“Sorry I’m late, I couldn’t find your office.” We have all heard this excuse. And how can we argue with this? With no street signs, no house numbers, and many offices not having prom­inent signboards it can be a frus­trating job either finding the place we want to go to or trying to explain to someone how to find our office or home. Having spent 15 minutes last month looking for an office, I was confident this time round that I knew exactly where it was. Only to be taken aback to find out they had moved to a new location. Yes, they sent a map but has anyone else noticed Google seems to have made up the names, and often the location, of streets in Kath­mandu? And damn, these maps make it look easy with their clean, crisp lines indicating roads. What is missing is the street vendors blocking entrances, new construc­tion spilling onto the roads, and dead ends that do not appear on the maps.

 

This makes it impossible to count… is it the first or second turn off after the mandir? Not to worry, you have the phone number right? You can phone for directions right? Well then it starts to get interesting. First of all you need to explain where you cur­rently are. Errr, what is the name of the mandir? And how do you pronounce it anyway? Then you need to interpret what consti­tutes a ‘small’ road to the person on the other end of the phone. Do they mean this British sized B road, or do they mean that gullie over there?

 

So you ask the standard question, “left or right”? Now various sites on the internet put the number of the global population who cannot tell left from right at 20 percent. But if I think how many people I ask, how many taxi drivers I tell, on a weekly basis, this figure is surely much higher for Nepal. It seems more like one in two people I ask or tell directions to cannot tell the difference between right and left. And it’s not just a language thing; I can ask in Nepali too, to no avail. Eventually finding the cor­rect road, why do offices not have prominent signboards? Don’t they want business?

 

When the shoe is on the oth­er foot and people are trying to find my house, I despair. These are computer literate friends, who want me to send a map of my location and a snap shot does not satisfy them. Aside from me being technology challenged, we are then back to relying on those maps which show only certain roads, and tiny shops you never knew existed on your street.

 

I find it easier just to tell them “follow the river, turn right at the first driveable bridge, walk for 100m.” You would think those are easy directions to fol­low—but no, seemingly not. Quot­ing non-scientific figures again, I can say 90 percent of foreign friends can find me by this meth­od. Only around 5 percent of Nepalis achieve this. When I am told some workman (usually the internet provider) will need to come over, I shudder.

 

I need to give a day when I know I have a lot of free time to go hunting in the neighborhood for the guy who is well and tru­ly lost. I never order food from Foodmandu. I saw a Foodmandu delivery man waiting for a pick up recently and asked him, hopefully, if they had an app to find locations. No. But the first time I placed an order and the delivery man finds me (right!) he would tell all his fellow delivery men so that in the future they could easily locate me. Big pinch of salt. Better have some tequila with that salt as cer­tainly dinner ain’t arriving any time soon!