Chitwan

A one-horned rhino

To see where Chitwan National Park is
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Still having so much time left on our Nepali visa extension, we decided to take advantage of it and make a stop off at Chitwan National Park on our route back into India. We stayed in the picturesque town of Sauraha which is set along side the banks of the Rapti river with a backdrop of lush greenery and a view of Chitwan Park on the other side. The warmth of the lowlands felt wonderful after spending weeks at altitude with cold nights.

Every morning local elephant owning entrepreneurs make their way down to the river to let tourists pay for rides and to be thrown off into the water a few times. This just looked like too much fun to pass

"Get in the jeep, here comes the wild elephant!"

up, however cheesy and staged it may be, so we made our way down to the water and chose an elephant that looked friendly. Before we got on we heard someone saying hello to us in familiar British accents and turned around to see a retired couple from England who we had originally met in a small town on the Annapurna Circuit trek. Covering the well worn tourist route through Southern Asia makes for a lot of little coincidences like this and we took it in stride handing Ivan our camera to snap a couple photos of us on the elephant. It was quite an amazing experience to be so high up on such a powerful animal and we had a great time playing around in the water with it.

Later that day we rented bicycles to ride out to the Elephant Breeding Center. We wanted to go to the center in particular to see

New born elephants at the Breeding Center

one elephant with her new twin babies who were only a month old and turned out to be incredibly cute. The elephants sleep with a chain around one leg attached to a bolt sunk into the ground and this mama got impregnated one night by a wild male elephant who wandered out of the jungle. During the day the other elephants go out with their mahouts (trainers) to take tourists on safaris or to just have a walk in the park. We wound up at the breeding center at the same time that the herd was returning from their day of work and were so busy looking around and taking photos that we were kind of surprised when we noticed that there sure were a lot of elephants unchained and wandering about, at the same time we also saw sections of the wood fence divider that had been shattered into splinters by previously angry elephants. Although we saw all off these things I guess it didn’t really sink in because as an adolescent elephant was walking towards me I was too busy taking its photo to get out of the way. When I realized it wasn’t slowing I tried move away but the only place I could go was up against the wood fence. As the elephant started passing me it got the bright idea to stop and lean into me, trying to crush me. This beast was as tall as Andy and when Andy saw what was happening he hit the elephant causing it to rear up for a slow motion kick aimed towards him. I managed to wiggle up over the fence to the other side and get away, I guess he was trying to assert his dominance or something. At least I got a good photo of the jerk.

The following day when we showed up for our half day jeep safari, who should be there but the British couple, Ivan and Jean. We all

Gharials

crammed into the jeep with two other clients plus the two guides and headed off for the National Park where we saw a wild elephant, one-horned rhinos, deer, and gharials. We also got to see a gharial breeding farm and a sad looking tiger kept in a tall wood pen. Apparently the tiger was an orphan whose mother had gotten the taste for human blood, when the mother was finally caught the game keepers accidentally over-sedated her and killed her, leaving behind her two orphaned tiger cubs. The wild elephant we saw from a distance coming at a quick and steady pace down the dirt track towards the jeep, the guide was acting really nervous and made us get back in the jeep before we really had a good look. That was probably for the better given my experience with elephants. Luckily our guide did allow us to get dangerously close to a rhino. We followed a few other jeeps to where a rhino had been spotted, and while the other guides forced their clients to stay in the vehicle, we got to get up close and try to take some photos. On the way out we saw another rhino, which was very fortunate because some tour groups don’t even get the opportunity to see a wild animal other than deer.  If you’ve never heard of a gharial before, you’re not the only one,  I had no idea what it was  until we got to Chitwan. They are an endangered prehistoric looking fresh water reptile that are the second longest crocodilians in the world, after salt water crocs, and have a sinister looking snout filled with sharp interlocking teeth. Those teeth made me think twice about swimming in the river.

We made plans to meet up with Ivan and Jean to share an elephant for another tour outside of the park. On top of the elephant was a

The elephant top baskets for our elephant safari.

basket that fit four people, each with their backs to one another and facing outwards towards each different compass point, the mahout rode on it’s head behind the ears whacking it with a stick every now and then. The novelty of riding on an elephant wore off as soon as the first person’s leg fell asleep and an hour and a half was plenty of time to get our fill of basket life. We were lucky again that day seeing three rhinos, one of them very young, plenty of deer, and a wild peacock as well as various other birds.

It’s surreal to be reading the Lonely Planet guide book and have a man come up to you and say, “Hi, I’m an author of a guide book and I

The tiger in its wood fenced cage.

want your opinion.” Turns out he was in fact one of the authors of the new Lonely Planet book for Nepal and after we gave him a few suggestion he went off in search of some other traveler’s opinions. He was taking only three weeks to gather information on Pokhara, the Terai, and Chitwan, then would head back to Australia to piece the information together to update the ‘Book’. Busy schedule.

We spent a quiet Thanksgiving eating tandori chicken, sold our Nepal Lonely Planet book for 400 nepali rupees, and made the arduous journey to Kolkata with a stopover at the Nepal-India border in Raxaul.

Annapurna Circuit Trek

Click here to see where we hiked.

From the first time I realized we would be coming to Nepal, I knew I wanted to do one of the famous tea-house treks. A “trek” is kind of like what we’d call a backpacking trip back home: heading off into the boonies to do some hiking and camping. But in this part of the world “backpacking” is traveling cheaply while living out of a backpack, so the names are changed around a bit. Terminology aside, trekking in Nepal is different from almost anywhere in the world. Not only is the Himalayan setting and scenery uniquely spectacular, but the so called tea-house treks offer what I’d call a more refined approach to a hiking trip: rather than camping out and cooking for yourself, all along the trail are a series of lodges and restaurants that take care of all your food and shelter needs. All you really need to carry is a sleeping bag and clothing; no food, shelter, stove, fuel, and the myriad other things you need on a standard camping trip. That means a nice, light backpack, which is always a good thing but is even better than usual in that thin Himalayan air. Last summer Denae and I spent a month hiking and camping 400 miles across Oregon on the Pacific Crest Trail so we’re no strangers to self-supported trips, but this tea-house style of trekking was sounding like a lot of fun to us.

