Nepal

Especially after India, Nepal has been a big slow-down in pace for us. In fact, it’s almost a shame, because we feel a little bit like we haven’t seen much here. That’s not quite true, but it does feel that way.

One of the reasons we feel like we haven’t seen much is the weather. You see, Nepal is at the foothills of the Himalayas. There are parts of the country that, on a good day, you can get your mind completely blown by just how CLOSE this whole string of magnificently gigantic mountains is to you. Unfortunately, July/August is the heart of Monsoon season here. And, while monsoon season right next door in India means unbearable heat, high humidity and blistering sunny days, here in Nepal it means near perpetual cloud cover, and lots of rain (not aguaceros like in Costa Rica, but still plenty of water). On the plus side, it means there are very few other tourists here. On the down side, it also means that, despite some pretty valiant efforts, we’ve only really gotten a tiny peek at the Himalayas.

Culturally, there are definitely similarities with India, but the feel is VERY different.  For example, there were a lot of women wearing Kurtas, just like in India, but in Nepal they more typically wear them with jeans, and almost nobody wears Saris.  Also, in Nepal, the male/female ratio on the street is pretty well even, whereas in India, it was something like 75-80% men in some places.

As far as the streets and cars go, both India and Nepal (at least many of the cities we went to) have fairly small, narrow streets with no sidewalks, and the cars and motorcycles are always trying to fight their way through.  In contrast with India, though, Nepali drivers honk a LITTLE bit less, and to my ears, definitely less aggressively (usually sort of a *meep meep* instead of a *HOOOOOOOOOOOOONK!*).  Most of all, though, the TRASH level is MUCH better in Nepal.  I’m not saying there’s no trash on the ground, but there’s definitely a strong effort to clean it up.  In India, trash was everywhere, along with shit from all manner of animals, from dogs to cows to people (and even sometimes elephants).

Speaking of the streets of Nepal, one interesting thing is that they don’t seem to have any traffic lights… ANYWHERE.  At intersections, in off-peak times, everybody just eases their way through, and everybody just… melts on by.  In heavy traffic, some busier intersections have traffic cops standing on big platforms right in the middle, pretending that they’re helping.

Back to the season thing though… there ARE some nice advantages to being in monsoon season here. For one, it’s the off season, so all the hotels are MUCH cheaper than normal. Also, they’re more available, so we can pretty much have our pick of the rooms (within our budget). Even the souvenir stands that line every street corner here in Kathmandu are suffering so heavily from lack of business that you can pretty much name your price! These guys are desperate to sell. That doesn’t mean they don’t all start off TRYING to rip you off, but once you put your back into it and start the serious negotiation it works out well. Needless to say (but I will anyway), we got ourselves a couple really nice deals. :)

We have seen a few cool things here, though. In the Kathmandu valley, one of our first little outings was to see Swayambhunath Temple, the Monkey Temple. It wasn’t quite as crawling with monkeys as I thought it might be, but it was still pretty neat. The temple is pretty old, from around 500 AD. I don’t know how many (if any) of the buildings we saw are from then (they don’t look it), but the site itself is pretty ancient, and is one of the holiest places of the local (Newari) Buddhists. Also, it’s up on a hill, so it has a pretty nice view of the Kathmandu valley below.

Shortly after that, I got one of the worst illnesses of my life, with a massive fever of at least 103F/39.4C. I also had sudden and massive chills that came on in a matter of seconds (which was both weird and quite disturbing). I won’t list the rest of the symptoms, because they’re more unpleasant, but let’s just say it was ugly for a couple days. Jime found a really great international clinic for me, and in the morning, as soon as I felt like I could leave the room for long enough to reach the clinic, we went there. After a check-up and some tests, the Doctor (who happily was very nice and spoke very good English) told me I had a bacterial infection and gave me antibiotics and some drugs for the fever. While I was still in the clinic, I felt like death warmed over. The doctor said I would probably feel better within 3 days. As it happens, within HOURS of taking the pills, I felt MUCH better. By the next day, I felt downright human, and even got hungry again. Soooo… we lost a few days there, but no biggie. The room is nice, and also cheap!

