Nepal: I Am a Dog
The roads before me blend from one into the next, but the drive is comforting.
By Kevin Sites, Mon May 15, 12:37 PM ET
KATMANDU, Nepal - It is pouring. Rain hard enough to dent the car. Dent it more than it already is if that's possible, this 1971 pre-Nissan thing called a Gista. The car has wiper blades, but like disconnected brain synapses, the electrical circuit from the wiper knob to the blades is not making the jump.
Despite the fact the windshield glass is as opaque to me as the meaning of life, I'm able to make out the buildings, colors, people as we whiz past them on this narrowest of streets, swerving and beeping and pushing forward to who knows where.
Kevin Sites reporting
Photo by:
Dinesh Wagle/United We Blog
When I was traveling in Africa or even the Middle East, the country changes weren't as abrupt to me as they have been in the last six weeks. Like a slow-dissolve connecting the disparate sequences of a continuous story that spans too much geographic territory, I see the roads before me blend from one to the other — riding the river beds of eastern Afghanistan in a humvee, through the lowlands of northern Colombia packed in a local taxi, winding through the hillsides of Haiti in my fixer's beat up Datsun and now to this moment in Nepal.
There is a duality at work here that is hard for me to comprehend. I'm amazed by the these geographic disjunctions in my journey, the shock of sensory overload, the new smells, terrain, and lives that wash over me on these drives.
Simultaneously, I'm lulled by the comfort of it all, the fact that there is too much to understand. Instead of an observer, for this moment, I am a dog with my head out the window, the rush of air creating a comforting buzz that silences the need to know more — at least for now.
Kevin Sites in Nepal
Photo by:
Dinesh Wagle/United We Blog
In every new place, this is where the journey begins — with this drive. During the drive my inability to speak the local language doesn't matter, it is about smiles and pleasantries done in charades. On the drive there is no negotiation over prices, no cold sweat over the time I have to shoot, write, edit and transmit a half dozen to a dozen new stories. There are no technical concerns, there is no hunger or sleep deprivation — for a moment even the alternating senses of alienation and loneliness disappear.
Today in Nepal, the birthplace of Buddha, it is indeed the rare moment of Zen that eludes me most of my conscious life. But very shortly the ride will be over. The new reality of where I am will fall full force on my head like a cartoon anvil.
My fears, insecurities, discomforts must cede to those living in this place that I'm so privileged to see. Here in Nepal it's the story of a burgeoning democracy. The story of a people who stood up to an autocratic king and his forces. The price of that courage was 21 lives and hundreds wounded.
On this day, myself and my fixer Dinesh Wagle, a local newspaper journalist and pioneering blogger, will take an 18-passenger plane one and half hours to Dhangadi, near India on the western border. At 6'2'' I'm the tallest person on the plane, yet will end up in the only middle seat with my knees in my chest while I type this out.
But now that I'm finally here I know it's time to discover their stories — stories that cost them so much to make, yet cost me so little to tell.
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