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Published: January 27th 2015
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Apologies for the late start for this blog, unfortunately there has been a lack of wifi throughout Nepal, but now I can begin!
Blog#1 - Kathmandu
Our journey began in Heathrow Airport. After saying a very sad goodbye to our family, we made our way onto our first flight into Asia. We arrived in Mumbai, India pretty disorientated, but excited! Our time in Mumbai was a short one, as we were only there for the transit flight to Kathmandu, Nepal. The wait was long and slow, as well as being eaten alive by thousands of mosquitos, neither myself or Joe were able to get any sleep because of the time difference. The time finally came to board the flight to Kathmandu, which in my personal opinion, was one of the most spectacular flights I've been on, scenery wise. In the last 30 minutes of the flight, we came upon miles and miles of rugged mountains, endless rolling hills and the numerous villages and towns scattered amongst this amazing landscape. When we got off the plane, there was a feeling of wonder and achievement; we had finally made it to the first leg of our journey after months and months
of planning and preparing. The feelings soon changed to exhaustion. Neither myself of Joe had sleep in 24 hours. Baggage Claim in Kathmandu Airport brought utter chaos! The conveyor belt broke down so everyones bags were no where to be seen. More and more flights began to arrive and still the conveyor belt wasn't fixed. People started to get frustrated and soon climbed through the tunnel of the conveyor belt to reclaim their luggage.
After an hour of hanging about, we got all our bags and met our tour guide who helped us bring our bags into Kathmandu centre into our hotel, The Buddha Garden Hotel. Unfortunately, having not slept for over 24 hours, I had to go and have a couple of hours of sleep. During that time, Joe took the chance to explore the city and gather his bearings. Well rested and restored, I met up with Joe and continued to explore this colourful and crazy, but amazing city.
Kathmandu reminded me of Cairo; busy busy busy! There are no such thing as pathways, there are literally millions of motorbikes, cars and tuk tuks and the air is full of dust! I absolutely loved it! The
local people are some of the friendliest I have ever met, always smiling, making us feel very welcome. We spent most of day 1 and 2 wandering around the crowded streets, avoiding the speeding cars and struggling to keep our bearings. We visited the famous Kathmandu Durbar Square and the Monkey Temple. Durbar Square was great, but we made the mistake of getting a tour round all the temples. Unless you are very interested in the history of all the temples, you can pretty much figure out each temple for yourself. Monkey Temple was incredible! We had to walk to the other end of Kathmandu to get there but it was well worth the visit. The Monkey Temple is situated on top of a huge hill overlooking all of Kathmandu, a truly spectacular sight. The main attraction for us was to see the Rhesus Macaques, whom has claimed the temple as their home. As a lover of animals and a huge wildlife enthusiast, I was beyond delighted to see the amazing Macaques roaming free and not behind a glass window. We stayed up in the temple until sunset, which was magnificent! Overall it was a brilliant start to our trip
and a great way to introduce us to Nepal.
As we had planned a scheduled itinerary for Nepal, we had planned to visit many more place apart from just Kathmandu. Our next visit in Nepal was a hill station in the foothills of the Himalayas called Nagarkot. Nagarkot was to be reached by taking a bus, or in Joe and I's case, several buses! We started the 3rd day bright and early, going into the local supermarket to stack up on snacks and bottled water for the bus ride ahead. Getting to the bus station was a bloody nightmare! As the Nepali people are friendly, so friendly in fact they would go out of their way to help you, most of the time they have no idea what you are asking or talking about, so they just point in a random direction, and us being typical tourists, took their word for it and, of course, went the wrong way! In the end, we had to take a taxi. Unfortunately the nightmare was not over. The taxi driver took us to the wrong bus station, so after some time asking all the bus drivers if they were heading to Nagarkot,
we finally managed to find the "second" bus station, meaning a couple of buses hidden away up a narrow street. Tired and sweaty, we finally made onto the crowded bus and started the 2 and a half hour bus ride up towards Nagarkot.
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