“Hey, girl! Do you need your ticket for reimbursement? Because if you don’t, I want to have it.”

I lifted my head and discovered the questioner sitting on the bed across a slim aisle from mine, a woman with a slightly doughy face and anticipating eyes.

“Oh, actually, I do need my ticket. Sorry!” I answered, flashed an apologetic smile and sunk back onto the pillow. But she’s not done with questioning yet.

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

“Going to college?”

“On a business trip.”

“What do you do?”

“English teacher.”

“How old are you?”

“Thirty.”

“Thirty? I would never have guessed you were thirty. I thought you were a college student.”

By then, I was sitting upright facing her to take the onslaught of questions. She looked my parents’ age, clad in a black sweater and a green fleece vest, hair pulled back into a low ponytail. She leaned closer to me to study my face, which she claimed to be younger than my age.

I thanked her and felt smug. I know my fellow Chinese, especially those my parents’ age, well enough to believe that my inquirer was not interested in flattering me, and the conversation that followed confirmed my conviction.

“Married?”

“No.”

“Boyfriend?”

“Yes.”

“Are you guys going to get married?”

“Yes, when he finishes his graduate school.”

“You need to hurry and get married. You need to think about having a kid soon. Women who pass thirty age quickly. Before long, you would be too old to have kids.”

I had known this woman for less than ten minutes. We still didn’t know each other’s name, but here she was, counseling me on my reproductive capability and with such motherly concern on her face that I felt equally offended and grateful.

Backpacking through my motherland after spending much of my adulthood in the United States, I found myself frequently squirming under the cross-examining of my fellow Chinese and their uninvited advice.

A taxi driver grilled me on my profession, my income, and my monthly expenditures. A fellow passenger on a bus queried if I was making enough money to afford a house and advised that I start saving for a down payment. A hostel roommate suggested that I quit doing pushups because Chinese guys find muscular girls unattractive.

I couldn’t bring myself to simply rebuff them. As the saying goes, when in China, do as the Chinese do. Plus, I am Chinese. I couldn’t snub my own culture just because I had been exposed to a Western concept called “privacy,” which is still a nebulous puzzle in my head anyway.

Questions regarding someone’s earning ability and marital status are out of the question to Americans, I get it. But why no one thinks it’s a big deal that two guys loudly swap tales about circumcision in office?

And there was this time when I asked a colleague whether he voted for Obama or Clinton after the Democratic Primary in Virginia. “Well,” he hemmed and hawed and fidgeted and shifted. “Just so you know, it’s kind of someone’s privacy.” How could I know it was such a private matter after he’d been openly trashing Hillary for weeks!

I learned never to offer unsolicited advice to an American unless I see that person heading to a cliff. Even then, it’s better to start with “I don’t mean to tell you what you should do with your life…” because apparently the other side of being warmhearted is being meddlesome.

But in China, leaving someone alone also means being “cold-blooded.” My mom called me “irresponsible,” when I suggested that my cousin has a right to a Ph.D, because that’s solely her own decision to make. “You cousin will end up an old maid. No Chinese guy will marry a girl with such a sky-high degree.”

So I devised an ethically ambivalent strategy to handle such cultural ambiguous situations—lying. To tell a Chinese that I’m a married woman who’s quit her job and left her husband behind to travel solo, I would likely get an earful about the danger of “not guarding my nest” or “planning my life responsibly.” To say I was single would invite a heap of dating advice, so I became either a graduate student or busy professional awaiting to marry her boyfriend once he gets out of graduate school. I enjoyed the perverse pleasure of reinventing myself into an architect major, a college teacher or a fashion boutique owner. It’s like outfitting an avatar in real life, and when the barrage of questions came, I felt it’s someone else’s life, not mine, being pried open.

I also enjoyed some old-fashioned Chinese meddlesomeness. When an older Chinese woman took me under her wings, because I was this “poor skinny girl on her own,” I felt the warmth of a busybody aunt making inconsequential fusses about my welfare, except that she won’t tell on me to my parents if I don’t follow her guidance.