We’d decided to do the 200 kilometer Annapurna Circuit trek in central Nepal, one of the more popular longer treks due to it’s reputation for varied scenery and culture, and the amazing trip over

Andy on a day hike above Manang

the nearly 18,000′ Thorung La pass. This is not a trip through wilderness, like a backpacking trip we’d take back home. Nepal is a fairly small country with about 20 million people, and the majority of its population is distributed throughout its rural areas, including the one we were hiking through. Most of the lower altitude land that could support crops was terraced and planted, and there were homes or at least signs of people almost all along the way, along with a series of villages and towns. This wasn’t a deterrent for us; we wanted to see the rural culture of the area that had such a great reputation. People and towns along the way also meant amenities, so this wouldn’t be a trip of self-deprivation: the nickname for the trek is the Apple Pie trail, thanks to the availability of that and other delectables along the way. It sounded pretty good to us.

We set off armed with sleeping bags, down coats and some other warm clothing for the cold that we’d find at the higher altitudes, but at the beginning of the trip during the daytime the clothes were far

A night shot at one of our guesthouses

from necessary. We never realized it before we came, but Nepal sits at latitudes that are approaching the tropics- about the same as Florida, we were told. So even in November, at lower altitudes the sun beats down with some serious heat. We were thankful for our brimmed hats, bandannas and shorts at that time- not our down gear. But that would change as we climbed higher. It did get surprisingly cold, even at the beginning of the trip, when the sun went down. The sun always set surprisingly quickly, and as soon as it did the temperature would instantly plummet, leaving us scrambling for our fleeces when moments before we’d been basking in T-shirts.

To get to the starting point for the trek we rode a local bus about five hours from Pokhara to a small town called Besisahar, found a cheap guest house for the night, and the next morning started walking. The permits that we’d paid for in Pokhara (a little spendy at over $50 usd for the two of us) were checked here at the beginning as well as at various places throughout the trip. Our bags were light, the sun was shining, and we were excited to get underway.

Our first day of walking was during election night at home. We kept asking people along the way if they had a TV, or had heard anything, but nobody had. Finally we staggered into our guesthouse for the evening, and tracked down the owner to ask if he had a television. He looked at us knowingly and said, more a statement than a question, “you’re Americans?” We nodded, and he told us that Obama had won in a landslide. Everyone was pretty happy (and ever since then most every Indian’s first words upon hearing where we’re from are “America? Ah, Obama!!”).

The first few days of the trek were through a lush, almost jungly river

Terraced Hills

canyon. There were mountains off in the distance that we would occasionally glimpse, but most of the scenery consisted of huge hillsides terraced out for rice farming. There were literally hundreds of little terraces going over 1000 vertical feet up some of these steep hills; it would be a humbling sight for the average farmer back in the states who has hundreds of flat, fertile acres and modern irrigation. The river down below was beautiful, and periodically we would pass large waterfalls spilling off from the hillsides on either side of us. We crossed rickety suspension bridges high over streams and canyons, and dodged numerous mule trains.

We spent our nights at simple guest houses, where we always found an inexpensive double room with an outhouse outside. Some rooms

Some lower altitude scenery

were divided from the others by walls made out of little more than cardboard, while others were essentially the same buildings we’d been staying at in the cities. The lodging was always very cheap, anywhere from free to a couple dollars. The food, however, was expensive. As we got further and further from anywhere that a truck could deliver goods, food became more and more costly. This is understandable, as much of it has to be carried in, but there was definitely some price gouging going on. Expensive definitely didn’t always mean good, either, and sometimes ordering continental food would produce something just plain weird (this is true all over south Asia, though): once when Denae ordered mashed potatoes, she received a bowl of shredded potatoes that had been boiled down with milk to a thin, glue like consistency, and then sugared heavily. We grumbled, but at least we weren’t carrying it, not to mention having it cooked and cleaned up for us.

We did save some money by carrying some supplies that we’d bought in Pokhara: 24 snickers bars and two small tubs of peanut butter. The snickers would later draw some envious looks from our fellow trekkers when the lodges were charging 250 rupees (about $3.20 usd, a ton of money for Nepal!) for one candy bar.

Our constant companions along the trail were the Nepalese porters,

A porter carrying live chickens

whose bags were far from light. These guys were usually wearing plastic flip-flop scandals, staggering underneath gigantic loads of everything from rebar to live chickens. Many of them were carrying 80 pounds or more, sometimes a lot more. Roads are starting to be built in places like the Annapurna Circuit (more on that later) but for the most part everything- fuel, soda pop, food that isn’t grown locally, building materials, everything– has to be carried in on someone’s back, or on what must be much more expensive mule trains.

Many trekkers in Nepal employ local porters and/or guides to help show them the way and carry their stuff. This practice is definitely encouraged by the Nepalese as it is an important revenue source for their economy, and the work is relatively well paid at somewhere in the neighborhood of $10-20 usd per day (that’s a very approximate figure; we didn’t really look into it). We didn’t use a porter or guide. We both figured it would feel a little uncomfortable and colonial to have someone else carry our gear, although the locals definitely don’t look at it that way. I know how to use a map and compass pretty well, and the trail was reportedly so well traveled and inhabited that finding the way would never be a problem. The cost of hiring someone wasn’t completely prohibitive, but over twenty or so days it was pretty expensive. Most of all, though, we are simply too independent. We met a lot of people along the way whose porter/guide was really calling the shots- where to stay for the night, when to stop for tea or rest, which of the alternate routes to take, that kind of thing. We would hate that, and never regretted our decision to go it alone, but did talk to many people who felt their experience was greatly augmented by having someone there to explain local culture, interpret, etc.

