Is this the most horrible city in the world?

7 REALLY BAD PLACES IN THE WORLD’S WORST CITY

No reliable electricity, no sanitation, no transportation infrastructure, no plumbing, no urban planning (ha, ha, that’s a good one), no running water, no hygiene, no emission controls, no building codes, no hope. You may think we’re describing some godforsaken shantytown in war-torn Africa. But we’re not. This city happens to be the Capital of a peaceful, well-known Asian nation.

Now I’m not the sterile type to shy away from grim locations of decay and misery. I’ve been to the alleyways of Mumbai, recorded the brothel industry of The Philippines, bear witness to the desperate, alcohol-induced pagan rituals of Central America’s slums, volunteered in Harlem (when Harlem WAS Harlem), Photographed the dead-poor and despised Vietnamese Boat-People of Cambodia, and ran through the crumbling gutters of Sub-Saharan produce markets. Yet nothing prepared me to the sheer stench, filth, rot, and hopelessness that is Kathmandu – Nepal’s out of control capital of 1.3 million poor, suffering residents.

True, Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, may win Kathmandu for the title “Hell on Earth” based on a “feature-to-feature” comparison. Watch Shane Smith’s remarkable and brave VICE documentary and see how fucked up, fucked up can be. Then again, you kinda expect a West African city to be dreadful. Going to Liberia and finding it awful, is like picking a fight with Tyson and wind up in a hospital bed. Big deal.

Picking a fight with Woody Allan and find yourself in the emergency room, now that’s a real shock!

Our story begins with a song

Back in the 80’s an Israeli song about a Nepalese mythical stone bird perched in the middle of Patan’s magical, wooden-carved temples, became an instant hit that inspired hundreds of thousands of Israeli backpackers to seek out that distant, exotic Himalayan city of wonders.
30 years later, it still does.
I, like many others, imagined Kathmandu as a nicer, cleaner, better organized and more exotic version of India.
I was wrong. Very wrong.

The fact is India is the cleaner, nicer and better organized of the two. According to the CIA Factbook Nepal is among the poorest and least developed countries in the world, with about one-quarter of its population living below the poverty line. The UN Human Development Index ranks it as one of the lowest in the world, second in Asia only to battle-weary Afghanistan.

Inconvenient reality

Nowhere are these sad facts more evident than in the country’s largest, most densely populated city. Forget about an exotic hamlet up in the Himalayas. Kathmandu is an open sewer. Like any other sewer, as long as there enough water to shove the garbage, the waste, and the bodies downstream, well, that’s somebody else’s problem. Alas, when the dry season comes, and the rivers empty into shallow streams, all the s*** comes out to the open – and stays there until the next Monsoon.

Kathmandu used to be a smaller, more beautiful place. The entire area was once home to a string of independent small towns connected by a dirt road and confined by the geography of the bowl-shaped Kathmandu Valley. All was lovely and peaceful until the 70s and 80s came knocking on the doors. Ruled by a grossly inept monarchy, the government concluded that paving over the dirt road was enough to prepare the kingdom for the 21st century. Reality and internal migration did the rest.
Kathmandu grew – completely unchecked, unplanned, and supported by no civil infrastructure – to cover the whole valley in one massive, ugly sprawl.

What a nice person like you doing in a place like this?

The awful reality is made even worse by the rift between the environmental and economic calamity, and the pleasant and friendly people who created it. The Nepalese are among the kindest, most accommodating and hospitable folks you can find. Crime is low despite the abject poverty. Surprising as it may be, Kathmandu is a safe place to hang around. Unless of course, you happen to hang around when a 7.8 magnitude earthquake hits the place. (Disclosure: I recorded all my impressions before the destructive earthquake of 2015).

All of this begs the question: what are such nice people doing in a place like this?
Keeping this question in mind, let’s pay a visit to some of the unique places that make Kathmandu so memorable, starting with the bad and going downhill.

Prepare your rubber gloves and nose plugs. We’re diving in.

1. This is your Captain speaking, did someone see the landing strip?

It was a sunny, warm March day as our Boeing 737 descended into the Kathmandu Valley – a bowl-shaped depression surrounded from all sides by towering mountains. Flying in through the gap between the mountains the visibility outside my window changed from hazy to murky. I was a bit surprised at first. With a base elevation of 1,300 meters (4,000 ft.) and with no real heavy industry Kathmandu should have benefited from the Himalaya clear, crisp air, shouldn’t it?

