We're at the top of Sarangot and I swear you can see the whole country from up here or at least you could if not for the thick white clouds sliding like snakes through the mountain valleys around us and you and I are standing off to the side away from everybody else, it's always you and I, us, we, we're a team. We're talking about. What were we talking about? Hard to keep track of conversation that comes that easily. Hard to keep track of anything for folks like us. I remember we talked about how early it was. 4 AM it was that we had to get up. And with the sun still hiding below the mountain tops we weren't even sure it would be worth it. It would be, it would be gorgeous, like the whole world catching behind the safe boundaries of the Himalayas, but we didn't know that yet. I remember we talked about silly things that reminded us home. Like how many Disney princess movies you were gonna watch back home. Like how I was going to sit in front of the TV watching anime and smoking weed for two solid weeks, nonstop, to make up for lost time. What else? All I wanted was to give you my words and then fill up the space they left with the words you spoke, not a fair trade, your words are so powerful, well chosen and carefully raised, fully pedigreed, mine are just confused and ambling mutts, uncertain where they're going or where they've been.
I remember standing quietly for a while. Most of the people at the top of the mountain that morning were standing quietly. This place was like a shrine. Or a graveyard. Silence, solemnity, and respect are demanded. So we just stood next to each other and didn't say anything. I wove your hand into mine and that was loud enough for me. Louder now than ever, as the clock ticked and our time ran out, the orchestra building into their final crescendos not resolving into warm easy comfort of major chords, instead into growing cacophony, pitches stacked senselessly against another and clearly unawares as to how or why.
I remember what was almost said. I remember catching your eyes (god those eyes) and we smiled at each other and you, you couldn't help yourself, involuntary, like a sneeze, "I'm gonna miss this" falls out of your mouth. "Nepal?" I ask her, knowing how stupid it is. She averts her eyes, then catches my gaze again, then squeezes my hand, and sighs, and looks away again. Nothing good lasts forever and we knew this ship wouldn't hold any water long before we found ourselves so far from land.
"Are you going to be okay?" She asks me.
"I don't want to talk about it. Not right now."
And so we just watch the sun rise.

"What's the first thing you're gonna eat when you get back?" she asks me.
It's only the end of our first week and already we're talking about home. Then again, every day here feels like five. Plenty of time to feel homesick.
We're laying up on the roof as night sets in on the city. The dogs have already started their nightly barks and howls. The stupas off in the mountains light up like beacons.
"A pepperoni pizza. No doubt."
They have pizza here, but it's just not the same.
"I'm gonna go to Five Guys before anything else."
My first meal when I arrive back in Orlando turns out to be McDonald's. Hers will be Ruby Tuesdays.
"But first I'm gonna light up a bowl, goddamn," she adds.
We laugh, and then we go silent, and our silence is filled in by the noisy Kathmandu night.

"I miss Winter Park and my dogs." she says.
"Orlando can burn but I miss Tallahassee," I respond.
She gives me a firm punch in the arm.
"Hey! I like Orlando."

It's gonna be a long time before we're back in Orlando.

"Are you ready for tomorrow?" I ask.
Tomorrow being the day we leave the city and travel to a rural village in Nepal's hot and humid Chitwan district.
"I'm nervous."
"Me too."
I feel like I'm about to embark on some big journey, explore the countries interior, with little idea what to expect. Very Heart of Darkness but with less imperialism. And in place of a boat on the Congo we'll be traveling in a battered van around the sharp twists and turns of mountain roadways.

"I can't stop thinking about cheeseburgers now," she says.
"I can't stop thinking about pizza," I say.
We laugh, not realizing that after we do touch down in Orlando and find our way back to our lives in Tallahassee, it will be Nepali meals of dal dhat, momo, and pickle that we'll be missing.

I'm swaying back and forth, vision blurred. I have no idea where we are but, then again, I would have been lost as soon as we left Thamel if I was stone cold sober. And by this point, its half past midnight, I'm drunk as hell, and the city has gone dark.
Maybe that last Ghorka beer was a bad idea.
Sunil is supposed to be guiding us home but thanks to my mile long stride I keep ending in front and almost losing the group. This is how I end up breaking away and going down a side street, where a man on the side of the street walks up to me, puts his face right up to my ear, and whispers:
"Hashish?"
I stare at him and giggle. This is an extremely common occurrence in Thamel but I've never been drunk enough or alone enough to take one of the city's many enterprising hash dealers up on the offer. I finger the rupees in my pocket.
"How much?"

