National 5 (Spotlight Weekly)

The Siren Of Kathmandu

In the heart of the capital, there is a district made artificially foreign to accommodate the whims of the tourists who frequent it. But who are these travelers, and what do they really want?

By Joe Bavier

“I just wanted to see something different,” John told me over a drink at Les Yeux Cafe.

Japanese tourists in a restaurant : Native cuisines available

A bookish lawyer from England, in his late fifties, this was his first trip outside Europe. Responsibilities and family obligation had long prevented him from indulging a latent adventurous streak. But, with two weeks vacation-time to burn, and his kids finally grown, he decided he was now ready for something a bit more exotic than a beach holiday in Spain or Greece.

As he sipped a glass of Tuborg, he ran through the checklist of vaccinations he'd gotten in preparation for his trip to Nepal: polio, hepatitis A, tetanus, and there were a few more he couldn't remember. He was prepared for anything. But after only a few hours in Kathmandu, he seemed a little disappointed.

“Bit touristy, isn't it,” he noted, with typically British understatement, adding, “Not many bars are there? Not like London.”

And he was right. Perhaps not about the bars. But certainly about the general atmosphere.

There we were, sitting in the rooftop garden of a restaurant with a French name, listening to American rock legends The Doors over the sound system. John drank a Danish beer, as a German couple a few tables away gazed longingly into one another's eyes over a dripping candle that could have been lifted from a Roman bistro.

We were smack in the middle of a Third World metropolis. And yet John and I had spent most of the evening mulling over European politics. How could this be? Where were we exactly?

“Thamel is very much Western,” says Yuba Raj Luintel, a sociologist at Tribhuvan University. “Partly it belongs to Kathmandu. Partly it doesn't.”

To illustrate the point, Luintel suggests taking a walk around Thamel at night. At 11 o'clock, the streets are packed with rickshaws and taxis. The proprietors of shops selling Pashmina scarves and jewelry stand at the curb offering half-hearted namastes to tourists out on an evening stroll. Inside, travelers swap stories over Rs. 130 beers, while over the railings of rooftop bars, music pours into the streets.

Now head north into Samakhusi. Or west into Kaldhara. Or in virtually any direction you like. And you'll see what Professor Luintel means.

The streets are dark and quiet. The occasional taxi or motorcycle may cruise through, but by and large the streets have been abandoned to the city's stray dogs and to the poor, sleeping in shop front doorways. For most of Kathmandu the day is finished.

Thamel is the stepping off point for nearly every tourist entering Nepal. The district boasts hundreds of restaurants, nearly as many hotels, and enough travel agencies advertising safaris in the Terai, and trekking in the Annapurna to keep a legion of thrill seekers occupied for decades.

But for most travelers, this first experience in Nepal is perhaps the most un-Nepali available in the country.

Anna Maria Forgione owns Fire and Ice, a pizza and ice cream parlor on the district's Eastern edge. And though she can hardly be considered a true foreigner at this point, most of her customers are.

Forgione came with her husband to Kathmandu for what they'd expected to be a two-year stint. That was 1989. “When we stepped out of the airport, I thought I'd come to heaven,” she says.

Over the next fifteen years, she fell in love with Nepal, its culture, and its people. Three of her children were born in here.

Ten years ago, as tourism to Nepal was beginning to boom, Forgione, who is Italian, saw a hole in the market. Restaurants were selling pizza, or something resembling pizza, but there was nothing approaching a genuine Italian pizzeria. So, she decided to import one.

Fire and Ice's enormous oven, its plates, and much of what you see on the menu have been flown in direct from Italy. There is probably no place in Kathmandu further removed from traditional Nepali culture than her restaurant. But there are likely very few ex-patriots as thoroughly in love with that culture as Forgione. It's the kind of schizophrenic paradox that defines the Thamel district.

“The great thing about Fire and Ice is that you get people from all over the world,” she says. “You get all the travelers, the spirituals, the climbers. It's like a stage for me. Being here, you really have to think that humanity is beautiful.”

Her success has allowed Forgione to see quite a bit of humanity. On an off-season Wednesday night, when other restaurants in Thamel struggle for a handful of customers, her business is bustling.

