Friday Afternoon, Bye Bye Pilgrims

Posted by peterallen5405 on May 17, 2013 · 2 Comments 

Friday afternoon is nominally free for me.  If I don’t have pesky work to do I take it.  Today I took it.  I got home late last night and really wanted to go somewhere with Emily today to make up.  We went for a walk and my buddy Dinesh came along.  One of the things I wanted to see were the sad remains of a local institution.  Last night the Pilgrims Book Store burned down.  This was one of the nicest places to hang around in Kathmandu.  I’ve been there quite a few times, the staff were lovely and the shop had that kind of unforced relaxed feel you get in real bookshops.  I loved it and it is a huge shame it has burned down.  An enormous loss.  It occupied the first two floors of it’s building, the top two were a restaurant where the fire started.  A faulty generator (only necessary due to load shedding) sparked the blaze, and the twelve large cylinders of gas stored in restaurant did the rest.  The books didn’t stand a chance with an explosion like that.  Luckily the staff of the eatery next door were able to move their own gas cylinders to safety, stopping the spread of the fire and preventing a ‘great fire of London’ style inferno.  We could quite easily have seen the great fire of Thamel last night.  Anyway, as usual some photos and a few captions to tell the tale of my Friday afternoon…

Bye bye Pilgrims.  I hope you get back on your feet soon.  Thamel had a lucky escape last night, the fire that destroyed my favourite bookstore could have been much worse.

We drank a beer at a rooftop bar overlooking Durbar Square.  Getting there was the usual grind; walking down narrow lanes barely wide enough for people let alone bikes and certainly not wide enough for the cars beeping their horns and squeezing past perilously close to Embles.  No matter.  Emily had a great time all afternoon, but screamed with delight at the view of ant sized people below from the roof top bar, and then poured out two whole water butts to the amusement of the waiters (I think I mentioned before how much Em loves water…). I tipped enough to cover the cost…

A few street scenes from Thamel.  Dinesh at a photo shop, some snacks and bottled water in a typical eatery window, some rickshaws and a bare wall with character, and a dog on a leash.  Unlike most mutts here he was actually jumping up to play not to bite.

Being a bus conductor on private KTM transport is pretty intense.  Up until a month or so ago the only buses plying the roads were private ones like this.  They pack people in, often to unsafe capacity.  They stop anywhere on request – convenient for some, but a pain for other users of Kathmandu’s often narrow roads.  Like most private bus conductors this guy is male.  The new Sajha Yatayat public buses only ply a few routes so far, but are more regulated, less crowded, cheaper and often have female conductors.  They have been a big hit.

Nepal police keeping an eye on the traffic.

Martial arts students and footballers.  It is a real shame that this football / cricket ground, which has always been a dustbowl since I arrived, has now also become a car park and dumping ground.  The bus, in case you are interested, has a Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP) flag flying from it.  The RPP want to bring back the monarchy.  The bus had been ferrying supporters to a rally today.

To round off our trip, Dinesh popped into the Dairy Development Corporation (DDC) for an ice cream.  En route a bike rider dropped his chickens.  Note the one in the foreground: roadkill.  (Although it was already dead, so do the skid marks count?)  I also took a shot of the murals on the wall opposite the DDC, which is the wall of the Social Welfare Council – the body in Nepal that approves all NGO projects.

Filed under Life in Kathmandu