“You are not dressed warm enough,” my sleeper-cabin mate said apprehensively, after telling me that she has a daughter my age. “Here, put on my coat if you don’t have one,” she ordered and thrashed in my hands a gray fluffy jacket.

The conversation sprang out over corn liquor, after a dinner of stir-fried green beans, potatoes and eggs. The storyteller, a sinewy guy with bronze skin and dark spiky hair, was the youngest son in the Jinuo family we were boarding with for the night.

A day’s hiking through tropic jungles, across rubber tree plantations and rice paddies in Xishuangbanna at the South end of China’s Yunnan province sent us into this Jinuo village at the hillside the Youle Mountain.

The Jinuo people, with a population of 20,000, is often called the “last minority nationality” in China, as they are the last ethnic group to be given the status of national minority by the Chinese government.

Officials like to visit Jinuo villages. It’s good politics to be seen among members of the smallest national minority. Every year, a national leader attends the Jinuo celebration of the Iron-Forging Festival, which is the equivalent of Han Chinese’s Spring Festival and Westerners’ Christmas, to show that Beijing’s warmth shines on every remote corner of the country. Local officials visit Jinuo villages from time to time to bring their care. “And they like game animals,” the young Jinuo storyteller informed us, holding the gun erect on his lap. “We made the gun ourselves, and it can kill wild hogs.”

Pun intended, there is a catch. It is illegal to kill wild animals, and those gastronomical officials are supposed to enforce the law. So the hosts hide the guns and bring out the game dishes. They tell the guests that the beasts died of natural deaths. Occasionally the diners bite into bullet scraps. Some officials who are serious about their duties would ask what they were. “We just pretend we don’t know and raise a glass to toast the greatness of the government,” the storyteller said with a smirk.

He had traveled around the country as a traditional Jinuo dancer with a circus and speaks good Mandarin. The dim radiance from the light bulb hanging down from the ceiling beam cast his shadow long on the wooden wall. A hint of red peeked out on his tanned face. Stories kept flowing with the corn liquor flowed.

The legend goes that the Jinuos had an epic battle with the Dais, the largest ethnic minority group in Xishuangbanna. The Dais won. They drove the Jinuos up into the mountains and occupied the fertile plains. The Jinuos and the Dais don’t marry each other.

A Jinuo woman weaves to make traditional dresses.

“The Dai written language is like worms crawling on banana leaves,” our storyteller scorned.

But wormy characters beat no character at all, right? The Jinuo language is oral only.

“We had a written language a long time ago,” the storyteller informed us eagerly. According to folklore, all the Jinuo wisdom and characters were written on a roll of ox hide, and one Jinuo man was the assigned keeper. One day, he crossed a river with the hide in his pocket. The hide was soaked, so he made a fire to dry the hide. “The more he roasted the hide, the better it smelt,” the storyteller said over laughers. Finally, the starving currier succumbed to the temptation and ate the hide. “There went out written language.”

Most Jinuos live at the Youle Mountain, but a small tribe reside a dozen miles away. “They were stragglers when our ancestors came and found this land.” On their way to their final settlement, Jinuo folklore goes, some members of the pioneering tribe caught crabs in a stream and started boiling their catch. They expected the crabs to become pale as other meat would do, but saw them turn red instead, so they kept boiling. The troop started moving again, and planted a banana tree to mark the location of the crab-boiling lingerers.

The author in traditional Jinuo dress.

Banana trees grow extremely fast, “so after just an hour, the tree grew a few inches, and the people left behind thought days had passed and there was no hope to catch up. They stayed and built around the spot where they boiled the crabs.”

His parents were cooing and humming to the kids. His wife bustled about, cleaning around the house and pulling blankets out of a closet to arrange a makeshift bed on the floor.

She was a silent and busy figure. The lighting was too dim and she never got close enough for me to see her face.