Around this time, we did a bit more research into our next planned destination, which was China and Tibet. After a lot of reading, we finally realized that Tibet was just not in the cards for us, this time.

When I first researched the Tibet part a few months ago, I knew that we were going to need a special permit, and that they COULD reject us. When I checked back in later, I found an article saying China was planning on removing the special restriction entirely from visiting Tibet, but that it wouldn’t happen until after we were gone. So, too bad for us, but at least things were looking up.

This time, though, the news got worse. Rather than making things easier, China went ahead and made it MUCH more difficult for foreigners to visit Tibet. To go there, you need to A) Apply for the special permit, B) be approved to travel with a minimum of FIVE people… C) from your same nationality and that D) you must all enter AND exit the area at the same time, and finally E) that this whole application process can take up to 10 days (if you’re lucky), during which time you can’t leave the place you’re staying (because you never know when you might get called in or approved).

So… alas… no Tibet for us. That meant that this Nepal trip was going to be the only chance we had to see the Himalayas. No more train riding up in the clouds past the base of Mt Everest. DANG! Oh well, at least we have Nepal! So, we decided that if Nepal was it, we would go ahead and extend our Visa (and our plane tickets) to stay here an extra week (about the amount of time we WOULD have spent traveling to and from Tibet). Fortunately, this was fairly easy, and while not cheap, was at least less money than we would have spent on the Tibet trip.

While researching Nepal, Jime had found out that the second most popular destination (and second largest city) here is in another valley, and is called Pokhara. Not only that, but she also found out that Pokhara is supposed to be a pretty PHENOMENAL place from which to see the Himalayas. Also, the whole area has a reputation for being just amazingly beautiful, and has a really nice lake in the center of town that’s very popular to rent boats on. They say “if you haven’t seen Pokhara, you haven’t seen Nepal.”

So, we packed up some mini-travel gear in our day-bags, left our big packs here in Kathmandu at the hotel’s storage area (which, happily, was both safe and free), and hopped on a bus to Pokhara! The bus was supposed to take about 8 hours, including a couple stops for breakfast and lunch. Alas, on the way there, we hit some pretty ugly traffic, and at one point got stuck, stopped dead, for about 2 hours. We have no idea why, exactly, but it didn’t really matter. Being stuck for 2 hours always sucks. As it happens, the same thing happened on the way back, only it was more like 3 hours, and it was extra brutal because it happened when we were only about 15 km from arrival! I got the impression this may be a regular thing.

We finally did arrive, and Pokhara is indeed a VERY beautiful area! In fact, it reminded both of us quite a bit of Costa Rica. In fact, the whole country does. It’s a country with a wide diversity of climates, including tropical and sub-tropical, with a big central valley, high above sea level, and ringed by mountains. Pokhara especially (which is Sub-tropical, according to Wiki) was INCREDIBLY green. On one side of the lake, it’s every bit as green as the forests around Volcán Arenal. The difference here is that the rivers and low hillsides are all covered in rice paddies. In fact, the second half of the bus ride down here was practically a never-ending line of one rice paddy after another. BEAUTIFUL!

Our second morning in Pokhara, we got up very early, before dawn, and went up to the roof to watch the sunrise over the Himalayas. This was why we came, and we weren’t gonna miss it! Much like Retes (Jime’s family’s farm in Costa Rica), the clouds drop down in the early morning, so it can be your best chance for a good view of the mountains. The hotel manager told us the same thing, so up we went. Well, it wasn’t perfect, but it was pretty freakin’ incredible. Over the course of the 2.5 hours or so that we were up there, we never got a perfect, complete view of the whole range at once, but we did get very good views of one or two mountains at a time, and eventually we saw pretty much everything there was to see (bit by bit).

