There is a strange sense of order in the domestic terminal of the Kathmandu airport -- some common logic among the whirlpool of people and goods that constantly shuffle across the open and dirty warehouse. There are untold numbers of young Nepalis in western dress, raisin-faced old women laden with gold earrings and elaborate saris, and always a few of foreigners usually looking a bit bewildered. The airport possesses a kind of beauty that somehow, indescribably, makes sense. But this is lost to the untrained Western eye. My gaze tends to slide instead to the broken ceiling fans, the pigeons preening themselves by the small windows, the ancient moon-faced baggage scales standing sentry over the plywood check in counters.

This morning I was waiting for my flight on one of the decrepit plastic chairs, and a pod of American trekkers came by and broke into gut splitting laughter, all the while pointing and gesturing at me.
I knew I look tired and a bit disheveled, but this surprised me. Then I realized they were laughing at the ‘Police Headquarter Complaint Box’ nailed to the concrete pillar above me. The box is a rough hand-painted affair, resembling a birdhouse.

The joy of the trekkers, it seems, was born of the futility and quaintness of what the box represented, sprinkled with a healthy dose of general discomfort with the airport or perhaps the country in general. I’ve spent years doing this – quietly poking fun at how poorly things are done in the developing world. There is just so much material to work with, and it somehow sets us at ease – perhaps in the way bullies enjoy recess, or that we relish in unfairness when the unfairness works in our favor.

I wonder how much our (Western) experiences in the developing world are fed by the inevitable ego boost we get from feeling superior. How much of the tourism trade in Nepal is built upon things like the complaint box, much in the same vein that Vermont has built a tourism trade around their cows.
In the end, there is something deeply human and insecure in all this -- in the mechanisms that keep us from seeing things for what they are, and from keeping our judgment upon such to ourselves. And I fear it’s a much bigger part of our motivations than we’d all like to admit.

I hope to cultivate a life of travel that is based upon reverence and respect. A means of going to new and strange places that is built less upon complaint and more upon simple perception and love. I thought about this as I had my boarding pass stamped by the bored policemen at the security check. I was thinking about it as I boarded the old bus that took me out past the shells of airplanes scattered across the tarmac and as I climbed on to the old Canadian Twin Otter that rattled and roared down the runway and, as we took flight, I plugged in my iPod.