Katmandu , Nepal – It was time to get out of India. Even before the big incident, there were plenty smaller tell-tell happenings in the past 2 weeks going, “Yo boy – get `da hell out.”
I’ve swam in the Ganges and got a complimentary pet who I named Jerry Giardia.
One night I was walking through the market and a crazed bull in heat ran over me, snotting and drooling all over me and my bruises.
I’ve been kicked out of Ragaji National Park after arguing with a park ranger who was miffed at my not taking getting ripped off lightly.
Out in the middle of nowhere, my friend Jasmine and I walked away from the secluded park towards the mirage-like horizon that whispered, “long walk, long walk.”
After several of those footsteps though, we hitched a ride upon the first vehicle to pass, which was an old baby blue tractor.
We sat upon the fenders of the rear wheels and Jasmine looked at me and said, “Damn, we’re cool!” Later that night she had trash thrown at her for not saying “hello” back to some side-of-the-road punk.
A few days back I too had become victim to the melee of a projectile when I was hit in the back of the head with a rock by a crazed maternal harpy for declining to buy Chai from her.
When we got on a bus with no seats save our packs for a 10-hour ride, I was relieved to be leaving and I thought, “Here I come, Nepal.”
Part of the way there we stopped at a dirty, wooden-planked and tarp-roofed truck stop.
While there, I realized something analogous to the counting-chickens-before-they-hatch thing while I had some guy pushed up against the counter, his shirt between my clinched fists. The smell of curry and armpit was trickling from his person and molesting my olfactory.
I was screaming, “You think it’s funny? You think this is funny?”
By then he had gotten a bit scared and was now going, “No funny. No funny.”
I finally decided not to fulfill my bludgeonous desires and, disappointedly, this was more for the fact that I didn’t have any backup instead of anything I should’ve learned from the Dalai Lama’s hums.
What did he do, you may ask?
I was eating a samosa and walked Tasha to the dark bathroom in the shadowed corner that looked like what would come up on a yahoo search for, “places where bad things happen and bad smells live.”
The little stocky man asked if I wanted a cigarette, then asked if I had a light. I said I wanted none and voiced my lack of flint and steel. I bent down to tie my boot.
I heard a scream and commotion.
In that split second of my diversion he’d walked the two feet over and entered the door where Natasha was pulling up her pants, done with a long-held pee. He tried to force himself on her and let’s just say it would have been considered “bad touch.”
She shoved him off and came out disgusted. He came out smirking.
I learned that my temper hath plenty of fury when the one-humped dromedary’s back is broken with a straw like that.
Regardless of the direct reason for not breaking his masala-eating jaw, it was a good choice.
As we had gotten loaded back on the bus, he had run off and returned with six of his rural knights, ready to defend the chivalry of perversion.
They walked around with swaggers like the “Beat It” video and tapped at my glass by my head with their little threats and as we pulled out one jumped and swung or threw something toward my window.
Anyway, the bus driver, as drunk as he was, finally got us to the remote western border of India and Nepal through the night.
At 6:30 a.m. we and our bags crammed up with indigenous families and burlap sacks of rice, we rode five kilometers across the border to the checkpoint on a splintered wooden cart pulled by a horse with no name.
I’m in Katmandu now. I sit in a coffee shop housing Bob Marley posters and frames of Hendrix straining, pulling electric strings. The speakers blurt with a reggae drawl, “.emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds.”
A Nepali boy with long hair nods his head and taps his foot to the sound. Music like this is eternal and transcends through generations as well as cultures.
My tea is too hot to drink just yet. A piece of abstract artwork on the wall provides a puzzle to the onlooker. A puzzle that – when solved by me in temporary clarity – translates, “too far above earth to accept a terrestrial journey.”
I wonder how many hours it will take me to go completely crazy. Hopefully only a few.
Alan is here. Nepal is filled with three southern accents.
We look eagerly at a map soon to be smudged and torn. We have a special flash of limited edition Remy Martin to be cracked open upon the snowy, glaciated goal of ours. Sunday, we go on the 21-day trek to Mount Everest Base Camp.
So, this is goodbye in the travelogue sense.
For those who wish to hear the outcome, either hang out at Buck’s Pizza or The Sophis-ticated Otter this summer or send an email to KinserWisdom-subscribe@yahoogroups.com to get e-mailed stories with bad words and all.
Or, visit my Web site, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/KinserWisdom – which will have pictures by the end of June.
I’d like to thank the editors of the East Tennessean, Dr. Slagle, Dr. Cavender, Joe Rice – the financial aid cashier who handed me my Stafford loan check – and everybody who took time to read my ramblings.
Wish us luck. We may need it after seeing the way Alan and I lost our asses at the Himalayan Hotel Casino last night.

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