Financial Ruin!!!

Ive been robbed!!! Ok… well not literally maybe, but by walking through Kathmandu it certainly feels like you have been…… Everywhere you look you are surrounded by shops and bazaars selling absolutely everything you don’t want or need and yet the unbelievably cheap prices simply compel you to dive into your wallet time and time again …… you need to have the will power and thriftiness of my ex wife ( I was going to say, stinginess, but she probably reads these blogs and that will only get me a slap!!!) to get through this place unscathed, mind you, that said I bet even she would succumb to the temptations that exist in this large city.
Im also reluctantly trying to find pressies for everyone and I also have to reluctantly admit that Kathmandu is a great place to do this, well that’s my excuse and im sticking to it.
As a consequence im going to probably end up being hit by a serious excess baggage charge when I fly out of India, however I have a cunning plan, yes, yet another one!
By chucking away my crusty socks, my last remaining pair of pants and my stinky trainers (which are showing signs of structural failure anyway) and then shoving everything heavy into my hand baggage and wearing everything else, I hope to slip by the scales.
Getting here isn’t easy either and the gods of good fortune decided not to smile on me the day that I decided to travel to Kathmandu. The first time our bus got a puncture, the second time was even more fun. The Nepalis love nothing more than to have a good old fashioned strike or bandh as they are known. This is where the locals, usually being in a state of aggravation over the slightest little thing, such as the price of rice, the wrong kind of headlines in the local paper or the fact that little Krishna in the next village has had his bike nicked, succeed in bringing the entire transport system to a grinding halt and causing general mayhem in the local area. So I was resigned to sitting on the edge of the road for 3 hours until those who were angry, decided that they were angry no more…….
Being the only real city in Nepal, Kathmandu is admittedly noisy, built up and a tad polluted and although it is not as clean as Pokhara, it is still nowhere near as dirty as your typical Indian city. Thamel is where most of the tourists hang out and of course, where you will find most of the best shops, bars and even strip clubs if your that way inclined.
Im actually writing this blog on my second visit to Nepal. The first time through, Heather and I only spent 2 days here as we needed to get to Darjeeling being as she wanted to see that dreary little hill town before leaving for Bangladesh a few days later.
Needless to say, we still found time to get extremely drunk, which resulted in Heather and myself coming out of a bar, jumping up on a cycle rickshaw and cycling away with it, Heather up front, cycling like crazy and me in the back hanging on for dear life……. the poor guy who owned the rickshaw was making a concerted effort to run alongside and keep up…… well, its all part of the fun….. I suppose….

Warned about the apparent tenacity of Kathmandu’s ubiquitous Tiger Balm salesmen, we had our guard up from day one. However, after the second day we began to feel quite offended that we hadn’t actually been approached and subsequently began our quest of actively going in search of one. The same goes for the Everest Steakhouse. The well known guide, Lonely Planet had lead us to believe that the waiters were not only rude but insulting, so we made a point of going there simply to revel in this unusual form of customer service, yet again our hopes were dashed when the waiters unfortunately turned out to be as polite and friendly as any other quality restaurant in town…… damn!!!

Kathmandu has plenty of sights if you want to get away from the shops. Not that its going to save you any money as tourists are forced to shell out for everything. You cant even walk through Durbar Square without paying a 200Rs entrance fee, although we found a couple of ways of sneaking into the square without paying.
There are a few sites of interest in Durbar, this area is where the Kalamari (or whatever her name is) lives. She is apparently some kind of living goddess. Chosen from a rather large group of pre pubescent girls, the idea is basically to check the all the girls star signs, scare the crap out of them and then finally, once the prospective canidate is chosen, she is shown a huge wardrobe of clothes and if she picks the clothes of her predecessor she becomes the Devi Kalmari. She spends her youth living in a palace funded by the taxpayer (no doubt, to the delight of her parents, who get to live there too) and once or twice a year she comes out for an airing. As soon as she has her first serious bleed, such as her first period or a serious accident, the search for a new goddess begins! Riveting stuff ehh!!!
Otherwise, Durbar is the place to sit and people watch. The Shiva temple is a stepped temple where many of Kathmandu’s youth sit to while away the day and simply watch the world go by.
Joining them isn’t such a bad idea as you have quite a good vantage point from where you can watch all the wonderfully attractive Nepali women go by, chew the cud with a good friend or simply sit and take the piss out of some of the clueless video camera wielding tourists milling about below…….

Asides from this, the stupas and the ghats are the attractions that most people are drawn to. Unfortunately though it is very difficult to sneak into these places without paying. Although the ghats are an exception to this rule.
Around 6km to the east of the centre is Bodnath Stupa, this is the largest of its kind in Nepal and possibly the world. A Stupa is basically a round based, dome shaped structure that was once believed to contain religious relics of the Buddha. The outside is adorned with prayer wheels and you will see many Buddhist coming here, walking round the stupas and spinning the prayer wheels that have Om Mani Padme Hum inscribed on them. The belief is that when you spin the wheels, you spin the prayer off into the air. The wheels also contain many more incantations so your always spinning off more than one prayer each time…… which is nice …… !!!
Bodnath Stupa is quite an impressive structure. You can actually go up onto the first level although for religious reasons you are asked not to climb up higher, ‘immoral acts’ are also frowned upon too and there are signs to this effect, although whoever would want to perform a lewd or immoral act in front of half of Kathmandu deserves a medal rather than facing copious amounts of indignant finger wagging!!!

The eyes of the Buddha stare out at all 4 axes and prayer flags flap about in the wind high above this gleaming whitewashed monument. Of course, where there are tourists, there is also money to be made and the entire Bodnath complex is full of more of those wonderful shops that just seem to suck money out of you.
To the west of the city is another stupa. Swayambhunath Stupa is not as far from the centre as Bodnath although you need to prepare yourself for a bit of a climb if you want to get to it, unless of course you cheat and go in the back way. Situated up on a hill, the views of Kathmandu and the surrounding hills are quite stunning. This stupa is nowhere near as big as Bodnath however it does have another attraction, this being the monkeys that live around the temple, unsurprisingly enough, Swayambhunath is often referred to as the monkey temple. Again, tourist tack shops abound and while I didn’t find anything of interest to buy here, there is a rather large Prayer box shop on the way to Swayambhunath. I managed to pick up 2 prayer boxes for 1400Rs which I think was a bargain….. it always pays to buy from the wholesalers ;)
The ghats are another place of interest, located not too far from Bodnath, you can come to watch the Hindu cremations taking place without being surrounded by the muck and grime of a city such as Varanasi. Situated in an area called Pashupathinath you will not only find the ghats located here, there are also several temples which are of interest too. Most are closed to non Hindus, although it’s still a great place to wander about in, sit and contemplate the meaning of life, reflect on how close you now are to bankruptcy or simply watch the monkeys mugging the locals.
You can find fake designer labels everywhere, some are convincing, some are not, I wasn’t particularly impressed with a cap that was labelled Addidas and a shirt that had Ralf Loren printed on the tag inside the collar, but there are still good deals to be had…….
As luck would have it, the monsoon has just started and each day brings a new and hefty downpour that leaves you soaked to the bone, regardless of if you have an umbrella or not!!!
So, rather than sit in a soggy city with waterlogged streets, im heading back to Pokhara again in a no doubt, futile attempt to get another glimpse of the Himalayas. I will more than likely have to run the gauntlet of landslides, roads that have been washed away and the usual glut of suicidal cows and chickens, but hey, you only live once…..well, that’s unless you are Hindu of course!!!
So, don’t count on hearing from me for a while as im intending to spend some serious time vegetating in Pokhara……….

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