I picture Nepal in shades of green and blue, woods and sky. The Himalayas take you by surprise, looming out of an otherwise flat plain, rising in vast walls, creating thresholds on the next level to heaven. The road -- THE Road, one of the most beautiful roads on earth -- rises up through deep green forests, a jungle lush with massive oaks and maples, then shifting to banana palms, bamboo, and giant ferns. Fat deer browse; chattering monkeys fill the trees.

But the cities of the Kathmandu Valley labor under a cloak of thick smog, and at first glance, bare the same ugly facades as any modern industrialized city: smokestacks and oil tanks, factories and slummy apartments, rough dirty streets. The beauty, I later learned, is in the subtleties, only found on foot.