Spit on.  That is what happened to Donna-Rae as she was leaving one of the temples in Kathmandu, Nepal.  A woman spat a “I hate you” wad, never having met or spoke with Donna-Rae.  It was a new experience for Donna-Rae, an old one for Gregory.  When they talked about the incident later that evening, Gregory said it proved that traveling shows how wrong one can be about a country.  The spitter did not know if Donna-Rae was from Austria or Alaska, all she knew was what she saw, a white Western face.  He put a positive side to it by saying, “So she spit on your back, no big deal. The last time I got spit on by woman it was from the front, but all she could manage splatting was my boot.  Of course that was by a bitch-born daughter of Hades who was hot because I would not pay for her favors.  Forget it. I did, until you reminded me.  What I haven’t forgotten are the camels that spit on me.  Now camels, they can really let a honker fly with deadly aim.  And like the woman who spit on you, they have no clue about you, you’re just a target.”

     Posupati, or the “Burning Ghats.”  This photo shows the entrance to one of the few places in Asia where a tourist can easily photograph the cremation of bodies.  There was a fee charged to enter the area, and then guides tried to assign themselves to the tourist for another fee.  It was an unusual tourist attraction, the burning of the dead. 

     Motorcycles had multiplied since Gregory was here several years ago, and that was manifested by an increase of motorcycle rental businesses.  Part of the obvious was from the influx of inexpensive motorcycles on the streets, small displacement (engine size) motorcycles from China.  Another part was from the rising capital base of entrepreneurs in Kathmandu, the major city in Nepal.  Tourists had the money to rent motorcycles, creating a demand; thereby creating a group who rose to supply.  A small rental bike, big enough to haul Donna-Rae and Gregory around, cost about $10.00 per day, not a bad deal when compared to the $250.00 a day rental agencies charged for bigger bikes in California or Munich.

     Nepal was a strange but colorful mix of East and West.  It was there the motorcycle travelers had to make decisions about between riding a motorcycle across Nepal or circling, then flying over Bhutan, India, Burma and into Thailand.  Gregory wanted to take a rental motorcycle and hunt a Yeti in the Annapurna Conservation Area, something environmentalists would hunt him for.  Donna-Rae wanted to taste, buy, touch and smell the colorful and differences from West to East.  It was a hard time for both.  Maoists, police, sickness and Buddha made the decisions for them.

     While Gregory hunted the streets of Kathmandu for a large motorcycle, Donna-Rae looked in and at shops, stupas, temples, burning corpses, and Freak Street.

     Street life in Kathmandu, Nepal, pictured above, was busy and noisy from 10:00 AM until 10:00 PM.  The color, noise, and masses of people made both Donna-Rae and Gregory yearn for the quiet roads through the far north of Sweden and Norway.