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Mark Moxon's Travel Writing

Nepal: Death in the Afternoon

A Nepalese film poster
I replayed the afternoon's events in my head, round and round like a film, but without the happy colours of your average Nepalese blockbuster

Seeing a dead body is one of the most unnerving sights on offer; whenever I think of Hobart in Tasmania, I think of two pale, bloated bodies washing up from a sunken car in the dock, trailing frothy white vomit on the black water. Worse than this is to watch someone die, to go from alive to dead in the blink of an eye, a pleasure I have yet to witness. But surely the worst sight of all must be to see someone still alive, but dying slowly and desperately in front of your very eyes, without a hope for survival; this is why fatal cancer and AIDS are so frightening, because there's no hope. At least a bullet in the head is quick.