Hash

In Sweden I kinda stopped exercising. My biggest excuse was that all the people I knew were lazy bums. Which i still think is a fair point to make. Somehow I thought it would be different here in Kathmandu. It is different.

You wouldn’t think that hash would require you to do anything taxing, but alas. The hash is some kind of running experiment, in which the organizers test how much they can push you when you run around the wackiest, most impenetrable parts of whichever city the hash happens to be organized in, before you die of exhaustion. They won’t say it out loud, and they’d rather err on the safe side so a to not arouse suspition and not loose running meat. hence not many people actually die, but I’m sure this is their goal.

It goes a bit like this: the members agree to meet on a Saturday around mid-day at a given point. One pre-appointed member will have set out a course of his own device, straight through the city, or, what I understand happens more often, in the countryside. She/he marks the route with flocks of shredded paper along the way (often from classified documents of one embassy or another). To make it a bit more interesting, some false trails are laid, so the quick ones have to backtrack and will be just as exhausted as the rest of us. At certain points the paper is laid in a circle. That’s where the slow ones can catch up.

Apparently these hashes have been going on for years all around the world. It all started in Korea I think; in or after the Korea war. And it spread like Agent Orange across the world.

Last week I did my first hash. Untrained, flimsy looking and with my city shoes on. I spent all my energy in the first quarter of an hour to keep up appearances. That wasn’t to smart, but then again a slower start wouldn’t have saved me. This hash was here in Kathmandu, Nepal. So in about the hilliest country in the world. And I come from Holland: the flattest land in the world. We ran (well ran..) around 14 kilometres, but that’s calculated from GPS info. Taking altitude drops and climbs into account I’d give it 30 km. And if that’s not at all the case, it certainly felt like that (well it actually felt like 80, but I feel I’m portraying myself as a wimp already a bit to much).

 The picture on the left gives an idea of what one has to conquor. This particular hill was actually quite fun. The industrial sand makes for quite a soft landing so this would give the Australians under us a great opportunity to show their kangaroo hop mastery in the 4 to 7 meter category.

It took me about four days to recover. Room-mate Bryan had lots of laughs when he saw me shuffling bum first down the stairs the first two days, which was about the only way to get down without having to sacrifice our biped evolutionary advantage.

Turned out that particular hash was quite harsh, and was meant more for the masochistic inclined.Yesterdays Hash was much more mellow. It was more meant as an educational Hash i believe, showing off Kathmandu’s waste disposal belts.

The pinnacle of the hash was undoubtedly the film/video clip shooting we accidentally bumped into. In the middle of the street a camera team was setting up a scene. A scantly clad young lady was being kept under wraps, and some dancers were just warming up, when they were all of a sudden confronted with a brigade of sweaty, tired runners. And what better backdrop for your video than some dancing sweaty people in running outfit! So the director seized the opportunity, sent the dancers home and let us dance in stead. I’m sure our dancing talents will get him a prize in some category of whatever type of thing he was shooting.

As I understand, next week is going to be more of a classic one, through beautiful nature and such (did I just hear a boo from the back of the crowd?). I should really start looking for some running shoes.And here are some pics of the last run.