Bartering

On Saturday a group of us went to Thamel, the tourist district of Kathmandu.
We did some shopping, which involved a fair amount of bartering.

There are several joys that come from bartering.

The first is the chance to use some of the few words I have learned in Nepali.

"Oho! Muhungo! Dheri Muhungo!" means "Wow! Expensive! Very expensive!"
It's fun to say.
And there is nothing quite like being understood in a foreign language - the sense of achievement!

The second is when you succeed and manage to get the price of something down.
This is often a necessity when you're being charged "tourist" prices and you fully know you're being ripped off.

For example, on our way back we got a taxi, and we asked for it for 250Rs, which the driver agreed to, then upped to 300. We knew we didn't have to pay that and could just try another taxi, so started to walk away, which made him agree to 250.

He asked if we were volunteers, which we said yes to, and he was like "yes, obviously volunteers, asking Pulchowk for 250"!

The ridiculous thing of it all is that the amounts we're often bartering over are literally pennies! Most things we bought were under £5!

For a good portion of the time we spent in Thamel we were followed by some men trying to sell me a sarangi (a Nepali bowed stringed instrument)
This was my own fault for showing interest.
And really I was a bit interested...
I managed to get them to drop their price from 1500Rs to 500Rs, but decided against the purchase anyway, because as cool as the instrument is, it's not got the most beautiful tone in the world...