Kathmandu: ALL-CHANGE

rain and demons

…
from remote Ladakh, very Northern India
to Nepal, capital city
...
from cool and bright and open and fresh
to warm and sticky and shadowed and muggy
...
from empty streets and paths
to heaving alleys and lanes
to walk-halting traffic jams on thin roads
...
from a Buddhism
to another Buddhism
...
from tiny villages and two largeish towns
to a giant city sprawling for miles of jagged sullied concrete outside the historic fabulous old
...
from stretched out
to everything on top of each other, packed in, one thing after the next
jammed stuffed crowded rammed
...
from slow
to busy
to busier
...
from gaps between
to the next starting before the last has finished
and more already starting before those have properly begun
...
from muted
to garish
...
from low-rise and wide-open sky
to eaves and rooves above thin streets
...
from stretching out in space
to banging head hard on stone beams
after insufficient stooping in ever-shrinking rain-flooded alleyway
...
from loosely curving lanes
to tight zigzaggery
...
from junctions
to crossroads
...
from one choice, maybe two,
to many
...
from long strides
to short inhibited steps
...
from tallest person in the street
to tallest person in the street
...
from chicken chow mein
to buffalo chow mein
...
from Tibetan / Ladhaki or Indian food
to Chinese or Indian or Nepalese
...
from ice-melt rivers in torrential spate
to rainy season deluge
...
from Buddhism and Islam
to Buddhism-merged-Hinduism
...
from 3500-metre altitude issues
to none
...
from, often, no beer for 240 k
to beer-shops on the corner
...
from breakfast of local honey with tandoori roti from alley-side bakery oven
to hotel buffet breakfast
...
from new streets solely of hotels and guest-houses
to ancient old and older

...

from no pizzas no burgers no franchises no coffee-shops full of westerners

to no pizzas burgers franchises or coffee-shops full of...
...
from stark rocky plunging valleys
to intricately ornamental beauty
...
from rock-falling scree-slopes
to post-earthquake precarious walls
...
from no-mirrors and
i-forgot-what-i-look-like
to oh shit, really?
...
from tumbledown grey-stone hovels
and robust square elegant white new houses
to dilapidated, wonky, bowed, sullied, yawing, crumbling
...
from Leh
to Kathmandu

…

…

…

while this is a picture from my next perch
above Sedi, near Pokara