to the Hetauda settlement, so Prakash and I sit in the aisle on bags of rice. This is a new experience not only for me, but for my fellow travelers who stare in unabashed curiosity. An old man comments I’m a real Nepali as he steps around me to get to his seat. A father who sits with his young son, offers me space. I smile and say “tikcha”, which means I’m fine. It seems to worry everyone that I’m traveling like this, like I deserve better than to sit in the aisle. Another man offers me his seat. I decline again. There are Nepalis traveling on the roof of this bus, I want to say. Why are you not offering them seats? A movie begins and diverts attention.

Kamala, the journalist we are visiting here, sits with Phoebe. She is young, maybe 23. Yesterday we taught her the basics of photography: how to focus, how to use aperture, how to think about composition and framing. The Canon XTi is cradled her lap, although she often brings it to her eye to look through the viewfinder and turn the focus ring. She’s never had the opportunity to use a camera before and makes no effort to conceal her excitement.

The bus drops us off on a sharp switchback and I watch it spurt off up the hill. Terraced patches of corn and eggplant stretch along the sides of the road. Small huts of red clay and stone hide among stalks. Once the sound of the bus’s belching fades, I hear the wind through the crops and distant water falling onto rocks. Soon, curious children and adults form a semicircle around us.

I try to place myself in their shoes. Buses and micros pass on these roads every day, but they rarely stop to drop anyone off. Visitors must be a unfamiliar sight, especially camera carrying white visitors. So why wouldn’t our presence merit a semicircle to form around us?

Kamala wants us to meet a 15-year-old girl who had experienced discrimination in her school. We walk to her hut, and our onlookers follow, talking amongst themselves. Her mother, thrilled Kamala has brought us to her house, sends for her daughter and turns back to us with a smile. After a moment, her daughter appears and nervously eyes the crowd behind us. Her mother prepares a straw mat for her to sit, we prep the camera, Kamala snaps pictures, Prakash explains the details of the documentary and the children push in closer to get a view through the Z1U’s LCD screen.

I am troubled with this setup. Kamala knows the girl well and coaxes her to tell us a little about herself, but she is uncomfortable. I am uncomfortable, too. We can’t show up with professional cameras and a crowd of onlookers and expect a child of 15 to open up to us. Phoebe walks off in frustration with the smaller A1U to try to lore some of the children away from me and the Z1U, but many remain. Some reach out to touch the LCD monitor and viewfinder.

I turn the camera off and tell Prakash this isn’t an ideal situation. He understands how important it is to create a comfortable space. He and Kamala are good at this, but we have not establish a trust with this girl and I do not want to continue filming. She is too young and I should know better. We put the cameras back in the bag and head up the mountain to another hut. The children look on in amusement.

I’m in a microbus with windows that slide open and my head is out in the cool air like a dog. The early evening sky is clear and the pictures I’m taking of the snowcapped Himalayas would look a lot better if our driver didn’t swerve so much. The road’s not paved and boulders the size of full grown cows (as well as full grown cows) often materialize in our path. I’m confident we’ll be fine: a laminated picture of Laxman, the Hindu god of good luck, covers our driver’s rear view mirror.

The mountain air tastes sweet at this speed. I no longer notice my own robust odor, or those of the other travelers. The Seti River, the churning brown water to my left, creates standing waves almost a meter tall. Phoebe comments on the rafting potential. I think of the hydroelectric potential.

We had originally planned to be in Baglung longer than eight hours, but instead we are on our way back to Pokhara after a physically demanding day with Mahesh Kaita and Purna Bishwakarma. Prakash, his head on his bag in his lap, is exhausted. His eyes open only after we go over large bumps in the road. Phoebe’s legs ache and my left knee hurts. I wouldn’t think a day hike up and down a mountain is enough to cause me discomfort, but sitting inside this micro, I can feel the joint stiffen and swell. It’s impossible to stretch or straighten the leg, unless I place my foot on the shoulder of the gentlemen sitting across from me. I’d rather not encourage his curiosity, his constant eye contact is tiring already.

I wonder if those women, who greeted us with smiles and namastes on our hike up to the Dalit settlement this afternoon have sore knees. Are they stretching their legs? They must have been fifty, maybe sixty years old. The rock staircase we met them on was too narrow for all of us and so they stepped aside as we continued up. “Ho, sure is steep,” one had offered with a smile. She was barefoot while the other two had plastic sandals. I wanted to ask if they had to climb the path often, but I knew the answer: it was the only way from the settlement to the town. If you lived at the settlement, you had to climb the path. An hour down, maybe an hour and a half up.

