Escape from Kathmandu

1 Usually I'm not much interested in other people's mail. I mean when you get right down to it, even my own mail doesn't do that much for me. Most of it's junk mail or bills, and even the real stuff is, like, official news from my sister-in-law, xeroxed for the whole clan, or at best an occasional letter from a climbing buddy that reads like a submission to theAlpine Journal for the Illiterate. Taking the trouble to read some stranger's version of this kind of stuff? You must be kidding. But there was something about the dead mail at the Hotel Star in Kathmandu that drew me. Several times each day I would escape the dust and noise of Alice's Second City, cross the sunny paved courtyard of the Star, enter the lobby and get my key from one of the zoned-out Hindu clerksnice guys alland turn up the uneven stairs to go to my room. And there at the bottom of the stairs was a big wooden letter rack nailed to the wall, absolutelystuffedwith mail. There must have been two hundred letters and postcards stuck up therethick packets, blue airmail pages, dog-eared postcards from Thailand or Peru, ordinary envelopes covered with complex addresses and purple postal marksall of them bent over the wooden retainer bars of the rack, all of them gray with dust. Above the rack a cloth print of Ganesh stared down with his sad elephant gaze, as if he represented all the correspondents who had mailed these letters, whose messages were never going to reach their destinations. It was dead mail at its deadest. And after a while it got to me. I became curious. Ten times a day I passed this sad sight, which never changedno letters taken away, no new ones added. Such a lot of wasted effort! Once upon a time these names had taken off for Nepal, a long way away no matter where they were from. And back home some relative or friend or lover had taken the time to sit down and write a letter, which to me is like dropping a brick on your foot as far as entertainment is concerned. Heroic, really. "Dear George Fredericks!" they cried. "Where are you, how are you? Your sister-in-law had her baby, and I'm going back to school. When will you be home?" Signed, Faithful Friend, Thinking of You. But George had left for the Himal, or had checked into another hotel and never been to the Star, or was already off to Thailand, Peru, you name it; and the heartfelt effort to reach him was wasted. One day I came into the hotel a little wasted myself, and noticed this letter to George Fredericks. Just glancing through them all, you know, out of curiosity. My name is George, alsoGeorge Fergusson. And this letter to George was the thickest letter-sized envelope there, all dusty and bent permanently across the middle. "George FredericksHotel StarThamel NeighborhoodKathmanduNEPAL." It had a trio of Nepali stamps on itthe King, Cho Oyo, the King againand the postmark date was illegible, as always. Slowly, reluctantly, I shoved the letter back into the rack. I tried to satisfy my curiosity by reading a postcard from Koh Samui: "Hello! Do you remember me? I had to leave in December when I ran out of money. I'll be back next year. Hello to Franz and Badim BadurMichel." No, no. I put the card back and hoisted myself upstairs. Postcards are all alike.Do you remember me? Exactly. But that letter to George, now. About half-an-inch thick! Maybe six or eight ouncessome sort of epic, for sure. And apparently written in Nepal, which naturally made it more interesting to me. I'd spent most of the previous several years in Nepal, you see, climbing and guiding treks and hanging out; and the rest of the worlRobinson, Kim Stanley is the author of 'Escape from Kathmandu' with ISBN 9780312874995 and ISBN 0312874995.