More Kathmandu...

So, the next morning we woke up to an alarm at 5:30. You might ask why, but if you refer to the previous post, you will see that Matt and I had spoken to a travel agent and arranged some exciting adventures which were not detailed on that post. The most important was a flight around THE TOPS OF THE HIMALAYAS!!!



I thought it was pretty neat. I won't bore you with the whole early morning, delayed flight boredom, but will jump straight to the experience, which you can see a piece of here. It was a standard and very short flight except for the incredible scenery and the fact that they let us look out of the cockpit and take pictures of the pilots. We flew along the whole line of the Himalayas to Everest and back. (the pictures are all a bit hazy since they're out of windows)

After our incredible morning, we came back and got another great breakfast at Helena's (grilled bananas!!) before heading back to the old part of town and wandering for a while. I must confess that I spent at least a couple hours this day shopping. We topped off the amazing day with a slideshow and talk by Chris Beal about trekking in the Annapurna region where we found out what we're missing (Nepal is well known for its scenic treks but they don't fit into our schedule) and learned about a couple nice day hikes we might be able to do out of Pokhara. Then dinner > internet > bed.

The following morning, we got up early and headed to Bhaktapur which is one of the other two (besides Kathmandu) cities in the Kathmandu Valley. The oldest part of this city is off limits to most vehicles and had retained alot of its old ways so it's a great place to spend a day.


Before we could start our walk though, we bought coffee from two English-speaking Nepali guys with whom we discussed the importance of good barristos, the 'interesting' (explicit) carvings on some of the nearby buildings, and bad American movies (I also used this occasion to get splashed by the juice of a nearby animal carcass that was being carved up).


We had a great walk around the old city before we stopped for lunch at Fire Fast Food where we were blindsided by the strength of the local liquor (Raksi) and made a young friend who taught us a little Nepali language then showed us briefly around town. The local museum was closed for the day so we headed home for our normal evening routine.

The following day, we got up early and took a taxi to Bodhnath which is a Buddhist stupa frequented by many Tibetan exiles who live in Nepal. We walked the Kora (clockwise circumabulation) around the stupa while spinning all the prayer wheels (about 500) before finding a MASSIVE prayer wheel (about 8 feet tall and probably 6 feet in diameter) which we ran around several times.


Then we set off to find the gompas (basically schools for the mini-monks) which we had quite a difficult time located and eventually postponed the search for lunch. We ate at a Tibetan place where we met an interesting American guy who has been living in Nepal and studying Tibetan language for two years now. After lunch, he set us in the direction of the gompas which we admired then walked to Pashupatinath (quite an interesting 20-minute walk through little neighborhoods) which is another temple. The first thing that struck us about Pashupati was how ancient and empty the place was as it crawled with monkeys.

This is another picture from the same area of Sadhus (or dreadlocked holy men) at the same compound. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed access to the interior of the temples since we're not Hindu, but the place was fascinating nonetheless.


The temple area was interesting to begin with, but when we stumbled across a funeral ceremony, things really got weird. I'm going to leave out the details, suffice to say that it was fairly gruesome and after watching more than we should have, we left. Normal evening procedure... eat, blog, bed.

This morning we got up and had alot on our plate. We dropped off laundry, contacted a friend of a friend, scheduled stuff with a travel agent then headed to Patan, the third of the three cities in the valley.

The internet cafe is closing and I have to go... can't blog for a couple days.
I have a bunch of pictures that I haven't put up, so please leave comments, or email me about any that you want to see. Love to everyone. -ell