The Peace Correspondent (37 page)

“Eight years with the sixth Gurkha Rifles, I never saw a kukrit like this,” grumbles ex-Captain Sandy Horner, Sandhurst graduate. He examines the polished, etched, curved knife -- weapon and symbol of Nepal's mountain mercenaries.

“Army-issue kukrits are made in Dharan, Eastern Nepal,” says Horner. “Black scabbards, none of this fancy work. Sixteen inches of solid, functional steel. The lads could lop heads off with them.”

He scornfully tosses the offensive weapon down among the peacock feathers, Tibetan paintings, prayer wheels, masks and carvings piled before the sidewalk hawker squatting on a stupa in Kathmandu's Durbar Square, a complex of intricately decorated temples, pagodas and palaces.

Nepal, the world's only Hindu kingdom, was closed to the outside world until 1952, when 250 visitors came. Now tourists bring in as much foreign currency as the mercenaries. Culture-seekers clutching the All-Asia Guide admire the holy places and ancient cities, trekker/adventurers in khaki shorts and heavy
hiking boots bicycle the rough streets and drug-trippers in billowy, cotton Indian pants smoke the treasured Nepalese hash and savor apple pies and brownies in Freak Street coffee shops.

But even the capital, Kathmandu, with more shrines, pagodas and temples than dwelling places, a wide-eyed, Living Virgin Goddess who is trotted out for tourists, and bovine sacrifices in the main square, seems little affected by the influx.

In the ancient square, this sharp, clear Himalayan day, Nepalese men sport topis (hats), baggy-bottomed jodhpurs and thigh-long, high-collared, slim-cut jackets; bare-legged farmers haul produce in wicker baskets on their backs; and women dangle great gold and jade earrings from pierced ears and noses.

Herds of goats, sheep and cattle graze in the downtown parade square. Dogs with marigold wreaths and red tikka marks on their foreheads for Dog's Day festival sniff at piles of food in the square. Hippies lounging on tall, multitiered stupas gaze dreamily down on the royal drum-and-bagpipe band, dashing in scarlet coats and leopard-skin topis, playing the Colonel Bogie March for Japanese diplomats going into Nasal Chowk, the royal courtyard, for a state function.

“Some 50 to 60 battalions of Gurkhas serve in the Indian army, as well as in the Nepalese army,” the retired captain explains, pausing to inspect the band. “Better conditions and more prestige in the British Army. We recruit them straight out of the hills, teach them how to put on boots and socks, turn on a light switch and use a Western toilet, then send them to Hong Kong for military training. Post them to Hong Kong, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore. It's a proud old tradition, Gurkha soldiers serving under British officers,” he states in tones as clipped as his sandy mustache.

“We'll go to the western mountains, where the Gurungs, the major martial caste, are recruited,” says Horner. “I want to see the burra-sahib, the old man who served as my senior officer 14 years ago. They show great love and respect for their commanding officers, you understand.”

The dawn's early light slowly tinges the Himalayas reddish-orange, the color oozing down from the tips like strawberry sauce poured on a blob of vanilla ice cream. We drive away from the Soaltee Oberoi Hotel past cow's garlanded with marigolds and colored with saffron or vermilion this Cows' Day Festival.

“The five day Tihar Festival takes place during the last three days of the dark half of the lunar month in November, and the following two days,” Horner says as our driver negotiates around cows, three-wheel scooters and buses topped with swaying passengers.

“The festival of lights honoring Laxmi, Goddess of Wealth and Good Fortune starts with Crow's Day, then Dog's Day, then Cow's Day. It's Self-Worship day tomorrow and, finally, Brother's Day. Celebrate with ritual bathing. Burning wicks are soaked in mustard oil, put on small leaf plates and floated on the waters, so the whole countryside is bright with colored candles and butter lamps,” he explains, as we pass half-naked men washing in icy mountain streams and village wells out in the countryside.

“Nepal is Hindu, with animistic and shamanistic traditions,” the old soldier explains. “They all believe in spirits and ghosts. Each Gurkha regiment has its own priest and temple or shrine, and they celebrate all the Hindu festivals. We'll stop at the Dakshinkali Temple of the bloodthirsty Goddess Kali ‘The Terrifying,' for the animal sacrifices.”

It is festive down by the temple in a gorge 28 kilometers from the capital, with beer and tea vendors, and children selling garnets and pleading for pencils. Peasants lovingly prepare their goats or chickens for the sacrifice before taking them into the temple, where grinning teenage boys casually cut their throats with long knives.

Warm red blood slicks the ground and dyes the boys' bare arms and legs like scarlet gloves and boots. The farmers plop the sacrificed animals into pots of boiling water, scrape off the fur or feathers and wash the carcasses in the river. Tonight, they will feast.

