Saturday

Saturday mornings are sleepy in Kathmandu.  The city wakes up slowly enjoying the day's reprieve from work.  Traffic is light and my neighbors bathe each child outside in a bucket while the adults gamble in a nearby alley.

I woke up and the house was chilly.  Our gas heater battled to no avail against the cold.  I wrapped up in three blankets on our gold sofa and formulated a plan.  Saturday was the perfect day for an adventure.

I did a map recon, analyzing routes and possibilities.  Finally I settled on an uphill day hike at a nearby mountain.  I packed a picnic lunch of leftover pasta salad and cookies.  I dressed my son in sturdy shoes and an extra jacket.  When my husband awoke we were ready to go.

I felt like Lewis and Clark on the edge of something wild and grand.  We were armed only with the memory of a computer map and our enthusiasm.  We made the short drive down our road and when we arrived at our intersection crowds mingled uneasily. A few blue clad police officers with batons met us at the corner gesturing for me to roll the window down.  "You can not go this way.  There is a strike - a bandh," they said.  This was not a sleepy Saturday.  This was a restless creature with its own identity.

I turned around quickly formulating an alternative plan.  We would go visit the waterfalls instead.  "Waterfalls, I want to go waterfalls," chanted my son from the back seat.  At least we had a sole supporter of the new plan.  We bypassed the main roads traveling tiny pot hole covered back alleys instead.  An unknown alley would dissolve into a tiny footpath and we would slowly inch the car backwards.  I navigated using gut instinct and the location of the mountains.  A curved stone advertised we were close - only three kilometers from the falls.  "Waterfalls!" JAC demanded from the backseat.  We passed through a tiny village with houses stacked and crumbling on top of each other forming a tunnel around the road.  We emerged and were met with smoke and a small crowd of young men standing back on their heels with their hands in their pockets.  They blocked the road with a small fire and stared at us quizzically.  Every local knew this road was impassable today and a lazy eyed police officer reinforced the idea.  "You can not not pass.  It is a strike," he informed us.  We made a slow u-turn. Defeated, we returned home.

We chewed cookies and laughed on the way home.  Our son fell asleep in his carseat with his head and arms spilling over the edge.  Every winding back road was an opportunity and we wove carefully past pedestrians through the streets of Kathmandu grateful to be near the main road.  We slid onto the main road and the air felt heavy and gray.  Unnerved I rolled my windows up and locked the door.  There was a sole car on the road and then we were alone.  We drove slowly forward and every kilometer the foot traffic grew more dense.  The intersections were lined with riot police and hundreds of pedestrians walked on both side of the car.  We were in the middle of the strike.  We unwittingly missed the road block by utilizing back roads and instead positioned ourselves in the middle of the unrest.  We needed to get home. 

We crested the hill and I saw our intersection engulfed in black smoke.  Tires were burning.  The people were too dense to pass through.  Our cell phone chirped with the alert, "Kathmandu unstable, remain in a safe place."  We could not make it home but were relieved to stop at friend's house for a few hours.

In Miami they have hurricane parties.  In Kathmandu we have bandh parties.  With the streets shut down and nowhere to go we opened a bottle of wine and sampled cheese.  We walked down to the intersection with our cameras and snapped pictures of protesters.  When night came the protesters walked home, happily chatting about the days events.  The bandh was over.  The end seemed to lack a suitable climax and we drove home expecting something more.   We never did hike up a mountain but we drove through a smokey protest instead.