For our extra long midterm/Eid/Dusshera chutti, my friend Briana and I went to Nepal for 10 days. The Nepalganj border is only 5 hours from Lucknow. Our journey got off to a strange start…so our bus stops and we catch a cycle rickshaw to the visa office (or so we though) and we are going along in the heat until we realize that it’s been 40 some odd minutes and we are no longer sure what country we were in. There were no clear signs of note that would indicate the country change and people were freely moving in two directions…so we ask a passerby and find out we are in Nepal and have been for the last 30 minutes….great….so we turn around to the visa office, but because we missed the India office and failed to get an exit stamp the visa vaala sent us back to India. Finally, with exit stamps, we returned to Nepalganj – only to be held up for a day because we had no US dollars! And but of course the visa vaala office only accepts US dollars…fine, so long as there are money exchangers…but alas, there were none and we were in for a fun adventure where we had to make quick connections and find US dollars. Not even the banks would give us US dollars…at least we are American…if I had been of another nationality and had to face this mess…I would have been much more irritated by American imperialism. Sure enough, we learned our lesson. Turns out seasoned travelers always carry US dollars…at least the visa vaala let us spend the night visaless in Nepal and didn’t send us to India again. This whole shenanigan got me thinking about the arbitrary nature of borders…I mean seriously, we were unclear which country we were in for 45 minutes. Both sides of the “border” were the same (superficially at least). We kept our eye out for some huge “welcome to Nepal”sign…but we are still looking for that one. Okay so there was this decorative gate at one point but there’s no dearth of those in South Asia and this one had no indication of a special crossing like a COUNTRY BORDER! So there we go….these country borders at a practical/executed level seem to have little significance (I’m overlooking borders that are matters of contention). Yet still territory at the mass/macro level is such a huge deal…how does one really sit down and draw clear lines on a map….the process seems so random/arbitrary/semantic. A process that those who care to can take major advantage of and use a means to exploit/exercise power. When the parties involved are having their maps/borders drawn by an “uninvolved” party.
We decided to fly from Kathmandu on the way back to save time…I was determined to get the Indian fare and not the exorbitant foreigner fare. Honestly, I probably could have even done without a visa …as no one even checked my visa all 10 days (sans the evil visa officer). So the travel agent was quite a character…he claimed that he could not give me the Indian fare…but we all know that is not true. So I insisted…and he consulted with his boss and decided that I would have to change my name because “Raheja” is Pakistani. Would you believe that? I’ve never heard that before…but technically I guess it kind of is a Pakistani name? Anyhow, he wanted me to make a fake id and all…which we both found hilarious. I assured him that I could pass for an Indian…and he finally conceded. Ironically there was absolutely no security at the airport! Not like the tickets look different anyhow.
Anyhow, on to the 15 hour bus ride to Pokhara. After having only budget traveled for the past 4.5 months, I’ve all ready changed my conceptions of what a “long car/bus ride” is. The Austin to Dallas 3 hour drive used to be pushing it. Now, I’m fine with and even expect double digit numbers. It’s not that I value my time less, it’s just that I am not falsely obsessive about my time and know that thinking/chilling/moving from point a to b is justifiably quite productive. Not to mention – overnight bus/train rides are such a perfect utilization of time…I love getting on a train in Lucknow, falling asleep, and waking up in Bodhgaya. From Pokhara we took an awesome 4 day trek/rafting trip. First time to do both and I loved it – trekking is def. more my thing. I don’t care much for cold water and getting beat up by rocks. Get this…instead of bussing all the way to Kathmandu from Pokhara, we arranged our rafting trip so that we could raft halfway to Kathmandu instead! In the mornings when the sky was clear – we got to check out some awesome Himalayan views. Nothing beats the flight back from Kathmandu where I could clearly see huge chunks of the Himalayan range though.
We ended our trip in Kathmandu. Minus the hyper tourist factor, the city was a lot of fun and extremely festive as we happened to be there for Nepal’s largest festival – Dashai. This utsav celebrates the victory of Durga/Kali over Mahisasura and animal sacrifices galore are made to both deities. The idols are even bathed in blood. It’s so fascinating to me to see the cultural appropriation of any one given religion (in this case Hinduism). The other neat thing we saw in Nepal was the confluence of Buddhist and Hindu traditions. It’s experiences like these make me think that using one unified term of Hinduism to refer to a pluralistic set of traditions/belief systems simply based on geographic proximity to be quite problematic. One could perhaps argue that this is an accepted essence of the notion of religion (it’s malleability). Who knows. I just think it’s okay to be different…no need to try to smooth over the differences and try to get all to adhere to one label and learn to conceptualize themselves under this label.