Well, perhaps once a year when the weather is just right, and the stars line up in perfect order. During the rest of the year, Kathmandu’s chronic smog takes over your eyes, nose, and lungs. Check out this video shot by a commercial aviation crew as they try to locate Kathmandu’s landing strip.

 

Not that the view outside would lift your spirits. It’s all just endless, dense and undisturbed blanket of red brick houses crisscrossed by few semi-dry ravines. Once you go off the plane (assuming you landed safely – the airport is notoriously known for its poor safety record) and get into the scantily-kept terminal, you start to realize your preconceptions of Kathmandu may need some urgent reality check.

2. Child sex anyone?

Located in the center of Kathmandu, the Thamel is the hub of Nepal’s backpacking community. For many, this would be the first stop right after the airport.

Its narrow alleys are packed with noisy peddlers, cheap guesthouses, motorcyclists, neon signs and pedestrians of all shapes and colors. Moving through the bustling streets, you may notice a strange ambient buzz – like hundred scooters got their engines stuck in half throttle. The source is countless rattling portable generators. Nepal may have enough hydroelectric potential to one day power all of North India, yet its capital center suffers from chronic blackouts.

The Thamel itself is not substantially different than other similar backpacking districts in Asia. Just keep in mind that in Kathmandu this cheap, run-down, slum is actually the nicest part of town. Also, some of the things you get at the Thamel are not exactly what one would call “run-of-the-mill” products.

You can pretty much find everything over at the Thamel; cheesy T-Shirts of unknown quality, food that will challenge your Imodium pills, and North Face rip-offs. That’s not all. One can also find genuine Everest climbing gear, drugs of all sorts, and – apparently – also child sex.

I wish the last one was just a fluke, but it isn’t. Billboards all over the Thamel warn about the penalty for child molesters.

Then again, 200 meters away nightclubs advertise “Teenage Club – with shower”…WTF!

3. Running water is for wimps!

Before the 2015 earthquake destroyed much of it, Patan Durbar used to be a remarkable example of ancient wooden pagoda architecture. At the base of one of the pagodas there’s a long flight of steps leading to a broad paved depression with a beautifully carved stone fountain perched on its opposite side. There, waiting quietly in long, orderly line, stand the neighborhood locals. They didn’t come to take photos, nor to admire the scenery. Equipped with plastic jerrycans, they came here for water. So there you have it, a UNESCO World Heritage site used as a communal well.

Mind you; Patan is close to the city center. Imagine what happens on the city outskirts. We went to check it out for you.

About 10Km (6Mi.) south of Kathmandu center lies the large and quiet village of Bungamati. Quiet, because with practically no electricity, it’s hard to make much of a racket. That’s ok though. Bungamati doesn’t have running water, plumbing or sanitation either. Not even one those UN-financed water hand pumps you see in documentaries about aid relief in the Congo.

No, the folks at Bungamati use an old fashioned bucket well and wash once a week in the patio. They also share public toilettes and throw the waste and trash into the ravine below. Since we happened to arrive on a washing day, we all had quite an experience and shot some impressive pictures. I don’t want to even think what would have been our experience had we arrived a day earlier.

4. The gorge is so beautiful, so why am I feeling sick?

Since Nepalese live by the motto “Our waste is somebody else’s problem,” we went downstream to find out what “somebody else’s problem” might look like.

Being a closed caldera, the entire Kathmandu Valley drains through the Bagmati River. Over the centuries the Bagmati has carved a deep gorge on the south edge of the valley to join the mighty Ganges about a thousand Kilometers further on. An ill-kept rope bridge connects the two sides of the ravine. As we stood in the middle of the bridge admiring the view and the rush of foamy waters below, we started to feel dizzy. At first, we thought the bridge was swaying. It didn’t. It was the smell. Hard, pungent odor of feces, rotten carcasses, and chemicals. The Bagmati River was not a river anymore. It was the city’s main sewage canal – an open, unfiltered and untreated concentration of Kathmandu’s entire smut confined to a 20-meter gorge. I was still dizzy as we drove away.

5. Watch out. Love can kill you

The Bisnumati River flows through the western part of old Kathmandu. According to the books, the Bisnumati is one of the most important rivers of the valley. It provides water for drinking, cultivating agriculture and ritual purposes, and is considered holy for both Hindus and Buddhist. The name literally means “the beloved river of Lord Vishnu.”

The Nepalese must have a good sense of humor.

