Lucky Handsome
Drive-by Portraits 01
It was 16 years between trips to Nepal. I was a schoolboy then and I’m a workman now. My culture shock in 2003 was replaced with a heightened but still child-like excitement and fascination this time around. Even the mundane details of this distant city made my head spin. Everything took on an incredible beauty. Any doubt I had about pushing my baggage weight limit with too many cameras was quickly cleared out of my mind as the city streets of Kathmandu washed over me.
We had a couple of days in the capital before heading northwest into the Annapurna region of the Himalayas. We were sitting on an old bus, stuck in traffic watching peak hour commuters wander past much faster than traffic was moving. Despite the strange and beautiful scenes out my dusty window, something familiar cut through the swirling diesel exhaust fumes, dust and cigarette smoke. It tugged at my memory. Being in such a different city and seeing something familiar made me shift in my vinyl seat. I found the answer in the rushing commuter’s faces. Two plane rides and a quarter of the planet away and I was stuck in the same morning traffic as Melbourne.
It was a Monday morning and traffic was finally beginning to move. The city was off to work or school or just sitting watching the world go by. Others charged through the city, their urgency matching the chaos of the bumper-to-bumper traffic and the drone of blaring horns. There was a familiar sleepy urgency in the peak hour faces. They looked calm but serious – at peace with the hustle of their commute.
In contrast to the familiar expressions, the fashion was a forest of unfamiliar colour combinations where function seemed to take precedent but an underlying pride and vanity shone through. The women wore the queen’s share of colour compared to the muted tones of the men. Pops of colour caught the sun and wandering eyes. Iridescent pinks, yellows and reds shone in a sea of grey, navy, black, and brown. The commuting men dressed smartly – shirts and suit pants for office workers and the universal uniform of jeans and a t-shirt or shirt for everyone else.
The broad roads were like a rolling museum crammed full of antique buses and obscure car models from familiar manufacturers. Parades of motorbikes and scooters weaved between the hulking motionless exhibits, and a procession of faces flowed past my small, dusty bus window. We edged forward – nowhere to be by no particular time.
