Kathmandu

Kathmandu is the urban counterpoint to the mountain life that has shaped Pietro: a sprawling city at the foot of the Himalayas where monsoon storms, news from Grana, and work with children gradually give his wandering a new direction.

Setting and First Arrival

On his first journey to Nepal, Pietro begins from Kathmandu and travels by road toward a wooded valley on the way to Annapurna. The route, less than two hundred kilometers from the city, passes villages linked by steep mule tracks and narrow rope bridges. In the surrounding fields, he sees terraced rice paddies and farmers working through the October harvest. The villages appear to him to preserve an agricultural way of life that has disappeared from the Alpine mountains he knows; along the route, he sees no derelict buildings.

Pietro reaches Kathmandu as a base for a mountaineering expedition, sharing a tent with four Italian climbers and carrying a film camera for a documentary assignment. The work initially seems like a fortunate opportunity, but the journey also leads him to decide to stay in Nepal after the expedition and explore the lower elevations independently. Kathmandu thus stands at the threshold between a professional trip into the mountains and a longer period of life in Nepal.

Monsoon and News from Grana

Later, during the monsoon, Pietro is back in Kathmandu, where afternoon storms interrupt the city’s traffic and turn the streets into streams of mud and rubbish. He regularly finds a telephone connection and an old computer so he can catch up on news from home. His mother reports that Lara is five months pregnant and continues tending the cows at the alpine pasture despite an ankle injury, sunstroke, and the discomforts of late pregnancy. In August, an ultrasound confirms that Lara is expecting a girl; after the cows descend to the valley at the end of September, Lara gives birth soon afterward.

The distance between Kathmandu and Grana gives these updates a particular force: Pietro receives news of Bruno’s expanding family while living far from the farm and its seasonal routines. When he learns that Bruno has become a father, he is in lower Dolpo, but the earlier Kathmandu reports establish the months of work and waiting that preceded the birth.

Children and a New Responsibility

On the outskirts of Kathmandu, Pietro encounters children whose parents have migrated to the city in search of work. Some have lost one or both parents; others have a parent living and working in a shack while they are left to grow up on the streets. Organizations try to care for them, including one where a woman Pietro knows works with children. What he sees and hears from her leads him to help as well.

This involvement changes the meaning of his stay. After years of wandering, Pietro finds himself in a large city at the foot of the mountains, alongside a woman whose work recalls his mother’s care for others. He and the woman also go to higher elevations when they can, using the mountains to recover energy depleted by city life. Kathmandu is therefore neither simply a stop on the way to the peaks nor a replacement for them: it becomes the place where mountain-directed travel coexists with practical commitments to people in the city.

A Place to Reach Bruno

Kathmandu is also where Pietro finally acts on his mother’s urgent request after Bruno’s farming business collapses in autumn 2013. Bruno declares himself bankrupt, closes the agricultural business, and hands the farm’s keys to the bailiff; Lara goes to live with her parents and their child. Pietro’s mother fears that Bruno has lost everything and is alone, and asks whether Pietro can do anything.

Pietro leaves the computer, asks to use a telephone, and calls Bruno in Italy. The call is a departure from his usual distance: instead of remaining an observer of events at home, he takes direct action to re-establish contact. In the broader arc of Kathmandu, that call links the responsibilities Pietro has begun to accept in Nepal with the friendship and family ties he has left behind in the Alps.