Free The Waiting Land by Dervla Murphy Page B

potatoes and onions are fourpence each and no other vegetables or fruit are to be had at this season. Fresh milk, butter, cheese, meat, bread and flour are all unobtainable, so rice, dahl, dried beans and eggs must therefore be our staple diet – and for luxuries we can import from KathmanduIndian instant coffee of a peculiarly vile variety and stale Indian Cadbury’s chocolate at one-and-sixpence per very small bar. Just now excellent Russian sweetened condensed milk is available in the local bazaar at four shillings per pound tin, and recently good quality Chinese tinned jam was also available; but the supply of these ‘propaganda-type’ goods is very uncertain. Occasionally Kay treats herself to Indian cream-crackers at seven-and-sixpence per pound – a good example of ‘give them cake …’ One feels that the Nepal Tourist Bureau could use this situation as a new advertising gimmick aimed at overweight Westerners – ‘Enjoy the Breathtaking Beauty of Pokhara Valley and Regain Your Figure!’
    Today Chimba told me that I could soon move into a room at the lower end of Pardi Bazaar – for a rent of fifteen shillings per month – so this afternoon I went marketing in the main Pokhara Bazaar. From Pardi the rough track climbs all the way, past neat two- or three-storey Brahmin, Chetri and Gurung homesteads, their ochre walls warm against a freshly-washed background of maize-fields, bamboo-clumps, banana-trees, orange-groves and many other trees and shrubs unknown to me. Everywhere smug black cattle roam free, blatantly conscious of their sacred status and looking a lot healthier than their Indian cousins. It seems lunatic that we have to buy tinned milk from Russia in a valley overrun by herds of healthy cows; but I can see that these cattle are not bred as milkers: their udders are completely undeveloped, so the little fresh milk that is used by the locals must come from buffaloes.
    An hour’s unhurried walking took me to the centre of Pokhara Bazaar, and at once I fell hopelessly in love with the place. Its attraction is not easy to define: one cannot claim that it is especially beautiful, or colourful, or gay, or exotic – but as yet it is utterly itself , a small Nepalese town (or Nepal’s second city, if you wish) where one feels immediately and intimately in touch with an ancient, strong tradition that still determines every action, thought and emotion of the local people. One may be aware that in the course of many centuries much of this tradition has become distorted, and therefore socially damaging; yet the basic stability and tranquillity inherent in such communities – despite the perennial anxieties of debt, disease and political unrest –appeal most powerfully and significantly to our tradition-bereft Western hearts.
    On either side of Pokhara’s ‘Main Street’ stand dignified, three- or four-storey tiled houses, their ground floors open-fronted shops, and from any given point on any of the town’s streets or alleyways at least one dilapidated but much-frequented Hindu shrine is visible. At various corners squat ragged hawkers, with their pathetic stock- in-trade of gaudy Indian glass bracelets, small religious oleographs, bunches of safety-pins, flimsy combs, heavy bead necklaces and sundry other trinkets spread on the dust at their feet; it is to be hoped that they are not dependent on their sales for a living. Then, halfway up the Main Street, one is startled to see the carcass of a large motor-truck. There are now six or seven small Willys jeeps in the valley, but as all vehicles have to be flown in I was fascinated by this remnant of someone’s over-optimism; considering the nature of local tracks and the absence of local mechanics it is not surprising that the truck died young.
    Even by Nepalese standards the surface of the Main Street is incredibly rough: it looks as though it had been torn up by some enraged god who was determined that no one should ever again be able to walk in