Irene Peroni describes the tourist ghetto of Thamel as a game of snakes and ladders
In the day your plane lands at Kathmandu airport and an obnoxious taxi driver in an antique car charges you a fortune to dump you in the middle of its urban chaos, you quickly learn to navigate Thamel. It’s like snakes and ladders. Whatever your destination, and however close, a series of obstacles will hold you up. You have to walk very briskly, look down and skirt teeming humanity. There are the drug dealers offering you pot, fruit vendors with their one-dollar-a-piece apples, rickshaw drivers, touts who pretend you’ve met before and try to talk you into going on a trek with their agencies. Each time you hesitate and stop, you slip back a few squares. Then there are the ragged ladies shaking empty baby bottles, the kids begging for biscuits, the guy with the mini-chess set, tiger balm, flutes, sarangis. If you are scared of reptiles, then you might also have to cross the road to avoid walking next to a snake charmer petting a two-metre python.
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