These [are] were a few of my favorite things...

On the phone with Miss Jess working out the details of our impending arrival to Nepal, the more permanent one, where we get to be neighbors in Kathmandu for a few months - and the conversation shifts to discussion of whether or not to buy a washing machine once we get there.
I'm recalling the first three months in Bangalore, having left behind the amazing housekeeping and laundry ammas of Tamil Nadu I was faced with managing my dirty clothes on my own.
As the little (that's an understatement) house I was renting had no room for either kitchen supplies or laundry facilities I did what I'd learned to do on my earlier backpacking treks to Goa: buy a bucket and little sachets of Tide and wash things myself, by hand.
This became tedious after a few weeks and the detergent was murder on my hands, so I contracted a young mother from the village literally right across the street from my house to handle the laundry for me.

She charged less than two dollars U.S. to wash whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted - but I insisted on seven (a little over 300 rupees) hoping it would ensure the safe passage of my gear through whatever system she would use to get them clean.
I felt free the day I handed her a load of my brand new handmade bedsheets, Abercrombie pants and tank tops, and whatever else had been languishing in a now heaping pile of things needing to be washed, and I thanked her and paid her in advance (again hoping it would mean some kind of insurance against the possible destruction of my precious things).

Three days later she returned to me a pile of sun-dried, clean smelling laundry that made my heart sing. I'd found the solution to my problem (laziness coupled with a dislike of detergent-hands) and I vowed to plunk an equally desperate load on her the following day.

As I unfolded the laundry to place the crisp sheets on the bed and clean clothes on hangers the corner of one of my new embroidered bedsheets caught my eye - it was torn, badly. I quickly opened everything else to discover bizarre black stains on more than one of my favorite tee shirts, numerous inexplicable gaping holes in both the bedsheets, and the drawstring missing from my favorite cargo pants.

Raging, I marched over to the village, children clamboring at my heels; a foreigner in the village was big news and they raced ahead, leading the way to my victim.

When she opened the door I was close to tears and showed her each damaged item, one by one - expressing my disdain and explaining that I'd just paid her to literally ruin my things.

"What did you do!?" I demanded of her "Did you wash them with stones!!??"

She looked at me and smiled sincerely innocent, "Yes, of course, madam. And a special washing mixture that gets them extra clean."

She reached behind her, producing a plastic milk jug with the top cut off, full of a black oily looking liquid with a distinct sheen of soap bubble across the top. She pointed to a pile of large round rocks, just outside the door of her meager house - as if to explain away my misery with proof that she had in fact pounded my clothes to death. To more clearly make her point she plucked a small wire brush (something I'd have used to clean a charred grill) from her pocket and demonstrated in a violent swishing motion how she had 'scrubbed' the laundry.

Needless to say, we have a washing machine (dryers are essentially out of the question here as anything will air dry in about two seconds in the hot Indian sun). I'm thinking an investment in the same direction will be a good idea in Nepal as well.