A Rant About Nepal

Although it’s easy to paint a pretty picture of my stay here in Nepal, I think it also necessary to share some of the repetitive annoyances too that occur almost on a daily basis.


Stare bears
Living in a fairly remote city in Nepal off the tourist track there is little interest or reason for tourists to visit, which actually I like. In fact I think if you have time its far more interesting staying in these random places than that of tourist traps, the culture so rich and the experience so authentic. The down side of this is that any movement is bound to cause a stare and I mean any movement. And it’s not a subtle stare it’s a stop and have a really really good stare and take in every detail gold fish style stare. There are several ways to deal with this and these vary according to tolerance level, the person who’s is staring and general mood at that exact moment. Ways to deal with stare bears include; 1) ignoring it, 2) stare back and smile this usually causes embarrassment on their part 3) say hi or Namaste 4) or rare occasions say ‘what’, look mad and slightly crazy.

Married or unmarried
One of the many many questions that curious Nepali people fire at me is ‘are you married or unmarried’. This is actually a sensitive issue as the whole of Nepali society fiercely revolves around the expectation of marriage which I vehemently disagree even though I understand the reasons for it. Therefore its never a good question to start off with, my reactions can be blunt pushing on rude; ‘unmarried’ followed by firing a question right back at them, ‘are you married and do you enjoy it?’. The truth of the matter is once you scratch below the surface most young people would choose not to be married but don’t know what else to do and to be honest – what else is there to do in this country?

Your Fat
Where I come from its apparently good to be thin and bad to be fat, these are messages and images that we have been bombarded with from a variety of media sources forever, which re-enforce these ideas into our vulnerable minds. In Nepal though it’s the reverse, people think its good to be fat as it shows health and wealth and bad to be thin. So if someone says, ‘ you became fat’ its a compliment and if some one says ‘you became thin’ it not a compliment! It’s like a reverse head fuck and actually really interesting experience to witness my own reaction to.

Nepali time and Its Cancelled
Nepali time basically means everything starts later than planned. So training that was supposed to start at 10:00 am may start at 13:00, someone who I have arranged to meet at my house may come 1 – 2 hours late if at all, without informing me. Plans get cancelled at the last moment and sometimes never happen at all. Now you might think that Nepali time and cancellations may have caused me some annoyance and despair, but actually it doesn’t. I won’t lie that is hasn’t taken some time to adjust to this way of life, but now I have I actually like it because it means I can cancel things too and be late without any major consequence and I really like this as its so not allowed in the UK. I wonder if I will ever be reliable again.

Can I Have Your Phone Number
Without doubt the single most annoying thing in this country is people asking for my number and then calling me on it for no apparent reason other than for novelty factor. And if I don’t answer they just keep on ringing and ringing and ringing. It’s quite hard to avoid giving out my number the only real way round it is just to say no you can’t have my number.