At one table a Frenchman is arguing with a waiter of his drink order. Next to him, an American couple talks the ear off a German Buddhist monk, who is trying to concentrate on his meal. And a bit further down, a group of young people chat in Italian, their backpacks dangling from the backs of their chairs.

Like John, they've all come to Nepal searching for something different, something exotic, something Eastern. But while in Thamel, that search is on temporary hold.

In bars and restaurants throughout the district, you'll find people of every conceivable nationality. What you probably won't find, unless they are working there, are Nepalis.

“We don't consider Thamel our area. It's for foreigners and tourists. The businesses don't cater to us. The restaurants are too expensive. It's not for us,” says Luintel. Thamel exists to provide tourists with all the conveniences of home, he says.

“Going out of Kathmandu, they are mentally prepared for discomfort. And so while staying in Thamel, they are looking for comfort,” he says. “It's about comfort, about facilities. It's all right there, hotels, restaurants, etc.”

And for the district's entrepreneurs, comfort can mean many things...as long as none of those things are Nepali.

There are hotels with Korean names, tee-shirts bearing images of Tibet, establishments advertising 'Thai massage', and of course there are the restaurants. A sign for an eatery not far from Forgione's proclaims it 'specializes' in Indian, Chinese, Continental, and Italian cuisine.

But can people that have traveled thousands of miles and spent thousands of dollars just to get here be content to end up in a replica of home? The question is trickier than you might think.

A look at the notice board in Fire and Ice gives a good indication of just how fickle the tastes of visitors can be.

Beneath an advertisement for a course entitled “Discovering Buddhism: Introductory Meditation” is pinned a flyer for “Rooms for Rent in Western Style.” A poster encourages foreigners to “learn Eastern vocal and instrumental classical music in a cordial atmosphere.” While in another notice, someone is trying to get rid of a Land Rover for $14,000.

To even the most intrepid backpackers and trekkers, on the move for weeks at a time and intent on experiencing the culture, a couple days' stop-over in Thamel can be somewhat of a guilty pleasure. After a month of dal bhaat, squat toilets, and sore feet, a hot shower and hamburger can seem like heaven.

Forgione, now in her fifteenth year in Kathmandu, admits that food is one area where she's had trouble assimilating. “When I came here, there was no pasta. I cried!”

The relationship between Thamel's business owners and their tourist customers is an odd one, similar to that between drug dealers and junkies.

You'll often hear foreigners talk about needing to get out of Thamel, that it is artificial, or that there are too many tourists. Young backpackers will usually employ this last term in it's derogatory sense. But you can usually be sure that these complaints are uttered between sips of cappuccino.

Its abundance of Western trappings have prompted The Lonely Planet Guide to Nepal, the little blue book you'll often see travelers consulting religiously as they wander around the city, to include a playful warning concerning the district.

“With its tourist comforts, Kathmandu is well worth a week of your time,” it reads. “But it is all too easy to spend too much of your time stuck in touristy Thamel. Enjoy the Internet connections, the Western music and the lemon cheesecake, but make sure you also get out into the more interesting countryside, the 'real Nepal'.”

Forgione says her intention is not to try to westernize Kathmandu, she is just doing what she knows best. And she often wishes others would do the same.

“Thamel could be a bit more Nepali,” she says. “It should be full of restaurants doing Nepali food. I just do pizza. I don't do mo-mo's. I try to tell them to do what they know. But Nepalis really want to please the foreigners.”

And as long as the rupees keep rolling in, it's unlikely much will change. Thamel will remain largely a foreign enclave at the center of Kathmandu. Freshly showered backpackers will continue to eat sandwiches and drink foreign beer. English will continue to be the unofficial language of a few square kilometers of the capital. And the 'real Nepal' will have to wait outside.

But no foreign conquest of Nepal has ever been entirely successful, and in the end some of country is bound to rub off on its visitors. After all, that's what they're here for.

Sitting in the restaurant over a cup of tea, Anna Maria Forgione takes it all in philosophical stride. "There cannot be a world where you only have East or West. I think all of Kathmandu is like that. That's why it's so wonderful.”

(The author has done a degree in journalism in the U.K. and interned at the Institute for War and Peace Reporting. He has worked as a reporter in London and most recently did a nine- month stint as a freelance journalist in the United States. He is currently in Kathmandu)