Obliterating Life in KT-fucking-M (Thamel)

You've traveled from far, perhaps by land, perhaps by air flight. You've arrived in a hot and dusty bowl, and you fancy maybe climbing some portion of the world's highest mountain. But before you get on with any of that, a most hospitable welcome, to the place where comfort rides with you high on its saddle.

Welcome to Thamel.


Oh yes, and I suppose; to Kathmandu.


There was a time when I thought Ko Sahn couldn't be trumped. But Thamel is a worthy contender for what I can only hope will be the futile end of tourist commercialism, sometime before the more holistic apocalypse.

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"The ice age is coming, the sun's zoomin' in...a nuclear era, but I have no fear; 'cause Thamel is burning, I...


...I live by the river!"

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Thamel, unlike Ko Sahn Rd, isn't just a street - but a whole two kms squared leading to the complete obliteration of all that is indigenous to local life. To arriving home with a coffee table book displaying center-folds of a (less caged) Annapurna:


With an array of hotels and, I opted for the "Om Tara". I hoped we were the right place for each other, and t'was true.


The windows were of grand scale, and oddly enough, the sheets smelled like freshly laundered linen.


The nightlife (to making base camp!) - could be celebrated in establishments purveying beer and cuisine approximating double the country's annual GDP. These included: the Reggae Bar, the Transit Club (titties and techno trance), and a multiplicity of cover-band venues enthusiastically emulating songs by the Dire Straits and the Guns N' Roses. All of this hovered above streets adorned with eight year olds huffing glue and middle-aged couples whisking by in Gortex.

The average Nepali seemed to find the whole thing a little confounding.


The question remains: is it really logical to backpack around Asia carrying a 52 kg golden Buddha. Some think so.


I loitered here for over a week with a most esteemed Manchesterian, tending to our necessary agendas: my Indian visa and his burst thrombosis induced cat-scan examinations. And so we succumbed to the finer of what Thamel had to offer: jam toast, Japanese food, toongba (Tibetan millet beer) and a plethora of Argentian red.


And so the burgeoning hunger for the acquisition of the real Kathmandu.


A mooch, then.