---


"Yeah man, we can go to some local bars tonight, it will be so cool. Sunil knows all the best places in Thamel."
Our always enthusiastic friend and guide gestures over to his cousin, Sunil, sitting in the corner looking over a massive sitar in his lap. He does not play the sitar but he's sure as hell trying.
I'd been dying to get drunk from the moment I'd stepped into the first of many airports that brought me here to Kathmandu and so I tell him, already a little buzzed from the two Ghorkas I'd had with dinner, that this is a great idea.

---

"I think this is the place. He said it was right by Kathmandu Guest House." We look around outside the gates of the place and we spot it. The Buddha Bar. Sunil sees us and bring us inside. It's dark, loud, and crowded, just a like any good bar should be. I miss the comforts of home, I'm dying for some McDonalds or some Starbucks, but at least the bars feel familiar.
"This is my favorite bar in Thamel. I'm friends with the owner," he shouts over the cover band. Every bar in Nepal has a cover band, to the point that I think they might be required by law. We take a seat by the window and a waiter brings over a big hookah and places it on the table. We all order a round of drinks. And then another. And then another.

---

I'm bent over the toilet, knees on the damp tile floor, and she's rubbing my back and whispering soothing words. Thank god she's awake. And thank god for the western toilet in the house, because vomiting into a Nepali squat toilet seems even more unpleasant than normal toilet vomiting. I find myself wishing I'd acquired some hashish -- something to calm my stomach -- but Sunil found me before the hash dealer could even give me a price. "He is a crazy man," He told me, "don't buy anything from him." To be fair, my drunk ass, still getting used to the value a rupee, would have spent much-too-much money on the hashish. When I try again to buy some, sober this time, the dealer tries to charge me "one fifty USD" for 10 grams. I'd later discover that, at "Nepali price," this should be about 1500 rupees, roughly fifteen bucks, but here in Kathmandu, I get the "Tourist price" which means at least a 100% markup.
The next morning, when I refuse breakfast because my stomach isn't settled, Shrijana, woman of the house, says to me "Yes, I heard you last night after you all came home. I'm glad you're enjoying Kathmandu."

You take the beer in your hand - Special Edition Everest Lager, not what you ordered but, as it often is in Nepal, only a single kind of beer is left in the cooler - and pour it into the glass stein. She stares, wide eyed, at the ornate bottle. He - our guide, our translator, and our friend - is trying his best to stifle his laughter. You ordered a beer expecting (foolishly, in hindsight) the usual American 12oz, and instead the waiter (a shy young man with averted eyes who gestures more than speaks) brings to the table nearly a bottle nearly twice that.
Only 240 rupees.
Only $2.40.
The change isn't exact but its hard to adjust to halfway-around-the-world.
The sound of a sarangi being played rings out from the square below, beautiful. Lazy, though. Almost certainly played by a bored man walking around Bhaktapur, scratching that bow back and forth across the strings like a rhythmic drone, hoping to scam a tourist into thinking 2000 rupees is a good deal for the hastily made instruments he sells. You can't blame him, living in a city so flush with vapid hippie tourists. We look out at the square from our rooftop, but we can't find him. He's hiding. Hiding is easy in Kathmandu, hiding is easy in a city where every street seems to be an alleyway. Hiding is easy in a city that feels like you're in another world but still can't get your head around the idea that you can't take just take a bus home and when you get on that plane home in two months that distance still won't fit inside the tiny little space between your ears.
"So this place is Durbar Square?" She asks. He replies "Yes," and then "But not really" and then "This is Bhaktapur. This is Durbar Square. There are several Durbar Squares, but only one Bhatkapur."
"So what is Durbar Square?"
He smiles. Tourists. "Durbar Squares are where many seperate kingdoms once lived. They are where the palaces of the long past still stand, from long ago before the Newari kingdoms united. Durbar Squares are one of the places in Kathmandu where our history still lives."
There are hmms and knowing head-nods that fade into nothing and we sit and sip on our giant beers and listen to the sarangi drone and take in this kingdom so much older than any back home.