Gorkha – Catching a Wedding

Gorkha Bisauni Hotel 50 NRs/bed

Met a Malaysian traveller some days ago, a journalist of a quite reknowned Malaysian media. Since this is the first in last two months for me to be able to speak Malay/Indonesian language, I felt so happy to chat with her about the politics, cultural issues, etc of our region. She told me that some days before she met a Nepali guy who has ever worked in Malaysia (there are sooo many Nepalis with working experience in Malaysia), and this Nepali guy, Deepak, invited her to attend a wedding ceremony of one of his friends in Gorkha.

I was so interested in attending the ceremony (wedding ceremony is not everyday, right?) so I joined them. Deepak speaks a little bit of Malay, with very bossy accent (guess that he learnt his Malay from his Chinese boss in Johor). He insisted us to depart at 6 o’clock in the morning as he wanted to take the earliest bus to Gorkha, 150 km or so from Kathmandu. And he also insisted us to take the “best” car, which cost 200 NRs per person. The journey was gruelling as he even didnt let us to have breakfast first, and the zigzagging road quaked my empty stomach.

Arrived in Gorkha, Deepak didn’t pay for his bus fare, and made us to pay for him. And he also seemed quite confused about the wedding himself. He tried to phone the groom, but nobody answered. (He said that) he didnt know where the wedding is, even he didnt want to go to the groom’s house (supposed to be his friend) to ask for confirmation. He just seemed very relaxing, asked us to wait. And he even asked when we were going to return back to Kathmandu as he was bored in Gorkha. It did really arouse suspiciousness among us about the intention of this guy. It seems that this guy was interested with the Chinese girl travelling together with us, but he also tried to harass me sexually (he is a HE!!!). We tried our best to avoid him, and we made it by pretending to take our rest in a hotel room. (He even wanted to sleep together in our room…, and his bossy Malay accent lead to a NO)

We decided to explore Gorkha by ourselves, by climbing the small hill north of the town. Surprisingly, that 6 village men we met can speak Malay fluently. Many Nepali work in Malaysia, but it’s really strange when you visit such a small village in Nepal and everyone speaks your native language (Indonesian/Malay). I had the feeling such I was in a small village in Sumatra. A villager told me that now is not marriage time in Nepal, as the Dasain festival is coming. Mostly Nepalis wont hold marriage in these two months.

We really dont know whether there would or there would not be a marriage here. But we dont really care about it so much actually.