Mahesh had written an article about a Hindu temple where Dalits had been forbidden to enter only a few months back. In 1953, after Nepal became a democratic state and opened its doors to the world, untouchability became illegal. Perhaps within living memory for those women with the plastic sandals. But discrimination cases like the temple are common and local law enforcers rarely follow through with such cases. To bring their stories to journalists like Purna and Mahesh are often the only way Dalits can have any hope of justice.

When we made it to the top, I rested underneath a huge bodhi tree. Purna and Mahesh spoke to a few women at a drinking well a few meters away and I looked out across the rolling foothills. I am drawn to mountains for the perspectives they offer: I climbed from there, I am now here, I need to be there. Had the women heard about the temple incident? Do they know who was involved and how it happened? Have they had any problems themselves?

The micro emerges from the twisted mountain road and speeds across flatter ground towards Pokhara. I think we should be there in less than an hour.

I sit on a plastic chair outside the Pokhara bus port and sip black tea. I’ve been here for more than two hours, just waiting. I’ve watched the sun burn off the morning clouds. I’ve watched the vegetable sellers wheel their carts full of eggplant, cucumbers and potatoes down the hill towards the bazaar. I’ve watched children, dressed in school uniforms, sidestep the puddles from last night’s rains on the broken sidewalks. I’ve watched three brothers in a makeshift tent next to the bus port deep fry dough in iron sarans. Prakash shares one with me; they taste like doughnuts.

Mahesh Kaita and Purna Bishwakarma, the two journalists we are to meet in Baglung, expect us to arrive at any moment. If the jeep were to leave this very minute, it would still take us two and a half hours to get there. There’s little chance of that, though, because we only have seven passengers (Prakash likes to say victims) and the jeep won’t leave until all ten seats are filled. We would have phoned to tell Mahesh and Purna about the delay, but the mobile network is down this morning. And so I continue to wait, watching the world from a plastic chair outside the Pokhara bus port.

Prakash had warned us we needed to be here early and we planned accordingly. We packed the night before, awoke at 5:30, bought fruit and some pastries, and walked two miles along Pokhara’s dusty main artery that leads from Baidam (lakeside) to the bus port. As we stepped onto the bus park, though, a jeep passed us with ten bodies packed tightly inside heading for Baglung.

I can’t dwell on this spot of bad luck, but it’s hard to feel the day slip away, especially when we’re here for such a short time. I ask Prakash to see how much it would cost to hire a taxi. The price is a little high and I consider buying the jeep’s last three tickets. I offer half the asking price, but they won’t budge.

Another hour passes and I find myself still sitting on a plastic chair outside the Pohkara bus port. Two more tickets have been sold and I have bought the last one, but two passengers need to collect their luggage at their homes. I watch them walk off towards the bazaar on a street now crowded with activity.

I wish I could say we eventually made it to Baglung, met with Purna and Mahesh, trained them in photography and hiked to a Dalit mountain settlement. This would have been the happy ending to our unfortunate start, but it was not to be. Had we known our five hour wait on plastic chairs at the Pokhara bus port would be followed by encountering a bandha - a blockade of ten microbuses impeding travel along the only road to Baglung protesting the government’s price hike of petrol - we would have surely slept in. But then again, the mobile networks were down, so how were we to know?

There is one way down into the Dalit settlement. The sun bites the back of my neck and the sweat crawling down my forearm almost causes the camera in my hand to slip. I am nervous; I feel like a trespasser, an outsider who has come to gawk. I descend the rock staircase as two old women with bags strapped across their head pass me going up.

There are six of us today: Prakash, our JMC travel companion and friend; Prem, the Dalit reporter who has brought us here; Suhet Polhara, a local Dalit leader who we picked up along the way; our taxi driver, who for 1000 Rp has agreed to drive us the 15 kilometers to the settlement and then drive us back four hours later, Phoebe and myself. Prakash walks with our Sony A1U, Phoebe and I switch between the Sony Z1U and the Canon XTi, and Prem manages the Panasonic LX2.

Prem, who is close to my age, tells us there are 200 families living here. He is soft spoken and deliberate. He squints into the sun, the lines across his forehead hint of years of intelligent calculation. On the way to the settlement, three men riding on a trash truck yelled out and waved to him. Prakash told us later they were thanking him for an article he wrote a few weeks back. His wife is pregnant with their third child.

We speak to a man who has been here for 31 years. He tells us about the house he built from clay and bamboo, the six children he raised and the crops he grew. But I also catch some words in his diatribe like Dalit Movement, Congress Assembly and New Nepali. I wonder why he answers such simple questions as ‘what are the best crops to grow here’ with such political rhetoric. I look at us: our cameras roll from the firm ground our boots stand on. I look at him: his bare feet are submerged in the rice paddy.

