Bartering and Barfing Amongst Buddhist Temples (By Justyna)

Well, as you all know I am the one who got ill pretty much straight
away - 4 days into our trip. Though I am fine now, it was not pleasant
so thought would share my first two days in Kathmandu from my point of
view.

Started to feel very queasy in the middle of the night and ran to the
loo where the inevitable projectile vomiting occurred. Triston, being
the gallant gentleman that he is, rushed to my side to hold back my
hair, pass me tissues and rub my back (of course this has nothing to
do with the fact that I have thus cared for him on many an occasion).
Anyway, in the morning I thought I was better, so we went out for a
walk in Kathmandu to do some shopping. Saw an amazing temple, the
biggest / smallest traffic jam ever and made our way to Durbar
Square, which is where the 'Living Goddess' lives. In the middle as
with any good square worth its name, were some sellers, selling their
wares.

the usual sob stories come out - 'please ma’am, you are my first
customer in 3 weeks, bring me good luck, buy something' or 'I give you
best price, it is off season, no business, you tell me your price, I
tell you my price. Almost free'. As I was at this point not beginning
to feel so good, I was unfortunately accosted by one of these sellers,
and as I was on one hand keeping an eye on T (who was at the next
seller, talking excitedly about something he had found) this lady
gave me one of her sob stories and I was very weak and caved in buying
a 'singing-prayer bowl' from Tibet. Then this other guy came up and
desperately tried to get me to change his 'loonies' for him (3 Canadian
dollars) I was polite, then less polite, and then I knew I was going
to vomit so pushed him aside and ran across the road so as not to
projectile vomit all over the square, but in a corner of a building
instead. Unfortunately I happened to be vomiting on a sacred temple,
but never mind. At this point, 'loonie man' was bothering Triston, who
also pushed him away (although at this point 'loonie man' was telling
T his lady was very sick and needed help) so both of them rushed over
to me, again T being the gallant lad, 'loonie man' telling us that the
tourist toilet is just there, yet still asking us to change his
dollars. I stopped barfing and shakily thought it would be it fine as
I felt very empty so we both rushed off as I had desecrated a holy
place.

sitting, recovering in a restaurant (I didn’t eat) T then excitedly
told me about his amazing finds from his lady. An amazing smooth oval
rock which was cracked open to reveal a trilobite inside! And a heard
of elephants carved into real whale bone! All for just #### rupees!
Well within a second of inspecting his amazing finds we both realized
T had been had and his smooth rock was a mold and his heard of
elephants - resin. So we were both 'lighter' by the end of the
afternoon.

Although I had been quite ill, the wrath of dysentery did not escape
Triston, who kept on having to go to the loo for other purposes, where
I would hear from him "Baby, I got problems!" (so?! What’s new?) "No,
but you don’t understand, I have REAL problems!", which made me feel a
little better especially as later on that night, as we were bartering
(far more successfully) for some Mandalas, I thought I too had
PROBLEMS and needed a toilet really fast. We got very quickly to the
restaurant where we were going to have dinner, only to find that there
was no electricity, no working toilet, and the one they directed me
to, had no loo paper. Not a happy Justyna. thankfully, I did not have
PROBLEMS and after a good nights sleep we left for Pokhara on a bumpy
bus ride from Kathmandu at 7 in the morning. And I feel very ready to
climb to Annapurna Base Camp!