Bye-bye Hotel Harati, you of the gray towels and the tepid water. We tearfully said goodbye to our travelmates but very thankfully moved on to Courtyard Hotel.
The old and the new
We were greeted at the front desk by Michelle, the American wife of the owner, Pujon, a Nepali Prince who is now running his family’s 6-story, 50,000 sq. ft. palace as a hotel. What a change that was! Half the guests and Michelle and Pujon were spread out on sofas in the courtyard surfing the internet wirelessly. Everybody talking, laughing, e-mailing, drinking tea. Michelle told us they screen all their guests. She said that if you are an ex-pat, you are automatically allowed in. There were two real Mexicans staying there,
Ancient street dog
Rebekah and Pedro Martinez. Pedro and his father are the developers of Real del Mar, Alimar, La Joya and numerous other developments in Naryarit. I told Pedro I knew both his father and his mother as they are advisors to P.E.A.C.E.
Pujon was educated abroad. He was sent to boarding school in India at the age of 5. When he was in high school, his sister went to college in Seattle, and she brought him with her to study there. He is thoroughly, and I mean thoroughly, Westernized.
The Garden of Dreams
Somewhere along the line, he met and married Michelle, totally against his mother’s wishes. His mother is terribly spoiled. When she was a little girl, she had a wedding for her doll. She invited 500 people and she and the doll were carried through the streets of Kathmandu, each on their own palanquin. There were musicians and dancers and all the people received candies and favors. In Nepal, most marriages are arranged. The wives come to live with the son’s family and are totally treated as slaves to the mother-in-law. They must cook for
Patan temple
her and wash for her, and bathe her and dress her, and do her hair and rub her feet. Pujon’s mother had been looking forward to her good Nawari daughter-in-law for many years only to find that her only son had married a liberated American girl who couldn’t even cook American, let alone Nawari. She will not talk to Michelle, and has presented several suitable girls to Pujon as she does not recognize the legitimacy of his marriage. Michelle says that his father and his sisters have warmly accepted her, so she is happy enough with the way things stand.
Just hangin' around
Pujon and Michelle’s hotel is an oasis right in the middle of the densest part of the city. We still had to suffer the electricity outages, but at least there was always hot water. Our room was a little strange. There was cream-painted wood paneling about three feet high running around the rooms (we were staying in a suite). And the walls above were painted black. Black would be a weird color in a sunny environment, but in a country where you have usable electricity for 4 hours a day, it was downright bizarre.
Kathmandu at night
At night, we had to train the candles to reflect off the ceiling, which was also painted cream. Black is an interesting color. I thought it absorbed all color. But it appeared to be different colors in different parts of the rooms. In some places it looked blue-black, in other places green-black, in others moonlight-black, in still others, a deep, dark ebony. I didn’t know there could be so many shades of the same color, black. Ed loved the effect. I did not.
Black bedroom in the Prince's palace