Anyone who does hire someone for a trek should definitely get him from a reputable agency, so there is some kind of guarantee that

One of the many small villages we passed through

things will go OK, or at least have some recourse if they don’t. We ran into a group of Israelis who had casually hired a porter they’d met along the way. They didn’t know any more about him than his first name, and when he’d turned out to be a drunk and a thief they had no one to complain to when they fired him. Even worse, he’d become so close to violent upon being let go that they’d felt compelled to pay his wage for 20 days, even though he’d only been with them for 5. Even after being paid off he told them to keep their eyes open on the trail for the next couple days, because he and some friends were going to take them out! We always felt safe, but Nepal is just emerging from a decade of conflict that killed thousands of people, so a threat like that isn’t something to dismiss without worrying about it. Thankfully it all turned out to just be bluster, but the Israelis (fresh from the army lads who I sure wouldn’t have messed with, by the way) were pretty nervous for a while.

The route of the trek climbs pretty consistently from the beginning on towards the huge Thorung La pass, and as we gained elevation day by day the terrain and vegetation changed dramatically. Soon we passed through the rice paddies and thick greenery, and came to a kind of mid-alpine area full of evergreens and hardwood trees that really reminded us of home in the fall. There was one point when we both turned to each other and said, almost at the same time, that we felt like we were back at Mt. Pisgah in Oregon, where we’d gotten married a few months earlier. An hour later a guy said he’d seen a large white monkey walking through the forest. We thought… Yeti?

Soon we made our way to a high alpine zone, and suddenly it felt like we were really in the Himalayas. Huge soaring hills of solid rock were everywhere, there were much less trees and vegetation, the air was thinner and cold, and dominating everything were the mountains. All around us were some of the tallest peaks in the world, covered with snow and huge glaciers and towering an incredible distance above us. Every day we walked the scenery grew more and more amazing.

The town of Manang was a highlight. Trekkers spend a rest day here at 11,500′ to help acclimatize for the big pass a few days later. This is the big city for the locals, complete with bakeries and movie showings.

Some of Manang's old buildings

We enjoyed a nicer than usual guest house, great food (the yak burger was just OK…) and the old part of the town that reminded us a lot of Leh in Ladakh with its mud brick construction and Buddhist flavor. There was also some fantastic day hiking. We walked up to a nearby viewpoint that overlooked a glacial lake and the biggest glacier we’d ever seen in person. It tumbled off of one of the nearby mountains, down to the valley floor where it formed a stream down to the lake. I hiked to the foot of the glacier and it was incredible to see so much pure ice. It seemed huge and up so close I could probably only see 5% of it, maybe less!

After Manang we left the road behind. Roads on these trekking routes

Denae in front of the big glacier near Manang

are controversial, to say the least. While they represent progress to some Nepalis, they are a huge eyesore and detriment to the experience of most of the trekkers who are the lifeblood of the economy for the area. Porters, guides, guesthouses, restaurants, and many others all depend on a steady supply of foreign trekkers and their relatively deep pockets to come through each year, and they are more than a little put off by roads. We talked to many locals who said their business was way down, and more and more trekkers were going elsewhere in search of the road-free experience the Annapurna Circuit used to be. The road from Besishar at the beginning of the trek goes all the way to Manang, but thankfully (for us, anyway) the monsoon landslides, as they often do, had taken the road out only a couple days into the trek and there was no traffic beyond that point. Unfortunately the trail in many stretches was the road, a much less scenic alternative to the old footpaths that had been used for centuries.

The roads were one of a few disappointments we had on this trip, the other big one being the general attitude of many of the locals. Like many other places we’ve been on this trip, a high percentage of the people we met made their livings off of tourists, and quite blatantly viewed us as nothing more than walking wallets. We’d start to feel very jaded when for days at a time we’d fail to have one meaningful interaction with a local, but then a man wearing wool robes would come out and bashfully show us his son, wanting nothing more from us than some cultural interaction. Moments like that, along with the sublime natural beauty of the area, kept us from ever feeling too down. We had hoped that out there in the boonies people would be less jaded about tourism, but in retrospect it isn’t surprising that that was the case. I can imagine that if the only possible way I could earn more than a pittance of money was to put up with- and serve, often in a very mean fashion- a bunch of sometimes very obnoxious tourists tromping through my hometown, I would get pretty bitter too.

From Manang we headed upward, dodging large organized groups of graying and plump French people who had a team of porters carrying all their crap, which we later heard included french cheeses and

Denae on the way up the pass

bottles of wine! We managed to be both contemptuous and jealous at the same time. By this time we’d randomly run into a Canadian couple we’d met on a bus earlier in our trip, in Ladakh; we even mentioned them in our blog back then. Small world! It was getting cold as we climbed higher and higher, even in the mid day sun, and during the mornings and evenings we were very thankful for our warm clothing. The mountain scenery was downright spectacular, as were the food prices at the remote guest houses leading up to the pass. We saw lots of Yaks (or dzos, yak-cow hybrids, we can’t tell the difference) grazing on the hillsides, and sometimes what looked like full on cliffsides; they are surefooted animals.

Finally it was time for the final push up the 17,769′ Thorung La pass.

Our prayer flags are in that pile somewhere...

We left our guest house at the foot of the climb at 6:30am, much later than many people, some of whom left at 3 or even 2am (they were very slow and/or insane!). There was little to no snow on the trail, and we were happy not to use the gators and plastic bag vapor barriers that we’d brought in case we had to post hole through snow with our trail runner shoes. We made good time and reached the top around 10am. It was a stiff hike, but we felt no ill effects from the altitude, which can be very dangerous and has killed people on this route. Actually for us the pass was pretty easy, certainly no harder than climbing up the South Sister or something like that. The pass was probably the high point for scenery on the trip, as well as elevation, and we stared in awe all around us at the mountain views. We’d carried in some prayer flags from Pokhara and strung them up with all the others fluttering in the wind. We bought some 100 rupee black tea (!) from the improbably situated shack that seemed to be doing brisk business in the cold wind, took some photos, and started down the other side.

