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.