If you want to know what the Nepalese think of their king, you don’t have to look any further than  their 10-rupee notes. The sage-green and pale brown bills – worth about 16 cents – show the sunken-eyed, scowling monarch glancing off to the right, as if wary even of the portrait artist (as well he might have been). On the new bills, the portrait of the king is printed over with a bouquet of red rhododendrons, the national flower. But locals delight in holding the revamped bill to the light, proving that the monarch is still hiding behind the scenes.

 As Nepal bides its time, caught between a lame monarchy and a failed democracy (not to mention a despised, splintered Maoist movement), tourism remains an important revenue source. “Welcome to Magical, Mystical Nepal” declare banners strung across avenues choked with diesel-spewing trucks and crowded with ramshackle, earthquake-bait buildings. I have to laugh, imagining how ludicrous this must appear to first-time visitors. The banners are right – there’s still magic in Kathmandu — but getting to it involves frequent transits of hell. Traffic and pollution are so bad that the high-end department stores do a booming business in particle filter masks –though the good ones cost the equivalent of a week’s salary.

So why do I love this place? Because as soon as I get out of the city – and it doesn’t take long —  I’m reminded of where the magic really is.

 Just an hour’s drive north, the hamlet of Nagarkot faces out toward the middle hills and the central Himalaya. The lights and smog of Kathmandu are out of sight. My old friends Tom Kelly and Carroll Dunham – check out their books and films —  have built a small house here, and from this base (and the nearby Vajra Farmhouse) I’ve been taking short treks into the countryside. It’s mid-autumn, and every village is busy with the harvest: wheat, potatoes, cauliflower, bright red chili peppers, popcorn, tangerines, apples. Though the festival of Dasain is over, high bamboo poles –which served as scaffoldings for home-made swings — still stand in the village squares.

The changes in these villages since my first treks, 27 years ago, have been huge; there’s  electricity now, and motorcycles are parked outside some of the shops. Aquifers are channeled through brass nozzles (instead of carved naga spouts), and gush onto cement platforms. There are more schools, and trucks carry 50 kg sacks of produce to the markets in Asan and Kupondole. But it’s the little things that get me: men taking pictures of local pujas with their cell phones; writing pads emblazoned with Spider-man; porches decorated with glittering CDs, which dangle and turn in the breeze.

I cannot believe that I’ve got just one day left in Kathmandu. Two an a half weeks seemed like a  long time, but it’s been the shortest eight months of my life. Equally hard to believe is that this Fall marks the 20th anniversary of my “Shopping for Buddhas” trip (and that, after all these years, I’m still shopping). If the blessings I’ve collected here bear fruit, 2008 will see the publication of “Snake Lake” – a book as close to my heart as Nepal itself.