“Getting a wife isn’t easy,” the young man took a swig of the corn liquor, cast a glance at his woman and said. In older days, a Jinuo man had to work as a laborer for three years for the family of the woman he’s pursuing in order to win the parents’ consent. “Now the levy has been reduced to a year.”

So he had to get up early everyday to clean up around the house. During the day, he worked in their rubber tree plantation (“Her dad would complain, if I got up later than he did.”). And in the evening, he was the old man’s drinking buddy (“Once we both got so drunk that we passed out under the table.”). And only brief leaves were allowed (“I came back home for the Iron-Forging Festival. I stayed for three days and he was upset.”).

But the payoff was terrific. Not only did he get a wife, she also came with a thousand rubber trees. And it looked like he’d never have to do sweeping or cooking again, with her whirling around taking care of things.

More Xishuangbanna Photos

Lijiang, the ancient Naxi city, received traders from as far as Nepal and India in the tea-horse days.

The Naxi people, an ethnic group with a population of 300,000, lives in the mountainous region in Southwest China where three provinces—Yunnan, Sichuan and Tibet—meet. According to China’s Baidu Encyclopedia , it’s a bad idea to whistle in a Naxi house. They think whistling is summoning the ghosts. According to our driver, a slimly-built young guy, Naxi people love those with full statures, “so we call our girls ‘fat golden sisters (pang jin mei)’ and the guys ‘fat golden brothers (pang jin ge)’.” We called him pang jin ge. He giggled.

In his grey van, our pang jin ge was taking us to a preserved section of the “Ancient Tea-Horse Road,” the silk road of Southwest China. Cutting through pine groves, tracking mountains streams, etched on cliff faces, the route took tea and silk from Sichuan and Yunnan provinces to the frigid Tibetan plateau and down to the warm valleys and plains of Nepal and India.

Back in those days, Naxi traders bought Han Chinese products, packed their horse caravans and headed into the mountains to barter with Tibetans.

Lijiang Night

At the bank of a large emerald lake called Lashi, we abandoned the van for horses. These Lijiang horses, named after the ancient Naxi trading hub, were short and lean, “but they are built for long treks in the mountains,” the horse owner proudly pronounced.

“Do you want to race horses with me?” a youngster with an impressive mop of hair asked, stooping in front of the barn and smoking a cigarette. I didn’t take the challenge, but insisted on mounting the horse without any assistance to salvage my pride.

Off we went to the wriggling narrow trail. We were about to address the horse owner fat golden brother as well, but he laughed at the idea. “That’s a thing of the past. Now we like slender girls, just like everybody else does.” He told us he’s a descendant of Lord Mu, the powerful warlord that ruled over the Naxi region hundreds of years ago, so we called him “brother Mu.”

Not everyone could lead a trading safari onto the mountain path in the tea-horse days, said brother Mu. “There were bandits lurking everywhere.” We were treading on a steeply ascending dirt path in the shade of a sprawling pine grove. The sun rays were blunted into dim glow.

Brother Mu says he's a descendant of Lord Mu, a powerful warlord and trader.

So horse caravans were a monopolized business of Lord Mu. He sent an army with his processions of horses and traders. Bandits stayed away.

But even with a security force in the wings, riding a horse into the deep mountains was a treacherous journey. “People in the horse caravans carried three pieces of silverware,” said brother Mu. “A silver bowl, a pair of silver chopsticks and a silver bracelet.”

The legendary ancient tea-horse road.

Chinese in older times believe silver turns dark when it comes into contact with poison. A trek to the bosom of Tibet took several months to a year on horse backs. Drinking water was taken from mountain streams, and sometimes wild berries and roots became food. The travelers believed the silver bowl or chopsticks would be able to tell malignant substance from edible materials. And the bracelet could be used to temporarily block the blood flow in order to win critical survival time for a victim of a poisonous snake.

Upon finishing the story, brother Mu started a love song at the sight of a pair of attractive female tourists coming the opposite way, and his horse, which led ours, broke into a sprint.

