The Visa Thing

Instructional viewer mail
Kathmandu, Nepal

A viewer known only as "IndiaFan" writes:
I noticed you're stationed in Nepal. Do I need to get a Nepali visa in advance, or can I get it at the border on arrival? and do you know anything about getting the new Indian visa in Nepal?

The answer is Yes; at any Indo-Nepali border town (there are four - Mahendranagar, Bhairawa, Birganj and Kakarbhitta) or at the Kathmandu airport they will issue you 60 days' visa for $30 US. For some reason, this must be paid in USD$. Even British citizens must pay in dollars! Why? Who knows! Personally I think it goes straight into the king's pocket.

In Nepal, at the Indian Embassy in Kathmandu (on Lainchaur just up the road from the British Embassy), one can get a new 6 months' visa to India. There are rumours that travel agents can get you a one year's tourist visa, but you must pay baksheesh to the agents, not go to the Embassy directly for this. At the Embassy, they will pretend they have nooooo idea what you mean... but someone there must, because someone is issuing these 1-year visas. I personally do not advocate such practices as I've found them to be rife with problems (not to mention overpriced).

Currently they are giving only double-entry visas, not the usual multiple; but on request I asked for triple, and they gave it!

-Do you know any nice, clean hotel in Kathamndu to wait for visa and where is the Indian Embassy there?

There are loads of them - I stay at the Hotel Northfield in Thamel, also the famous Kathmandu Guest House, you can't go too far wrong with these. Northfield will get you a single room w/hot water and cable for about $10, less if you bargain as it is now off-season. Room rates are very flexible here. If you want to go ultra cheap yet clean try Holy Lodge round the corner, tiny room w/shared bath for $2.50 a night.

The Indian Embassy is well-known to all drivers, rickshaw cyclists and is also walkable distance from Thamel. It's in a neighborhood called Lazimpat where most embassies are, just down the road from British Embassy. All cab drivers know these and don't pay more than 50 Nepali Rs (less than $1) for a cab from these hotels I mentioned.

Let me fill you in on the Indian visa scoop - when I did it, it was November - high tourist season in Nepal - and you had to show up for the queue at literally 5 or 6am and sit outside the gates in order to be seen by closing time at 12 noon! Bring a book! Now it might be better because it's getting off season.

On the first visit, you must be seen between 9am and 12 noon. You just turn in an application and 300 NRs - they give you a receipt and a day, about 3 days later, to return. During this time they fax the Embassy in your home country to see if you're persona grata.

On the return date, you come again early in the AM (like 6am) and bring the price, for Americans it's 4600 NRs, less for others. For some reason Americans pay 1100NRs more than any other nationality. I say, before we give away any more nuclear goodies, we need to get that straightened RIGHT out.

They really like you to "tender" exact change here. You present the receipt, they take the Visa fee and your passport, and give you yet another receipt tell you to come back after 3.30 pm the same day.

Go have lunch at the Hotel Ambassador down the road or the KFC cafe and come back in the afternoon. At that point, you go to the 2nd window, with your 2nd receipt and they should have your passport with the visa sticker inside. I turned mine in on a Friday and got the visa on a Wednesday.

Although I must say, after spending a few days in Nepal, you may be wondering why you'd ever want to return to India. Just... maybe. Off the top of my head I would have said "rava dosa and idly," but Nepali Banchha Ghar and Dudh Sagar on Kantipath do them very well, thanks. Of course, it's no Saravana Bhavan (still haven't found Idiyappam kurma or lime soda sweet here).

Kathman-Don't

at a loss for a clever subtitle...
Kathmandu, Nepal

It's official - my eyes are screwed up. I have something called Punctate Keratitis (in case you want to Google it) and will be in semi-retirement till it clears up. If you want a good scare just translate Punctate Keratits to "tiny little holes in my cornea."

But not before I get in a good rant
Remember last January when I passed through Majnu Ka Tilla (also known as the Only Decent Place to Stay in Delhi)?

Well, it was just too nice to allow to exist. I mean, a peaceful, relatively clean, cheap place to live within Delhi? NOT possible meddem! So, the authorities have decided it has to go!

Check out the full story here. How come change around here is always destructive, never creative or constructive? Kali Yuga indeed!

Just adds insult to irony (or is it vice versa?) that MKT is home to lots of political refugees. Now I guess they're double refugees.

