Kathmandu - The Illusion of Control
I tumble out of the plane in Kathmandu with sleep-crusted eyes and a slight hangover from the past night in Bangkok. Tribhuvan International is half-airstrip, half-busted parking lot and a place I spent 48 sleepless hours in just over a decade ago. But before I can light a cigarette or finish the first of a hundred tiny cups of chai, the subcontinent issues its greeting: a thousand angry horn blasts, an attack of touts, a peculiar smell, and a lot of physical contact.
I’m not in charge; I’m just here for the ride.
Kathmandu smells of kerosene, cardamom, and wet plaster. If Vietnam is a symphony of horns, Kathmandu is free-jazz. A child’s bicycle bell answers a truck’s baritone foghorn; a sputtering Suzuki coughs up the middle notes. Clutch burn and incense duel for top position in your nostrils. The concept of a lane or even basic road rules are mythology, yet everyone seems to make it work. Kathmandu’s workhorses are dinged-up Suzuki Marutis that would have been considered an “old car” last century. Inside: vinyl seats sweatier than a confession booth. The driver of my taxi plays lead conductor, tapping his horn in rhythms that translate roughly as: "I'm passing", or "I'm merely thinking about passing", or perhaps "We shall all die someday, perhaps now".
The April 2015 quake may have flattened plenty, but Kathmandu is less a disaster zone today than one would have thought. Temples may still wear bamboo scaffolding, you might spot hairline fractures in centuries-old stupas, but it’s surprising how much is looking normal. The city is rebuilding in layers: old brick, new rebar, and another post-quake brick of stubborn optimism.
The place looks fragile until you realise the broken stone on the footpaths are just a placeholder for the next renovation.
Surrender the illusion of control.
There is an hour - most evenings - when traffic in Thamel congeals. Engines switch off, only the horns keep breathing. Generators splutter into life as brownouts roll through on nobody's schedule; neon signs give up. In the sudden hush, no one complains. No one even looks at a watch. A gridlocked street becomes, briefly, a department store of street sellers.
Another day, what should have been an eight-hour ride to Chitwan mutates into eleven. “Traffic ahead”, the driver says with a shrug that could mean landslide, festival, continuous roadworks, or union strike.
Control is never on the agenda in the Indian subcontinent. You can’t conquer anything. You can barely make a dent. Instead, learn to sit, sip chai, and wait for the road to remember where it was going.
That, for now, is enough.