Unfortunately the descent down the other side is probably harder than the climb. It drops steeply down for over 4000′ vertical feet, really pounding one’s knees and leg muscles. Denae had been suffering from some serious knee pain over the last week, and the trip down the pass had her hurting pretty badly. We made it down, though, and celebrated with some friends we’d met along the way by drinking a few beers at the next town we came to.

The guest house we stayed in there was the scene of one of our more unique experiences on the trip. When we asked for a room the owner lady only had a triple bed room available, and we agreed we’d take it but at a double price. Five minutes later I was sitting on the bed in my underwear when she barged in with two trekkers in tow. She looked at us in confusion for about thirty seconds, then said in suprise, “Oh, you’re full?” The other trekkers looked confused and horrified, and finally we convinced her that yes, we were indeed full, and she left. After all that, we were warned not to eat there by a fellow trekker, who said that his porter wouldn’t eat the Dahl Baht (rice and lentils) that they served him. This is quite a statement, as most Nepalis eat dahl baht twice a day, every day, and porters work up quite the appetite. So we ate at the neighboring guest house, in violation of the sacred (to the guest house owners) rule that lodgers eat where they sleep, which is really how the guest houses make their money. Anyway the owner lady went crazy! We later found out that she is an alcoholic and gets kind of crazy on a regular basis, but she got into a screaming match with some of our friends and tried to refuse them entry, even though they had already taken a room and had all their stuff in there. That night when we went down to use the bathroom, she was waiting in the dark hallway and started yelling at us, “you don’t eat here, you don’t sleep here!” She was pretty pissed (in more than one sense of the word), but I just said OK, we’re just going to use the bathroom and then go to bed, you go away now. And she did.

Denae’s knee was in a sorry state. Walking downhill had been what hurt it the most, and the huge descent down the pass had put a massive amount of stress on it. She woke up the following morning hardly able to walk, so we told the friends we’d been hiking with for the last week or so that we wouldn’t be able to keep up and they should go on ahead. We slowly made our way, with Denae hobbling gamely onward, and late that day made it to Jomson, the biggest town on the trek. We found comfortable guest house with a TV and a huge pile of Newsweeks from 2003 (among the more interesting articles in that bizarre literary time warp: how European countries were embarrassed and having to eat their words for opposing the United State’s Iraq war, which the US had just so successfully and easily won! Crazy!!!). We decided to stay for a rest day to see if it would help Denae’s knee heal a bit, because at this point she was barely making it up and down the stairs. We enjoyed vegging out, but the following day the knee wasn’t any better. We started hiking anyway, but at this point we were walking on another road, this time with plenty of traffic. Denae was hurting, jeeps were clunking by, and we kind of realized that given the circumstances it was foolish for her to keep hiking and risk doing permanent damage to the knee. We walked back to the jeep stand and caught a ride on the roof of one of the outgoing rigs.

We still had some more jeeps and busses to catch in between washouts on the road, and some more hiking and a few more nights in guest houses, but essentially the trek was over for us at this point. It had been a fantastic time, and all told we were out there for about 17 days, through some of the most beautiful country we’d ever seen. We’d reccomend it to others as a good trip, with a few caveats, the biggest one being that you’d better do it soon! The roads really mess with the experience, and they are encroaching further and further into the boonies with every year.

Pokhara

We’d been in Kathmandu and the surrounding valley for a couple weeks and the time had come for us to move on, so we got up early one morning and headed for the tourist bus stand. We found an unusually plush bus out of the long line that were all headed the same direction, bargained for a reasonable price, and that afternoon we found ourselves in Pokhara. It’s a touristy but relaxed place with all the usual tourist amenities and continental food, but it has an unusually nice location right at the edge of a calm and pretty lake with massive Himalayan peaks jutting up in the distance. After the crowds and frenetic pace of Kathmandu, the calm of Pokhara felt like a revelation. Sidewalks were generally uncrowded enough that we could actually walk on them, and if we had to walk on the streets instead we weren’t in constant fear for our lives from crazy motorists. There was a serene and peaceful vibe about the whole area, it was absolutely beautiful, and the food was great. We liked it right away.

View of Pokhara from the World Peace Pagoda

We didn’t do all that much in Pokhara. We didn’t really want to. Most of our time there was spent relaxing, just sitting around staring at the lake or reading, strolling from one end of the strip to the other, sampling street food or picking out another cheap restaurant to relax in for a few hours. It was fantastic. We weren’t completely idle though. One day we rented a motorscooter and cruised around town, dodging cars and cows and trying to remember to stay on the left side of the road. We drove around to the other side of the lake, parked the bike and started up the trail toward the World Peace Pagoda, a massive Buddhist monument dedicated to, well, world peace. It’s perched on top of a hill overlooking the lake and Pokhara, and the mountains off in the distance make for some spectacular views. We made it up after a stiff little climb, and sat for a while admiring the scenery. Off in the distance we could see paragliders circling lazily down towards the lake from a hill above town, and the boats drifting around the lake below. On a longer trip like the one we’re on it’s easy to get caught up in the day to day life of traveling. We sometimes forget just how amazing the things we’re seeing really are, but then a moment like this one will make us remember all over again. We were in Nepal, on the other side of the world from everyone we knew, and it was amazing. Denae and I feel pretty lucky to be able to do what we’ve been doing the last few years.

Another day we rented a boat and paddled around the lake for a few hours, visiting

This scooting maniac can hold his own with Hell's Angels

the popular island temple midway. We tried to keep a straight face watching the large groups of Japanese package tourists walking around wearing their matching wide brim hats and bright orange life vests, all constantly clicking away with their cameras. Back on land that evening we went well beyond our usual daily food budget when we ordered steak, pasta and cocktails at one of the nicer restaurants. We wanted to go all out, because this was to be our final night in civilization, so to speak. We’d completed the last of our equipment shopping and had everything we needed; tomorrow we were headed off to the mountains. We were going trekking.

Bhaktapur

Andy and I were really excited to finally see Bhaktapur, we had heard rumors that it was a completely car-free town. No more dodging speeding motorcyclist on

View from Nyatapola Temple

too-small streets and climbing over the hoods of cars when the traffic is at a standstill and blocking the width of the road. We were so excited about this possibility that we decided that Bhaktapur warranted more than a day trip and after repacking our bags we were off.

You might think that after going to all of these Durbar squares around Kathmandu we might be a little tired of seeing pagoda style temples and dirty minded wood

Nyatapola Temple

carvings, but when we got to Bhaktapur we were amazed afresh. The town had five squares clustered together filled with pagoda style temples, and had a more vibrant feel than any other town we’d been to in the valley. One square in particular housed a really neat looking temple named Nyatapola. It is an amazing five tiered pagoda, the tallest one in the Kathmandu Valley, and has steps guarded by two wrestlers, two elephants, two lions, two griffins, and finally the tiger and lion goddesses at the top of the steps. We were lied to, however. The person that thought to market Bhaktapur as a car-free town was a genius, I bet we aren’t the only tourists that have gotten overly excited with hope. There were definitely less cars but we had to jump out of the way of more than one speeding motorcycle, and there were a few motorcycle parades that backed up some of the major streets.

We spent a lot of time getting lost in courtyards where we would come across locals slowly separating the rice grains they had grown from the straw it was attached to with wicker sieves. On one of these walks Andy stopped at a small barber’s shack where he had decided to get a hair cut and shave. These barber shops are men only territory so I sat outside and gambled a few rupees away with some children. When Andy finally walked out of the shop a good half an hour later I knew something was terribly, terribly wrong by taking one look at his sad face. The barber had actually shaved off part of his hair in the back so you could see his white scalp which had never before seen the light of day. He also ended up with what Andy calls the ‘Friar Tuck’ style bangs. Hilarious? Yes! Now he wont get a haircut without me there to supervise.

On top of Bhaktapur being just a beautiful town in general, there was the excitement of Diwali in the air that made it feel even more magical. Diwali is a Hindu holiday

Singing for money on Diwali.

that was described to us by a Nepali as the ‘Nepali Christmas’. To us it seemed more like a cross in between Christmas, the Fourth of July, and Halloween. During the day local businesses and homes had all drawn bright red lines leading from the road into their homes so that while Laxmi (the goddess of wealth) was cruising the streets she would see the red lines and not miss that particular home. After the sunset most people had their electric lights turned off and lit long lines of candles instead. At this point the children started to roam the streets in hordes carrying wicker baskets with a picture of Laxmi going door to door asking for money. Some of the groups would perform dances and songs for money and one group of boys threatened us with Laxmi’s wrath if we didn’t give them more money. When we wandered into one of the squares we came across some kind of weird child mob straight out of Lord of the Flies. Some older kids were lighting off fireworks and throwing them into the crowd where the younger kids would surround the sparks where they would start yelling and jumping around like Homo erectus discovering fire. Each time a new firework was lit the kids got even more wild and eventually they started kicking these things around and aimed one at us. We decided to retreat to the safety of another square before we lost any limbs.

Another thing that Bhaktapur is famous for is its King Curd which is a thick and creamy sweetened curd. You can tell just how delicious it is by the fact that when we got on the bus to leave town a large majority of people getting on each had a curd in it’s clay pot wrapped in a plastic bag and stowed in the overhead compartment. We would have taken some with us too, if we had an icebox.

Bouddhanath

Holy crap that's huge!

Something everyone who visits Kathmandu should do is take the short bus ride to Bouddhanath stupa. It is one of the largest stupas in the world, and at about 120 ft in height and about 300 ft in diameter it is definitely the largest one in Nepal.  A stupa (or chorten) is a mound created by buddhists to help worship the Lord Buddah by commemorating an event or marking a holy spot.  They can range a great deal in size but all have a similar look and many house some sort of religious relic in the base.

Andy and I had seen many stupas in Laddakh and we were always very impressed by the structures, but when we saw this bohemouth we were

Yes, those are buildings in the background.

awestruck.  Upon entering the courtyard of the stupa we immediately had to tilt our heads completely back to be able to see the tall yellow spire on top and the large painted Buddha eyes looking down at us.  There were long strands of prayer flags stretching from the spire to various points on buildings across the courtyard and all around the enormous base were hundreds of prayer wheels that Buddhists were constantly spinning clockwise as they simultaneously walked in a circle clockwise around the stupa.  There were also steps leading up the stupa so that people could actually stand on the huge base and be even in height with the second stories of the surrounding restaurants.

Buddhist monks.

It was a really neat experience to join the mass of people circling the stupa and to see all of their methods of prayer.  Some people were very serious while others talked with one another, and some people meandered slowly while others were almost running. The afternoon we spent at Bouddhanath stupa went by too fast and made us wish that we had more time to spend looking around the maze-like streets in the surrounding area, but after the sun went down we hopped on a bus and headed back to Thamel.

Patan

When Andy and I set off on our travels we knew that we would get to experience many different things regarding religion, but we never thought that we would ever be in the same building as a living goddess.

Patan's Durbar Square

The Royal Kumari is a living goddess in Patan, and as a manifestation of the Hindu goddess Durga she is worshiped by Hindus and Nepali Buddhists.  The potential toddler-aged goddesses must meet many different requirements, such as never having lost a tooth and being in excellent health, before they are narrowed down to a select group and are then put through a variety of tests until the real goddess is chosen.  Once the priests find their goddess the final test is to put her alone into a room with the heads of a bunch of ritually slaughtered animals that are illuminated by candle light to spend the night.  If she gets scared the hunt for a new goddess begins afresh.  If she isn’t frightened she lives as a goddess in a building along Patan’s Durbar Square until she has her first period which supposedly causes Durga to leave her body.  Man, this religion stuff can get confusing.  Andy and I were only allowed as far as her courtyard, but that’s closer to a goddess than I ever thought I would be in my lifetime.

After leaving the goddess’ abode we wandered around Durbar Square where we spent time looking at the pagoda style temples and spent even more time looking at all of the intricate wood carvings that adorned each temple.  Patan is a very artistic city and renowned for it’s multitude of wood carvers and metal workers who are commissioned throughout Nepal to create a wide variety of religious art.  On the streets surrounding the square there were many shops packed with art of all kinds, but since we were a little limited on room we only window shopped.

Patan has a really comprehensive museum where we got to see exactly how the traditional metal work is done by viewing a statue in various stages of creation.  It looked like a pretty time consuming deal, but the final product was amazing and can only be made in that particular traditional way.  The museum also had exhibitions on Buddhist art and Hindu art which helped answer some of our questions about the religions and different deities, but somehow having those questions answered created even more questions and left me in the same state of confusion I was at the beginning.  We decided to celebrate our museum trip with an apple pie Ala mode and two filter coffees in the garden cafe.  Having not had either of those things in quite a while it was almost as memorable as the museum exhibits themselves and well worth the jacked up price.

After another lap around Durbar Square it was back to Kathmandu.

Dhulikhel

After a few nights in the noisy Thamel area spent dodging traffic and saying no to Tiger Balm and hashish sales men we figured it was time to get above the smoggy pollution to see some of Nepal’s famed mountains. After wandering the busy Kathmandu streets we found the bus station, with the help of a local, and headed for the Newari town of Dhulikhel where we had heard there were some amazing mountain views.
The views from the bus of the lush green farm land and the hundreds of terraces were so amazing that we could momentarily forget about being crammed like sardines into our own metal packaging. We were quickly brought back to reality when the bus stopped short of our destination and everyone was told to get off; it was the end of the line. As we watched our bus head away back towards Kathmandu we realized that we still had about 10 kilometers left to go and the bus had turned around because of a transit strike. There was a large group of protesters, and looking around we wondered if we had made the right decision in coming to Dhulikhel. With no other buses, and being most of the way there anyway, we decided, “What the heck, lets just go for.” and started making our way through the crowd.
We were soon approached by a couple of young men who wondered if we would like to pay a few Nepali rupees to be taken up the road about two thirds of the way in their bike trailer. We, of course, agreed and hopped in back with two other people and our backpacks. Once the bike started moving we realized that he was taking us through the down hill section, and there were parts of that ride we were moving so fast that I was afraid a wheel was going to fall off. I really can’t tell you much more about that experience since my subconscious blocked it out from some kind of fear reflex, but everyone survived and we were a little closer to our destination. Turning down an offer for a ride on the back of a motorcycle, we decided to walk the rest of the way and arrived shortly.

Terraced farming near Dhulikhel.

We stayed at a nice little family run guest house on the far edge of town where we had mountain views from our windows and there was only one other guest. The lodge owner had his own version of the sad story so many people who rely on the tourist trade have; not enough foreigners. He said that the foreigners were scared off because of the recent change in government and the related uprisings, and that the transit strike was keeping people specifically from Dhulikhel. We then found out the reason for the transit strike and it helped us understand why maybe the foreigners were staying away.

A bus driver was asked to do a freight run, as I guess they commonly do in Nepal, where he was to take some milk to a particular destination and not pick up any passengers along the way. While he was doing this errand he was flagged down by some Maoists associated with the government who demanded to be taken where ever they were planning on going. When the bus driver refused to take them, since he had his milk run to complete, the Maoists beat him to death. The locals decided to go on strike until the widow was compensated with about the equivalent of a few thousand dollars and the offenders were prosecuted.

The second night we spent there I woke up with a head ache and cold sweats and what was probably a pretty high fever. After a sleepless night Andy decided that it would be prudent for me to have a Malaria test since we had spent time in a Malarial zone with out taking our medication and only using DEET as a preventative from mosquitoes. The lodge owner had told us about the local hospital and how there were foreigners working there, thinking that we might want to make some friends or something, so Andy found out where it was and dragged my weak, light headed ass across town to have my blood tested. When we saw the hospital we were pleasantly surprised; it was huge and looked brand new. This was a major stroke of luck since the transit strike had spread to the entire valley and there were no buses heading back to Kathmandu. The only way we could get back would be by calling a taxi from Kathmandu and paying an exorbitant amount of rupees to the taxi drivers who were scared of having major damage done to their vehicles, and possibly their persons, when they passed through the mobs of strikers.

It was a hospital that catered to the locals and I ended up having a check up from a doctor, a white blood cell count, and a Malaria test all for about three

"Chocolate? Pen?"

dollars. The facilities were wonderful and the doctor spoke excellent English, the only difference was that all the lab techs were wearing flip flops. After you have any kind of work done the hospital gives you your test results and information to carry around for the next doctor you encounter, whether it be there or in a different town. It was a great experience and made me really glad that there is that kind of care for the locals in semi-rural Nepal.

Malaria free, Andy and I spent the next few days trapped by the strike in Dhulikhel. We couldn’t have asked for a better place to recoup. The town had a few neat little temples and the locals were so friendly and nice. As we aimlessly wandered the back streets children were constantly asking us to take their photo and as soon as we would snap their poses they would run over to look at the photo. They’d obviously been exposed to tourists before because everyone of them demanded pens and chocolate, neither of which we had. We enjoyed the laid-back feel and spent time reading in our room with a view, but it was a small town and we were ready to head on when the strike lifted.

Kathmandu

A sacred beast in Durbar Square

Click here to see where Kathmandu is.

“I’m going to Kathmandu- It’s what I really really waaaana do…” Denae gave me a blank look as I gave my best Bob Seager impersonation, and claimed to have never heard the song. Sigh. We were in the middle of some long and hard traveling, which is what it takes to go budget from Varanasi to Nepal and that fabled former hippy capital of the universe, Kathmandu. Our journey required an overnight train, a bus, a border crossing, walking, a rickshaw ride, and finally the horrible overnight bus that was currently crawling us along at a narcoleptic snail’s pace. The bus was jam-packed full of people, hot, bumpy and never-ending. It was tolerable as long as we were moving, but we kept stopping for infuriatingly long periods of time for no reason that we were ever able to figure out. We’d drive for thirty minutes, then stop for twenty, and the placid and patient expressions on all of our fellow passenger’s faces only infuriated us more as we gnashed our teeth and daydreamed about standing up and delivering self-righteous lectures on efficiency, by gawd. The Zen sense of patience that everybody knows you need to always enjoy traveling in the third world is really only attainable by, well, Zen masters. But we endured and did finally get to Kathmandu, at four in the morning and after 36 straight hours of traveling.

Andy has joined a gang of wandering sadhus

We were pretty wiped so we decided to grab a taxi after the driver assured us he’d use his meter, which is generally a reasonable guarantee of getting a fair price- hence the difficulty of getting drivers to use their meters. Four blocks later though we made him stop and got out of the cab, as the meter had skyrocketed alarmingly as soon as we’d started moving; either it was rigged or night fares are simply not affordable in Kathmandu. After paying the driver his 50 Nepali rupees for our 30 second ride (about 65 cents, and you’ll just have to take my word for it that that price is highway robbery around here) we found a tea stand and sat for a couple hours to wait for dawn.

Ahh, the tea stand, that shining beacon of light (at least at 4am), hope and refreshment. If you ever find yourself in South Asia in some unknown rundown location in an unfamiliar city, in the dark, with shadowy figures walking past, just look around. Within a block or two there will be a shack constructed out of tarps, twine and bamboo, and a lantern will illuminate a guy slinging cups of chai to waiting customers and selling them single cigarettes, rather than the full packs that many can’t afford. For a few cents you can have your own cup of sugary, milky goodness.

Denae drinking tongba, a Tibetan alcoholic drink made by pouring hot water over fermented millet. It was pretty good!

As dawn broke we got directions and started walking, feeling a little jittery from a few too many cups of chai. We were headed for neighborhood of Thamel, where the majority of Kathmandu’s tourists stay. We hadn’t yet bought a guidebook and after walking a while we didn’t really know where we were, and at 6:30 am it’s surprisingly hard to find a tourist ghetto. All the shops were closed and few people were out, and the area just looked too dead to be our destination. But when we asked a local how to get to Thamel he gave us a weird look, made an encompassing motion with his hands and shrugged; we were there. We found a hotel, talked them down to 350 rupees (about $5 usd) from 500, set down our bags, and fell asleep with our clothes on.

When we woke up that afternoon and left our hotel Thamel was transformed. Throngs of people were walking around and there was a lot of Ex Officio clad white skin. Nepal pulls in a lot of middle-aged and older tourists, in addition to the usual twenty-something backpacker crowd, who come to walk one of the famous treks or go rafting or just check out the historic sights. Trekking is definitely the big draw, and all the westerners walking around the streets wearing Goretex and fancy synthetic outdoor gear made us feel like we’d just stepped into an REI clothing commercial. It was a little weird after being in north India for a while, where most of the tourists were young backpackers wearing shabby-chic hippy clothing, which generally looks about like a 17^th century pirate’s garb. Thamel is full of restaurants, guest houses, travel agents and shops, half of them selling trinkets and the other half trekking equipment. There’s an undeniable energy about the place, and with all the tourists and shopkeepers and roving salesmen the area almost hums with activity. There are many, many restaurants for which the area is somewhat renowned; we tried quite a few while we were there and found many to be so-so and a couple quite good. The older and less price conscious (i.e. not dirtbag) tourist crowd seems to have pushed prices up quite a bit, and many of the better restaurants were simply too expensive for us.

This was the first place we came across buff meat, in the form of buff momos. When we saw it on the menu we thought it was a simple misspelling of “beef”; English menu misspellings are the rule rather than the exception here. But after seeing it on a few other menus we inquired and learned that buff is water buffalo! A convenient substitution in a land where cows are sacred; water buffalo look and-as I now knew- taste pretty much the same, without the inconvenience of being too holy to consume. Anyway the stuff tasted pretty good, and I ate a good many buff momos, not to mention a few buff steaks.

We really enjoyed Thamel for about two days. The western atmosphere and food felt rejuvenating, there were lots of outdoor equipment stores where we shopped for the trekking gear we needed (about the only kind of shopping I enjoy), there were plenty of bakeries and real coffee shops, and we had a good time just walking on the crowded streets and dodging the crazy motorcyclists. By about the third day, though, it was all starting to get a bit old. The high prices, lack of street food, tottering tourists and the whole feeling of artificiality about the place made it start to seem kind of lame. We stayed, though, because just a short walk outside Thamel was a whole other world.