Future tense

This week's Viewer Mail
Kathmandu, Nepal

Science fiction aficionado Darkhorse in Nashville (don't say Nashville, where? there is only one Nashville) writes:

Dear Siren:
Here's a review from the Washington Post of River of Gods by Hugo Award winning writer Ian McDonald.
India lovers are said to love it. - Yours truly, Darkhorse

Science Fiction and Fantasy: India's apocalyptic future
By Martin Morse
Tomorrow on the Subcontinent
Scan the shelves of the science fiction section at your local bookstore, and you'll find all sorts of novels about adventure in the distant future. But the book you're least likely to find is the novel that aims to show us what the future will be like in 25 or 50 years.(...)

Ian MacDonald, however, has not heard the news that no one wants to read about the near future any more. His River of Gods: August 15, 2047 -- Happy Birthday, India (Pyr, $25) is a bold, brave look at India on the eve of its centennial, 41 years from now.(...)

In River of Gods, the lives of nine characters, including a police officer, a journalist, an astronaut and the aide to a powerful politician, intertwine as India veers toward an apocalypse caused by a reckless search for cheap power. MacDonald predicts that India will be divided into several warring states, each with sophisticated robot armies. Gender switching -- and the abandonment of gender entirely -- will be commonplace. Artificial intelligence will be advanced enough so that machines will pass for humans most of the time.

MacDonald takes his readers from India's darkest depths to its most opulent heights, from rioting mobs and the devastated poor to high-level politicians and lavish parties. He handles his complex plot with flair and confidence and deftly shows how technological advances and social changes have subtly changed lives. River of Gods is a major achievement from a writer who is becoming one of the best Science Fiction novelists of our time.

Dear Darkhorse:
It' s nice that someone besides that shrill, one-note harpy Arundhati Roy is worried about India's future. From all the glowing masturbation and self-congratulation in the "lifestyle" Indian press you would think there was nothing but Blue Skies and Capuccino Forever on the increasingly crowded and polluted horizon. Anyone who points out evidence to the contrary is liable to be shunned into silence or run out a rail on grounds of anti-nationalist and overly realistic sentiment.

Free expression is under definite attack here. National Security (in its local form of "communal sensibilities") is the cause often named for silencing. No less than seven states in the so-called World's Largest Hypocrisy (OOPS, I mean, Democracy!) saw fit to ban the Da Vinci Code movie because it might offend someone, especially those who are too pious to go see it in the first place.

In the wake (literally) of the deadly Danish cartoon debacle, everyone wants to get in on Being Offended. Being Offended is a guaranteed way to gain political ground and silence your perceived enemies. If we can't cut the hands off of all offending artists, next the law will have us all ripping our eyeballs out prophylactically to prevent us from viewing something potentially harmful to our innocent sensibilities.

Of course, seeing limbless beggars and starving children working captive on garment industry looms is not deemed offensive enough to warrant a ban, or any legal action whatsoever. It's those movies and artists that are causing all the problems in society. For one thing, they cause young couples to hold hands in public (and no, it's not just "backward" places like Bihar where the moral police see fit to assault these kids).

But I digress. Returning to the book in question:

MacDonald has, at the very least, been reading the more relevant sections of the Indian newspapers; there is definitely a looming apocalypse thanks to the race for cheaper power. Several states (Karnataka vs. Tamil Nadu, for instance) are already at "war" over water.

And the summer headlines fairly scream "After 5000 years of sweating continuously, every single one of us deserves to have central air conditioning RIGHT NOW! How are we going to get it?!?! We don't care how many villagers we have to displace, goddamnit it, now that we can afford designer clothes, we shouldn't have to sweat anymore!!!!"

However, he is conspicuously wrong about the "sophisticated robot armies." Any machine requires maintainance. Machines here, even simple ones like light fixtures and credit card machines, often stay broken for years. Besides, we already have a sort of "robot army" to fight our battles and do our dirty work for us. It's called The Poor.

Gender switching is not necessary, since every Indian knows that sex officially does not exist. That's why there are a billion people. They were all created by our entirely chaste, virtuous sex-free culture, which has advocated propagation by fission since ancient Vedic times. Married men and women lie next to one another fully clothed and reproduction occurs. (The sexual poses you see in certain ancient Hindu temples were actually created by aliens, in order to defame and give a bad name to true, virtuous, sexless Indian culture.)

