Pepsi and puja

Caught up in the enchanting whirlwind of Kathmandu, it's easy to forget the fabric of the country we're in. A 6am taxi ride to the bus station offered just the quiet exposure we needed to step back and see it, without keeping one eye peeled for motorbikes and street hawkers.

The first Europeans and Americans didn't enter Nepal until the 1950s, but now there are thousands of shops selling western food, clothes and shampoo. Religion is very much at the forefront of almost every Nepali person's life, but on the way home from giving puja to the gods, many can be found flogging singing bowls and necklaces to pale-faced tourists. Traditional motifs (including the swastika, still used in Buddhism and Hinduism as a symbol of good luck and refreshingly free from the corruption of those Nazis) are sprinkled with international football emblems and clothing brands. A mountain shack with a hole-in-the-ground toilet has a bottle of Harpic in the corner. Nepali families in their old, crumbling homes crowd around the latest T.V to watch American wrestling.

That morning, I watched a shoeless woman with her puja bowl amble past a large Pepsi advertisement, and right next to it sat an ageing man on his haunches, playing with a mobile phone. The capital city has none of the glossy, high-rise buildings and air-conditioned metropolis found in India's biggest cities, but there's certainly an aspiration for it as Nepal plants more roots in the international community.

For now, we're lucky enough to see it with much of its antiquity and historic charm - and can chuckle at the local 'Walmart' food stall and eccentric 'Hard Rock cafe'.