Suhet and Prem take us to meet two older women resting in the shade of their hut. One woman is 80 years old. Her bones have grown old here, she says, and she’s tired. Her face is sunken, but her eyes are sharp. A heap of corn lay out in the sun beside her. She offers us water before we go, but Prem declines the offer with a smile and pressing his hands together. As we walk away, the cow next to her hut shifts in the shade.

Prem is interested in meeting a man who lost his voice a few months ago. Medical coverage, Prakash tells us, is non-existent for most of these Dalits. The man crouches on his porch while his daughter sits next to him. She watches us intently as Prem asks questions and takes notes. I gathered the man had some sort of throat cancer and couldn’t get medical attention. I wonder if his daughter will remember years from now her father talking to us about the sickness that will in all likelihood kill him. A childhood memory that seems too much like a dream. Like it could never happen.

I’m looking out over Phewa Tal. A boy, maybe 14, asks if I’d like a boat ride. I would love one, I think, but I can’t stay by the water. At this hour the lake is peaceful and inviting, but I’m meeting Prem Nepali in a few minutes at Serenity Hotel. Prem is a freelance reporter who is tied with JMC’s network of Dalit journalists. He is the first of 16 Dalit journalists I will be visiting. We were to meet him at 7 this morning, but he’s having difficulty finding petrol for the two motorcycles we’re taking to a Dalit settlement 14 kilometers outside of Pokhara.

Our travels yesterday from Kathmandu went smoother than I was led to expect. Fifty years ago, before the construction of the Prithvi Highway, the journey would have taken us 10 days by pony. Although it’s 120 kilometers, the highway twists and turns back on itself across the Himalayan foothills, so the five hours it took us was considerably fast.

I turn and walk up to Pokhara’s lakeside main street. Most establishments in this section of town cater to foreign tourists. There’s a German bakery, an Italian ice cream parlor and even a wireless Asian cafe. The rooftop restaurants play Jack Johnson and Santana and everyone greets you with a hellohowareyou followed by a plea to buy their goods or eat at their restaurant. It's tiring. Whether consciously or not, Prakash and Prem suggested we stay here. Perhaps they thought we would like being in this part of town, or perhaps they thought this was the nicest area to show us. In either case, I’m conflicted: during the day we are to visit settlements where 20 families share one water pump, and at night we go back to our room with hot water and color TV.

I arrive at Serenity Hotel and find Prem waiting.

This morning I woke to the sound of a man violently hacking up flem in the alley next to our flat. My windows face all four cardinal directions and although I’m on the third floor, even soft sounds will reach my room. It would be uncomfortably hot to shut the windows, so I have become attuned, almost familiar with the daily sounds of the neighborhood.

At 5:15am, a farmer will steer his bicycle loaded with canvas sacks full of potatoes through our alley shouting, ‘AHHHHLU’. The first few mornings I woke here, I thought he was drunk and singing. But very few drunks could maintain his regularity. While I do not considered potatoes at such an early hour, my neighbors do. I can hear them inquiring from their windows about the freshness of his batch.

Inside my mosquito net, I consider all the sounds around me. At this hour, the dogs are quiet, tired from their nightly call and answer. Sometimes the barking rolls through the city like thunder, growing in strength until every dog on the block has joined the conversation. Then, just as suddenly, the noise subsides until one or two dogs still have the energy to persist. The ledges outside my windows serve as a convenient podium for pigeons, crows, and swallows. I’ve heard a faint call of a rooster before. Although the guesthouse sits far from major roads, I still hear motorcycles. Even so, it is impossible to elude the sound of horns; every vehicle has one, and every driver uses it constantly.

Around seven, I will begin to hear the continuous bubbling of children playing. There are no less that five schools within shouting distance and often I hear the squeals of laughter well past sunset. The Rosebud School, with its professionally painted signboard and tidy uniforms is well-known in Kathmandu. At 7:30am, the students will gather for prayer followed by calisthenics. A man on a microphone will lead the ceremony in English, his amplified voice bouncing off the concrete buildings around him. He will need to count to ten to warn the students that silence is necessary and his patience has an end. The students will not heed his warnings and the performance will take almost an hour to complete.

Sometimes I wake to hear the patter of rain, but not today. Generally the storms come at night and are over by morning. Without gutters, the roofs can drip for hours after the rainfall. Huge puddles form out on the streets. Today, a steady wind rustles the leaves of the lemon tree in the courtyard. I would like to sleep in, but I know I am already awake.

I sit up in bed and hear the heavy squeak of the well in our alley. A woman collects her morning’s worth of water, probably enough for her morning chores. She’ll probably have to go back to the well in the afternoon and maybe once more at night. As I shuffle into my slippers, I think how lucky I am that water waits for me when I rise.