And rather than having machines that pass for humans, we prefer to just turn humans into machines. My friends in Delhi didn't even know the name of their maid who cooked their meals every day. Why bother? she's not a person, after all. A few weeks ago the Times of India ran a supposedly humourous column by a woman lamenting the "loss of her precious object." This priceless possession had been "stolen" from her, she wept, by a former friend. At the end of the column you realize she is talking about a servant formerly under her employ. I guess it never occurred to her that the servant was a person, capable of deciding where she wanted to work on her own. No, the servant was an object, to be given or taken at will.

Besides, machines mean efficiency. If we were efficient, something might get done; and if something got done, things might actually change.

And that can never, ever, be allowed to happen. Because India has no problems and is perfect the way it is.

So go away and leave us alone.

There goes the bride

Village People
Lodhsi Village, above Shivpuri, Uttaranchal

I am stuck here in Kathmandu with no camera battery (it's $75 USD, wanna sponsor me?), no money, waiting for the new Indian visa....so, for today's program let's rewind a month or so.

April 30, 2006
Akshaya Trithya

Remember Mukti, the restaurant owner who served me brown rice with a dead insect attached? He invited me to a friend's wedding in a nearby Garhwali village. In some ways, the wedding was like going back into time - anyone who is fascinated by Indian culture would have loved it. We had to drive way up into the foothills (close to being respectably sized mountains at that point) and then hike up a trail for one hour. At this point it was 10.30 or 11 am, not a good time to be hiking through nonfoliate hills (ie, in the sun). By the time we got there I was truly about to pass out. The groom rode up the trail ahead of us on a tricked-out donkey rather than the more romantic, customary white horse. They explained that a horse is not agile enough to make it up the steep, gravelly slides.

Today was Akshaya Trithiya, traditionally a most auspicious day for weddings. On the way up to Shivpuri we had passed no fewer than five other wedding parties.

In Indian weddings, the groom is often the one, rather
than the bride, who is veiled. He wears (I got lots of photos) a kind of tinfoil turban that looks like a cheap magician's costume, with tinselly fringe hanging down infront of his face. It does have the practical purpose of keeping the flies away, but the traditional stated purpose is that of preventing the Evil Eye. That is, if the groom is lookin' really fine on the way to the wedding, some unmarried girls (or their parents) could cast eyes on him in jealousy and thus mar the proceedings or even put a curse of sorts on him. The procession was led by two drummers who banged traditional percussion instruments with what looked like stripped down tree branches (not the polished wooden drumsticks we use). The groom on his donkey, the donkey-minder who stayed behind to whack the animal every once in a while, all the groom's family and future in-laws and ourselves (the esteemed VIP foreign guests with our fancy cameras) wended our way slowly up the hillside. The tinsel marriage turban kept slipping down the groom's perspiring forehead and he adjusted it repeatedly.

The views were stunning ones of the Garhwali Himalayan foothills and the turquoise Ganges below. It was thankfully breezy, though hot. I wondered why there were not more trees. Someone told me a few weeks ago that these used to be teakwood forests before the British cut them all down, but that was sixty years ago; more trees should have grown by now.



When we finally reached the terraced hillside home of the bride, the entire village seemed to have turned out for the occasion - waiting expectantly for the approach of the drummers. Little children, families and elders all stood on the terraces as though they were stadium bleachers - boys perched in the trees like monkeys. The groom was greeted under a special archway erected from stalks of banana trees. The women of the bride's family, and the rent-a-pundit priests, had to remove any evil eye from him by greeting him with a ceremonial flame (ghee lamp on a tray), incense and Sanskrit chanting. They repeatedly daubed his forehead (actually, the tinsel marriage crown covered his forehead completely) with red tikka and turmeric paste dots before leading him into the roped-off area of the yard that had been designated for the wedding - and of course, as seating for us VIPs. The villagers, who'd probably known the bride all her life, had to make do sitting on the parched earth and dried grass. We were given the prestigious moulded plastic chairs under a homemade awning (bed sheets stretched between wooden poles) to protect our fair skin from the sun. Only we foreigners and the bride and groom's family were important enough to be seated here.

Naturally I sensed I was missing the real photo-ops and got up to look around. The house itself is a handmade one of wood and mud. It had been specially decorated with traditional white striping reading "Swagatham"(welcome) and "Shubh Vivaha" (good wedding). The lower story had two low-roofed, dark rooms and a family of water buffalo living under the porch. The upper storey window was crowded with demure village lasses who beckoned me shyly to come visit.

