Beat Up in Pokhara, Nepal

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MARCH 7, 2013

I got a massage today.  Or, more accurately, I paid for massage today.  I’m not sure what I got.  No, nothing sexual.  It was the opposite of sexual.  That is, unless you’re into torture in the bedroom. 

Pewa Lake, Pokara, Nepal.  There were more boats sunk than floating.

My new home office for the next week

From the start, it was awkward.  Like other massages I’ve gotten in Central Asia, a woman walks in the room point to me and says, “Take off.”  Clothing that is.  But how much?  Pertinent to this part of our story is that monkeys stole my boxers back in Rishikesh and I began my travel with only two pair – comfortable boxers and super tight brief that were to be used only for running.  I was wearing the briefs.  So I strip down to the briefs and pause waiting for my next instructions to get naked or get on the table.  “Face down,” with a drill instructor’s kindness. 

Pothead culture is alive and well in Pokhara

What followed next is hard to describe.  I mean, I’ve only spent about 500 hours of my life studying anatomy, physiology and kinesiology and I would need another 5,000 hours to properly describe the beating I took.

Let’s back up a second.  Its worth mentioning that I am no stranger to deep tissue massages.  Back in Mpls I used to massage therapists.  Kristi gave a solid deep tissue massage and took me to a level 8 on the pain scale, while Dana, also a friend, would actually taunt me sometimes and take it to a 10.  This bit*# in Pokhara took it to 11.  And in the weirdest of ways. 

By now I have received enough massages in the east to know that there are just some different thing they do – like pin your arm down by interlocking their fingers in yours.  There was also all the usual stuff that makes body work painful, like wrenching on my IT band and chronically over-worked calves.  But there was more to it than that. 

In the U.S. she would have been run out of the business for practicing medicine without a license as I received what might be called a chiropractic adjustment.  More like twenty chiropractic adjustments.  Some of them were legit adjustments I recognized from my time strapped on the rack with Doctor Burns.  Others…. well….  okay, how about this.  I’m lying there prone (face down) and she bends one knee, stabilizes that hip with her one arm, then lifts that femur (top half of the leg) with her other arm swooping it to the side then up to the sky until something – somewhere – snaps like a decent size tree branch.  Glad I did my dynamic warm ups before and restorative yoga after my run today.  Any normal hip flexor would have snapped.  Thankfully I’m hypermobile in some joints.

Here’s another one for you.  I’m again prone and she’s sitting on my ass working on my spine.  Go ahead, you can re-read that last sentence but I promise that you read it right the first time – she’s sitting on my ass.  Then, to stabilize my sacrum (that lowest part of your spine that connects to your pelvis) I swear to Allah that she rolled forward and planted her pubic bone square in my back and then proceeded to work her way up my thoracic (upper-middle) spine to my neck popping one or two vertebra at a time.  

Immediately after the body work I felt like hell.  Sure, that morning I had my long run of the week which beat me down a bit.  But it was still rough.  However, by the end of the night I felt like a champ again.  Maybe I’ll go back for another session tomorrow.  Or not.

Concrete outdoor ping pong table.  Brillant.

Post Script:   The benefit of posting an outdated blog is I get to have post-facto updates like this (today being March 12 now).  Tonight I ate dinner at a street cart.  It was the best food of the trip, though I’ll spare you the details.  Mid way through the meal it starts to pour rain and we are invited to finish the meal in the barber shop, naturally.  So we’re sitting there in the barber shop eating dinner (Theresa is literally in a barber’s chair and I’m standing off to the side) and we can’t help but watch the guy getting his hair cut.  The whole shop is only as wide as the one car garage door that covers the front and keeping the rain out and it can’t be more than 10 feet wide.  After hair cut and shave the barber starts doing bodywork on the guy.  It starts with a nice little head and neck rub then turns into a rather violent arm massage.  Then the barber puts the guy in basically a half nelson and cracks his neck.  Hard.  This whole process gets repeated on the other side.  It was the oddest thing I’ve ever seen.  Apparently everyone in town provides chiropractic adjustments as part of their service offering.  I got out of there with my beard intact, without risk of paralysis.