Well, he's really close to being naked.
Please note, the odd tilt is not me trying to be clever. While walking along a shopping street in the nation's capital- Kathmandu- I saw this man approaching. Not wanting to embarrass or anger him by raising the camera to my eye, I held it down low and fired one shot. It was tilted about 10 degrees and I didn't want to crop away a bunch of the surrounding "atmosphere" of the place, so I'm presenting it as shown.
Why is the man (almost) completely naked? I don't know. He hadn't seen a bath since the last heavy rain, and one can assume that what he was carrying represented the sum total of his possessions. Was he a hermit living in the city? An ascetic? Or one of the slightly crazy and/or mentally retarded individuals who sometimes roam the city streets of remote, poor countries, harming no-one, but having no-one to take care of them?
My thought at the time was the latter- but I don't pretend to know for certain.
This is the first of several posts about Nepal, a country I visited many years ago.
Scanned from an old B&W print.
Hmmm...I don't see anything unusual here...
I believe this fella and I could be quite good buddies!
I wonder what he's doing with his hands. Everyone is wearing long sleeves and full length pants. How warm or cold was it? He's got huge feet, so I can't judge by the shrinkage.
Thanks Scott and T-bone.
The man was blowing on his hands to warm them. The morning air was cold at this elevation (nearly a mile above sea level).
The man's feet weren't particularly large- the wide-angle shot (tilted up) caused distortion. The man exhaling cigarette smoke wasn't that skinny either.
My guess at the time was that he had no clothing and wore only what was required by law to cover his male "body parts."
In many economically poor countries, I saw people like this who roamed the streets, harming no-one, and receiving help from no-one, including governmental agencies.
Charlie
