The India shopgirls at Pilgrim's want to know if people in my country find me beautiful. That's the word they use. "Please don't take offense Madam," they tell me, "You have a very beautiful face, such a pretty smile and big eyes." Clearly, they are not hitting on me from behind the bookstore salescounter, but find my fairness and my Anglo features curiously fascinating. I'm amused.
They've accurately identified my celebrity lookalike as Meg Ryan, asking if I've ever heard that before and I smile. "Yes, all the time... but never here. Noone has ever mentioned it here."
They acknowledge Meg Ryan is lesser known in the land of Bollywood films and tell me reassuringly they think she's very good... and very pretty. They are pretty themselves with their smooth, glowing faces, long black hair parted in the middle, and discreet bindis above and between smiling, friendly eyes. I love their melliflous proper English, interspersed with many references to me as Madam. I wonder how old they think I am.
Either way, it is a nice final random encounter on my final night in bustling Thamel - Kathmandu's own version of Times Square minus the Disneyfication and historic halo of porn. Rajan had surprised me earlier with an unexpected "going away" dinner at UTSAV, a quite elegant Nepali restaurant where we watched a cultural show over an extravagant feast of ... dal bhat! He had brought along another "client" Dave, who had also just completed the Annapurna trek and was now bound for 3 months in India to visit his grandparents' homeland since he'd never been and wanted to go before moving to Boston from London to start b-school (smart boy!).
After dinner I asked to be dropped off in Thamel, for one last wander around the streets of Kathmandu's throbbing heart center. All the bright colorful shops are still wide open although the shopkeepers' beckoning "namastes!!!!" are far less frequent than daytime usual. I chance upon the cavernous Pilgrim's, realizing that Beth had marked it on her Kathmandu map for me and I'd never managed to stop in so I do. It is full of new and used books, and all sorts of assorted knickknacks and curios for the last minute tourist shopper. I buy some more incense and some Ayurvedic face soap, taking care to leave enough rupees for next morning's coffee and ride to the airport.
Leaving Nepal my heart feels satisfied and full. I could have easily spent another month here - my feet had already grown itchy for another (albeit shorter!) trek, and I never did go rafting on the river or to visit Nagarkot or Bhaktapur. I've enjoyed and felt enriched by my many encounters with other travelers and the Nepali I'd met: Debendra, Mitra, Rajan, Dr. Subodh, Neel and M- (sadly, no women). I'd grown to feel surprisingly comfortable walking down Kathmandu's pitch black frequently electricity-deprived streets with my torch; and no longer hardly noticed the dog opera that began right around when I got into bed at night. I'd even learned to understand the city map!
I will miss Nepal: its mountains - seeing them or just knowing they are there behind the clouds; the dal baat (which somehow never got boring); and the pots of masala milk tea (more milk then tea). And as always when I travel, I will miss getting up to a wide, open day with so much to explore and discover ahead and new people to meet, and that feeling of gratified self-fulfillment that comes with it. My last 5 days at a yoga ashram in Rishikesh will be an interesting change of pace from all this. I will pile it all on, and then I will head home.
