Hi
An Australian friend of mine wants to move to Nepal to become a rockstar with his two Nepali bandmates.
Is Nepal a really unsafe place to be?
What’s the cost of living like?
What creature comforts would the average westerner miss?
Would he be able to be self-sufficient teaching English during the day?
Is there any other advice you can give him
I’ve been on vacation there twice, 1995 and 2009.
Not really, for a developing country. The political situation has calmed down a lot and the Maoist rebels, while nasty buggers, never targeted tourists. I met one guy who was on a bus which had been shot at, but that’s it. Mainly they used to charge a ‘tax’ to enter certain areas. But that seems to have dried up. The biggest danger is transportation. They drive in a typically South Asian maniacal style and the roads are bad and crowded, with frequent enormous cliffs. The airlines don’t have great safety records.
It’s unbelievably cheap. Thamel Kathmandu, and Lakeside Pokhara the main tourist areas, are the most expensive places in which to live and buy things, and even they are insanely cheap. If you’re prepared to live in less westernised areas, even cheaper.
I’d imagine the latest electronic goods aren’t easily available, but if you live in a westernised area, you can get pretty much anything else you want. Books, magazines, DVDs, burgers, pizza, ice cream, etc. and for some reason the Nepalese do western food brilliantly. Best travel grub I’ve ever tasted. There are also a few shopping malls starting up in Kathmandu for rich Nepalese. Outside those areas it’s a completely different ballgame - the main staple is daal bhat which is unutterably boring. But if he’s in Kathmandu or Pokhara, he’ll be fine.
The main thing that he’d miss is electicity. Brownouts of several hours at a time are an ongoing problem, or were two years ago, and affect everywhere pretty much daily. In the tourist areas many places have generators, but not everywhere.
Other thoughts: apart from a few shysters in Thamel, the Nepalese are the kindest, friendliest group of people I’ve ever met (with the exception of people in Bangladesh, who were even lovelier).
Kathmandu’s one of my favorite cities. Nepal is largely safe, although there have been robberies of solo trekkers in some areas, and transport can sometimes be dangerous. As far as the cost of living there, no idea, but as mentioned by jjimm, it is indeed unbelievably cheap for a tourist, and if your friend is going to live in Kathmandu or Pokhara, creature comforts will not be hard to find.
I’ve never been so all I can tell you is that Nepalese folks hate being mistaken for Indian, at least judging from a former coworker’s reaction every time it happened in my presence. She was also a lot more touchy-feely than I’m accustomed to, but that could be her personality rather than a cultural thing.
This thread makes me wonder if something’s changed about the default font on my browser because many of the lower-case ls have weird little tails on them now, making me read the thread title as “Tell me about Nepa!”
Something I’ve remembered. Lovely as they are, the Nepalese cannot handle their booze. (I’m sure individuals can, but it’s one of those stereotypes that seems to get fulfilled quite often.) I was warned about this, dismissed it as racism, then on the first night I was there, I ended up in the middle of a massive barroom brawl, pool cues and bar stools being broken on people’s heads, ending up hiding on the roof with three of us holding the fire exit door shut against the mob. The guy who helped us keep the mob from getting onto the roof was an expatriate and confirmed the truism. Two or three beers down, they go nuts.
Nepal is an awesome time, and the food is indeed wonderful. Do not miss Pie Alley, is always my advice!
I’ve been a couple of times, (once to take a two week course in a Buddhist monastery!), and can confirm all of what jjimm has reported.
I don’t know about self sufficient teaching English, it would depend if he was going to live like a local or an expat/aid worker. Considered a hardship post, plenty get additional funds, allowing them to live like kings, mostly in Kathmandu. Meantime, many of the actual workers in the field, have to live like savages, it’s quite a contrast.
I’d say he’s going to miss electricity and hot water. If he’s never been to Nepal before, he’s very likely to get sick at some point, with a bad belly. After that he should be okay, though.
Nepal’s pretty darn safe for a third world country. Even before the revolution, the Maoist insurgents made a strong point of not targeting tourists with violence because they understood that Nepal has absolutely nothing going for it except the tourist industry. My aunt was stopped at gunpoint while trekking, asked to pay the $50 Maoist fee, and given a receipt in case she was stopped by other Maoists so she wouldn’t have to pay twice! Now, with the revolution over, it’s a little better still.
The cost of living is extremely low. In 2004, we were paying less than $10 a night for most hotel rooms. Excellent meals in the expensive Thamel (tourist) district were $8 or less and much cheaper outside of that area. Even as a kid, my pocket money went pretty darn far.
Personally, I missed ice and cold drinks, because you often don’t want to drink restaurant ice, which is made with tap water. That will happen in most third world countries, though. Infrequent and erratic electricity is a pain too.
I can’t speak to whether he could teach English and be self-sufficient. The cost of living is low, but that’s because the locals are rat-poor. I can’t imagine a Westerner could show up and command a whole lot of salary unless he were teaching English to wealthy people or their kids. If your friend can make forty dollars a day, he’ll be able to live pretty darn well, even by Western standards, and he’d be able to get by on a lot less-- the locals do!
This is a big reason I don’t drink with Thais. Except instead of violent, they get more like “I love you like a brother do you like Thai ladies hey I know a cheap brothel we can go to get up on stage and sing a song hey everybody my new brother’s going to sing a song!” And it never, ever stops no matter how late the hour.
Kathmandu is probably my favorite city in the world.
If you do end up there, grab yourself a copy of Streets of Silver, Streets of Gold. It’s a series of walking tours in Kathmandu covering everything strange, beautiful, overlooked and mysterious. From the most beautiful window in the world to the toothache god, there are countless treasures just littered throughout the city, often half forgotten. The book gives a lot of history and background to these things, and it added an incredible amount of depth and wonder to my wanderings.