Blogs from Swayambhunath, Kathmandu, Nepal, Asia

Happy Canada Day! Unfortunately, we're not in Canada to celebrate our nation's birthday. This morning Elysia spent the morning at the hospital and came back to spend the afternoon with Mike. Today our friend Katie was leaving to continue on her travels, so we said goodbye to her at breakfast. Then Elysia spent the rest of the morning at the hospital learning more about medicine in Nepal. There wasn't anything too exciting today. She just stuck around the outpatient clinic and made funny faces to make the children laugh when they cried. The one interesting patient was a little baby in the ICU. This is a sad story though, because the baby a few days earlier had been on a ventilator, which is very bad news in Nepal. Being on a ventilator is expensive for the ... read more

Kathmandu is very far away. It's hard to appreciate just how far it is until you feel it in terms of flying time. I got here on Tuesday night (Nepal time) after 5 hours on the plane to Vancouver, 12.5 hours to Guangzhou and 4.5 hours to Kathmandu. A very long 23 hours of flying (then add in the stopover time to make it over a 30 hour journey). The flights were uneventful for the most part. Within the first hour of the flight to Vancouver, the guy in front of me abruptly reclined his seat, sending my large Tim Hortons Earl Grey tea dumping almost completely into my lap. At least it wasn't hot. I sat next to a nice couple about our age who are going to Vancouver (specifically Gibsons and Kelowna actually) to ... read more

PArtenza mattutina , si vedono un po di montagne , ma peccato dalla stazione dei bus. Arriviamo a Katmandu nel pomeriggio e con un po di fortuna troviamo la guest house , bella caruccia 19 dollari a giorno ma con colazione ( ricca ) . Visto che abiamo tempo facciamo una scarpinata fino al templio di swayambhu.( vedere un po di foto ) .Un po manca la tranquillita del lago .Domani tappa al consolato cinese per chiedere carta d'ingresso .Dopo una cenuzza .dove alloggia l'amico che abbiamo incontrato a Pokara , finiamo in stanza sua . dove una sua amica sfoggia mille acquisti ( da milionaria ) e belle foto da una nikkon da un milione di dollari ... li mortacci loro , io non parlo cinese e finisco a bere litri di the . Dopo ... read more

After we said our goodbyes to Dida, the fruit store boy whom I always bought fruit and banana milk shakes from in the morning, we headed to the airport. The flight was delayed as usual due to fog. We visted Pashupatinath temple with the burning ghats and Anna was blessed by a Sadhu. Bodnath temple was a real highlight with the huge central Stupa and Buddha's all seeing eyes always watching. The next day we walked across Kathmandu to "Monkey Temple" Swayambhunath (which was made possible by more strikes so there was no cars on the road.) We also did some shopping for gifts for family back home. We went to Durbar Square to see more temples and also took a stroll down "Freak Street" which was famous for its hippy freaks back in the day. ... read more

I arrived in Kathmandu after a longish flight at about midday as I planned to spend a few days sightseeing here before heading off for some serious trekking. My friend would be meeting me in 2 days time to trek. My nepalese trekking company had kindly arranged a guide for us for Kathmandu so I had him all to myself which was great as we could do whatever I felt like. We visited the beautiful Swayambunath on a high hill in Kathmandu which was my first experience of a Buddhist stupa. We approached the main stupa from the steep stone stairs in gorgeous sunshine. Several monkey families bounded about the stairway and I kept a hand on my water as I could see them eyeing it up! The stairs were flanked with religious statues of peacocks ... read more