“Push down with your feet. Clamp the horse flanks with your legs and lean forward,” brother Mu barked the instructions as he disappeared after turning around a big rock.

And that’s it, my train-in-the-fire riding lesson. My horse darted forward. I wondered if a silver bracelet would help a broken bone.

More Photos of Lijiang

When our bus pulled into Dali’s West gate, the departing sun was hanging above the iron-gray city walls over a thousand years old. The sky was pained stripes of pink, golden and purple.

Dali is located on a fertile plateau between the Cangshan mountains to the west and Erhai lake to the east. It’s the ancient capital of both the kingdom Nanzhao, which flourished in the area during the 8th and 9th centuries, and the Kingdom of Dali, which reigned from 937-1253.

December was the offseason at this otherwise busy tourist haunt. The cold air swept in from the lake as the rainbow sky turned slate. Small bands of sightseers speckled the narrow streets meshing mud-brick houses with white walls and arched black shingle roofs. The city was alight for the visitors with rows of shops beckoning them in for souvenirs, crafts, snacks and drink.

We were out hunting for food and wandered into a street dimly lit except for pink light blazing out of every other shop. Each had similar settings: long couches lining the walls, a coffee table in the middle, pink florescent lights beaming on posters of scantily-clad human figures, and women wrapped in tight sweaters and knee-high boots lounged around on the couches, sometimes with men in their mix. It didn’t take too much effort to guess the goings-on at these houses.

So we went back to the brighter part of the town and walked into a restaurant that advertised local ethnic food on its window. We asked a waiter with hair that looked like Son Goku in Dragon Ball Z for recommendations. “If you guys are brave enough,” he suggested with a smirk, “deep fried water dragonflies are pretty tasty.”

Charlie and I exchanged a look and a nod: Of course we were brave enough.

We also ordered stir-fried bark and homemade plum wine to wash them down.

So they came.

The bark looked like the skin of the poplar—grayish white with black specks. It was chewy and a little bitter.

Then there were the “water dragonflies,” hundreds of them, fried golden, piling in a white plate and staring at us with their enormous eyes. They looked just like grown-up dragonflies except for teeny wings, also fried golden and translucent.

Charlie and I exchanged another look, wimpiness in each eye.

“I’ll follow you,” I half pleaded and half ordered.

Charlie drew a deep breath and said “ok.”

So he picked up one of the unfortunate creatures with chopsticks, opened his mouth wide, sent the insect ever so cautiously in as if steering an airplane into a hangar, closed his mouth, drew another deep breath before started chewing haltingly and gently.

Now there’s no backing away for me.

I sent in a golden bug with its bulging eyes, slender body, stringy legs and all into my own mouth. My teeth cut through a thin crispy crust and hit some soft matter while the entirety of the inside of me coiled into a tight knot.

It tasted rather bland.

I was slowly uncoiling when Charlie piped up: “Do you feel that some of the legs are clinging to your gum and that you have to lick them off really hard?”

That’s it for bug eating.

And the “water dragonflies” turned out to be young dragonflies, so I’m still feeling deeply guilty for chomping on such lovely creatures.

More Photos of Dali

Really high-tech stuff!

“Have more food,” he proposed and gestured over a tableful of dishes—my last dinner in Nepal. The monsoon season had ended. Tourists were flooding in, and it was time for me to leave.

Two weeks before, I was haggling with Raju over fifty rupees.

I was hunting for a bus ticket to the Chitwan National Park and stumbled into a shop front that read “Adrenaline Rush,” attracted by the kayak and oar standing by the door. The office was small, enough for only two desks.

“Three hundred and fifty rupees,” a mid-aged man sitting behind a computer offered. Unlike most of the pushy vendors and travel agents packing the streets of Thamel, he was solemn and a bit reserved.

“How about three hundred?” I asked.

