Nepal hits you right in the face the moment you cross the Friendship Bridge between Zhangmu, Tibet and Kodari, Nepal. The smell is different, the feel and look of the town that you’re in is also obviously different.
We arrived at the border before Chinese customs and immigration opened, so waited for a half hour to be let through and checked. The Chinese border is very clean and they are very precise when looking through your passport and paperwork. After clearing you cross the bridge and are magically transported back in time to 2 hours and 15 minutes earlier.
Its amazing how different one side of the river smells and feels from the other. The China side smells of incense and yak. The Nepal side smells of curry. We had a young boy helping us in the no-mans land in which we found ourselves, and had he not pointed out the small door for Nepal immigration we might have walked on through to the car waiting for us. Where the Chinese immigration is in a building with tiled floors, separate desks, various lines, and x-ray machines, the Nepal immigration is one room in a small house that is shared on either side by small markets or entrances to hotels located on the second floor. There are four customs officials who look at your passport, ask you to fill in an arrival card, and then you hand both back to another official on the opposite side of the long cubicle. The room quickly fills with foreigners entering Nepal scrambling to use the small amount of desk space to fill in their cards and hand in and retrieve their documents.
As different as the Nepal immigration office is from the Chinese, both seemed to be equally efficient, but in their own way. I think that this will be something that I’ll encounter a lot this summer - I’ll remember the extremity of the Chinese in surveillance and general up-keep of the entire country, and compare it with what I’m seeing and experiencing while here in Kathmandu doing my research. I’m not sure if I’ll find anything that is really particularly comparable, but I’m sure that I’ll be confronted with a different sort of efficiency, one that I will come to learn as custom and comfortable.
For the time being, I’m still in a bit of shock at being here. To be honest, I was a bit freaked out upon our first venture around the block from our hotel yesterday afternoon - the cars and motorcycles coming from all sides and on the wrong side of the road, the bridal procession with the trumpet band in front of it and the family following, the multitudes of people, the stores, the almost overwhelming onslaught of everything constantly hitting all my senses. And that was just in walking two blocks around our hotel. Dinner helped. A lot. Seeing all of my friends, all of us nine (one more who arrived this morning!) with our professor and local hosts. It was comfortable and familiar - and the walk back was much easier (even at night time) than the first venture out.
I still haven’t walked far around Thamel (where we’re currently located) and I’m still not really sure where in Kahtmandu (or the world) I actually am. But one thing is for sure - I’m excited! Still nervous and still unsure of how I’m going to start my work and what my first questions will be, who I will meet with, etc. But it will be fun - because there’s almost no way that it can't be. Ten good friends who worked hard all semester to come to this unknown country at a time of great transition, meeting with the change makers, and having the opportunity to look at our interests in the field - all the while experiencing the monsoon!
My topic of focus this summer are the broad questions of democracy, in particular individual rights. There has been a draft written of 31 individual rights and freedoms created by a Committee for the Constituent Assembly (CA). Since the draft was written, the deadline for the writing of the entire constitution has come and gone, threats of nationwide strikes have been made, and the Prime Minister has said he would resign, and then reneged. The writing of the constitution has been postponed for another year so that the CA and all the drafting committees can have time to write and present their drafts and various issues such as how to divide the country into new federal states can continue to be discussed. Still having the feeling from the many military walking around Tibet and going through similar check points from the armed police forces in Nepal, I’m forced to face the reality that this is a country in transition, with an interim constitution, many questions that still need answers, and many people who will or are trying to have a say in these changes, and with just as many, if not more opinions. I’m looking forward to get started but feel a bit like I’m fumbling as I did at the beginning of last semester - this time though I just have to bring back the voices of the many articles that we’ve read and see where they are happening in real life. There are few times when we get the chance to do this and even fewer when we get to see the changes as they are unfolding.
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If anyone is interested in seeing photos from this trip and information on our travels through China that preceded our arrival in Nepal, my personal blog is: www.cecisphotos.shutterfly.com.
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