Drivers there, in the shadow of the world's highest mountains, are probably the best in the world. They contend with what I believe is Nepal's approach to population control: traffic.

To start, there are the roads. A taxi driver might reasonably charge one fare for a direct route to a destination, and double the fare for the much longer route around the potholes. The roads are typical of those you might find in any third-world nation. Just like New York's.

At any moment, an automobile driver competes with buses, taxis, bicycles, motorcycles, rickshaws powered by human leg power, tuk-tuks (overgrown passenger-carrying tricycles powered by lawn-mower engines), seemingly self-propelled piano-size loads (on closer inspection, borne on the backs of men), dogs, cows, goats and yaks. The motorist also contends with pedestrians, possibly an endangered species. I can't swear to this, but I suspect that crews are employed to sweep up pedestrian residue.

In one popular district, Thamel, all roads are one-way, and they all accommodate two-way traffic-at least. There are no traffic lights to confuse or distract anybody. At one intersection in Thamel, five roads converge at one point, in a valiant challenge to the age-worn shibboleth that two objects cannot occupy the same position at the same time.

Or perhaps, there may be a form of natural selection at work, a Darwinian survival of the fittest. Many Nepalis consume with their meals a condiment that's a form of concentrated and solidified fire: chilies. It is possible that those who survive chilies can survive anything, even Kathmandu traffic.

It's also possible that the beautiful erotic sculptures on the magnificent 17th-century Jagannath Temple and many others-carved, it is said, to frighten away the prudish goddess of lightning (quite successfully, it should be pointed out, as no temple so adorned as ever been struck by lightning)-may also frighten away goddesses who might harm motorists.

Having successfully crossed some Thamel streets, not once but several times (I swear it), I realized that many of the "truths" I've always taken to be self-evident aren't. I can't believe much of what I saw in Nepal. So I've come to the conclusion that my intellectual horizons have been too limited and that I have been a prisoner of too narrow a list of experiences. I'll need to expand.