After another dish of momo (really hooked up on them) and a traditional tibetan soup called thukpa (very good) and a couple of Everest beers, sipped while taking photos of the Boudnath stupa at night with all the lights on, we decided it was finally time to return to reality and back to our place.
Since it was very dark we considered taking a taxi instead of walking.
And it was a good decision because we had a very interesting lecture on politics by our taxi driver.
His english was good so we ventured a discussion based on what he was telling us.
If we understood correctly it goes as following: our taxi driver is a royalist and is definitely not happy about the way the democracy is treating him.
He complained about having to pay a lot of taxes on his taxi vehicle but then he has to drive on roads whose condition is precarious and that gets totally flooded with every bit of rain (that bit is true, we had seen it with our own eyes just a couple of hours earlier).
The open potholes on the street often damage the cars and are creating even more chances of accidents than the not so safe driving of locals.
He then proceeded with pure logic to explain why the King was better for Nepal.
He said that when Nepal was a kingdom there were some dead people, but not many, 10 here, 12 there, more often than not less than 10. Very sad of course and by no means acceptable, but the numbers weren’t big nonetheless.
As soon as the democracy came there was a widespread killing and 20.000 people ended up dead.
Put like that there’s not much to argue, so we let him talk.
He then explained why the democracy is making more dead. Because it is corrupted.
It was his belief that the prime minister of Nepal is not fairly elected by the people of Nepal, he is instead the result of an agreement between several countries that have many interests in Nepal, like for example India and the US.
He did not explain what these interests were, although again his logic was linear.
We asked him what he thought about China since it’s on the other side of the border.
He said that they are ok because they don’t care who is leading Nepal.
When we objected that Nepal is still one of the most beautiful countries in the world he agreed but he said that very soon there will be another big protest and there will be more dead.
He reckons his opinion is very widespread in the country.
We cannot confirm that since he was the first local who discussed about politics with us.
He was a pleasant man, complaining just in the same way any other adult human being would complain about the government in his country and we actually took it as a good sign, we’ve seen far too many places where everyone is ‘very happy” not because they actually are but because they are terrified that if they complain they are going to end up in jail.
We had the last beer on the rooftop terrace of our hotel and then slept peacefully.
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