Escape from Kathmandu Read Online Free PDF

try to check in here and it’s full, I just go next door. We could look there.”
    “Okay,” said Nathan, completely fired up. “Let’s go.”
    So we walked out of the Star and turned right to investigate at the Lodge Pheasant—or Lodge Pleasant—the sign is ambiguous on that point.
    Sure enough, George Fredericks had been staying there. Checked out that very morning, in fact. “Oh my God no,” Nathan cried, as if the guy had just died. Panic time was really getting close.
    “Yes,” the clerk said brightly, pleased to have found the name in his thick book. “He is go on trek.”
    “But he’s not due to leave here for two weeks!” Nathan protested.
    “He’s probably off on his own first,” I said. “Or with friends.”
    That was it for Nathan. Panic, despair; he had to go sit down. I thought about it. “If he was flying out, I heard all of RNAC’s flights to the mountains were canceled today. So maybe he came back in and went to dinner. Does he know Kathmandu well?”
    Nathan nodded glumly. “As well as anybody.”
    “Let’s try the Old Vienna Inn, then.”

IV
    In the blue of early evening Thamel was jumping as usual. Lights snapped on in the storefronts that opened on the street, and people were milling about. Big Land Rovers and little Toyota taxis forged through the crowd abusing their horns; cows in the street chewed their cud and stared at it all with expressions of faint surprise, as if they’d been magically zipped out of a pasture just seconds before.
    Nathan and I walked single file against the storefronts, dodging bikes and jumping over the frequent puddles. We passed carpet shops, climbing outfitters, restaurants, used bookstores, trekking agents, hotels, and souvenir stands, and as we made our way we turned down a hundred offers from the young men of the street: “Change money?” “No.” “Smoke dope?” “No.” “Buy a nice carpet?” “No.” “Good hash!” “No.” “Change money?” “No.” Long ago I had simplified walking in the neighborhood, and just said “No” to everyone I passed. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no.” Nathan had a different method that seemed to work just as well or better, because the hustlers didn’t think I was negative enough; he would nod politely with that straight-shooter look, and say “No, thank you,” and leave them open-mouthed in the street.
    We passed K.C.’s, threaded our way through “Times Square,” a crooked intersection with a perpetual traffic jam, and started down the street that led out of Thamel into the rest of Kathmandu. Two merchants stood in the doorway of their shop, singing along with a cassette of Pink Floyd’s
The Wall
. “We don’t need no education, we don’t need no thought control.” I almost got run over by a bike. Where the street widened and the paving began, I pushed a black goat to one side, and we leaped over a giant puddle into a tunnellike hall that penetrated one of the ramshackle street-side buildings. In the hall, turn left up scuzzy concrete stairs. “Have you been here before?” I asked Nathan.
    “No, I always go to K.C.’s or Red Square.” He looked as though he wasn’t sorry, either.
    At the top of the stairs we opened the door, and stepped into the Austro-Hungarian Empire. White tablecloths, paneled partitions between deep booths, red wallpaper in a fleur-de-lis pattern, plush upholstery, tasteful kitschy lamps over every table; and, suffusing the air, the steamy pungent smell of sauerkraut and goulash. Strauss waltzes on the box. Except for the faint honking from the street below, it was absolutely the real item.
    “My Lord,” Nathan said, “how did they get
this
here?”
    “It’s mostly her doing.” The owner and resident culinary genius, a big plump friendly woman, came over and greeted me in stiff Germanic English.
    “Hello, Eva. We’re looking for a friend—” But then Nathan was already past us, and rushing down toward a small booth at the back.
    “I think he finds