Autism spectrum/A few impertinent questions/Consciousness and free-will may be defining characteristics of all life, but do we have much understanding of what they actually are?

Question 28 From Thailand I flew to Nepal, a tiny kingdom in the Himalayas. It was the dry season and everything was brown and dusty. I’d planned to join an overland bus tour to England in Kathmandu, and had a reservation at the hotel from which the tour was to start. I shared a taxi from the airport with some young Australians. It was a rusty old vehicle of Indian make, the stuffing bulging out of the seats. The starter didn't work, and two drivers were required, one to steer and another to push. We would drive a few blocks. Then they would cut the motor and coast, keeping both drivers busy. The Nepalese were under the impression this method of driving conserved petrol. At the hotel I learned my room wouldn't be available until the next day. For that first night, I was assigned to the dormitory, a sort of penthouse on the roof. Cots were lined up next to each other, and I’d never slept in a room full of strangers like this. Most of them were young Western tourists. In my traveling-on-the-cheap I would usually find myself with young people, and they never appeared to see anything unusual about finding a woman of my age among them. I was grateful for their acceptance. We were warned to keep the windows closed to prevent monkeys from stealing our belongings. Finally I'd arrived in a country so exotic that monkeys ran wild.

The next morning a dozen brown monkeys scampered away as we came out onto the roof. More played on the brown, dusty roofs around us. I looked out over the quiet little mountain Capital. It was not really a city; just a little rural town. I explored Kathmandu and the countryside on foot - or rode a rickshaw, a cart pulled by a boy on a bicycle. Amid chickens, geese, goats and cows, I saw Mongolian-looking, mountain people in colorful costumes and furs, holy men wearing nothing but a dingy cloth around their loins, women in bright silk saris, and brown children wearing only a skimpy shirt - or nothing. Western or Japanese mountain climbers in heavy boots were occasionally seen among the natives. On "Freak Street" Western hippies were allowed to indulge in drugs without interference from the Nepalese government, and had become a tourist sight. I skipped that one. Imagine traveling half way around the world to look at American drug addicts!

While planning my trip during the past year, I had tried to read something about the places I would visit. For centuries the kings of Nepal had married two queens in one ceremony. This bizarre custom caused endless palace intrigue, as both queens and their assorted offspring vied for power. A particularly bloody episode occurred at the middle of the nineteenth century, when half the nobility of Nepal was massacred. A young army officer seized power and declared himself to be Prime Minister. He and his descendants ruled Nepal for the next century, keeping the royal family captive in the palace. All Westerners were excluded from the little country, and radios and newspapers were banned. In the 1950's the young captive king escaped to India. Organizing a successful revolt, he returned to rule his country, overthrowing the Prime Minister and keeping him and his family prisoner. This new king accepted Western financial aid and built the first road into the little capital. Until then everyone had arrived in Kathmandu on foot. A funky rope-pulley arrangement had hauled freight over the mountains into the little city. Because of the rugged terrain and Nepal's long isolation from Western civilization, the tribes of the little kingdom remained separate, each with its own language and customs. I'd read that among some mountain people, a woman could have two husbands - if they were brothers. Among some jungle tribes near the Indian border, a man was supposed to only marry a woman from a tribe to the east of his village. The fate of the men in the eastern-most village was not mentioned.

"We seem to have our own private rickshaw," a New Zealand couple at my hotel commented with amusement. "A Nepalese driver is apparently devoting his services exclusively to us. Every morning we find him waiting outside the hotel gate. As we shop or walk around town, he follows us until we are ready to return to the hotel."

When the New Zealand couple left Nepal, to my surprise, I seemed to inherit their rickshaw driver, a friendly young man with a fun-loving sparkle in his big brown eyes. When I tried to walk he would pedal persistently along beside me, good-naturally extolling how cheap it would be to ride. Sometimes I resisted, enjoying the walk, but I would eventually succumb to his persuasion and climb up into his rickshaw. The driver called me Grandmother, under the impression this was a flattering term for a woman of my age. I could have explained that most Western women in their late fifties would not feel flattered at being called “grandmother”, but it was merely his respectful term for any mature woman, and I didn’t correct him. After a few days I began to understand my rickshaw driver's dogged devotion to one tourist at a time. He had once worked as a Sherpa on a mountain-climbing expedition. Someone in the group became fond of him and flew him to California for a backpacking trip in the Sierras. It had been a fabulous adventure for a Nepalese boy, and I'm sure he hoped something equally wonderful might happen again.

I loved riding the rickshaw. When we went downhill, I clutched the sides with both hands. We careened wildly along, dodging chickens, dogs, goats, cows and naked children. The horn honked constantly, as both the driver and I laughed with delight. When we went uphill I felt sorry for him and got out and walked. In fact, on very steep hills I got behind and pushed. I realized I might look a little ridiculous pushing a rickshaw, but I was having such fun, and no one seemed to pay any attention as "Grandmother" pushed that rickshaw up the dusty, narrow, crooked streets of Kathmandu. Perhaps in my beautiful, Chinese-style, straw hat, I was mistaken for some kind of a native.

The rickshaw driver would call happily over his shoulder, "See Grandmother, this very bad road. Maybe you give me extra rupee this time?"

He saw no reason why Grandmother shouldn't help push the rickshaw, and even pay extra for the privilege. I gave him several extra rupees. When traveling with family and friends one observes the world from the comfortable position of a tourist. Traveling alone allows one to experience cultures a little more deeply, finding differences, but also discovering shared feelings and thoughts. I was fortunate to be able do a little of it during that short window of time when it was relatively safe for lone tourists in that part of the world. Mostly we have to accept other people’s descriptions of our world, or how it was in the past. But nothing can equal first-hand experience.