Nepali Basketball

Thursday afternoon I was recruited to play on the Kathmandu University faculty basketball team. The term “faculty” is used pretty loosely since it includes teaching assistants with BS degrees and lecturers with MS degrees. I was the only professor on the team and therefore more than twice the age of anyone on the court. My only advantage was my height (6’4’’) and the fact that I vaguely remember playing in high school 35 years ago. The only player as tall as me was Anuroop Manandhar who, fortunately, was also on my team and is an excellent basketball player. Of my six teammates, two were excellent players, one was pretty good and the other three were, how should I say, "less experienced."

The outdoor court at the main campus in Dhulikhel has great views of an expansive, emerald green rice field to the west and the mist shrouded Himalayan foothills to the east. I stopped a minute before the game began to wonder what the odds were that I’d ever be playing basketball in this kind of setting! After helping the others shoo away some cattle and goats from the court, the game got underway.

We took a decisive 12 point lead in the first quarter. Anuroop and I were able to clog up the middle of the lane on defense so that they couldn’t get off any good shots. He and our pint-sized point guard did most of the scoring while I concentrated on rebounding, defense and handing out assists. I knew that my shooting needed practice so I only took four shots the entire game, making two of them. Our big lead continued into the fourth quarter, so in the spirit of letting everyone play we let the "second-string" members of our team play – a nearly fatal decision since they turned the ball over on nearly every possession and couldn't score any points. Within a span of five minutes the other team had pulled to within 2 points, mostly from steals and fast breaks. Anuroop signaled for me to come back in and we were able to stem the blood flow. We had been playing a zone defense, but I decided to go man-to-man on their best player who was scoring all their points. Between that and a few buckets by Anuroop, we held on for a 30-28 victory. Not having played for 8 months, my legs felt like rubber after the game, but I still had to find my way back home (20 miles away).

One of my teammates also had to go back to Kathmandu, so we walked to the bus stop at the main road. A local bus came by within a few minutes. We paid our 40 rupee fare (about 60 cents) and settled back for the 1 ½ hour ride. Unfortunately, we hit a terrible traffic jam caused by a line of trucks and buses waiting for a diesel station to open along the very narrow road. There just wasn’t enough room for them and two more lanes of traffic, so a few trucks had become wedged together and couldn’t move. Everyone got off the bus and started walking the mile to Banepa hoping to catch another bus there. By this time it was 6:30 pm and completely dark. We waited for at least 30 minutes but no bus came along. Emsar, my teammate, then commenced to flag down passing trucks and vans, hoping that we could negotiate a reasonable fee for passage to Kathmandu.

A small covered truck finally stopped at 7:30 and Emras was able to negotiate a 500 rupee fee ($7) for us and the freshman girl who had latched on to us for protection. I’m sure it would have been much less, but the driver saw my pale face and jacked up the price. In Nepal there are always two prices for everything: a Nepali price and a foreigner price. We three wedged into the front seat with the driver while three men jumped into the bed. Along the way we picked up another 4-5 people, so the driver was making a good “moonlighting” wage that night. While stopping to pick someone up, the girl next to me looked like she was going to upchuck, so I hurriedly let her out to do her business. She had to get out one more time along the way. She was either car sick or I really smelled bad.

It was kind of eerie driving at night on the dark, poorly maintained, and deeply potholed road that is the major thoroughfare between Kathmandu and Tibet. There is a significant amount of smuggling that goes on along that route. We were stopped twice at police checkpoints, but they let us through quickly – one look at me and they knew I wasn’t Tibetan. Police usually don’t give foreigners a hard time, except for the few crooked ones who try to entrap them in order to extort money. We’ve had no trouble at all, though.

Finally, we reached Kathmandu at 8:30 but the driver let us off more than 3 miles away from my apartment. Emras and the girl waited for a minibus to get home, but I knew it would take more than an hour for me to make it home that way. Instead, I took off walking through the dark streets (the power was off again). As long as you stick to the main streets and stay out of the alleys at night, we’ve found Kathmandu to be a very safe place. I eventually got home at 9:10. My average speed from the bus stop in Dhulikhel to my apartment was a turtle-like 8 mph, but well worth the hassle to get in a good game of basketball.