Bundha!

I write this after having slept in the longest since I have been in Gorkha, 7:30. We left Kathmandu yesterday early in the morning, but midway home we got stopped by a Bundh, which is a strike or protest resulting normally in a road stoppage. The reasons for these vary from being hosted by one of the over 93 official political parties, or groups for ethnic or workers’ rights, or more local issues appealing to the authorities. Considering how few major thoroughfares there are here and how vital they are for the transportation of people and goods, these can be at least very effective at stopping the flow.

There is only one main road that goes west from Kathmandu and yesterday there was a Bundh. We were traveling in our minivan, which impressively only can be described as a clown car with the sheer number of bodies they manage to cram in these things using a mixture and real life tetris and yoga skills, when we arrived to a line of stopped cars, our driver, who was wearing what one would not be criticized for believing was the national uniform due to the sheer number of people wearing them, and Angry Birds t shirt, cut the engine and placed the emergency brake, a rock behind the back wheel.

For him along with the other Nepali on the bus, there was no questioning of what was going on and they seemed fine with it. In Nepal, Bundhs are fairly common and it was only a matter of time before we ran into one. The next two hours were spent drinking milk tea, milling about the town that was ‘hosting’ the bundh while eating the locally picked guava, and watching the helplessly outnumbered Nepali Armed Police Force try and calm down a crowd of young males who had taken the center of the road.

Eventually, while sitting near the van, we saw a wave of people running back to their respective vehicles, the Bundh had finally been broken up and it was time to leave. Now began the slow game of inching our way out of town. During the 2 hours or so of stoppage, on arguably Nepal’s busiest road outside of Kathmandu, on one of the heaviest travel days of the year (the first day of Deshian, a 15 day holiday), cars loaded with people and gifts for the upcoming festival, trucks over flowing with goats and other livestock unknowingly living their last few days before they are scarified (one of the days of Deshian is dedicated to sacrificing an animal, to cope with the need over 89,000 goats were shipped into Kathmandu during these past few weeks, in about a week, I will be walking up the over fifteen hundred steps to the old palace, along with mostly everyone else in Gorkha to participate in the sacrifice), and busses filled with a mixture of Nepali heading back to their villages for the holidays and tourists enjoying the high seasons weather heading to or from the Anapurna Region, where the majority of treks and climbing take place. These vehicles had jockeyed themselves into every possible orifice in an attempt to save some time, and thus a long unraveling process began, with surprisingly little use of the horns.

By late afternoon, I made it home to where my host father and uncles made up for lost time and poured me several glasses of our home brewed alcohol, Roxi. Soon I will be making it with Amaa (Nepali for mother). I asked them why there was a bundh today and they told me it was over a football game! Eventually, like many of my conversations with Nepali, I discovered through Napenglish and some elaborate pantomimes that the Bundh was in fact over football, but not as first suspected, an argument between two teams or supporters, but rather friends trying to petition the government to take action because their friend had been stabbed by supporters from the other team.

Today is the second of fifteen days I will have off for Deshian. Festivities kick into gear next week so this week I am planning of hanging out a lot with the family, trying to convince them to let me learn to cook (I am still struggling with getting them to allow me to clear my plate and have to plays games like “look over there” to distract them to give me time to secretly put the plate in the sink, I’m not even attempting to wash them yet). All of us Fulbrighters are also planning upcoming teacher trainings and different holiday celebrations for Access class. Halloween in Nepal!

Time to play some badminton I will fill you in more soon about this weekend’s rafting trip.

Thanks to the upcoming holiday there will be a lot more of this: