Here we have some of our best and worst moments of our 14 days in Nepal, we've also put together a gallery of our favourite photos which you can visit if you don't feel like ploughing through our gazillion photos. The gallery is available here.
Our FAVOURITE Places/Activities
According to Yann:
1- Getting charged by elephant in Chitwan National Park
2- Meeting up with Maoist protesters in Pokhara
3- Birthday dinner in Kathmandu: Pizza and Everest beer (courtesy of Megan)
According to Emilie:
1- Newari architecture in Kathmandu and Patan
2- Chitwan elephant encounters (the good and the bad)
3- Walking around Bodnath stupa in Kathmandu
Most DISSAPOINTING Places/Activities
According to Yann:
1- Watching young man die on the street at the Nepalese border (with locals showing little concern)
2- Glue sniffing street kids in Thamel, Kathmandu
3- Hearing Venga Boys full blast at 3a.m. on a night bus (Boom boom boom boom I want you in my room)
According to Emilie:
1- Thamel: Kathmandu's tourist ghetto
2- Nepal night buses (overheated, slow, noisy and crowded)
3- Getting stuck in various bandhs
Most DELICIOUS Foods
According to Yann:
1- Buffalo momos
2- Vegetable momos
3- Buff and Veg mixed momos
According to Emilie:
1- Onion bhajis from street stalls
2- Veg momos
3- 50% off baked goods
For those interested in our expenses, we have updated our homepage with our financial information for Nepal, it is available here
Showing posts with label Nepal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nepal. Show all posts
Maoists Spice up a Speedy Visit to Pokhara
After two weeks in Nepal it was time to move out of Kathmandu and say goodbye to Megan. Before we left her, Megan let us know that there were strikes called for the upcoming Sunday and Monday. Strikes (locally called bandhs) in Nepal essentially paralyse transportation with nothing other than possibly rickshaws and pedestrians being allowed to circulate. So we took a bus for the touristic town of Pokhara having decided to skip the previously planned stop in Bandipur, since we wanted to exit Nepal to resume our fast-paced traveling. This allowed for two days in Pokhara, not much, but enough to see it. The bus ride to Pokhara winds through valleys of rural Nepal and was very pleasant minus the heat and the bus stop at the extortionately priced tourist restaurant. 
Entering Pokhara we noticed a group of villagers sporting red caps imprinted with the letters "YCL", they were gathered around a statue in the center of town. Since we arrived in Nepal, the YCL had appeared on the front page of newspapers almost daily. The YCL, or Youth Communist League are a sister organization of the Maoists and seem to be favorite target of the local English newspapers. Judging from their most recent activities: pelting a UN jeep carrying the American ambassador with rocks and kidnapping a Nepali wanted on fraud charges and delivering him to police, a more appropriate name for them could be the "Young Communist Vigilantes". While we were in Kathmandu the current prime minister Koirala publicly called them the "Young Criminal League" creating quite a political stir and prompting many reactions from the Maoists. With elections coming up this year, Nepal is going through very interesting times. The elections will determine the Constituent Assembly who will then put together the country's new constitution. Every group in Nepal, especially minority groups are trying to make their voices heard, to guarantee themselves a favourable place in the constitution.
Exiting the real Pokhara and entering the tourist zone, we left the politics behind and found a lovely guest house with again very reasonable low season prices. We relaxed for a few minutes in our room and decided that the first order of business was to book our tickets for the Indian border for Saturday, knowing that Sunday and Monday we would be stranded by the strikes. While surveying several travel agencies to find the best price we learned that there was also a strike on Friday and possibly on Saturday. As usual, no one actually knew anything for sure, but some agencies weren't selling tickets for Friday or Saturday, which was a bad sign. It was Thursday afternoon, if we didn't leave that day we wouldn't be able to leave Nepal, let alone Pokhara for five days. After brief debate we decided it was better to get to the Indian border before the strikes started and the only out of Nepal was a dreaded night bus leaving only a few hours later.
We had come all the way to Pokhara (not exactly on the way to the border) and before leaving we felt we should at least accomplish the major tourist activity in town, a boat trip on Phewa Lake. With time running out before departure time, we rented a boat for an hour. Emilie's paddling skills were somewhat inadequate, so we didn't manage to get very far. With my criticising Emilie's paddling and the fact that for some reasons we had the heaviest paddles on earth, Emilie quit and let me row us back to shore. So, an hour in the boat proved to be more than enough for us.
After the boat ride we quickly ate dinner, picked up our backpack at the hotel, hailed a taxi and headed for the bus station. The bus station sits right next to the statue occupied by YCL members earlier. On arrival there, we noticed that there was nothing left of the statue. All that remained was the base implanted with a red hammer and sickle flag. 
A large crowd had now gathered there and as the good and safe travellers that we are, we headed over to the gathering (of course still wearing our backpacks so that we could make an extra fast escape if things degenerated), Megan would not be impressed. We approached the crowd and asked if we could take pictures, protesters immediately began talking to us. We were warmly welcomed and even asked to be part of the procession through the town. Seeing the police close by and knowing to what extent they love permanently pacifying activists we politely declined. We still had a bus to catch. After discussing with an older protester we learned that they just reposessed some land from the royal family around Pokhara and that they were a Maoist aligned group called the Tamuwan Mukti Morcha (TMM). We also learned that the now removed statue was some member of the royal family. 
We continued to discuss with protesters always making sure to reiterate our anti-monarchy position (and how Canada is still not free of monarchy). While discussing the crowd started getting ready for the procession, with the distribution and lighting of torches. We stood on the remains of the statue and watched the torches disappear down the road. 
After this brief but highly entertaining Maoist spectacle we returned to our bus and our extra tiny seats and waited to depart on our long journey to the border. Little did we know that the temperature there was hovering around 50 degrees celcius (no exaggerations). We were at the border by 4:30am and stamped out of Nepal and back into India soon after. But we wouldn't be in Delhi for another 30 hours, that are just too hot and painful to describe. 
Entering Pokhara we noticed a group of villagers sporting red caps imprinted with the letters "YCL", they were gathered around a statue in the center of town. Since we arrived in Nepal, the YCL had appeared on the front page of newspapers almost daily. The YCL, or Youth Communist League are a sister organization of the Maoists and seem to be favorite target of the local English newspapers. Judging from their most recent activities: pelting a UN jeep carrying the American ambassador with rocks and kidnapping a Nepali wanted on fraud charges and delivering him to police, a more appropriate name for them could be the "Young Communist Vigilantes". While we were in Kathmandu the current prime minister Koirala publicly called them the "Young Criminal League" creating quite a political stir and prompting many reactions from the Maoists. With elections coming up this year, Nepal is going through very interesting times. The elections will determine the Constituent Assembly who will then put together the country's new constitution. Every group in Nepal, especially minority groups are trying to make their voices heard, to guarantee themselves a favourable place in the constitution. Exiting the real Pokhara and entering the tourist zone, we left the politics behind and found a lovely guest house with again very reasonable low season prices. We relaxed for a few minutes in our room and decided that the first order of business was to book our tickets for the Indian border for Saturday, knowing that Sunday and Monday we would be stranded by the strikes. While surveying several travel agencies to find the best price we learned that there was also a strike on Friday and possibly on Saturday. As usual, no one actually knew anything for sure, but some agencies weren't selling tickets for Friday or Saturday, which was a bad sign. It was Thursday afternoon, if we didn't leave that day we wouldn't be able to leave Nepal, let alone Pokhara for five days. After brief debate we decided it was better to get to the Indian border before the strikes started and the only out of Nepal was a dreaded night bus leaving only a few hours later.
We had come all the way to Pokhara (not exactly on the way to the border) and before leaving we felt we should at least accomplish the major tourist activity in town, a boat trip on Phewa Lake. With time running out before departure time, we rented a boat for an hour. Emilie's paddling skills were somewhat inadequate, so we didn't manage to get very far. With my criticising Emilie's paddling and the fact that for some reasons we had the heaviest paddles on earth, Emilie quit and let me row us back to shore. So, an hour in the boat proved to be more than enough for us.
After the boat ride we quickly ate dinner, picked up our backpack at the hotel, hailed a taxi and headed for the bus station. The bus station sits right next to the statue occupied by YCL members earlier. On arrival there, we noticed that there was nothing left of the statue. All that remained was the base implanted with a red hammer and sickle flag. A large crowd had now gathered there and as the good and safe travellers that we are, we headed over to the gathering (of course still wearing our backpacks so that we could make an extra fast escape if things degenerated), Megan would not be impressed. We approached the crowd and asked if we could take pictures, protesters immediately began talking to us. We were warmly welcomed and even asked to be part of the procession through the town. Seeing the police close by and knowing to what extent they love permanently pacifying activists we politely declined. We still had a bus to catch. After discussing with an older protester we learned that they just reposessed some land from the royal family around Pokhara and that they were a Maoist aligned group called the Tamuwan Mukti Morcha (TMM). We also learned that the now removed statue was some member of the royal family. We continued to discuss with protesters always making sure to reiterate our anti-monarchy position (and how Canada is still not free of monarchy). While discussing the crowd started getting ready for the procession, with the distribution and lighting of torches. We stood on the remains of the statue and watched the torches disappear down the road. After this brief but highly entertaining Maoist spectacle we returned to our bus and our extra tiny seats and waited to depart on our long journey to the border. Little did we know that the temperature there was hovering around 50 degrees celcius (no exaggerations). We were at the border by 4:30am and stamped out of Nepal and back into India soon after. But we wouldn't be in Delhi for another 30 hours, that are just too hot and painful to describe.
Welcome to Shit-wan...Uhhh...Chitwan National Park
For Yann's birthday weekend, the three of us planned a trip to Chitwan National Park in southern Nepal. As one of Nepal's top three most visited sites and one of the best places in the sub-continent for wildlife viewing, we paid no attention to the warnings of heat and hopped on to a tourist bus heading for the park. Not without warning but still very annoyingly, the bus drops off all its passengers a few kilometers from Sauraha, allowing them to be mobbed by business card weilding locals trying to attract you to their hotel. It seems no one has understood that getting two inches from someone's face and yelling "hello hello where you want go, hotel very cheap" isn't exactly the best sales pitch. But in my usual boneheaded fashion I managed to single out the one seller with dilated pupils and a large quantity of marijuana in his system. Megan and Yann were kind enough to point this out to me once we had settled into his hotel. 
Our first task in Sauraha was to book a jungle walking tour. What better way to go searching for tigers, bears and rhinos then to go walking unarmed through the jungle? Every other building in the small Sauraha tourist strip is a travel agent, and they all offer the notorious jungle walks. After a brief interview with our slurring hotel resident stoner, who offered his guide services, we quickly set out to find another candidate. The next guy we met claimed to be the guide described in the Lonely Planet guidebook as having fended off a tiger attack, he even had the framed letter from the tourists who were with him during the attack. We visited a third guide who gave us about the same rhetoric as tiger man. During this process Megan seemed to be the only one showing some apprehension about the safety issues, apparently she is the only one of the three of us with a brain. We booked tiger man for a four hour morning walk the next day, we each paid about 5$ for his and his assistant's animal tracking services. We celebrated our Chitwan holiday and Yann's birthday with a mound of half disentegrated chocolate (most likely ruined from the continuous melting and rehardening in the heat of Sauraha). 
Our walk started at 6am but it took a while to purchase our park entry tickets as we were lined up behind hotel workers buying tickets for long lists of guests (who were probably still sleeping). We were introduced to the assistant guide, a young man who had been working for a month, both our guides were armed with a pair of flip-flops on their shoes and long wooden bamboo sticks. Feeling extra safe now. 
We got ferried over the river in a long wooden boat and began our walk. We walked quietly for a few minutes, until Megan brought up the question of safety tips. Our senior guide then gave us the rundown:
Sloth bears- Stick together and act big and scary, don't climb a tree, don't run
Tigers- Don't run, fight for your life
Rhinos- If there is a big tree, hide behind it, otherwise climb a tree
Elephants- Run for your life
My idea of the jungle walk was that we would follow a trail through the park, enjoying the scenery and if we were lucky, we might see an animal from far away (if we were unlucky we would see one from close). Very quickly into the walk I realised this wasn't exactly what our guides had in mind. Our guide spotted rhino dung and rhino tracks in the ground and exclaimed "a rhino been here last 10 minutes, follow me, quiet", and cut off the path and into the forest "following the tracks". Most of this tracking business seemed like an act, and after about an hour of walking around pretty much in circles I was wondering how I was going to last 4 hours. Every once in a while our guide would squat to his knees and scan the forest with a very concerned look on his face. Megan would turn around to sneak a glimpse of the novice guide looking bored and useless, once he would notice her, he would turn on his serious "scanning for wildlife" face. 
Acting on a tip from some park rangers that we crossed paths with, we took a small detour through the tall grasslands on a search for some rhinos, that didn't yield any sightings either. Back into the jungle, our guide brought us into some thicker vegetation and it started becoming more difficult to see anything ahead of us. As we walked through the quiet jungle we were all startled by the sound of an animal, it was a loud snort/puff. The novice guide was actually more than just startled, he blew past us running in fear. This is the point in the "jungle walk" that I started doubting the safety of it all. Retrospectively, this was also the point where we should have turned around and walked away from the animal sound. 
Our guide on the other hand, led us closer to the source of the sound, exclaiming confidently that we had come across a rhino (one of the least agressive of the possible encounters). The next few moments are somewhat of a blur, but each of us has managed to reconstruct the events as follows:
MEGAN's Account:
All of a sudden, our guides were yelling, the junior one ran off like a bolt of lightning. It was sheer mayhem. Yann, Emilie and I were running in all directions not knowing what to do. And by running in all directions, I mean slowly trying to navigate over and under branches with our cumbersome backpacks, cameras and water bottle holders making things that much more difficult. The senior guide who stuck around was pushing us and screaming. At this point, we could hear stomping and branches snapping right behind us. I couldn’t look back – I was too focused on trying to run through the thick jungle (while contemplating my lack of tree-climbing abilities and whether or not now would be a good time to learn). This is when I tripped and fell. While splayed out on the ground, I had no idea what was about to kill me – maybe a rhino or a tiger?...but something was very near.
Emilie, who was behind me at the time, was kind enough to stop for me, while our guide looked me right in the eyes and yelled "RUNNNNN, RUNNNNN, RUNNNN". I quickly made it back onto my feet and continued the frenzied running. Eventually, the charging stopped, and our guide stopped, and we all just stood around laugh-crying. The guide was brushing off my pants and shaking my hand. We had survived being charged by a wild elephant!
The guide told me "even me too, I was sad. I thought you would be dead". Umm, thank you junior guide, who ran off – dropping his stick and a shoe – but making sure to hold onto his lunch.
EMILIE's Account:
Novice guide starts running as fast as he can, Yann who is right next to him, takes his cue and starts running too. Meanwhile Megan and I are at the back of the pack not yet reacting. Senior guide begins to scream "Run! Run!", we are now running through thick brush with the senior guide shouting and pushing. Megan falls flat on her face in the scramble and the senior guide is yelling at me (and her) to run, but I'm not moving since I am stuck behind Megan who is still on the ground. At this point I look behind me to see a huge elephant coming towards us (I suppose all elephants qualify as huge however). Megan is now back up, with some help from the senior guide (who I maintain put her there in the first place) and we continue running together. The whole time this is going on, we can hear the elephant trampling through the forest, but the sound finally stops. The senior guide rushes back towards the elephant to make sure the stampede is over.
We quickly continued walking through the brush until we felt we were at a safe distance at which point we stopped to compose ourselves. The young guide was shaking, he had lost one shoe and dropped his bamboo stick, but was still holding on firmly to his lunch. Senior guide was trying to cover up his panicked behavior, pointing out how he was "very sad and sorry" when Megan fell, but luckily he was there to help her. Megan and Yann still didn't know what was chasing them, neither of them had looked back (am I the only one with such morbid curiosity?). However, if they had listened properly to the safety instructions they should have known what kind of beast we had encountered (run from an elephant). None of us were too shook up because we were never really aware of the danger that was facing us. It didn't stop us, however, from cutting our jungle walk short.
YANN's Account:
I run quicker than all the elephants in all the jungles of the world. Proven by Fact!
Back in Sauraha, I took a bath in the river with the elephants (trained ones) and their handlers, we got stuck in a torrential downpour complete with lightning storm and we drank a bottle of wine, toasting to the beginning of our new lives.
We wouldn't arrive back in Kathmandu until late the next evening stuck in Sauraha by a local roadblock/strike for hours. But of all the passengers on the tourist bus, we were confident that we had had the most intense brush with nature. "Oh you saw a wild peacock? How nice.... we got attacked by an angry wild elephant... but peacocks.. amazing...really amazing."
An afterthought: although our guides were pretty much useless (they did prove to be good trackers though), they seemed somewhat embarassed by their cowardly behavior. At one point, the senior guide made a comment about it being his responsibility to protect the tourists. Really that's a complete load of rhino dung. We come to a poor country and pay peanuts for a jungle walk, in which anyone in their right mind should know they are exposing themselves to certain dangers. Seriously, what can the poor village guides really do with a bamboo stick? They can't very well stop a charging elephant, though they might be able to wack a tourist in the head and save themselves. For five bucks I certainly wouldn't risk my life for a tourist, and we let him know that, hopefully his expressions of guilt were part of his act.
A second afterthought: For Seinfeld fans, think of our senior guide as George Castanza in the fire at the children's birthday party.
Our first task in Sauraha was to book a jungle walking tour. What better way to go searching for tigers, bears and rhinos then to go walking unarmed through the jungle? Every other building in the small Sauraha tourist strip is a travel agent, and they all offer the notorious jungle walks. After a brief interview with our slurring hotel resident stoner, who offered his guide services, we quickly set out to find another candidate. The next guy we met claimed to be the guide described in the Lonely Planet guidebook as having fended off a tiger attack, he even had the framed letter from the tourists who were with him during the attack. We visited a third guide who gave us about the same rhetoric as tiger man. During this process Megan seemed to be the only one showing some apprehension about the safety issues, apparently she is the only one of the three of us with a brain. We booked tiger man for a four hour morning walk the next day, we each paid about 5$ for his and his assistant's animal tracking services. We celebrated our Chitwan holiday and Yann's birthday with a mound of half disentegrated chocolate (most likely ruined from the continuous melting and rehardening in the heat of Sauraha). Our walk started at 6am but it took a while to purchase our park entry tickets as we were lined up behind hotel workers buying tickets for long lists of guests (who were probably still sleeping). We were introduced to the assistant guide, a young man who had been working for a month, both our guides were armed with a pair of flip-flops on their shoes and long wooden bamboo sticks. Feeling extra safe now. We got ferried over the river in a long wooden boat and began our walk. We walked quietly for a few minutes, until Megan brought up the question of safety tips. Our senior guide then gave us the rundown:Sloth bears- Stick together and act big and scary, don't climb a tree, don't run
Tigers- Don't run, fight for your life
Rhinos- If there is a big tree, hide behind it, otherwise climb a tree
Elephants- Run for your life
My idea of the jungle walk was that we would follow a trail through the park, enjoying the scenery and if we were lucky, we might see an animal from far away (if we were unlucky we would see one from close). Very quickly into the walk I realised this wasn't exactly what our guides had in mind. Our guide spotted rhino dung and rhino tracks in the ground and exclaimed "a rhino been here last 10 minutes, follow me, quiet", and cut off the path and into the forest "following the tracks". Most of this tracking business seemed like an act, and after about an hour of walking around pretty much in circles I was wondering how I was going to last 4 hours. Every once in a while our guide would squat to his knees and scan the forest with a very concerned look on his face. Megan would turn around to sneak a glimpse of the novice guide looking bored and useless, once he would notice her, he would turn on his serious "scanning for wildlife" face. Acting on a tip from some park rangers that we crossed paths with, we took a small detour through the tall grasslands on a search for some rhinos, that didn't yield any sightings either. Back into the jungle, our guide brought us into some thicker vegetation and it started becoming more difficult to see anything ahead of us. As we walked through the quiet jungle we were all startled by the sound of an animal, it was a loud snort/puff. The novice guide was actually more than just startled, he blew past us running in fear. This is the point in the "jungle walk" that I started doubting the safety of it all. Retrospectively, this was also the point where we should have turned around and walked away from the animal sound. Our guide on the other hand, led us closer to the source of the sound, exclaiming confidently that we had come across a rhino (one of the least agressive of the possible encounters). The next few moments are somewhat of a blur, but each of us has managed to reconstruct the events as follows: MEGAN's Account:
All of a sudden, our guides were yelling, the junior one ran off like a bolt of lightning. It was sheer mayhem. Yann, Emilie and I were running in all directions not knowing what to do. And by running in all directions, I mean slowly trying to navigate over and under branches with our cumbersome backpacks, cameras and water bottle holders making things that much more difficult. The senior guide who stuck around was pushing us and screaming. At this point, we could hear stomping and branches snapping right behind us. I couldn’t look back – I was too focused on trying to run through the thick jungle (while contemplating my lack of tree-climbing abilities and whether or not now would be a good time to learn). This is when I tripped and fell. While splayed out on the ground, I had no idea what was about to kill me – maybe a rhino or a tiger?...but something was very near.
Emilie, who was behind me at the time, was kind enough to stop for me, while our guide looked me right in the eyes and yelled "RUNNNNN, RUNNNNN, RUNNNN". I quickly made it back onto my feet and continued the frenzied running. Eventually, the charging stopped, and our guide stopped, and we all just stood around laugh-crying. The guide was brushing off my pants and shaking my hand. We had survived being charged by a wild elephant!
The guide told me "even me too, I was sad. I thought you would be dead". Umm, thank you junior guide, who ran off – dropping his stick and a shoe – but making sure to hold onto his lunch.
EMILIE's Account:
Novice guide starts running as fast as he can, Yann who is right next to him, takes his cue and starts running too. Meanwhile Megan and I are at the back of the pack not yet reacting. Senior guide begins to scream "Run! Run!", we are now running through thick brush with the senior guide shouting and pushing. Megan falls flat on her face in the scramble and the senior guide is yelling at me (and her) to run, but I'm not moving since I am stuck behind Megan who is still on the ground. At this point I look behind me to see a huge elephant coming towards us (I suppose all elephants qualify as huge however). Megan is now back up, with some help from the senior guide (who I maintain put her there in the first place) and we continue running together. The whole time this is going on, we can hear the elephant trampling through the forest, but the sound finally stops. The senior guide rushes back towards the elephant to make sure the stampede is over.
We quickly continued walking through the brush until we felt we were at a safe distance at which point we stopped to compose ourselves. The young guide was shaking, he had lost one shoe and dropped his bamboo stick, but was still holding on firmly to his lunch. Senior guide was trying to cover up his panicked behavior, pointing out how he was "very sad and sorry" when Megan fell, but luckily he was there to help her. Megan and Yann still didn't know what was chasing them, neither of them had looked back (am I the only one with such morbid curiosity?). However, if they had listened properly to the safety instructions they should have known what kind of beast we had encountered (run from an elephant). None of us were too shook up because we were never really aware of the danger that was facing us. It didn't stop us, however, from cutting our jungle walk short.
YANN's Account:
I run quicker than all the elephants in all the jungles of the world. Proven by Fact!
Back in Sauraha, I took a bath in the river with the elephants (trained ones) and their handlers, we got stuck in a torrential downpour complete with lightning storm and we drank a bottle of wine, toasting to the beginning of our new lives.
We wouldn't arrive back in Kathmandu until late the next evening stuck in Sauraha by a local roadblock/strike for hours. But of all the passengers on the tourist bus, we were confident that we had had the most intense brush with nature. "Oh you saw a wild peacock? How nice.... we got attacked by an angry wild elephant... but peacocks.. amazing...really amazing." An afterthought: although our guides were pretty much useless (they did prove to be good trackers though), they seemed somewhat embarassed by their cowardly behavior. At one point, the senior guide made a comment about it being his responsibility to protect the tourists. Really that's a complete load of rhino dung. We come to a poor country and pay peanuts for a jungle walk, in which anyone in their right mind should know they are exposing themselves to certain dangers. Seriously, what can the poor village guides really do with a bamboo stick? They can't very well stop a charging elephant, though they might be able to wack a tourist in the head and save themselves. For five bucks I certainly wouldn't risk my life for a tourist, and we let him know that, hopefully his expressions of guilt were part of his act.
A second afterthought: For Seinfeld fans, think of our senior guide as George Castanza in the fire at the children's birthday party.
Doing the Tourist Thing in Kathmandu
Our impressions of Kathmandu were slightly marred by its tourist ghetto: Thamel. Thamel is the centre of tourist activitiy, with hundreds of guest houses, German bakeries, internet cafes, rickshaw drivers, travel agents...The darker side of Thamel is a world of glue sniffing pre-teens, poverty and tourists spending more money in a week then many Nepalis earn in a year. Despite my extreme dislike of the neighborhoud, our hotel owners were extremely friendly and our room good value (especially if it weren't for the identical rock set that we heard from the nextdoor bar's Nepali cover band every night for 10 days). Every morning and evening we were greeted by two smiling young brothers sewing away at their machines, they embroidered t-shirts and the eldest at 22 years old had been doing so for 13 years. Even earlier in the morning the mother and son team of tea sellers started up their makeshift shop: a small cooking stove and a tea kettle. While his mother brewed a new batch, the small boy would run tea to store vendors through the neighborhood while collecting the empty glasses. Back at his stand he would clean the dirty glasses and start up with a new round. Each cup sells for about 6 rupees, that's 10 cents, and the pair wake up first and go to bed last. Our friend Megan, working in Kathmandu for the summer, was staying right in the heart of Thamel, at its biggest and most well known guest house. It was the centre of comings and goings of "important" people, including the Everest climbing team with oldest ever summiter (71 years old and didn't look it). Our evening routine in Thamel consisted of the three of us eating together at a restaurant that Megan had found, with the cheapest momo (dumpling) prices around. So we ate alot of momos then we hit the German bakeries for their late hour 50% off prices. 
During the week, while Megan worked hard all day, Yann and I hit Kathmandu's greatest hits:
Pashupatinath:
A large Hindu temple complex on the banks of the Baghmati River, this is where Kathmandu-ites come to cremate their dead. Non Hindus aren't allowed in the temples, but they can cross the river and watch the cremations from the stairs on the opposite river bank. We searched for shade and found it in a row of white hollowed-out stupas, although most were already occupied by sleeping saddhus. One low key cremation ceremony was taking place and we sat and watched.
Bodnath:
From Pashupatinath you can walk to the largest Buddhist stupa in the world, Bodnath. Tibetan buddhists have combined exercise and prayer in a lovely way. The more times you walk around the stupa, the more "prayer credit" you get. Throngs of faithful power walk around the stupa and you can't help but join in and get swept around yourself.
Swayambunath:
This multi denominational shrine sits on top of a hillock with a spectacular view onto Kathmandu. Of course, at the height of the dry season, the haze prevented us from seeing much. Buddhist and Hindu faithfuls as well as lots of souvenir hawkers hang around the stupa conducting their various business. Butter lamps alters line the stairways up to the stupa and hundreds of monkeys too. Yann and I are becoming accustomed to Asia's temple monkeys, although I still don't trust them.
Patan's Durbar Square:
Patan is a suburb of Kathmandu, and its town centre is quiet and beautifully preserved. The Durbar Square (meaning Royal Square) is packed with beautiful Newari buildings and temples. We visited on a week day and the square was mainly filled with elderly men in their pink and white Newari caps making their prayer rounds from shrine to shrine.
Kathmandu's Durbar Square:
On our first weekend in Nepal we strolled over to Kathmandu's Durbar Square, within walking distance from Thamel. The multi-storied Newari buildings and temples were filled with locals relaxing away from the sun. The main thing to do in the square is to walk around watching the locals haggle for merchandise and taking in the unique architecture. We even stumbled into the Kumari temple and got a glimpse of the Kumari Devi. She is Kathmandu's living goddess, who makes a brief appearance from her balcony in the temple every day. The living goddess is chosen after satisfying over 50 strict criteria ranging from eye colour to absense of moles. She then undergoes a series of tests to confirm her goddess stature. When she hits puberty, she returns to mere mortal status and a search begins for the new Kumari. Its hard for non-believers to see anything in Kumari other than a very made-up and costumed little girl. Just like it is hard to see Thamel as anything other than a very made-up and costumed piece of Nepal.
During the week, while Megan worked hard all day, Yann and I hit Kathmandu's greatest hits:Pashupatinath:
A large Hindu temple complex on the banks of the Baghmati River, this is where Kathmandu-ites come to cremate their dead. Non Hindus aren't allowed in the temples, but they can cross the river and watch the cremations from the stairs on the opposite river bank. We searched for shade and found it in a row of white hollowed-out stupas, although most were already occupied by sleeping saddhus. One low key cremation ceremony was taking place and we sat and watched.
Bodnath:From Pashupatinath you can walk to the largest Buddhist stupa in the world, Bodnath. Tibetan buddhists have combined exercise and prayer in a lovely way. The more times you walk around the stupa, the more "prayer credit" you get. Throngs of faithful power walk around the stupa and you can't help but join in and get swept around yourself.
Swayambunath:This multi denominational shrine sits on top of a hillock with a spectacular view onto Kathmandu. Of course, at the height of the dry season, the haze prevented us from seeing much. Buddhist and Hindu faithfuls as well as lots of souvenir hawkers hang around the stupa conducting their various business. Butter lamps alters line the stairways up to the stupa and hundreds of monkeys too. Yann and I are becoming accustomed to Asia's temple monkeys, although I still don't trust them.
Patan's Durbar Square:Patan is a suburb of Kathmandu, and its town centre is quiet and beautifully preserved. The Durbar Square (meaning Royal Square) is packed with beautiful Newari buildings and temples. We visited on a week day and the square was mainly filled with elderly men in their pink and white Newari caps making their prayer rounds from shrine to shrine.
Kathmandu's Durbar Square:On our first weekend in Nepal we strolled over to Kathmandu's Durbar Square, within walking distance from Thamel. The multi-storied Newari buildings and temples were filled with locals relaxing away from the sun. The main thing to do in the square is to walk around watching the locals haggle for merchandise and taking in the unique architecture. We even stumbled into the Kumari temple and got a glimpse of the Kumari Devi. She is Kathmandu's living goddess, who makes a brief appearance from her balcony in the temple every day. The living goddess is chosen after satisfying over 50 strict criteria ranging from eye colour to absense of moles. She then undergoes a series of tests to confirm her goddess stature. When she hits puberty, she returns to mere mortal status and a search begins for the new Kumari. Its hard for non-believers to see anything in Kumari other than a very made-up and costumed little girl. Just like it is hard to see Thamel as anything other than a very made-up and costumed piece of Nepal.
Leaving Leh
We spent 23 days in Ladakh, with 12 nights in Leh, the biggest town in Ladakh, with just under 30,000 inhabitants. We spent more nights in Leh than we'd spent in one place since we began our trip almost 8 months ago. When we came back from an excursion, I was excited to get back to our familiar guest house, have a tea and Ladakhi flat bread for breakfast, lunch with Yann and Jochen and relax the time in between meals.
Our arrival in Leh coincided with a visit by Ladakh's head lama who was giving a series of talks at the monastery just down the street from our guest house. His talks attracted crowds of pilgrims who sat outside listening to his microphone enhanced speeches while drinking butter tea and spinning their prayer wheels. I lasted less than an hour at the prayer session, there's only so much monotone Ladakhi chanting one can stand. Many of the pilgrims were taking naps or socializing so I didn't feel too bad about my short visit.
Leh is surrounded by a dry barren landscape, and it's character is defined by the massive, crumbling Leh Palace and Monastery overlooking the town. Yann and Jochen made me climb up to them. 
Adding to the feeling that you're stuck in a time warp are the traditional Ladakhi clothes, sported by most of the older Leh residents. The men's wear is a bathrobe like maroon coat, tied around the waist with a rope. The woman wear a full length brown or maroon wool dress with lots of turquoise and coral jewelry, their hair grown long and worn in two braids. To complete their outfits they wear felt slipper like shoes with turned up pointed toes and are usually holding prayer beads. Younger Ladakhis are encouraged to wear traditional clothes, but the big city Leh kids mostly wear jeans and a t-shirt. There is also a sizeable Muslim population in Leh, who add a kufi (muslim skull cap) and a long beard to the Ladakhi ensemble. 
The number of tourists in Leh increased every day, with more and more restaurants and travel agencies opening up for the season. It was actually a much more interesting place without tourists. In the busy season Indian and Kashmiri store owners make the journey to Leh to open up their seasonal shops. When we first arrived the only shops and restaurants doing business were Ladakhi, it felt more like every day Leh life, the life that is lived 8 months of the year. Apparently, during peak season every single pack-horse in Ladakh is rented out to trekking porters and the price at our guest house rises to 3 or 4 times what we were paying.
To help me get over my fear of flying we left on the inaugural flight from Leh(completely surrounded by large mountains) on a budget Indian airline. To our pleasant surprise we arrived safely in Delhi an hour after departure. We had weren't able to get a place on the train towards the Nepalese border until the next day. Jochen and I bullied Yann into letting us go to McDonald's for our last dinner together. McDonald's in India is terrible value and doesn't really taste that good, but the desire for familiarity had really gotten to me.
The next day we began our exhausting journey to Kathmandu, starting with a night train to the city of Gorakhpur, sitting right in the middle of the blistering hot Indian plains. We arrived there before lunch and managed to get on a bus heading to the border town of Sonauli, about 3-4 hours of sweaty, crowded bus riding away. The Indo-Nepali border is completely open, Indians and Nepalis crossing back and forth without hassle. We walked right by customs and could have entered Nepal without anyone uttering a word to us. Once on the Nepali side, applying for our visas, another couple of tourists sat down and started filling out forms, thinking they were still in India. It took about 5 minutes to process our visa applications and stamp us into Nepal, easiest border crossing yet.
We now had to travel through our second night in a row, by bus to Kathmandu. We had a few hours of waiting in the oppressive heat of the Nepali Terai (Nepal's version of the Indian plains). We haven't yet been to an appealing border town and here was no exception. Sitting outside the bus ticket office, we noticed a young man lying on the ground nearby, he looked incredibly sickly. He was covered with flies, dirty and emaciated, he was breathing, but it seemed that he was doing so with great difficulty. We finally asked the men at the bus ticket office if an ambulance needed to be called, or if something could be done but things aren't so simple here. Nobody would call an ambulance, we are assuming because they aren't free. We would wait until the man died because then "the police will come and get the body, he's almost dead anyways". According to the locals, the dying man/boy was a drug addict, who they had previously attempted to help, his arms and body appeared to be covered in needle marks. In a place where people are barely scraping by themselves, locals viewed giving him money as a waste, at least, that's how they defended their inaction. He died a few minutes later, although no one would confirm it, and after some hesitation I built up the courage to check him for a pulse, there was none. Then someone called the police and we got on the bus to Kathmandu.
Our arrival in Leh coincided with a visit by Ladakh's head lama who was giving a series of talks at the monastery just down the street from our guest house. His talks attracted crowds of pilgrims who sat outside listening to his microphone enhanced speeches while drinking butter tea and spinning their prayer wheels. I lasted less than an hour at the prayer session, there's only so much monotone Ladakhi chanting one can stand. Many of the pilgrims were taking naps or socializing so I didn't feel too bad about my short visit.
Leh is surrounded by a dry barren landscape, and it's character is defined by the massive, crumbling Leh Palace and Monastery overlooking the town. Yann and Jochen made me climb up to them. Adding to the feeling that you're stuck in a time warp are the traditional Ladakhi clothes, sported by most of the older Leh residents. The men's wear is a bathrobe like maroon coat, tied around the waist with a rope. The woman wear a full length brown or maroon wool dress with lots of turquoise and coral jewelry, their hair grown long and worn in two braids. To complete their outfits they wear felt slipper like shoes with turned up pointed toes and are usually holding prayer beads. Younger Ladakhis are encouraged to wear traditional clothes, but the big city Leh kids mostly wear jeans and a t-shirt. There is also a sizeable Muslim population in Leh, who add a kufi (muslim skull cap) and a long beard to the Ladakhi ensemble. The number of tourists in Leh increased every day, with more and more restaurants and travel agencies opening up for the season. It was actually a much more interesting place without tourists. In the busy season Indian and Kashmiri store owners make the journey to Leh to open up their seasonal shops. When we first arrived the only shops and restaurants doing business were Ladakhi, it felt more like every day Leh life, the life that is lived 8 months of the year. Apparently, during peak season every single pack-horse in Ladakh is rented out to trekking porters and the price at our guest house rises to 3 or 4 times what we were paying. To help me get over my fear of flying we left on the inaugural flight from Leh(completely surrounded by large mountains) on a budget Indian airline. To our pleasant surprise we arrived safely in Delhi an hour after departure. We had weren't able to get a place on the train towards the Nepalese border until the next day. Jochen and I bullied Yann into letting us go to McDonald's for our last dinner together. McDonald's in India is terrible value and doesn't really taste that good, but the desire for familiarity had really gotten to me.
The next day we began our exhausting journey to Kathmandu, starting with a night train to the city of Gorakhpur, sitting right in the middle of the blistering hot Indian plains. We arrived there before lunch and managed to get on a bus heading to the border town of Sonauli, about 3-4 hours of sweaty, crowded bus riding away. The Indo-Nepali border is completely open, Indians and Nepalis crossing back and forth without hassle. We walked right by customs and could have entered Nepal without anyone uttering a word to us. Once on the Nepali side, applying for our visas, another couple of tourists sat down and started filling out forms, thinking they were still in India. It took about 5 minutes to process our visa applications and stamp us into Nepal, easiest border crossing yet.
We now had to travel through our second night in a row, by bus to Kathmandu. We had a few hours of waiting in the oppressive heat of the Nepali Terai (Nepal's version of the Indian plains). We haven't yet been to an appealing border town and here was no exception. Sitting outside the bus ticket office, we noticed a young man lying on the ground nearby, he looked incredibly sickly. He was covered with flies, dirty and emaciated, he was breathing, but it seemed that he was doing so with great difficulty. We finally asked the men at the bus ticket office if an ambulance needed to be called, or if something could be done but things aren't so simple here. Nobody would call an ambulance, we are assuming because they aren't free. We would wait until the man died because then "the police will come and get the body, he's almost dead anyways". According to the locals, the dying man/boy was a drug addict, who they had previously attempted to help, his arms and body appeared to be covered in needle marks. In a place where people are barely scraping by themselves, locals viewed giving him money as a waste, at least, that's how they defended their inaction. He died a few minutes later, although no one would confirm it, and after some hesitation I built up the courage to check him for a pulse, there was none. Then someone called the police and we got on the bus to Kathmandu.
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