Playing in the Himalayas Part 1

Prior to my trip to Nepal, I fully expected to tell you to again throw away your travel bucket list again and start anew with Nepal taking over the top spot. But I just can’t do it. For a select few of you, yes. By all means go. It really is an incredible place to see. But in all honesty, I don’t think that the trip would be that enjoyable for a large chunk of you. I’ll let you decide for yourself after reading. (Kelly and Bethany….go ahead and cross it off your list. No need to continue reading.) And if you go, do it before you have kids...or just leave them at home. Not a kid friendly place, especially for us soft Americans.

Personally, I loved it.  For me it was a fascinating mix of culture, crazy city life, history, and the stark beauties of the natural world. But I think it takes a special person to be able to put up with the rigors of traveling in Nepal. As much of a zoo as I’ve described India as being, Nepal is just the same….maybe even worse. Traffic? Just as bad. Cows? More of them. Stray dogs? I counted 63 on the streets on our 30 minute ride back to the airport. Trash? Yep, pile it on the side of the street and light it on fire. Electricity? I think we had electricity maybe 25% of the time we were in our hotel rooms. Restrooms? I hope you’re a good aimer while hovering over a hole in the ground. Hot showers? If you’re lucky. Sounds glamorous, right?


This could be why they have electricity problems.

 If I hadn’t been battle hardened in India for 3 months beforehand, I’m not sure I could have done it. I definitely wouldn’t want to do it alone. So without further ado, here is the candid account of our little trip. Sit back and enjoy. Maybe I’ll convince you to go someday, and maybe I’ll convince you to stay at home and experience it on the Discovery Channel.

Monday

Our flight left Bangalore at 7:00 AM, which meant arriving at the airport by 5:00 AM (international flight), which meant leaving my place by 4, which meant waking up at 3:30. Brutal start. But the flights went rather smoothly and after a short connection in Delhi we touched down in Kathmandu around 2:30. Looking back, the condition of the airport was a great pre-cursor to what the rest of our trip was like. For being the country’s main international airport in a city of 4 million people, I guess I expected more. But as we load the bus to take us to the arrival terminal (they don’t have any actual gates, just places where you load or unload busses full of people) it looks like we’re being taken to an old elementary school built in the 1950s. Turns out, that exactly what it looks, feels, and smells like on the inside. But in its own little way it’s charming. At least until we stand in line for two hours waiting to get our tourist visa. In India, they make you jump through hoops weeks in advance to get a visa. In Nepal, they make you stand in line for an hour and pay $25. So I guess I shouldn’t complain.

I guess I should back up a little bit and explain how I planned our little vacation. It started just like any good plan does, with a Google Search. My “Nepal vacations” search eventually led me to a website, where I found a vacation package that sounded like what we wanted. The gentleman at the travel company was very helpful and responsive the entire time, but still I was a little worried that there would be no one with a Mr. Clifford Olander sign waiting on us at the airport and that we would have to fend for ourselves for a week. Luckily that wasn’t the case as we were greeted with a smile and piled into the back of 1985 Toyota something or other and were whisked off to our hotel.  I didn’t think anywhere could have roads as bad as India. I was wrong. I’ve described India road maps looking like a two year old’s scribbles. Well, Kathmandu’s road map would look very similar to what a plate of spaghetti dropped on the ground would look like. Between that and the smog and the dust and the smells that accompany it all, it’s quite the sensory overload. It feels as though we’ve traveled from the outside of a maze to the very middle, where our hotel was.

We check in to a charming little hotel that had a lovely little courtyard that despite being only a block away from the madness of the main market streets of Kathmandu, is surprisingly peaceful and quiet. Having sat in airports, airplanes, and cars all day, we were excited to get out in the city and explore. As soon as we turn the corner, I’m stopped in my tracks. I have no clue which way to turn. Shop after shop line both sides of the narrow road. People selling just about everything under the sun from tiny little spaces. Every time you walk past one, if you even glance in the way of their shop, the owner pounces, trying to sell you their wares. In its own chaotic manner, it’s very charming. But you also learn quickly to not make eye contact with anyone.  We keep walking. Street after street, block after block, the same thing. For the most part they are all selling the same little trinkets and pashmina scarves , but yet they all look a little different. It was such cool stuff though! It was all I could do to keep myself from spending thousands rupees at every store we passed. (1000 Nepali rupees = $12).


Craziness. Not sure what their signage strategy is here.

