Mismas Moksh

Finally, a bar that lives up to its name. Moksh has always been a notch or two clear of what tired Thamel has to offer, and has long been a favourite of the Patan crowd. Nepalis and expats congregate gregariously on busy Tuesdays and weekends as well as on the quieter, smokier nights, in the garden, the house bar, or the two-part terrace. 

But yesterday’s performance by the collective ‘ The Night’ proved yet again the old dog isn’t handily placed in Pulchowk simply so Patanites can slake their thirst this side of the river. The garden performance, though marred early on by power blips the band blamed charmingly on neglecting to invite one of the musicians onstage, was such a fusion as I have rarely seen in Nepal before: a balance of talent, professionalism and restraint. It was a blessed contrast to the rather aimless jam sessions that tend to transpire of a Kathmandu evening.

The Night’s ‘Tribalism to Technology’ gig started slowly, and stopped a little too often to earn the momentum they strove for, but when they did get going, the going was good. Initially it seemed as though their sound risked being swamped by the broad ensemble of guitars, keyboard, tabla, drums, sarangi, sitar, flute and vocals ranging from Shreeti’s mezzo-soprano to Ranav’s death-baritone. The Night skirted the issue by building on clear melodies derived in part from Nepali folk and interleaved by excursions into darker territory. The whole was anchored by simple, effective, trance-like percussive playing and ambient keyboard.

The conscious absence of virtuoso widdling from any of the instrumentalists left space for Shreeti’s elaborations in and around threads supplied by flute, sitar, guitar and Bibhusan’s mellow vocalisations. Shreeti was at her best playing within the limits of her range, and when she combined with Tashi’s perfectly gauged Manangi chants, Moksh was mesmerised.

The Night: http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=850042

nagdaha buzz

a limber out of the dustbowl across the river from Dhapakhel led us to Nagdaha, another body of water surrounded by low terraces of green and yellow, another pocket of peace that couldn’t help but remind us of Taudaha-by-Chobhar. Part of the pond sectioned off as a patch of grassy wetland where waddled wild ducks and coots and white storks, and in the early evening joined by swallows swooping to meet their reflections. Facing onto the water we shared a ragged garden with other picnickers – the usual assortment of lads, familiers and couplets at the corners, speaking of what? away from the disapproving darts of self-professed loved ones. We tasted tongues (jibro fry) and guzzled beer, and Bikash lumped out luscious, spicy has ko chwoela picked up in a earthen brick eatery I’d never had picked for anything but demolition, to temper the light daze of the day.

Thence to the bar Bikash runs, Buzz. The novelty stemming as much as from the unlikeliness of the locality of Jawalakhel as from the bar’s cosy neighbourhood feel and warm tones. We balanced on the barstools and made merry, though what the rest made of us drunken knaves is doubtful enough.

A second sober visit confirmed my instincts. A large grave Buddha dominates one wall and is reflected in the opposite mirror; stylised paintings of women’s faces fill the walls around wooden chairs and tables with elegant bamboo coasters. Buzz is up the road to St. Mary’s, opposite the bonus branches of New Orleans, and a little further on, Roadhouse Café. There’s a couple of restaurants about as well, and with Quixote’s Cove set to lay out its literary wares in the next couple of months, I run the grave risk of abandoning Thamel altogether.

Who’s Nhuchhe?

Listing to interminable, reactionary rambles on the quagmire of Nepali politics, I sit shrouded in my own darkness, list in the flickering flames we draw on, amused only by the idea that this Baluwatar space, once most likely the seat of a minor noble in Rana times, also served as the headquarters of the royalist Janashakti Party, before its modern-day incarnation as *Nhuchhe’s Kitchen: The Organic Bistro. Where last year I sip-supped on laligurans juice (a little tar, refreshing, and awfully nationalistic) and organic buff momos from Kavre, presumably reared with much tender care before being dragged off to the slaughtering grounds in the Valley mooing Jai Bajrangabali Mata Ki Jai Please Toot and Have A Nice Day!

(*since incarnated once more as a Thai & Organic restaurant!)

on the bhatti trail

Fresh from the Gokyo trail, alternating between explications of myself (to bemused locals) and my country (to curious phareners), the latter peppered with exhortations to try the tongba! the chhyaang! – imagine my indignation once we’d twistered ourselves around a mini-table on the rooftop of the Anacha bhatti to be told yes, we’d get our sekuwas, our egg baras, our alu ko achar and our kachela, but there was no chhyaang. Eh? What’s that? No chhyaang in a bhatti?

So it was true! That dwarf of a Home Minister was really getting on my nerves now. The dance bars? The footpath people? The casinos? They don’t sell anything I want. But moonshine? Are we to be condemned to drink shite Nepali lager and worse Indo-whisky at the expense of our homegrown and well, well-tested local brews?

Still, the view of the Krishna Mandir flush in front of Anacha is superlative. It’s one thing to be craning about with your camera while motorbikes vroom you away, another to be sitting back admiring the intricate stone figurework washing down some crunchy, spicy sekuwa with a bowl of…?

It was time to move on. Indeed, it was incumbent upon us to get to the bottom of this sorry business. Where was the chhyaang? No less than a bhatti crawl would do. We paid the sahuni, stoutly surrounded by her wares, a pot of money, and a large flat tawa on which she turned half a dozen egg baras over while shouting at her charges.

We crossed Patan Durbar Square in the fading gold of the evening, arrowed for Chasal, where, my pharen-local friend informed me, a classy bhatti awaited, buffalo testicles at the ready. But just as soon as we’d dipped into one of the alleys we espied a hariyo parda. We peeked in – a tiny, grimy cove sucked us in. Steel bowls of chhyaang were quickly doled out under the smiles of the regulars. Thin, but plentiful. Indifferent plates of chewy meat made their way towards us. In a circle around the stove a family conversed in Newari as they ate and drank, the littlest of all cradling her own littlest plate of meat. And what plopped from above? A starling, peering out her mud nest on the blackened rafters.

A few more twists and turns in the dark we burst upon the Chasal bhatti, an altogether grander, dozen-tabled affair housed in a roofed-in courtyard, replete with posters of stupas and tigers reclining before waterfalls. More birds, hens this time, cleaning up under the tables. The chhyaang was altogether richer, the meat yet enticing after all our labours, and the ambience, classic. Here the men of Nepal drink and eat and talk and laugh.

I’d love to tell you how to get here. Only I don’t remember. Try Chasal Chowk next to Patan Durbar Square. This would be my local if I were local to Patan. Where’s yours?