Yes, I was trying to take off an amount that’s less than a dollar from my purchase, but bargaining had been a habit for me, and most tourists in Nepal. It’s like playing a game and you want to feel a victory, no matter how small it is.  And fifty rupees can buy a bottle of icy coke nonetheless.

“Ok,” said Raju and filled a bus ticket for me.

It felt like I was just warming up but declared winner in a wrestle.

“I like doing business with this man,” I said to myself.

After that, I bought another bus ticket and an air ticket from Raju. I haggled with him each time, and he always answered “ok.” In between those, I also got many sessions of free consultation from Raju and his men. I wanted to know how to best use my three days in Pokhara; They drew me a map and referred me to their Pokhara office. I wanted to know what to wear and bring to my trekking up to the Everest Base Camp; They gave me a list. I had forgotten to get a trekking permit from the Nepalese government until it was too late; They gave me a pre-approved license.

So the day before I was leaving Nepal, I went back to Adrenaline Rush to say goodbye to. Raju insisted on taking me out for dinner.

We sat at the backyard of a place called “Funky Buddha.” The night at Thamel started to throb. Thumping music from nearby clubs washed us over competing with the restaurant’s own band. We had to raise our voices to talk.

After a bottle of beer, Raju became lively and talkative. I gathered that he has a wife and a son who’s going to elementary school. “I see them little, because I work lot. Fifteen hours a day. No weekend. No holiday,” said Raju.

He shrugged away my sympathy and continued, “I don’t mind. I’m happy. It’s my own company. I feel good. My wife understands it.” Adrenaline Rush is a family business operated by him and his brother-in-law Nabin, a vivacious river rafting guide.

I felt slightly guilty. For sure Raju didn’t make much money from me even without buying me such a big dinner.

“But you are our friend,” he assured me. “Come back anytime. You can work for us as our Chinese interpreter. We will meet you at the airport. We will give you housing, food and free rafting.”

What a perfect parting gift—a sincere invitation to come back.

And I will, for the beautiful country with beautiful people. I would miss Raju and other friends I made in Nepal: Raj, the trekking guide, who instead of pushing his service on me, told me a cheaper way to go; Mona Lisa, the graduate student, who toted me around on her motorcycle and volunteered as my interpreter for my interviews; Parshu, the clerk at a cyber café I frequented, who smiled and said “Namaste” every time he saw me and quietly gave me discounts; the hotel receptionist, who offered me masala tea in the morning; and the nineteen-year-old waiter who came to my table to chat when he had some downtime and told me he wanted to open his own restaurant one day.

Nepalese, especially those at Thamel, the grand central for tourists, can be push and nagging, when it comes to selling their merchandise or service. But most I’ve met are happy making money the upright way. They are even happier if they feel they are playing good hosts. They want to know that the guests are having a good time in their country and they are proud if they are contributing to pleasant experiences. A compliment to their food or service or the beauty of Nepal can always win the biggest smile and sometimes a small gift.

And no matter how hard it is to make a living in Nepal, some of them will gladly relinquish some profit for friends.

Goodbye, my Nepalese friends, for now.

November 25, 2009/Fu Xing Men Starbucks

Middle-aged woman talking into a cell phone: “I’m having trouble thinking of a gift for him/her? What can I get with a thousand dollars? (Yes, she said dollars!)”

November 25, 2009/Fu Xing Men Starbucks

Middle-aged guy to a woman of unknown age since she had her back to me: “I have an apartment, a car and a stable job. I like to drink occasionally and to watch soccer. You know, the usual pursuits of a dude…”

December 7, 2009/Guo Mao I Starbucks

Middle-aged guy A: “How did you become interested in this topic?”
Middle-aged guy B: “When I was eight, I watched a movie about Lei Feng (A half real and half fictional figure created by the Communist Party who supposedly devoted everything he had–time, energy, money, and life–to the people, the party and the PRC and who supposedly wrote in his journal “Treat the people with the warmth of the spring. Treat the enemy like the fall gale that sweeps away that the fallen leaves.”). I couldn’t believe one person could be so completely selfless. Thus it sowed in me the determination to become a selfless person…I know you and I know your reputation. You are a loving person. You share my purpose. In a communist society, kind people and loving people will be successful. We can make lots of money together…”
Guy A: “You and your book have great potential.”

