Wednesday 16th November 1983
Dawn was a welcome relief, bringing light and warmth to us as we lay curled in the foetal position on our grubby mattresses in all our clothes. Our task for the day was to find the bus stop for Narayanghat and after breakfast in the Ashok Pie Restaurant we set off with this aim.
Narayanghat was linked to more spiritual mumbo-jumbo designed to bewilder Asian children growing up in Birmingham, England. On the bank of river Sabarmati a holy place comes as ”NARAYANGHAT “. As our epics Narayanghat is above from all 'tirth' (a holy place). In ancient time this area was known as “ DHARMARANYA”. Dharmadev and Murti devi did hard penance to please lord on the bank of Sabarmati at Narayanghat. When Lord Narayan appears to them and asks for boon.
They want 4 sons like god himself. As a boon, lord incarnet himself in 4 forms of’HARI’ , ‘KRISHNA ‘,‘ NAR and’ ‘NARAYAN ’so Narayanghat is a birth place of Lord Narnarayandev. Whenever lord Swaminarayan came to Ahmedabad he used to come to Narayanghat everyday with all saints for bathing in Sabarmati river. This place is as pious as Akshardham.
The puppet in the Tourist Information Office directed us to a chaotic side of central park where minibuses in an appalling state of repair pulled up and instantly became packed to the roof with human cargo and then left again, seemingly without rhyme or reason. We leaned against the wall in a fog of black exhaust fumes which exuded from these randomly departing junk heaps and tried to glean some idea of system in the melee.
We had to admit defeat and retired to a nearby hotel roof garden for a cuppa. I asked another customer in this café where the bus stop was, and he directed us to the small offices clustered around the Bhimsen Tower. Here we were quickly able to buy two tickets for 26.5 Nepalese Rupees to Tádí Bazár leaving at 06:45 hrs. tomorrow. Tádí Bazár is about 4 kilometres north of Sauraha, a village which is the eastern gateway to the nearby and large Chitwan National Park, that protects part of the Terai-Duar savanna and grasslands ecoregion.
Our task complete we waded through stinking streets to the British Council where we restored a modicum of happiness by reading English periodicals and travel books. As the light began to fade we left for the Ashok Pie Restaurant to assuage a hunger that both of us were feeling strongly. A handful of peanuts had been our only nourishment since breakfast.
We engaged in our usual sport of “soap-spotting” on the way back to Durbar Square identifying the most pretentious idiots roaming the streets. In the Ashok Pie Restaurant, we crammed in another heap of unfulfilling food, followed by slices of pie and cake, while we read our books. We eventually decided to return to our grubby pit and on the way we found that a local power cut had hit our hotel.
We trod cautiously up the dark slimy alley that led up to the reception and we were greeted by the imp at the desk requesting that we pay for our room for tonight. I broke into a fit of giggles at the pathetic nature of the situation. We stood in a cold reception hall which resembled an old dirty storeroom, scrobbling about in our wallets to find the right money in the pitiful light of a small candle.
George asked for some candles to light our room and was presented with two birthday cake candles which the imp lit from his candle. Both giggling now, we protected these fragile pinpoints of light as we carefully tiptoed along the pitch-black corridors until George said “fuck this”, and we went back outside in search of an establishment with light.
Pausing to piss up the front of the G. C. Lodge, we went into the “Lunch Box” café next door, which at least had a sensible number of decent sized candles. When the power was restored we went back to the G. C. Lodge to find that it was still devoid of electricity. We went to another pie shop, which offered a wide selection of apple pie or nothing, and sat down with a couple of slices to cheer us up.
We talked of getting to civilization in Australia, our romantic visions of exotic Asia destroyed. Kathmandu was a dirty, filthy, smelly, medieval hole populated by idiots (I did not appear to have sympathy for poverty and lack of education at this time) and money-grabbers. Also, our financial resources were trickling away more noticeably as our pool of funds diminished.
Back in the room we put on all our warm clothes in preparation for bed. What a filthy room. Yuk!
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