what a day !

it's funny how this goes. have had so many awesome days flying in the last year, saw many places, met lots of people. but what makes me come back to my computer and stop, at least for a moment, being super lazy in writing this blog, is almost ordinary conversation.
on my way back from the dinner, walking to my room, i meet my hotel's manager. we exchange a hello, a few jokes and i almost keep on walking as usual. but for some reason i just sit on the stairs and we talk for a long time. talk about kings, tigers, rhinos, maoists and random things from "ordinary" life in Nepal.
today started just like any other day, after "the same" breakfast i took a friend's kid for a flight. "the same" is really the same, same breakfast i get every day at the same place, The Family Garden Restaurant in Lakeside. friend's kid is this funny easygoing 6year old named Cameron, who i enjoy taking flying just for his company. a flight was in fairly strong mid-day conditions, thermaling way over the take-off, super light on my wing, a bit nervous about that, but having a great flight.
then the day got more interesting, as this american asshole walks into the office. i've had a few thousand tandem passengers, and most i feel like i understand pretty well. some are straight up awesome, some not so much. but this guy was a gem. afterwards my buddy said he was one in a million. not sure about the statistics of assholes in the world, but he was hands down biggest douche i've met in the last 5 years. maybe longer. ya, probably way longer. but thanks to him i got to see a local public hospital, got to meet a couple of very nice Nepalese, and realized how some of us look sometimes, ignoring the local culture and local people.
thanks to Mr. American Tourist i got to see how they are really perceived. how even for Nepalese, the money earned with such attitude is not worth it. how the locals are willing to give up a couple hundred bucks of income to safe their integrity and good spirit. how they won't let one tourist with a chip on his shoulder to ruin their day. and most importantly i again realized i'm not being looked at as one of "those" tourists.
so sitting on the freezing cold stone staircase, in a company of my hotel's manager, i'm really enjoying his company as we talk story. in the back of my mind is "the tourist", with whom i speak the same language, but there is no way in hell i could ever have a conversation with.
and so we keep on talking.
about him growing up in Chitwan in southern Nepal. his simple house getting almost pushed over by a rhino which came to scratch itself. about the asian black bear ripping the face off of his brother in law.
about how him and his wife got attacked by a rhino. she couldn't climb up the tree even though he keeps trying to push her up. they know if they run they will probably get killed. so together they hide behind the tree, only to feel wind blow by as the charging rhino runs by, unable to stop or turn fast enough.
about a group of villagers carrying a sick neighbor through the jungle to see a doctor. but half way through their journey they encounter a tiger. everybody gets scared so they climb up the trees, leaving the sick person in the stretcher on the path. and so they watch, as they are all terrified for their own lives, how the tiger slowly approaches the sick person on the stretcher and eats him.
we talk about the faith of Nepal, royal family, current politics. where the english isn't good enough we use gesturing and body language until he has to get back to work and i start feeling too tired and cold.
so as i'm typing this, again i'm reminding myself how very glad i am to be in a cold room with candles for light and sporadic internet connection. how good it feels to walk on the street and having a bunch of kids knowing and screaming my name. and how proud i am not to be one of those assholes from out there.