One thing has not changed since the first time I arrived in Nepal, in January 2008, and that is the dramatic and over-loud power horns attached to buses and trucks. 18 years ago, I was at first accommodated quite close to the highway, and the passing traffic certainly made itself known. And now I am staying quite close to the road again, but on the opposite side, still in audible distance of the torrent of discord.
Some of the horns play what sounds like a minor interval, such as C and E flat, exactly like the melancholy note traditionally heard on North American railroads. But the North American train horns are not designed to produce a minor triad, for example, nor any specific musical interval, but merely to be as resonant as possible, simply to be heard as a warning signal. The idea that the sound is melancholy may simply be due to context: the emptiness, the night-time, the loneliness of a long train journey.
Another common type of demanding horn sound here is a chromatic run, brutal and jarring, simply done to demand attention. On my very first visit there was a rhythmic staccato phrase reminiscent of some of the overtures to early Verdi operas, a brassy but more musical riff; but this is rarer now. The road emits sounds late into the night: a moaning of brakes, a rattling of metal bodies of trucks, a constant low rumble punctuated by squeaks, knocks, and jangles. These continue to lap against the windows, echoing as the vehicles recede on their bumpy path to Kathmandu.
The road works from Bhaktapur to Dhulikhel are still going on, and the only way to handle the topography is to have the two opposing traffic streams at different levels, and this has resulted in huge amounts of earth being gouged out, and massive walls of concrete put in place. I suspect that even when it is all finished, the road will mostly be choked with traffic.
As you approach Kathmandu, the massive ranks of motorbikes dominate the whole road, weaving in and out, or simply forming an impassible knot. Whatever happens, those raucous horns are sure to continue. Such jarring noises have been declared illegal, but like many of the well-intentioned laws in Nepal, this prescription has been ignored.
Last week we returned late from Kathmandu, and hurtling through the torrent of darkness were those trucks, which in addition to their strident voices, were bedecked in vivid necklaces of garish lights, insisting that in addition to being heard, they would certainly be seen.
