On Running and Kathmandu

What do you like about Kathmandu?  My best friends have all asked me this question.  I ask about their kids and their husbands.  I ask about career changes and we all enjoy spring weather and fattening American food together.  I am mentally assessing and summarizing their lives in our short time together.  I am looking for indicators of well-being that cannot be seen through truncated emails.  I am savoring bites of delicious conversation with people who know my back stories.  I relax into familiar patterns.

I like the challenge of Kathmandu.  This is the first answer that tumbles from my mouth.  I like that every day I must try being brave.  I open our front gate.  It is made of heavy gray steel.  A few weeks ago it betrayed me, crushing my left index finger and now my fingernail is failing off in hard yellow pieces.  I walk down my driveway to start my morning Kathmandu run, trying to pick my route.  I dodge buses, and motorcycles so plentiful that they are a plague of locus swerving and narrowly missing my back heel.  Dogs sleep curled up in potholes or paw through open sewers looking for edible scraps.   A black dog with a curled tail and sagging chest lunges at me and barks an aggressive warning.  When I return home my teeth are coated in grit and my nostrils covered in black dirt.  The run was hilly, mostly unpleasant and felt dangerous but I was brave.  I feel like I have conquered a piece of the wild city of Kathmandu.