After that, we did some more reading, and asking around, and learned that there was another hill city close by, called Sarangkot, that was the highest point around the valley, and had a perfect, unobstructed view of the mountains. So, we found ourselves a room, hired a cab, and up we went! Sadly, the cab couldn’t (or just wouldn’t) take us all the way up, due to the road conditions, so we ended up hiking a very steep kilometer, which Jime especially did not enjoy. But once we got there, we were the only guests at the hotel we’d chosen (which we picked for the reputation of their view), so they gave us the best room in the house, way out in the corner.

The view from our room was simply SPECTACULAR! Alas, it was not of the mountains, but rather of the valley below. It seems almost none of the hotels up there can actually see the mountains. For that, you have to hike up to a view point at the top of the hill. Still, our room was on the corner of the building, on the edge of the hill, and we had an amazing view of the Pokhara valley, with the lake laid out wide in one direction, and a river snaking away into the hills in the other direction. We looked down on clouds, and hawks, and on paragliders jumping off and soaring below us.

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Brief Interlude:

From this point on, I’m writing this post on a 19 hour “Express” train from Hong Kong to Shanghai. We have a room called a “Soft Sleeper”, and it is AWESOME! This is a GREAT way to travel! We have power, AC, TV, a window, comfortable beds with sheets and pillows, free hot water (for soup and tea), and best of all, it’s QUIET. I’m sitting here in my PJ’s, typing on a table. LOVE it!
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As for the View Point though, that was quite a hike indeed to get to. We had to climb up 293 stairs (yes, we counted)! We woke up well before dawn our first morning in Sarangkot, and started the hike up the hill. It took us probably about 30 minutes total to get there. Aside from being a LOT of stairs, they were also very BIG stairs… over-sized… so each step was extra work. Also, they were all wet, because this hilltop was up in the clouds. Plus, it was.. you know… monsoon season.

Eventually, we made our way to the top, and found some lovely benches there so we could relax, catch our breath, and wait for the sun (like a pair of suicidal vampires). When it did come up, unfortunately, we saw pretty much just clouds covering the entire mountain range, as far as the eye could see. We had hopes that the clouds would move, like they did they other day, but alas, not really. We stayed up there for a good 2 hours, and we did see one pretty clean mountain (the sharp peak of the holy Fishtail Mountain: so holy that nobody is allowed to climb it), but that was about it for the Himalayas. In the other direction, though, was an AMAZING view of the valley below, even better than from our room! It was really neat being able to look down on the low clouds floating below us, and seeing the dawn sunlight reflecting and sparkling off the rivers and lake.

After we finally called it quits for the morning, and after we hiked back down the 293 stairs, we got back to our room, started to get ready to go back to bed, and I saw something on my ankle. EEEEEE! GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF!!

It was a LEECH! (sanguijuela) And a FAT one! A more rational person than I… may have reacted calmly and appropriately, and perhaps burned it off or used medicine or something. Not me. Sorry. Rational had left the building. I swatted the fucker right off and smashed it with my shoe.

In retrospect, smashing a blood-fattened leech on the floor of our hotel room was probably not the wisest choice I could have made. Of course it exploded and left a lovely dark mark on the carpet. Fortunately, this hotel was not perfectly clean to begin with, and the carpet was already fairly dark. Nobody would notice.

Also, as it happens… leeches don’t die that easy. By hitting it with my shoe, all I did was stain the carpet, and annoy the leech. At this point, though, I was able to have some brain return to my body (not much, mind you, just a little), so I found a piece of paper to pick up the little blood sucker and THEN squished it but good. Jime then kindly took it from me to go flush down the toilet, just to be thorough. It may still be alive out there, but at least it ain’t in my world no more.

