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I woke up this morning to the sound of a washing machine on the final stage of its spin cycle.
It put such a smile on my face.
I don't like staying in hotels. Whether it's a 40-rupee charpoy at a truck stop in southern Karnataka or a £4000 a night suite on Park Lane they both carry out the same function and that's to help you move on to another place. Photo: A beggar in Thamel, Kathmandu with a higher rate of interest.
Just transient and temporary, but I bet you the truck stop does a more succulent chicken tikka.
So now my time in Kathmandu is always short. I pick up some supplies - books and paper and head west to Pokhara.
On Tuesday night I bid farewell to Sam's Bar - it must have been late as Raj had to open the steel door at the bottom of the stairs.
Like grotesque gargoyles, either side of the doorway, a street kid sniffed glue from a plastic milk carton.
As I stumbled through the back streets and alley ways one rickshaw driver half-heartedly asked to take me back to my hotel, but he was cold enough and the short ride was not going to warm him.
Out of the gloom and under a half lit blue neon light a pair of transvestites and their handler came into sight.
They were both tall and slim wearing bright blue and yellow saris - too tall to be Nepalese so maybe Indian - with bright lipstick and black eyes.
Now every night in Thamel I get offered sex, drugs, and rock & roll, but this was a first.
"Hey hen! We've got enough problems of our ane, where we come frae we wear kilts."
I am unsure that they understood what I said but they both tottered away with their minder holding their hands so they wouldn't fly away.
So I came back through to Pokhara.
This morning as I listened to the washing machine build up into a crescendo and the centrifugal force expelled the last drops of water; to me it represented the continuity of daily life, the banality of domesticity, and lost socks.
- comments
Corinne Mustafa I do not think that I have ever had such romantic and dreamy ideas about the place of a washing machine in the scheme of "life goes on"...LOL. Good one Fergoose. Corinne