Kathmandu is Nepal’s capital and by far its biggest and most important city. It has something like 750,000 people and more air pollution than many cities ten times its

A streetside/in the street market

size, and is usually veiled under a significant haze. And in the maze of old streets snaking their way between Thamel and the famous Durbar square at the city’s center, ancient and modern buildings and lifestyles mix together like nowhere else we’ve been. Walking those streets was the kind of experience we were after on our trip. They were incredibly crowded, but with locals rather than tourists. There were big markets set up on sidewalks with towering displays of fruits and huge bushels of everything from spices to dried sardine sized fish. There seemed to be a temple on each corner, and buildings that were many hundreds of years old were everywhere. It was a fascinating area, and we loved walking there although we tended to get lost. The crowds of people did occasionally get frustrating. One especially crowded day we were in a sea of people on a narrowish road, which at one point narrowed further to about fifteen feet between two buildings. There were just as many people coming our way as there were going the opposite direction, and as the two groups met they jambed together until they just… stopped. It felt like being a tapered plug pushed into a hole; there was simply no more room and the whole crowd of people just kept pushing against each other and no one got anywhere. Walking in south Asia is an every-man-for-himself type of activity; there is little to no thought given for lines or concepts like taking turns and letting one side go first and then the other. Luckily we were towards the back of this ridiculous human drain stopper and after a couple minutes of futility we simply doubled back through an alternate alleyway and around to where we had been trying to go. When we made it to the other side the plug was still in place.

Where are we? These kids gave us worthless directions

Durbar square is the historic center of Kathmandu. It’s a grouping of extremely old temples and buildings, most with multi-tiered roofs and intricate carvings out of wood and stone. Some of the roof struts had erotic Kama Sutra type scenes carved into them, actually a pretty common thing in Nepal and India. Those old-timers had it on the brain, if you know what I mean, nudge nudge wink wink. We loved to go to the square and sit on the steps of some temple or another and people watch. Many locals and other tourists would do the same thing, especially in the evening, and it was always an interesting place to be. We’d buy some chai from one of the tea vendors who set up shop on some other temple steps, grab some momos from one of the carts, and watch the world go by. It was great. Just off Durbar square is Freak Street, which was hippy headquarters back in the 60’s and 70’s when this was the hashish filled Shangri La at the end of the overland trail from Europe. Now it’s just a normal looking road with a few more head shops than average. If we ever come back to Kathmandu that’s where Denae and I will stay, because the location right next to the square seems so much better to us than Thamel.

Another road branching off of Durbar square is New Road, where most of the non food and curio related shopping in Kathmandu is grouped. We read that it was a decent place to buy electronics, so we decided to follow through with something we’d been debating for a while: buying a new camera! This wallet-lightening move was inspired by some weird clickings and hesitations in our formerly backup and now only camera, the status of which came about when we dropped and broke our nice new Canon (see the “Manali” post for details) that we’d bought specifically for this trip. Well we’d had enough with the old backup and decided to re-buy the Canon. Upon shopping around we discovered that ours had been replaced by a new and improved model, so we ended up with an even better one than before, for about the same price as it would have been back home. We had the latest and greatest, and all we had to do was buy it twice. Anyway, the camera (model SX 110 IS if you’re curious) has been fantastic and we’re happy with our decision.

One of the many protests in Kathmandu

One afternoon we took a taxi to a famous Buddhist site commonly known as the Monkey Temple (I forget its real, but less common, name). It’s a temple built on top of a fairly tall hill on the outskirts of Kathmandu, and you have to walk a long series of steps to get up to it. There are all kinds of interesting chortens and statues built along the sides of the steps, making the walk up just as much of an attraction of the temple itself. At least that’s what we told ourselves when we got to the top and discovered the 200 rupee entrance fee for foreigners and decided to skip it. It’s only about $3 usd but that can pay for a night’s accommodation, and would be unthinkable to locals, who pay only 5 rupees. That kind of enormous disparity between local and foreigner admission prices is very common over here, and in one sense is simply a reflection (actually a conservative one) of income disparities between the two groups. But in another sense- the one we feel more acutely- it’s an unfair and ridiculous example of sticking it to the foreigner. Is a rich Indian charged $400 for a ten dollar admission to a US national park (the same ratio) simply because he can afford it? Anyway, foreigner pricing can be a pretty big blow to the budget, but there’s not much we can do other than ineffectual boycotts, because there are plenty of tourists who will keep paying it. I decide how indignant to feel about it on a case by case basis that depends on how cool we think the attraction is going to be.

So we never saw the actual Monkey Temple, but we sat for over an hour on the steps right below it looking down at the city as the sun set. It was a beautiful sight, made even better by the monkeys scampering around that gave the temple it’s unofficial name. It was pretty cool; we were sitting and watching a big group of monkeys playing a hundred yards down the steps below us. Then it was like the classic horror movie shtick: every time we looked the monkeys were closer, but we never actually saw them coming our way. Eventually we ended up in the middle of the whole troop of them, as apparently they had decided that our exact spot on the steps was the area to be. There were dozens of monkeys, jumping around and playing and swinging in the trees. At almost any given moment we could have reached out and grabbed a monkey without getting up; they were completely unafraid of us (it was probably us who should have been afraid!) and acted like we weren’t there. Denae and I sat there holding hands and looking down at the lights of Kathmandu, listening to the cackling monkeys and watching them play around all around us and right at our feet. It was surreal and wonderful, and we stayed until the security guard kicked us out as he came down from the temple for the night.

Durbar Square

Kathmandu was a good place. I’d built it up in my mind as some sort of super-exotic paradise, and while it really wasn’t (too polluted, too modern, too normal) it was a fun and beautiful city with more history on display than almost anywhere I’ve been, and I only have to qualify that because of some other cities we saw in Nepal. The only other thing I wanted to mention was one of those small world moments, probably the weirdest one I’ve experienced. While we were in Kathmandu Denae and I had been talking about a possible job opportunity in New York for when we get back to the states. We’d first heard about it from a lady we worked with in Utah when we were ski bums out there, and figured we should try to email or call this woman for the job contact info and a recommendation. Well, walking down a street in Thamel with our backpacks on, literally as we were leaving town, we ran into the very woman and some other people we’d worked with in Utah. A little stunned, and with contact info in hand, we headed out. Maybe the universe was trying to tell us something.