something tasty with arteries sticking out

Even though today began at 6am, nothing really interesting happened until exactly 2:29 pm. Construction was a total bust. There were 8 Nepali workers, 5 volunteers, and exactly 1 crow bar so I petted goats. It looks like this will be my last week on the construction project as the 2 people staffing the clinic for landless villagers are leaving soon and I think I will be assisting the new UK med students there 6 days a week.

Anyway, at exactly 2:29 it started raining. ra i N I N G... like a switch was thrown, like the monsoon in Forest Gump, it was raining so hard the puddle drops were counter-dousing my knees. Daniel, our host mom Milan, and I were outside waiting for the bus for a trip back to Patan for authentic Newari food, which apparently is the Szechuan cuisine equivalent of Nepal. After a 20 minute Tuk-tuk ride we disembarked at the bottom of a gravel hill at the top of which was a footbridge over the Bagmati river. As we crossed the river, horns began to blow and I saw this procession of people carrying a large tray of vegetables that I assumed were being sacrificed to the river for some reason, maybe to stop the damned rain. So I asked Milan "Tarkari?", Nepali for vegetables, and instead of the usual Nepali head-bobble of assent I was shot the dirtiest look I think I've ever gotten in this country. It was a funeral procession carrying a body to the pyre by the river. It looked like a huge tray of cucumbers to me.

By the time we made it to Durbar square the rain had stopped. Instead of walking into one of the buildings we ducked into an alley so narrow that we all had to back out again to let a newari man with red eyes, dripping tears, and blowing snot-rockets by as he left the restaurant. If you took the American greasy spoon, wiped it on your shirt, then buried it in a dungeon featuring body parts hanging from the ceiling dripping blood on a dirt floor with walls blackend with soot and smoke and probably some more oxidized blood, that would be the restaurant. I don't think it had a name, or a sign, or a door, but the food was delicious and actually a lot less spicy than the weeping man had led me to believe. I ate ommelettes with buff meat and lentil flour, curried chickpeas with green chili and cilantro, potatoes with coconut milk and masala, and then some other buff dish that consisted of globs of gristle studded with blood vessels that tasted great but took about 3 minutes to chew. It looked like those lung tissue samples from cancer patients that little kids are shown in school as anti-smoking motivation. The 2nd best part was the slogan on the bottle of water we were served, "pure as the heart of a small baby." The best best part was that the entire meal for 4 people cost USD $3.