Nepal is in chaos. Returning from Kathmandu yesterday, airline passengers were checked so many times at the airport (including yet another full frisk as we got off the bus and were finally allowed to walk up the airplane steps) that a siege mentality began to take hold.

“Why look to us for bombs?” muttered one Buddhist westerner to his tour group, all wearing white scarves around their necks to indicate a recent peaceful pilgrimage to a monastery. “We’re hardly the problem”. Such displacement activity meant that while travellers were enjoying their fourth body or bag search, the real issue that was going on unchecked in downtown Kathmandu were the Maoist mobs parading around the city demanding businesses to close.

This disorganised mob, with a few army soldiers trailing half-heartedly behind them, was a response to the spontaneous general strike that took place on March 19 by the whole of Nepal’s business community. More than 10,000 people had taken to the streets of Kathmandu carrying placards calling for an end to “Maoist Hooliganism”, the extortion and violence being used to fund party activity as Kathmandu prepares to move to “democratic” elections in June.

More than 25 entrepreneurs have been abducted by Maoists in Kathmandu in recent months. The latest victim was the hotelier Hari La Shrestha, who was beaten up for refusing to “make a donation” of about $140,000. Overnight he became a hero and symbol of the business community’s frustration.

For foreigners going about their daily business, they found every shop to be shut, a sight rarely seen in a city where everything is up for sale. Long, long queues for petrol snaked around streets with petrol pumps (another problem with India) compounding the sense that nothing was working. And when the mob began to chant a little closer to home, then some of the tourists began to feel the true discomfort of living the Nepali life.

Just because foreigners are largely ignored by the Maoists (I simply flattened myself against a wall to let them pass) doesn’t mean that they aren’t threatening. Red-hatted young men, some carrying large bamboo poles, pushed and shoved themselves into our hotel, the Kathmandu Guest House, to demand staff join their protest. The Maoists were retaliating against the business community strike the following day, and the mood was getting a little ugly. At our hotel reception desk, many of the staff reluctantly went along, sticking up a sign in faltering English announcing: “We apologise for the Skeleton Manpower”.

With a hotel restaurant devoid of staff, we headed to our favourite Italian pizza joint, Fire and Ice, for its guaranteed good food. My friend arrived earlier, and was only just seated when the mob came in and demanded that the restaurant close for business. All the hungry foreigners trickled out confused, policemen protecting the bank refused to let them back in and dispersed them in different directions, as I ducked out of the way to slip in and find my friend.

The restaurant owner appeared flustered. “Don’t be startled!” she said to the handful still in the restaurant, agreeing nervously to serve us. “But just pretend you are a private party if they return”.

Such scenes are not good for business, or tourism – two industries Nepal desperately needs in its faltering attempts to reach democracy. The peace treaty was signed in November, to much relief and fanfare, but this week’s protests show that the free and fair elections scheduled for June may only look good on paper. Tourism has been up since the peace treaty by a full 60 per cent, according to many, and Thamel was buzzing on our arrival. But only the determined will put up with the uncertainty that surrounds the city at the moment, especially with constant power cuts that turn a walk around the town into an eerie medieval excursion, with candles in windows as the only source of light.

The purpose of our trip was to take in some of the many Hindu and Buddhist festivals happening every month in the city, as well as visiting some of the seven World Heritage sites there, all located within 20 kms of each other in the valley. In particular we were hanging out for a rare glimpse of the Living Goddess during Ghoda Jatra, when the young nine-year-old girl is carried in full red regalia to a chariot from her 17th century Kumari Temple - a place which later became a backdrop to businessmen’s fists punching the air. While Spiritual tourists such as myself were used to the sight of blood at Hindu festivals (goats are routinely sacrificed, their neck pulled back to spray blood on a shrine like a racing driver with a champagne bottle), we don’t necessarily want to carry on living the experience when the festivities are over.

Another power cut at a different festival in the most Holy of all Hindu sites, Pashupatinath, meant that a small group of us had to stumble home using only a mobile phone as a torch, becoming more and more scared by the bodies lying sleeping around the site. Pashupatinath is also a sacred cremation site, and the great fires on the shores of the river were funeral pyres, filling the air with a sweet intoxicating stench of burning flesh and straw. In the gloom, our eyes began to play tricks on who was sleeping, and who might actually be dead, awaiting funeral.

The final hardship for any current Nepali traveller is the sight of abandoned children on the streets. I spent a month in Kathmandu as a Gap Year student 20 years ago, living the life in a flat in Freak Street. Poverty was everywhere but I don’t remember the rubbish on the street, the pollution from cheap petrol, or, most distressingly, neglected children. It hurts a mother’s eyes to see dirty toddlers poking around in split rubbish bags on the street, or small gangs of children openly glue sniffing in a doorway.

We were approached by one eight-year-old beggar, part of a gang of half a dozen sleeping under filthy duvets, for money. He tucked his gluesniffing paraphernalia of a paper bag and straw into his trousers before holding out his hand. With maternal bossiness, I told him I’d give him no money but would buy him food. He picked out three packets of biscuits and a tin of milk from a shop. I felt a glimmer of hope as I saw him wander back to his friends that may be he might eat properly that night. “Forgeddaboutit”, said a Kathmandu resident in conversation.. “If you didn’t open the biscuit packets, they just sell them back to the shop when you turn the corner”.

Poverty and hardship must never be glamorised, and poverty with oppression is surely the worst beast of all. Head to the mountains would be my advice to anyone thinking of stopping by in Kathmandu for the festival season. My day trip to Dhulikel was the highlight of my trip, because the traditional friendliness of the Nepalis had the space to come alive, with hands brought together in prayer position and the words “Namaste” (“I salute the divine in you”) wherever you went. In the squalor and chaos of the city, however, the gods seem to have forsaken their people.

NEED TO KNOW

Emma Mahony flew as a guest of The Ultimate Travel Company which organises tailor-made journeys and tours. A typical two-week Annapurna Foothills Trek with overnights in Kathmandu Summit Hotel is £1,175 per person, based on a group of 6.

The quickest and easiest way to fly independently from the UK is on Qatar Airways which operates a daily flight from Healthrow via Doha.

For spiritual tours of Buddhist Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal visit www.visitsouthasia.org for their Buddhist Heartland tours, and www.welcomenepal.com for background information.

The best hotel in Kathmandu (and nearest to the holy Hindu site of Pashupatinath), is Dwarikas, built entirely by Newar craftsmen from local brick.

To find out which Buddhist and Hindu festivals are on during your visit, see Friends in High Places website

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