Today I went down to the holy Bagmati River to take some photographs. I find serenity by bodies of water. The river is a five-minute stroll from my room in Thapathali. Once I cross the brown clumpy waters of the Dhobi Khola canal, I am in Buddhanagar, although I can’t be sure of this. Thapathali is also the neighborhood farther west of here, closer to the main road of Ramshah Path. I tell taxi drivers to drop me off in Buddhanagar because our road isn’t accessible by car from Thapathali. I don’t think the house has an address because the roads have not been named. Most of the maps of Nepal are published in foreign countries, in foreign languages, which makes me wonder if foreigners are the only ones with a need for them.

To walk the roads in Kathmandu demand a bit more attention than I prefer to give and today I had to side step the huge puddles left over from last night’s rains. If I avoid getting hit by bicycles, motorcycles or vegetable carts, I’m often tripping over big rocks, mounds of poop or sleeping dogs. Before moving here, I invested in a nice pair of New Balance walking shoes. Like most Nepalis, I get around by walking or public transportation. Unlike most Nepalis, I have the proper foot support. Or rather, I am fortunate enough to afford the luxury of proper foot support. I’m self conscious of this and wish my feet wouldn’t hurt so much after a day of walking in sandals. Perhaps a Nepali’s threshold of foot pain is higher than my own.

Today was particularly bright and I was surrounded by colors. The tiny shops I passed were bursting with crackers, toothpaste, vegetables, cooking oil; all haphazardly arranged on shelves from floor to ceiling. Kathmandu is a beautifully vibrant city when the sun is out, completely photogenic. I don’t mind the clouds, though, because the sun can often be unbearably hot. The monsoon won’t allow continuous sun or continuous rain for anyone to be confident in weather predictions. This afternoon, a slight breeze helped to stifle the heat, but intensified the stench of the river, which in addition to being considered “the sustainer of life” in Hindu thought, is also a city dumping ground. It’s not uncommon to see clothes, tires, bags and even carcasses floating down the murky brown waters.

The area near the river, I was surprised to find, was swamped with school-aged children. A footbridge, whose stairs had never been built, took those agile enough to climb from the Kathmandu side to the Patan side. Usually the children would be at school, but today the transportation entrepeneurs of Nepal called a strike against the government’s decision to allow student a 45% discount for travel on public transportation. Days before, the students had called a similar strike against the government’s decision to increase travel fares 45% due to the increase in fuel prices. The entire country shut down; no buses, no taxis, nothing. The Kathmandu Post had pictures of tourists walking to the airport, suitcases in tow. Even the gas station owners did not open their businesses.

The color of my skin set me apart from the usual company kept at the river and soon I had a flock of curious eyes around me. Phoebe’s HDV camcorder attracted an even larger crowd. Some of the younger ones pulled on my clothes to take pictures of them while the older ones scowled from a distance. Some reached out to touch the camera. I thought it best to walk away from the crowds down to the water. Perhaps I would be forgotten and I could begin to snap some photos. I read a few days ago that the average Nepali makes approximately $28 a month. That means he would have to work around 15 years saving every penny to afford the cameras we had.

I’ve found solace before near bodies of water, but there was little reassurance here. We thought it best to not stay long, so we put our hands together in a namaste and made our way back through Buddhanagar or Thapathali to our room. By that time, it started to rain anyway.

overstimulation: the overload of sensory perception.

it's exhausting, yet it's what i love about being in a different and new place - the complete unfamiliarity of it all. it's like being 2 years old again - the world is so amazing, so incredible. when we are introduced to new environments, we become aware to a greater degree because it is different and new.

eventually this fades; it has to. like by the time we're thirteen, the world is already old hat and nothing seems to amaze us anymore. but for now, as i adjust to this new time zone, my sensory perception is at its most receptive. and kathmandu is a constant assailant.

i've been in nepal for two days. walking the streets is like having thousands of sensory bullets being fired at me from every direction: the brilliant yellows and oranges of the women's saris, the squish of the feces (dog? human?) below my feet, the linger of masala on my tongue from my morning breakfast, the motorcyclist's horn blown in my ear, the stench of the drainage canal i cross after walking out of my flat, the heavy humidity curling my hair, the buzz of mosquitos around my head. at some level, this all registers with me. yet i also find myself trying to float above it; a sense of meditative numbness to remain sane.

at some level we all must enact a sensory filter to our lives to tune out certain stimuli. without doing so would be exhaustive and stressful. perhaps it is a survival mechanism. but is it not the more experiences you have, the better?

i hope to make an effort to remain aware of these filters. not just on this experience, but throughout other journeys i might find myself on.