 Somehow we run into one of the restaurants that was recommended to us by Ram (the guy from the travel company we used), grab a quick bite consisting of delicious pizza washed down with a couple of local beers, hit up an Irish Pub with a local 80’s cover band (they were actually quite good) and call it a night.

Tuesday

After eating the hotel breakfast which consisted of beans and toast, we were picked up by our guide for our historical tour of Kathmandu. We started in Durbar Square, which is a large area that houses the old royal palace grounds as well as several temples that are hundreds of years old. Amongst the temples was the “Hippie Temple”, so named because that’s where the hippies used to smoke pot when they invaded Kathmandu in the 60’s and 70’s, and the Temple of Erotic Carvings, which was built because an old king was worried because the population of his kingdom was dropping rapidly, and he thought it was because people were spending too much time praying in the temples and not enough time procreating. Gotta hand it to him, it was a creative solution. Although many of the carvings depict acts that aren’t very holy….



Emily and I up at the top of the Hippie Temple.

One of the craziest experiences from Durbar Square was the visit to the Kumari Ghar Palace. After a morning of hearing about different temples, and them all kind of running together in my head, I was only half listening to our guide when he started talking about a palace with a living goddess. That’s when my interest perked up a little bit. Apparently there is a girl whom Hindus and Buddhists believe is the bodily incarnation of the goddess Taleju. Just as that was registering, he got really excited and told us to look up. As we were standing in the courtyard of this building, the Kumari (child goddess) appeared at the window. It was a surreal experience to actually see a girl whom hundreds of millions of people think is an actual goddess. She looked around at the crowd for a minute, and then disappeared back into her room.

Goddess Kumari, as borrowed from Google Images, since we weren't allowed to take pictures of her.

Because I’m fascinated with the whole thing I’ll share a few more facts that I learned from our guide and from the internet. The Kumari is chosen from a certain caste to which Buddha belonged to. They must pass 32 different tests to be chosen. The most brutal is that she is put in a dark room with the heads of ritually slaughtered goats and buffalo illuminated by candlelight. Then men with masks appear and try to scare her. If she shows any fear, she is not worthy and is replaced by another candidate. Then she must spend the night alone with the heads. Mind you these little girls are between 3-6 years old. After one is chosen, she is locked in her palace, and can only come outside 14 times a year for different festivals. During those times she can’t walk on the ground and is carried around on a platform the entire time. The girl is the Kumari until she has her first menstruation, which is a sign of the goddess leaving her body. Only then can her feet touch the ground outside for the first time in 10 or so years. Craziness. What I didn’t find was if they have a decent psychiatrist on staff to deal with all of the delusions that would result from being cooped up for 10 years thinking you were a goddess.

Pigeons everywhere...apparently they are a sign of peace so they feed them everywhere. I didn't tell them I used to shoot their sacred bird with my Red Ryder BB gun in my barn when i was a kid. Oh, and some more random cows. And some temples.

From there it was off to Swoyambhunath, also known as Monkey Temple, which is a Buddhist Stupa that is situated on a hill overlooking Kathmandu. Very cool to see and experience.

One of the monkeys at the monkey temple.

After that, we went to Bouddhanath, also known as Little Tibet. This is an area that is a place of refuge from persecution for Tibetan Monks, and also houses one of the largest Stupas in the world. Very cool, clean area.

Buddhist Stupa, with more damn pigeons.

After our historical tour and a couple hours of relaxing, we were back to the markets to really start our haggling with the street vendors. This time we actually made a couple purchases too. We finally figured out that if they won’t agree to your price, if you just start walking away, they’ll chase you down and give you their best offer. We probably still got taken on some items, but when you’re haggling over 100 rupees (about a buck twenty) what does it really matter?

Then it was off to dinner and then off to the rockhard mattress in our electricity-less room. And because we were still without electricity the next morning, the shower was nice and cold. I probably didn’t even faze the layers of dirt and pollution that had accumulated on my skin by that point. After another breakfast of baked beans and toast, it was off to the airport to fly to Pokhara!

Now that I’ve come to a decent stopping point, I’ll take the opportunity to cut this post off, in order to try to control the length and spare your attention spans. More to come on the rest of our trip in the mountains soon! (Was that a good enough cliffhanger? No? Well I guess I’ll have to include a picture of what’s to come next post to get you to come back!)

Sun rising over the Himalayas. Not too shabby, eh?