An escape from Kathmandu

An Italian man in a brown leather jacket and brown shoes was waiting for him, they said. How specific. Almost too specific. It's as if someone had told them to tell him exactly what he needed to hear. Someone he might find alluring, interesting but not too much. A man about the world, classy, rich potentially profitable. This was the time for thoughts or consideration, this was the time for action.

In five minutes, he was three blocks over, flagging down a taxi, on the way to the airport. His guess had been correct, he wished he had been wrong that it had really been an well-dressed Italian designer looking to talk leather and fabric to him. He'd serve him the oldest wine he had in his cabinet, try to impress him with stories from his youth part of which he had spent in Southern Italy in his attempts at becoming a self-made man. The three dark SUV's with tinted glass and heavily armed soldiers around them that who he saw as he absconded proved his hunch only too right. Time to take a vacation. Again. Each successive government would pardon him, or make pretensions too while keeping him heavily under their watch, only to decide when their hold on power was getting less tight that he was a liability who needed to be taken care of. And every time he would have to escape. Have to, he'd rather spend time in house arrest, among friends and family in a nice bungalow like they offered to the corrupt prime ministers and former ministers but his sources had told him on good authority that fate was not to be granted to him. Ah well. Maybe the next government will be kinder. He chuckled.

Two hours later, he was waiting at the Indira Gandhi Airport for a flight far far away. Far enough that he wouldn't need to think about that smelly place anymore. He didn't care for Kathmandu anymore, truth be told. The city was too crowded too expensive too poor and too luxurious at the same time, he had trouble breathing in the polluted air saturated with dust and harmful gases, and those goddamn traffic issues that were caused by some bullshit politician or other trying to lord it over everyone else on the streets. He really needed a nice relaxing vacation away from the hubhub, the sights sounds and the smells. Too overwhelming. Yeah the next time he'd take his own sweet time to return.