“Where are you from?” He tossed me the national opening line of Nepal.

“China,” I threw back the answer and kept up my stumbling down the slope of Sarangkot, a mountainside range overlooking the city of Pokhara and its lake with panoramic Himalayan views.

Kiran started trailing me, quietly, just two steps away. Then I had to pay attention to this slender dark brown figure. I pulled out my Ipod earplugs.

“What’s your name?”

“Kiran.”

“How old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

But he appeared at most thirteen, with shoulders only slightly wider than his roundish head, from which two enormous ears jutted out. A mop of dark hair covered his forehead like an inverted bowl and the joined bushy eyebrows took up a significant amount of the real estate on his face. Two slim arms protruded from a green T-shirt and a pair of faded jeans pouched on the knees hang above his ankles.

“Do you go to school?”

“Yes.”

“Why are you not in class today?”

“We are in our holidays. We are celebrating our biggest festival of the year.”

That’s right. Nepal was celebrating Dashain , the longest and the most auspicious festival of the year. It commemorates a great victory of the gods over the wicked demons, and the celebration last fifteen days.

Kiran became lively. “Every family slaughters a goat tomorrow. You see that guy? He’s going home with a goat.”

A wizened old guy with a red Nepalese top hat was wrestling a goat up the steep mountain path. The goat seemed to possess some knowledge of its imminent death, sat back and pulled the other way. One minute the man tried to yank the goat forward by its horn. The next he strained to push it up the slope by its hind.

Kiran giggled. “You see! Every one has a goat.”

A motorcycle roared by. A young guy rode on top and a young woman sat on the back seat, cuddling a fuzzy goat on her laps.

A taxi zipped by, bulging with passengers. Those on the back seats were trying to hold down a goat, which managed to stick its head out of the window.

A rickety bus huffed upward. Two guys sat on top, tending to a small fleet of goats.

The eighth day during Dashain is called the ‘Maha Asthami’. Sacrifices are held in almost every house through out the day. The night of the eighth day is called ‘Kal Ratri’, the dark night. Hundreds of goats, sheep and buffaloes are sacrificed.

“Is your family going to kill a goat, too?” I asked Kiran.

“No. My mom doesn’t have money,” Kiran said matter-of-factly and volunteered his life story.

“My dad left us when I was little. He’s with another woman somewhere. He calls us once a year, but we don’t know where he is, and I’ve never seen him since he left us. I don’t remember when that was. My mom does odd jobs here and there. I’m about to graduate from high school. I wanted to study medicine, but my mom doesn’t have money to send me to college. Now I want to join the British army.”

For nearly two hundred years, the British army maintains a Nepalese regiment called the Gurkhas . In 1814, the British failed to annex Nepal as part of the Empire but Army officers were impressed by the tenacity of the Gurkha soldiers and encouraged them to volunteer for the East India Company. Since then, the Gurkhas have loyally fought for the British all over the world. More than 200,000 fought in the two world wars.

I couldn’t help but casting a concerned look at Kiran’s small frame. The selection process for Gurkhas soldiers has been described as one of the toughest in the world and is fiercely contested. Young hopefuls have to run uphill for 40 minutes carrying a wicker basket on their back filled with rocks weighing 70lbs.

I wasn’t quite sure what to do with the information Kiran spilled. Was he soliciting donation? But he related his story in such a calm and dignified manner as if at such an early age he had made peace with life’s arrangements. Was I supposed to offer sympathy? But there was no trace of bitterness or helplessness.

We kept walking. The sun climbed higher. Clouds rose and draped over the illuminant silver peaks of the mighty Annapurna range.

We took a break at the foot of the hill. Kiran asked to see pictures in my camera and let out awestruck exclamations at the sight of sunrise over the Annapurna.