Jime was kind enough to put a band-aid on me, but of course, leeches have anticoagulant in their spit, so my little ankle hole didn’t stop bleeding for a while. Fortunately, the band-aid kept it mostly under control, but when we both got our brains back, we realized we probably should have washed it off first (you know, to get rid of that anticoagulant stuff so it would STOP bleeding sooner). Whatever. I didn’t want to think about it any more.

After that mostly failed mountain viewing day, we decided to try again the next morning, but alas, the entire mountain was covered in cloud, a complete white out (we couldn’t even see out of our window). Same thing the next day, but add in rain. Eventually, we had to give up. This was the main thing we had hoped to see in Nepal, and was THE reason we had come all the way to Pokhara, so it was a hard decision to make, but we couldn’t stay up on this mountain forever. I checked the weather report, and it said we could expect thunderstorms every single day well into the future. Oh well. Back down the mountain we went.

We did do one nice thing while we were down in the valley. We rented a row boat for a day, and spent the whole day on the lake, and I rowed Jimena all around from one end to the other. :) I got a nice little ab work-out doing it. We both got some nice sun, some really pretty pictures of the forest around the lake, and we both had a really nice, relaxing day on the water.

In one area, Jime spotted us a really beautiful and very large Golden Orb Weaver spider. She knows I love critters, so she had me get our boat close, and she got me some really great close-ups! A bit later, I spotted a really pretty little blue and brown bird, so we went chasing that guy around for a little while until we could get a nice shot of him. Other than that, we just had a great time rowing around slowly, seeing all the sights, and taking a wee break for a picnic on the water. It’s truly a beautiful place!

(After some searching, I believe it’s a White-throated Kingfisher)

On the way back to the boat dock, since it was so nice and hot outside, and since I was so warm from my lovely Ab workout, I finally gave in to temptation and jumped overboard for a little swim. I couldn’t be this close to such cool, fresh water, and not get in! Also, I had seen plenty other people in the water, so I figured it was safe enough. It… was… WONDERFUL! The water was indeed cool (not too cold), beautifully refreshing, and just what the doctor ordered to cool me down. I miss swimming!

We went back to Kathmandu the next day.  With only a few more days in town, we were out of time for big trips, but we did see a couple other local sights.  One of those sights was a town called Patan.   Patan is an ancient city, seemingly preserved completely, so that when you walk through it, it’s like walking back in time.  There are multiple temples, large and small, and dozens of old buildings with incredible wood work.

In the center of the old city, where they used to crown royalty in Nepal (or at least used to) but is now converted into a really neat museum.  The museum has great examples of old Newari Buddhist and Hindu statues, including a nice demonstration of how the various metal-working techniques were performed.  Included in that exhibit are really nice explanations for what the various symbolism MEANS in all those statues (i.e., for Buddhist statues,  hand placement is very significant, and there are several very common positions that mean specific things.  There’s also a really cool section with artistically carved roof braces, with a little bit of story to explain what the symbols on those represent as well.  They even have a nice section that explains how they use that very knowledge of what all the symbolism means to identify each piece when they find it.. to tell who it’s supposed to be, and what it probably meant to the person who made it.

Elsewhere in the town are a couple particularly popular temples, including one called the Golden Temple, which has, oddly (to us) a turtle walking through it.  I believe the temple has something to do with revering the turtle as a sort of a totem, but I didn’t read its history before I got there.  In any case, the temple had statues for monkeys, elephants, turtles, lions and more.  The statues were pretty incredible, and the wood carving on the temple building itself (windows included) was just gorgeous!

On our last day in town, our flight out was VERY late (11:30pm), so we spent the day seeing one last local site. We went to a place called the Boudhanath Stupa. A Stupa is basically a large, dome-shaped holy site for Nepali and Tibetan Buddhists, and this one is of the biggest ones in the country. It was a neat, last little bit of culture, and a lovely way to wrap up our trip.

After that, it was off to Hong Kong! And that, my friends, is where I shall leave you for now.

For your convenience, here is the full set of pictures for this post: 
http://alexjimenartw.shutterfly.com/pictures/1579