The bride doesn't have the same problem of avoiding the evil eye, usually because she is sequestered the day of the wedding. Inside the mud house, the bride sat cowering, covered up in tinsel and so much gold jewellery that her hands looked like metallic claws. You may think cowering is a judgmental word, but that's exactly what she was doing - trembling, in fact. The heat was unbearable, at least to me, in the top floor of the mud house but the bride sat motionless under her veil of red and shiny gold, head demurely downcast. When asked to raise her head for my photos, though, she met my camera with an impressively stoic and strong gaze.

Despite the presence of electricity, there was no fan and no one fanned the bride (a sign of honour) - instead the grandmother sitting nearby picked up a piece of cardboard and fanned me. I guess I was more important than the bride, in some way. A young man came to the door and offered a glass of RoohAfza or cool rosewater, the same colour as the bride's red sari. Cool water of any kind was a real commodity there and I wondered how in the world they had refrigerated it. It turned out that someone had carried (!) a cooler of big, old-fashioned ice blocks all the way up there for just such frivolities.

Meena was incredibly beautiful, even to someone who has spent three years looking at Indian women. I had seen the groom and he was nice looking, but he was getting a real deal with this girl. Unfortunately no one in the house spoke a word of English (but they did understand when I said "So beautiful!"), so they could not answer my questions about the marriage situation. Did Meena's family have to pay a dowry? had she ever seen or met the groom previously? How old was Meena? what was her education? What was the groom's profession?

Eventually a young man came along who spoke enough English to answer some of my questions. He denied that the family had paid a dowry; and while I was not sure I believed him, it did seem that the groom's family should be paying up in order to get such a remarkable girl. Meena had finished high school. The groom's family owned a restaurant down in Ram Jhula and had a big, pucca house (one made of concrete with more than one storey). They had become engaged through the network of other families in their caste, namely, the Garhwali Thakur caste - something like Kshatriyas, the warrior caste of old. Long ago, perhaps three hundred years before, their forebears had come to the Garhwal mountains from Rajasthan, known for its warrior tradition.

Meena had met the groom once before - of course, with both of the families present. This was during the ritual called "going to see the girl." The groom's entire family trekked up the mountain to "view" Meena. At this point she had to be on her best behaviour, being very deferential, never looking strange men in the eye and probably serving tea to her potential in-laws. I couldn't ascertain whether the bride and groom had ever had a confidential conversation, but it seemed unlikely.

Other families have told me that the girl's behaviour at this point ("Going to meet the Girl") is critical. How does she treat the family members? Is she well-behaved? (I would imagine this means, does she do as she's told?) It is strictly a buyer's market; Meena was the fourth daughter and I would imagine the parents were relieved at finding a groom that didn't ask too much dowry.

To be continued

A bicycle built for me

Down Memory Lane
Kathmandu, Nepal
(sorry, photos are still not uploading. there is supposed to be a charming photo of an old man with a turban, a goat, and a bike here.)

So many people ride bicycles here in Asia, not to mention the bicycle rickshaws aplenty. Even the milk is still delivered here in big metal cannisters, from the backs of bikes. Often the milk-bikes are so heavy that they guy can't really ride, he just pushes the bike. In early morning I lie in bed listening to their bells chiming down the lane.

Few of these bike riders are pedaling for their health. Rather, they consider themselves impoverished because they are not driving either a motor scooter, or a car. I am reminded of college days in Tennessee.

I went to college (the second time) in a small town, Murfreesboro, which was, unlike most of America, perfect for a bike. There was no way I could afford a car so bought a 10 speed bike at a yard sale for $25. I rode this bike EVERYWHERE, including in the freezing winter, to the grocery store too. Once a week I had to buy heavy things like milk and drinking water, so I had to find a ride in a car. Otherwise I rode the bike everywhere. I loved it! I was like a hero to the guys at the bike shop.

However, the car-driving commuters (ie, everyone else in town) hated it. They have this idea that bikes are dangerous (because they are not cars) and somehow feel that bikes take up too much room (!) - room that they feel rightfully belongs to cars. They would honk, hoot and all but throw things.

I considerd getting a sticker, or sign, or a t-shirt back that said "Don't honk at me - I'm not dependent on foreign oil." (This was during the first Gulf War, in 1991).

But I was advised by local friends not to do this. I would certainly get honked at, hooted at and most probably, attacked for such a shirt. At the very least, I would probably have things thrown at me because the drivers would somehow believe (wrongly) that I did not "support the troops."

Amazing, sixteen years later, so little has changed. Like they said on Will & Grace, "Wow, it's been so long! Last time we got together, Bush was in the White House, and we were getting ready to invade Iraq!"