We stopped again for some coke at a roadside shop, watching more goats being dragged or transported to their doom.

Kiran walked with me for two hours, all the way from the quiet mountain road of Sarangkot to the bustling lakeside in Pokhara.

“Can you give me your email address?” He asked.

“Sure.” I said.

He also wrote down his on my notebook and started making his way back towards the mountains.

On the page, his careful writing read: “www com parhocing kiran.com.”

More Photos of Pokhara and Sarangkot

“Oh, he’s having a coffee and a fag by the river,” Steph the red-haired English girl said, fiercely munching on a piece of toast. Roger, her boyfriend and John the Irish, both worked on their breakfast with dedication.

I almost dropped my coffee mug, but quickly steadied myself and turned my head to the riverside. The morning fog was still hovering above the water, and Den was nowhere to be seen.

“A fag??” I turned back to Steph, set down my coffee, and asked.

“Oh~~~!” The three of them stared at me briefly, then burst into roaring laughter. The wooden sky parlor, which was our restaurant, was vibrating.

“Den is not having a gay man,” Luke caught his breath first and said. “A fag in English is a cigarette.”

Now that made sense, I guess.

I met John the Irish guy at a Himalayan village, and found that we both were heading to the Royal Chitwan National Park , which covers a subtropical jungle on Nepal’s inner Terai lowlands.

My orientation to English-Irish English started on the bus ride from Kathmandu to Chitwan.

“What’s the crack?” John told me, in Ireland, means “What’s up?”

“Americans say ‘awesome.’ We say ‘deadly’ or ‘bang-on,’’’ he coached me.

And there were others that are not fit for print.

John was an accountant, and the worsening economy swept him from his job. Luckily, he’d been planning a prolonged backpacking trip for a while, so he took off.

On our way from Chitwan’s bus stop to the nearby village, we met Luke, Steph, who are medical students from England, and Den, who’s a Thai artist. The five of us hang out together ever since. Den didn’t speak much English beyond “yes” and “no,” but he seemed to be laughing at exactly the right notes when someone else cracked jokes.

After breakfast, we gathered by the river and filed into a long slim dug-out canoe. Den appeared energized from his coffee and fag. Ganesh, our lodge manager and guide held a thick wooden stick across his laps, sat at the nose of the canoe. Our boat glided into the sandy river towards the deep of the jungle.

The fog parted slightly and soft morning sunrays brushed on the water. A warm breeze skimped across the swampy banks and the reeds bowed their fuzzy heads. Big white egrets strutted on the marsh. Azure king fishers perched on driftwoods. Little black swallows flocked to the sky from the crown of ancient trees. A piece of log with cracked brown bark drifted a few meters in front of our canoe. Ganesh pointed out the two ominous eyes set on top of the log, and we realized we were staring at a crocodile sailing across the river.

We abandoned the canoe at the river’s bend and started on foot in knee-high grass.

“Nice trekking shoes, Yanmei!” John pointed to my Merrill sandals and joked. “The leeches will love you.”

Yes, they will. I thought to myself and trained my eyes on my exposed skin for any blood-suckers.

I thought I made a smart decision by leaving my trail running shoes back in Kathmandu and packed only the sandals to the jungle. “It will be hot” was my reasoning.

When we were sitting by the river, sipping cocktails and watching the sunset the day before, John and Luke helpfully fed me stories such as a one-foot-long leech bleeding a person to death.

When the marsh came to an end and the jungle started, Ganesh laid down the rules for us:

Walk quietly.

If chased by a rhino, run zigzag or up a tree.

If a tiger attacks, throw the backpack on its path.

“Imagine a village kid here, the parents is not telling him ‘Look both ways for cars when you cross the street,” Luke ventured. “But ‘look out for crazy rhinos and run zigzag if they charge at you.’”

