Travel is one of the best things in life and one of my biggest peeves of life in Nepal (and by that I mean work and Nepali wages) is that you have to save up for two years to vacation for one week somewhere new. [break]
I’m all for local tourism but there’s only so many mountains to drop your jaw in front of.
Anyway, all of this is worsened by the fact this homeland of ours is (budget) tourist paradise and seeing them wide-eyed at everything makes you want to be wide-eyed elsewhere too. But based on the look of some of these tourists I don’t have time to wish I was traveling because as lame as it sounds, I am just stuck at what they’re wearing.
Is it just me or do you also get around to Thamel and fail to understand why tourists feel the need to walk around in potato sacks?
If you don’t know what I’m talking about you clearly have been blissfully spared the hideous sight. And hideous is putting it kindly because criminal is what it would be otherwise.
The harem pants on their own would not put Atatürk’s harem to shame, but the faded, torn and all around tattered pieces of leftover fabric used to make them is an utter disgrace to the entire Ottoman Empire.
To top it off, the “100%” yak wool some choose to wrap around themselves in place of a fully functional and very practical sweater may count as creative, but really? Would you wear that in your home country? That thing is better left as a shawl too ugly to wear in public but too comfy to throw off when on the couch watching HBO.
Honestly, do tourists feel so at ease in our country that they think walking around our city looking like hippies at best and just plain weird at worst is appropriate? I mean when we go to Jerusalem or Barcelona we don’t wear biblical era robes or sombreros. Hello, no one does - no one sane anyway.
Somebody tell me if they land at Tribhuvan dressed like that. Or do they get to Thamel and then immediately strip because the tie-dye shirts just can’t be left unworn? Maybe they are misguided by what they see hanging in the shop walls or by what fellow tourists are wearing in place of real clothes, but come on! They can’t possibly be that stupid.
They did successfully haul themselves and their dusty backpack across mountains and oceans, navigating international airports and what not.
So I guess this is them easing into holiday wear and feeling the vacation spirit overcome all sense of normalcy. But even then I’m skeptical, sarongs in Goa are one thing but trousers hanging at your knees and 15kg of dreads another.
I’m so confused every time I have the misfortune of having to witness such ghastly sights. (Turning the other way offers little solace - it’s tourist country and they invade the nation after all!) Though, really, I should be thankful they keep themselves to Thamel.
I’ve yet to see their like meandering about Jawalakhel or Naya Baneshwar.
I am puzzled, no doubt. But, I am also close to being offended. Because, where do they think they’ve landed? It is not 1960s Kathmandu and the country has more to offer than hashish and cheap girls.
If you’ve come looking for that, I’m hoping it’s scarcer than your dated Lonely Planet hinted and suggest you take your senseless garb elsewhere. Like Mars.
Okay, fine, maybe they want to get rid of their blue jeans, flats and cotton t-shirts because they feel that is much too much in comparison to the poverty they suddenly find themselves surrounded by. So I can see them wanting to tone it down.
I certainly leave my cute boots and leather jacket when I travel to remote Nepal, but I also don’t wrap myself in a frayed old bed sheet and hold it together using old rope.
Nor do I wear duct-taped chappals and refrain from maintaining basic hygiene (read: shower), you know?
I don’t get these hippie tourists lugging around bottles of mineral water but bargaining the price of Wai Wai from the street vendors.
The only thing I am even more confused by is Nepalis replicating this hey-ma-I-left-planet-earth look.
(For more Nepali Keti visit nepaliketi.net)
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