Princess with a palace to match, revisited

In a darkwood bar in Kathmandu, Nepal - walls painted a royal, deep red, faded spot lighting showing off local handcarved goddesses, and Johnny Cash filtering through the speakers - I found nirvana, or at least a little pathway in the right direction.
I'm technically in the middle of nowhere but I'm definitely somewhere...and I don't want to leave.
The bartender is inventing drinks for me based on whatever my whim of the moment may be. My husband is talking shop and politics with the Australian, Sasha, who leaves tomorrow for a Himalayan trek and like many, has just extended his stay in Nepal by two more weeks.
The film crew here to document Everest strolls in and out with portable boom and camera slung over their shoulders, Russian is spoken, people greet eachother in what I recognize as the global travellers' standard of "Hello, where are you from? Where have you been to? Where are you going?" There really is no such thing anymore as borders, it's more obvious from this vantage point, and is one of the most beautiful realities I've witnessed in this grand adventure that is my dream turned life.

With my best friend at one side sipping neon kamikazes and my darling on the other exploring all the possible configurations Jack Daniels is good for I enjoy my Bailey's straight and begin the inevitable mental math that will finally work out a way to stay here - right here - for as long as is humanly possible.

Kathmandu is a literal breath of fresh air after the muggy, dirty heat of India and we had decided within the first two seconds, standing on the tarmac outside our little plane, surrounded by low green hills and snow capped Himalayan peaks, that this is exactly where we need to be the next few months. With only five full days to enjoy the local flavors and shopping of the busy Thamel tourist district as well as find a house I bounced between adventurous elation and quiet anxiety over the how and what of making it happen on a more permanent level. We asked around about rental homes and even checked out the expat bulletin board at a nearby supermarket but came up with nothing encouraging in the way of a possible home.

Our last morning there, resigned to another hotel stint upon our return, I opened the day's paper at random to find the classifieds staring me in the face next to an ad for this month's Fem Face - a sad looking, heavily makeup-ed girl in poorly matched too-tight white pants, just plain wrong stilettos, and a pink stretchy clubbish top embellished with giant rhinestones, intending to exude sex and freshness and getting away with none of it at all. With only four listings for rental homes, one in beautiful but illegible (for me) Nepali script, I thrust the paper at Pujan, Miss Jess' Nepalese husband and silently begged the universe for at least two good possbile options to choose from. Just two...just show me two good little simple houses and I'll pick one, I promised.

Pujan hung up the phone and announced that an agent was on his way to the hotel. He had four houses in our budget to show us, one of them quite near the hotel.

Within an hour we were making our way down the impossibly narrow streets, two taxis carting the four of us and our property liason toward a future I imagined fervently. I thought of small kitchens, little rooms, a single bathroom with clean water and enough space outside for Mooshy to stretch his little hyper legs. I would have been content with a two bedroom house, I'd even have been happy - after two years in our tiny Indian home anything was going to be a step up and I was in no position to demand much of the universe on such short notice.

We arrived at the end of an even narrower dirt road, large homes sprawling behind compound walls on every side and a wrought iron fence opened in front of us to reveal a palace set back from the street by an immense garden full of rose bushes.

I stared up and counted the levels of a house I immediately mentally dubbed 'The White House' - four floors, all of them sporting balconies and full length windows. I looked at Hamid, he was counting too, his eyes glinting with uncertainty and excitement in the afternoon sun.

We approached the house on foot, passing a beautiful black statue of The Buddha, and I asked the agent who confirmed for me for the second or third time in the past thirty seconds that it was indeed a 'Complete house? Single family?'

So it took about an hour - we found our 'little' Nepalese house: a seven bedroom, four bathroom, four floor mini-mansion with garden to match. We've paid the first three months (something equal to a one month rental fee for a modern one or two bedroom apartment in a good Seattle neighborhood or a bad studio in SoHo).
Now, we're booking tickets to return, packing (of course I already had us half packed weeks ago), and planning gorgeous balcony-based habachi feasts and parties in the big room on the third floor of what will always now be known as 'The White House' and promises room to stretch and breathe in ways I could never have imagined.

Looking back now I wonder why I ever worry about these things at all in this ask-and-you-shall-receive existence. I've only minutes ago wished for rain...and it starts falling in our Bangalore neighborhood almost as if on command. Hamid shakes his head in amazement and asks me why I don't just go ahead and wish for a Porsche.