Ganesh was an observing and resourceful guide. Following the murmurs of the trees, he led us to a pack of gray langur monkeys. The black-faced creatures scurried between leaves and stopped to make faces at us. The sound of fallen leaves crunching under the weight of bodies gave way to golden rhesus monkeys and brown muntjac deer traveling through thick bushes. Gigantic footprints and massive piles of dung brought us to a little pond hidden in rippling reeds. At the patch where the sun hit, a dark brown knoll and a horn parked immobile on the water.

Rhinos have bad eyesight, Ganesh had told us at the beginning of the safari, but they smell and hear really well.

A breeze carried whiffs of human bodies across the pond. The brown knoll shook and rose. Soon the massive body of a single-horned Indian Rhinoceros emerged above the water, its armor-like hide damp and gleaming in the sun. It paused and turned its giant head slightly as if to detect the source of suspicious smell, and waddled imperially into the reeds.

We were still holding our breath after the rhino disappeared.

I was the first to break the silence: “It’s just bang-on!”

“It’s deadly,” John followed.

And I looked down. A tiny black leech was getting fat on the back of my right foot.

I asked every person I laid sight on (there were two) if there was a bus stop nearby. I got blank stares, head shaking, and strings of alien words.

Then I realized my question was dumb to begin with. There isn’t such a thing as a bus stop per se in Nepal.

There are buses.

They are usually so stuffed that every window is spilling out heads, arms, toes and other body parts. And another platoon of passengers is stationed on top of the bus together with bundled luggage and livestock.

The bus door is always agape even when the vehicle is scuttling. A teenage boy, who’s the conductor, dangles his entire body out, fingers hooked onto the doorframe, shouting the destinations of the bus and gesturing passersby to jump on board.

Someone hails the bus. The conductor bangs the flank of the bus with his free hand. The vehicle snakes its way out of the traffic and makes a screeching stop. The passenger runs up. The conductor jumps off. The passenger hops on. The conductor slams the bus again and it lurches forward. The conductor runs after the bus, leaps forward and hooks his fingers again to the doorframe.

So everywhere can be a bus stop.

Problem was, I was at a place where there was no bus.

It’s time to take drastic measures.

I positioned myself in the shade of a tree and put my arm out with my thumb sticking up.

Soon a blue truck stopped in front of me. Apparently the hitchhiking sign I learned from American movies is universally understood. I took out a map and pointed to the driver where I wanted to go. He poked at a main highway near the city. I nodded and clambered into the back of the truck. A spare tire became my seat.

The afternoon sun pounded on my face. The wind was coarse with dirt. I felt triumphant, like Kumari on her Chariot.

I was dropped by the highway. Now I had buses flying at me. I waved. One stopped promptly. The young conductor strained to understand me before giving up and slamming the bus to tell the driver to move on. But the driver turned to me and asked “Thamel?”

“Yes!” I cried out and looked at him with great expectation.

He nodded me in.

There was nowhere for me to go beyond the doorsteps. But the conductor barked some Nepali and people moved. Soon an empty patch appeared miraculously on the engine cover. I planted my butt on that warm patch, squeezed between a granny in red sari and a skinny young guy.

Just when I thought even a mosquito couldn’t possibly wedge into this bus, the conductor let several other passengers in. People again moved and piled onto each other tighter to make room for new comers.

“Could you let me know when we get to Thamel?” I craned my head backward to shout to the driver.

“Thamel?” he asked, as if hearing the word for the first time.

“Yes, Thamel!”

“Thamel?” He now turned to the guy in faded baseball cap sitting on his left, between whose legs the driver shifted the transmission.
The baseball cap guy shook his head. The driver shook his head, too.

I had my knees jammed into my chest. The bus charged full speed ahead, passing one dusty road after another, each city block appearing to me no different than the next. The conductor hang his body out and shouted with great vigor.

I had no idea where I was or where I was heading to.

I jumped off into the crosscurrents of cars, motorcycles, bikes, and rickshaws, when the bus made another stop.

I waved to an oncoming taxi, like a smart foreign tourist would do.