Road trip part 2

"Brothers, there's going to be breakfast, want to get some?" he shouted, into the Jeep. His friends stirred.

Raul instructed the driver to stop. He wanted to get a good view of the city, and he'd just found
"We're there already?" Shyam bhai asked, rubbing his eyes. He sat straight, and stretched. He groggily stared ahead. Harkit opened his eyes, and jerked straight. "Oh, oh, breakfast time? Yeah, yeah lets get breakfast. I'm sort of hungry and hungover, so food is going to be good. I want food. Yes, it will be good, I'm going to have so much food, to prepare for the chickens and goats and fishes later," he said, with surprising gusto and got out of the car. Shyam bhai lazily moved his hand to the handle, and opened the door. He yawned. "I'm probably going to get some tea and eggs. There's no hunger yet. And then, I'll need to save space for later food too," he said.

They ambled to the dining room with homemade wooden chairs and tables. Thick milk tea was boiling on the stove, and six boiled eggs were placed neatly on the counter. The woman outside threatened the children to get into the house, or else she was giving them away to the bearded beggars with the big black bag. The children ran into the house. She caught the youngest one, and carried her in her arms.

"Where are you all coming from? What would you like to eat today?" she asked.

"From Kathmandu, just traveling around. Do you have selroti and pickled potatoes," Harkit asked.

"Yes, how many plates?" she said.

"Three plates please. Two for Harihar, and one for the driver. Can you bring four cups of tea and four boiled eggs too?" Raul said, looking at the driver, who had sat at the adjoining table. "You will eat selroti and potatoes, and tea and egg, yes" Raul asked?

'Yes sir, I eat," he said, taking a gulp of water from his water bottle that he had just refilled at the pump outside.


They made plans for the rest of the day. Harkit wanted to drink after returning, but Shyam bhai was tired. Harkit offered to buy all booze Shyam bhai could drink on a different occasion if he was willing to drink later that day. Shyam bhai thought about that, but declined the offer: "Can't take up your offer if I die of alcohol poisoning and general tiredness", he said. Then they got into a long conversation of whether someone could die of tiredness. Shyam bhai claimed it was possible: you could get heart attack, or exhaustion, or whatever it is you get when you get too tired, he said, giving examples of how people were constantly falling down due to dehydration and general fatigue. "Ohho, bro, but that's not exhaustion bro, that's aru nai aru kura, you do all hawa kura and nothing solid. We are talking about real life, about exhaustion, but about dehydration or other things. If you were tired, but if still dehydrated, I don't think you would die," Harkit said.

The team wolfed down the breakfast, and the journey was back on. The two back-seaters went back to seat right away. Raul noticed that Harkit was suddenly snoring loudly. He found it strange that he hadn't been snoring earlier, but the snores had started once he had had a stomach full of food. Must note, he thought, that Harkit snores when he eats a lot. He decided to not feed Harkit a lot if he was expecting to sleep next to him whenever.

They started gaining altitude. The valley opened up to them. To Raul, it looked like a dirty pearl. Surrounded by a thick blanket of yellow-brown haze, it still had a shiny white sheen of white puffs below. All the houses made it look less beautiful, but even then, the valley was incredibly beautiful. It was the surrounding blue hills, the green forests at the foots of those hills, the red brick village houses with corrugated tin houses below that, and finally, the city, in all its glory and dirt, that made it so great. The city itself was down below, the hell, the nasty, smelly unlivable sewer that fouled up the rest of the valley, whose stench permeated into nook and corner of everything and everyone that lived in it. And yet Raul loved the city.

Why did Raul love the city so much? He wondered. He wasn't a particularly patriotic person -- neither was he any more poetic than the average man. He hadn't -- before he had come back -- known that many people in Kathmandu either. Now -- now it was a different story. It was his city now, and the people his. He had lovers and friends and family, and adopted families, and significant investments. He liked to think of the city as an extension of his body -- a second stinky hole that was necessary but wasn't to be discussed in respected company.