Kathmandu is loud, crowded, dusty, and jam-packed. There are only occasional sidewalks interspersed with rubble or piles of dirt, and because of this when walking around the city one generally walks in the street. What elevates what should be a normal excursion to adventure sports levels is the traffic in the streets with you. When I arrived at the Kathmandu airport, signs were hung along the ceiling with historical and cultural trivia about the country. I noticed that one of them said that car horns are a means of creative expression in Nepal… that’s one way to put it. With cars, micro buses, tuk-tuks (three-wheeled public transportation vans), and motorcycles zooming down the dusty streets, horns are being blared constantly to alert both the other drivers and those walking in the streets of their intentions. Vehicles don’t move in straight lines, but in swerving S curves, stopping and starting and constantly narrowly avoiding crashes. It makes me incredibly impressed by their driving skills actually– you have to be constantly alert and supremely adept with your driving abilities, especially since you’re not just avoiding other vehicles, but also people, street dogs, and the occasional cow in the street. Let’s just say I would not last a second on those roads.

But I have to last on them when walking at least. Crossing a street is a somewhat terrifying affair. Crosswalks generally don’t exist, and the method instead is to walk directly into traffic and expect everyone else to anticipate you and swerve around you accordingly. Thus, every street crossing feels like a dance with death and I still have never been able to do it alone, instead clutching the shirt of whomever I’m walking with so that I’m not separated and run over.

It’s so dusty and polluted in Kathmandu, many people (including me when I remember) cover their faces when going out

Staying with local Nepali here has given me the opportunity to take public transportation around the city instead of the normal tourist method of taxis. This generally means either cramped “microbuses” which are minute vans packed full of people, or the unforgettable tuk-tuks, which seems to teeter over every pothole on their one front wheel and feel like they have no suspension. Yet it is so interesting to ride these modes of transportation so different from the subways and public buses back in the states. Not only for the novelty of it of course, but because you really get to see and FEEL the city from them. And I mean feel, because ever bump, swerve, and turn jars your senses into noticing everything that’s going on around you. As someone new to it, you can’t help but be wide-eyed and taking in all the sensations around you.

My first of many tuk-tuk rides! Rickety.

The view from inside a tuk-tuk. Crazy streets!