Outside Kathmandu Valley, in a thick, cold fog, we report to several police posts before breaking out into open country. Peasants along the road pack huge rice bags, firewood and cattle fodder. No beasts of burden share the work, not even wheelbarrows.

As the sun burns off the fog, we drive past farmers in native costume harvesting and threshing rice with foot-powered machines in an Asian Jean Francois Millet scene. Red mud houses, pale green rice and yellow mustard fields, vibrant orange marigold, purple and white chrysanthemums, red khannas, yellow asters and a backdrop of sawtooth mountain peaks piercing puffy clouds complete the setting. Terraced rice fields follow the contours of the steep hills in great thumb-whorl patterns.

Dogs, ducks, chickens and children scurry across the road before us. We stop at a sleazy town where every two-story, open-fronted building calls itself a hotel, for a Nepalese lunch of rice, dahl, spinach and cabbage cooked in charred pots over a wood fire on the ground in the back. Over clay, sake-cup sized containers of raksi, the local rum the ex-captain grows pensive.

“Ate this three times a day in the Gurkhas,” says Horner. “Took raksi out on patrol with us in jerrycans.” Nostalgia builds a thirst. “Innkeeper, another chotta-peg (small shot) of raksi,” he bellows.

A mad, horn-honking drive finally brings us to Pokhara, 200 kilometers from Kathmandu and a center for trekking in the 8,000-meter Annapurna range. The 20,000 trekkers a year who come to Nepal from around the world hire guides and porters (often women) or buy maps, and hike for days or weeks among the Himalayas, sleeping in villages and buying food on the way.

At the New Crystal Hotel, trekkers home from the hills kiss their Sherpas good-bye with hearty farewells: “If yer ever in Houston, y'all come see us, y'hear.” Climbers with huge backpacks, crampons and pitons, and clunky mountain boots stomp around the lobby. At the nearby airstrip, lama priests and Tibetan refugees with high cheekbones and mysterious, far-off eyes
squat on the ground amid mountainous bundles.

Mule trains and women beasts of burden crowd Pokhara's mud streets. We stop for directions and a Star beer in a shabby shop run by an ex-Gurkha transport driver. His older son is in the army. The younger one sits at a rickety table learning English so that he, too, can follow the family tradition.

Outside, ducks honk like brass carriage horns. The brittle rattle of the Nepalese army machine gun training echoes from a nearby field.

As we approach the Gurkha camp, the rubble road turns to smooth pavement. After the town's subcontinent shambles, the camp's spit-and-polish order seems almost unnatural.

A young English lieutenant with a Basil Fawlty accent, wearing the black, orange and green web belt of the 6 Gurkha Rifles, receives us in the officer's mess. Here, it is all soldier talk peppered with the initial's beloved by military types; 2IC, ADO, RSM, ARO and OC Sahib. (A card on the table reads “From RSM, PMC8 all members WOs/sgts, men, BGC to RSM, PMC8 all members WOs/sgts, men TDBG.”)

“England is the favorite posting for the Gurkhas,” the lieutenant explains. “This is because of the sights, and the friendly people in the pubs, who treat them well.”

“They are also posted to Belize, Brunei and Hong Kong. None in Northern Ireland, though, because of language difficulties.” What?

A Gurkha major arrives in a dump truck (“the staff car,” he jokes) to take us to the retirement home of the captain's old soldier friend, Lal Bahudur. His small farmhouse some miles in the country in the shadow of pyramid-like Macchupure (Fish Tail Mountain) is surrounded by fields of marigolds glowing orange in the pale dusk.

The old man's wife, Hem Kumari, greets us warmly at the door, serves tea and biscuits and goes in search of her husband. Cheap Hong Kong souvenirs and black velvet paintings of busty maidens line the walls of the neat little cottage. Kukrit, the Gurkha
regimental magazine, sits on the coffee table alongside a framed photo of a uniformed Gurkha officer in Buckingham Palace, waiting to be decorated.

A sound at the back door grabs our attention.

“Remember, they treat their former officers with great honor and respect, so don't be embarrassed,” ex-Captain Horner whispers as we rise to meet his old companion.

The arriving Gurkha's face breaks into a creased smile as he recognizes his former commanding officer, laughing and sinking a thin brown finger knuckle-deep in Horner's paunch.

“Ah, sahib, so wonderful to see you. But you are so fat.”

It is a kaleidoscope of impressions, a dizzying sensory overload of smells, sights and sounds. The balcony of Kathmandu's K.C.'s Restaurant and Bambooze Bar overlooks a scene exploding with action and exoticism, of sadhus (holy men) and trekkers, hawkers, hustlers and hippies, rickshaw drivers and snake charmers with baskets of cobras. The streets form a swarming maze of jostling, variegated humanity, like a crowd scene from an early adventure movie, except the extras are real people.