Happy for blue skies
because sometimes they're a murky grey
I like to write about things that bring me joy, and most things about living in Nepal do. But it goes without saying that it’s not all roses. There are issues, of course. As I’ve often told people who ask me why I choose to live here, I like the issues here better than those elsewhere, if that makes sense.
One such less-than-joyful thing is the pollution and poor air quality. If you’ve never visited Nepal, you might imagine it to be nature’s paradise, and it is, in many ways and in many places. There is so much beauty.
But the Kathmandu Valley is a bowl, and very crowded, and in wintertime that, combined with the smoke from seasonal fires to the south or on nearby hills, often lead to days when the Valley is covered by a haze that just sticks. It’s not as bad—or not as bad as often—as for some of our neighbours. But there are definitely days when we are high up or even atop that dreaded bad air quality index, days when the sky is the color of gloom instead of blue, when you can feel it a little when you breathe and more people that pass you on the road are wearing masks than aren’t. Air purifiers help but mostly we just wait for the weather to change.
It happened a week or two ago, and likely will again before the winter’s over. But for now the skies are back to blue, and we’re all breathing easy again.
**
This morning I woke up from a dream where the pollution was terrible, I was struggling to breathe, and was trying to borrow or buy a mask from someone. It was one of those dreams that feels like it’s really happening, and as I opened my eyes it took me a bit to realize that it wasn’t just a dream: my room was full of smoke and my throat felt funny.
It did take me a while, in my sleep-addled state, to get just what was happening: a neighbour had started a bonfire, almost directly under my left bedroom window, five floors below. She does this once or twice a year, a big garden clear-out, always in the winter. This year it felt earlier than usual.
I closed the windows on that side but by then it was too late: the room, the house, was filmy with smoke. I went out to my balcony of greenery—facing away from the fire—to take big gulps of fresh air before going back inside, retrieving a mask I did not need to buy or borrow to wear while getting myself ready (it was that bad1), and leaving the house significantly earlier (and faster) than I would have otherwise.
**
Back home, much later, I opened windows and doors on all sides, and wiped dust and ash off windowsills in my bedroom, where I also turned a fan on high to circulate air. Marv safe on the main balcony2, I even opened the southern windows for optimum airflow. I had to wash the bedding to get the smell out.
After hours of airing and fanning, by the time I went to bed my room mostly didn’t smell like it had been the setting for a teenage bonfire out of an eighties horror movie. Mostly.3
When I was a kid, I remember being rather obsessed with reading articles like “How to survive a hotel fire”, when I came across them. It’s funny now—especially since I can’t remember ever staying in a hotel when I was that young, much less the multi-storey affairs these articles used as a template. But I did remember about putting a wet towel or cloth over your mouth when breathing through smoke, and I tried it with a washcloth, and that, even more than the mask, worked super well. Despite the fact that I was at no risk from the lethal smoke inhalation those articles warned against, it was still kinda cool to use that knowledge.
Those windows, along with the small balcony on that side, are rarely opened because of proximity a neighbouring house. The one time someone who didn’t know this let him run out there, Marv easily made the leap. That house has a rooftop and balcony that connect directly to their living quarters, rather than the open staircase many buildings have. It was an awkward new neighbour introduction, having to walk through their home and then retrace my steps holding a freaked-out, squirming cat. We are not doing that again. This is still a concern, so much so that the sign I taped up as a reminder for a house-sitting friend a year and a half ago (ish) has never been taken down, only inked in darker as the original writing faded.
This all happened on Monday, and this footnote is mostly to say that I just discovered footnotes in Substack, and was having some fun with them. Saves me a lot of parentheses.
