Copyright 2009
My father was often fond of reverting to the old Yiddish saying ? ?Kush mir in tochas?, when we asked for something he had no intention of indulging us in. When I first came across the famous travel book by Eric Newby about the Hindu Kush I wondered whether these two things were somehow related.
In 1997 I found myself travelling in the region in the role of teacher. What was I to teach? I had become famous through the Ogilvy and Mather world for the work I had done on developing a process we called Brand Stewardship. Even the word Stewardship has a lovely British Raj ring to it and most of my experience in the region was redolent of cucumber sandwiches, rickshaws, fabulous wealth and unspeakable poverty that seemed to be the remnants of a culture left behind by the Victorian Empire.
This is neither the time nor the place to recreate the lessons I would give. Suffice to say, that good brands, like good books, have a quality of authorship that runs through them, an essential DNA that is distinguishable from one event to another, from one communication to the next and I had helped develop a process that would interrogate brands until they confessed their human truths.
My journey started in Kathmandu. Although to be fair, it started in an airplane 33000 feet above Kathmandu with an announcement from the pilot that we should not be alarmed as du to the height of the mountains that surround the place the planes are forced to go in for landing on a very steep path. In the case vertically which did little to help settle the stomach of a visit in which the stomach would remain constantly unsettled.
I spent two weeks lecturing young Indians. They are, without question, the world?s most hungry people. Hungry for knowledge ? prepared to stay up all night, if that is what it would take to extract the very last smidgin of information that I might have to impart if I had not already done so.
And they do it with charm. The language they use had been invented by Bertie and Jeeves in a Wodehouse novel. Their heads lol about on their necks in the most disconcerting way as whilst you might think they are disagreeing they are simply being agreeable.
It was in a time before the prince with the name that sounded like an assassin actually turned out to be one and did away with all his family. And the place where I was staying was right next the Royal palace.
I thought that the palms that surrounded this vast palatial compound bore the most remarkable fruit ? huge black objects hanging thick on every branch. But that was only until dusk settled and the fruit all flew off into the night sky and the night was darkened by vast battalions of bats.
Kathmandu, is still filled with hippies from the 60?s. They are still there searching, obviously unsuccessfully for themselves.
It is not hard to discover why it is that they have been incapable of finding themselves for the Nepalese sell a myriad of potent drugs. My personal favourite was the rice wine that they serve from Earthenware jugs that waiters ostentatiously pour from dizzy heights into your small earthernware cup.
Never has a concoction been invented with a more apt name.
The wine is called Reksia and that is exactly and indubitably what it does.
The Nepalese sit cross-legged on the floor at extremely low tables to eat. Which is all very well for an emaciated tickey high Nepali, but when you are an oversize western giant like me who rarely sees the floor sitting in this position is not certainly not conducive for pleasant dinner time conversation. The only value in it in my mind was if I was planning shortly for a significant visit to a chiropracter.
But I made a wonderful discovery. The aforesaid Reksia has this unique capacity of allowing you to fold you legs under your body in a lotus position or any other form of fold you might choose and forget that your legs are there. Apart from numbing the brain, it seems to have a similar effect on every other part of the body too. Standing up after simply isn?t recommended. And this might account for the many hippies I saw in local squares firmly ensconced in the lotus position.
It is quite natural, when you visit Nepal to make a pilgrimage to Everest. Especially if you are from New Zealand and apart from hobbits and sheep, the conquest of Everest is about the only other fact people remember. But one should leave early.
At 4 am in the morning, just outside Kathmandu, in the foothills of the mountain I was to encounter traffic gridlock of the like that would make LA proud. A single small road with very little wriggle space on either side, steep falls on both and convoys of trucks going to the market and coming back from the market all join together in one place where passing is improbable and generally suicidal.
They must have been shocked to see a big white man with a stick shouting at them to pullover to the side so that others might pass and so risking life and limb they all did. Whenever anyone deigned to argue with me I reverted, as had my father before me to the old Yiddish phrase ?Kush mir in tochas???
We did finally reach a viewing place high in the mountains where we would watch the sun come up over Everest if we had been prepared to wait until the next day. It was evening.
After two weeks it was time to head to India across the Himalayas, this time flying Royal Nepali Airways. I had not thought much about the subject until, walking out onto the airfield, I started to search for the Tintin like plane I expected to find held together with string and elastoplast.
Infinitely more frightening than this was the fact that it was the newest of the fly by wire Airbuses ? those planes so complicated that pilots all over Europe were flying them into mountains.
The blind pianist George Shearing tells a lovely story about being stranded on an airplane at O?Hare in a snowstorm for some time. The pilot announces that they will be there for some time and if people wish to stretch there legs, they might step down off the plane and wait around it on the tarmac.
A little while later, the same said pilot comes to where Shearing is sitting with his seeing eyed dog and offers to give the dog a walk. And they sit, and they sit. Eventually, Shearing is forced to find the help button and ask the attendant why the delay is going on for so long.
?Well, Mr Shearing,? she says, ?we were given the all-clear a while ago but then the passengers saw the pilot getting back onto the plane with a seeing-eyed dog and they refused to get back in.?
Onto this Royal Nepali Airobus 320 steps the pilot, wearing a beautiful blue turban and equally dapper blue Levis. At this stage I decided that I should make a more earnest attempt at religion, knowing that we would have to climb 33000 feet back out again in a single vertical motion.
The only other thing worthy of mention about flying Royal Nepali, is the uniforms worn by the stewardesses. They seemed to be made for people much bigger than these stewardesses and out of heavy yak?s fur. T was a uniform invented for a Sherpa. Indeed so heavy were they that by the time the plane landed in New Delhi they had served an inedible meal to the first two rows and then given up in exhaustion.
To be continued?.