The “beloved” river is a rancid dumpsite of epic proportions. The filth covers the banks and pops out as little stinky islands of grime amongst the shallow dark soup. Semi-finished and overpopulated houses line both sides of the gutter in a dense undistinguishable heap. I guess someone marketed these slums as “riverfront property.” The books, however, are not entirely wrong. I did see locals wash their clothes, bathe and – believe it or not – drink (!!!) from the gray, cloudy liquid. Since I did not see any of them die on the spot, I can only assume their immune systems are worthy of serious medical research. Cure for cancer anyone?

6. Never mind the Star of David. This synagogue ain’t Kosher

So you had enough of Kathmandu filth, stench, and chaos and wanted to get away from it all. A narrow 22 kilometer (14 miles) winding road will lead you south and away from the crowded, polluted city. As the car Snakes up the forested mountain, the air clears up, and the high Himalayas reveal themselves in all their glory. “Perhaps the place is not so bad after all,” I thought to myself as we reached the end of the road at the Temple of Dakshinkali. The temple stands in the middle of a green, lush pine grove. A dirt pathway leads through a dense line of peddlers hawking colorful spices, knick-knacks, chickens and goats. It’s all very colorful and cheerful, and the merchants seem to be doing very well – especially the ones selling roosters.

All the pilgrims around me were well dressed (having done their weekly wash the day before, I presume), and appeared to be in high spirits as they shoved their way forward to the growing beat of drums and cymbals. I was surprised to see numerous Stars of David painted golden and hanged on every corner.

The symbol so closely associated with Judaism is also used in the pagan worship of the goddess Kali. Funny, the place was as far away as one can think of a neighborhood Synagogue, and yet it strangely felt home-ish.

So far everything was going just fine. In retrospect, this alone should have raised all alarm bells.

When we got inside the temple it was too late. The place was a dense slaughterhouse full of blood, decapitated heads, and gore. The priests were busy collecting live animals from the pilgrims and quickly dispatching them in front of the ecstatic audience, before moving to the next kill. The air was heavy with the smell of incense, ash and candle wax. Outside, beneath the wooden floors of the temple, the poorest of people were wallowing in a pull of blood and gore. They were collecting animal parts.

7. Colonel Kurtz retreat

“The Horror. The Horror.”

No tour of Nepal’s worst gutters is complete without a visit to  Pashupatinath Temple during the dry season. To say the place isn’t for everyone’s taste would surely win a Gold Medal in the Olympics of euphemism. If you are on the lookout for life changing experiences, this place is for you.

But then, so is rolling your car off the highway.

The Temple lies on the banks of the sacred Bagmati River, which is – as you can already imagine – not much more than a foul trickle of raw sewage. What happens in the next 300 meters, however, can make even raw sewage seem compelling. Read on.
Among its many uses, the Pashupatinath Temple also doubles as a popular Antyesti site. Antyesti is the Hindu funeral ceremony in which the deceased body is burnt at the stake, and its remains then pushed into a nearby holy river.

As you enter, your senses are immediately attacked by the strong smell of smoke, ash, and burnt flesh. Your eyes are irritated to tears by the thick smoke and your soul stirred by the site of semi-burned bodies and bones being shoved into the squalid waters below. The process is not an easy one to watch as anyone who visited the holy city of Varanasi, India can tell you. But, at least in Varanasi the remains are pushed into the mighty Ganges.

The Kathmandu difference

In Kathmandu, they are pushed into the shallow stream below, where kids armed with flip-flops try to make the scorched flesh move slowly downstream. Other adults soak in the mire beneath the burning ramps in search for valuables, such as gold fillings. One of them suddenly takes a mouthful of the gray, cloudy liquid, pulls out a toothbrush, and start brushing his dentures. 50 meters on boys play soccer barefoot on the dry and exposed river bed.

100 meters further on, families congregate on the stone steps and dip in the muck. Some of them wash their clothes. Others wash themselves. One mother breastfeeds a new generation while the old one’s exposed remains slowly float by.

Is there a silver lining?

Yes. It’s called Dwarika’s. A little piece of heaven in hell. But it doesn’t come cheap. This upscale boutique hotel is the perfect escape from the horrors outside. It also demonstrates what Nepalese architecture combined with high standards of care and preservation can create.
It will be a while until I’ll again contemplate coming to Kathmandu. I hope by that time this nation of charming people would turn a place like Dwarika’s into the norm rather than the exception.

Have you been to Kathmandu in the dry season?

What was your impression?