Just as I did it, I wondered why. It was one of those times when you wonder how on earth you can explain your bizarre actions to somebody else. It would have been embarrassing enough had I been in the UK, and among friends, but instead I was 5000 miles away in a foreign country.
I thought I had not been seen. However, at the point my head was fully engaged inside a coniferous bush on the left hand side of the garden, I was aware that conversation that one of my hosts in Kathmandu was having on his mobile telephone, had ended. I could hear the cold, stark sound of flip-flop rubber on marble and then the common slap as the footwear met with the concrete outside. What had forced me to thrust my head, full pelt, into the aforementioned vegetation I do not exactly recall, but I feel it had something to do with the aroma – a lemon-lime citrus fragrance which permeated the air. It reminded me of a shrub in my garden at home, and feeling far from home at the time, I was thankful for the connection to it, even though it involved submerging my face in green fronds of vegetation in order to relive the experience!
As the flip-flop clad figure approached I jerked my head back as though nothing unusual had taken place, but at the same time I feared I was too late. The silence which emerged as a result, was almost deafening and my heart began to race as I scoured the limited Nepali vocabulary I had in order to try and explain myself. “Nice tree!” I managed to mutter.
My host looked at me quizzically. I would not have minded the emergence of the rather unusual situation had I not already had a number of previous faux pas in the presence of the same individual! The previous day, I could put my misdemeanour down to a travelling time from the UK of 36 hours. So, when I wrongly interpreted “Dinner is ready!” as “Deenay is Israei!” proceeding to ask how long he intended to stay in Nepal, I could just about get away with blaming jet-lag. However, in addition, and by trying to engage in Nepali language I had in fact also previously answered a question in Nepali, which seriously over-complicated the whole conversation, beyond repair!
Additionally, the next day, whilst navigating an area of one of the local towns, I almost fell in to a paddy-field. Given that I had chosen to wear flip-flops to navigate the vicinity, rather than a well-fitted sandal (There is a distinct difference!) this incongruously meant that ...I had to rely on my local to physically catch me before I ended up head-first in a rice-field!
English travellers tend to develop a reputation overseas. I was doing nothing to add to the credibility of mine, or anybody else’s for that matter!
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