Monday 24 March 2008 - Kathmandu

24 March 2008 Monday

I tested the lensboards I had made the last night at home and they are perfect. All my stuff is ready to go – I regret not bringing my rope and tent but how really could I have? The bags I did bring, all four of them, weighing about 50lbs each and the little one only30lbs(!) – had to be carried by me at several junctions or I would have had to ferry them – which I did consider many times, but which thing to leave unattended?
Anyway, I say to myself I have always considered myself a travel-lite photographer who shoots at and on a human vision scale, and the idea of adding the climbing paraphanalia and the additional people necessary to pull that off may cloud my landscape vision. There’s always that insecurity thing nagging at us all over every issue which says, ‘Take this extra thing, you may need it’, or ‘Get that extra piece of equipment, it may come in handy’, but at some point we are crippled by the weight of all that extra and don’t even achieve the simple thing we set out to do – and then again, this thing I’ve set out to do isn’t exactly simple but for this moment I think I should move quickly, and light, get what I can, and, when more resources become available, come back for what I see but can’t touch now. I keep thinking of Reinhold Messner, his Fair Means approach – he carries nothing; no rope, no pro (protection), no oxygen ! He uses only his own personal resources and resourcefulness.
It’s 8:15am. I’m back at Hot Bread my favorite coffee and pastry shop in the center of Thamel, sitting on the second storey terrace. The pastries are wonderful, the sights and sounds of the city rising are ever as they’ve been, a gentle bustling town with narrow streets on a human scale, that set against a cacophonous background of honking cars, rickshaw and bicycle bells and the, at times, incessant beep of motorcycles horns.
For 60rps I get a 5” diameter 1.25” high quiche either mushroom or mushroom/chicken and a raisin bun for an extra 30Rps also a small pot of coffee on the terrace upstairs is 77rps (the dollar is currently trading at 62.3rps per). The quiche is heated in a microwave(!). The ubiquitous Eurasian tree sparrows hop around at my feet hunting for the tiniest crumbs. These birds are amazing! I grew up with them in New Jersey, we called them English sparrows, I've seen in everyplace I've been in the USA including Hawaii, also Hong Kong and in the airport in Frankfurt.