Purple haze

There is a song that twirls through my head every time I see the sun setting in the hazy skies that dominate Nepal at the moment. It's one of Jimi Hendrix songs called Purple Haze and that is just what the sky looks like every evening.

As I left Pokhara I was hoping the weather would improve, but it was not to be. At first things did look up, on my second day in Bandipur I managed to get a glimpse of the Himalayas and I took this as a sign of improving weather conditions. Not that Bandipur doesn't have anything else for it but the views, it actually is a great little village that has used the tourist money wisely in restoring the old Newari merchant houses and converting a few of them into guesthouses or restaurants. I was somewhat taken aback at first at the amount of tourists around, not that there were many, but I had expected far less. It is the power of the Lonely Planet. After giving it a great review I guess more tourists decided to see for themselves, and with more tourists came more hotels and more restaurants and a menu featuring the traveler favorites like banana pancakes! But it is all good; I ended up staying more days than intended, partly due to the occurrence of the Holi festival right on the day I was planning on leaving. I didn't mind postponing my departure though, I had a lovely room looking out over the valley and the village is nice and peaceful. At night the shops and temples are lit up by candles, at least when the electricity is gone, which in Nepal is more often than not.

Holi in Bandipur was a thing for children and I was happy it was so, as I was in no mood to have my clothes, shabby though they be, turned all the colors of the rainbow. Some foreigners decided to celebrate it with the kids and they of course got the full treatment. After celebrating it in Mathura, India, a couple of years ago, nothing can really compare. Never the less it was nice watching the events from the sideline.

With Holi out of the way I moved on to Gorkha, a place of much significance to Nepal as the king who united the country was born here back in the day. There is a magnificent palace/temple complex on the hill, which is a pilgrimage spot for Nepalis. The woodcarvings on the buildings are quite intricate and it was at this point that I was sure that the weather too had changed as I got my best view yet of the Himalayas.

Alas, it was not to be. The next day as the bus to Kathmandu entered the valley I realized that things were just going downhill, and I don't mean just the bus. The first day the sky could be seen, on day two the blue was replaced by grey and the sun was no more than an orange fur ball in the sky with little power. On so it has remained. The local newspapers blame Rajastani dust for the haze, but I don't think Rajastan can be blamed for all of it. Pollution, lack of rain and the all pervasive dust of Kathmandu and it's valley are more important to the problem in my eyes, watering though they be due to the continues dust.

Fabled Kathmandu is where I am staying now, in Thamel, the tourist Mecca of this part of Asia. It is told by some that only Kho San road in Bangkok rivals it. Here there are five touts, four drug dealers, three tiger balm/flute sellers and two rickshaw or taxi drivers per tourists. There are more travel agents than hairs on the Yeti, shops selling all the usual crap, hotels, restaurants, pubs, nightclubs, supermarkets, bakeries and much more. Live bands play every night from numerous venues and while the tourist browse the streets being followed by their band of touts and flute sellers, little street kids sniff glue and ask for biscuits. This is Thamel! But luckily Thamel is not Kathmandu and Kathmandu is not Thamel and it is easy to escape it all. A short walk away and you come into the historic districts of town with so much history and so much going on that it is a sensory overload. There seems to be a magnificent temple around every corner, an intricately carved shop window or door frame just about every meter, stupa's and statues and small shrines thousands of years old can be found in courtyards around the city. The best thing is, it is lived in. People use the shrines, they live in the temple courtyards, they chain their bikes on some hundred year old statue which would be in a museum at home, hang their laundry on the magnificently carved wooden railings of some temple. The markets are bustling; the shops are often housed in the most amazing buildings or just on the lower levels of a temple. And that is Kathmandu, a living history, where one moment you seem to be in the Middle Ages as you walk along a narrow cobbled street or enter an ancient courtyard, and the next moment you are back in the twenty-first century, with motorbikes whistling past you and the passing crowd with impunity. Kathmandu could keep one busy for weeks if not years, were it not for the dust and the pollution. For now I have decided to give it a break for a while and clear my lungs just a little before returning back.

And as I return back from a stroll in Durbar Square one evening I see the familiar purple haze in front of me, but it is not the sun, no they are the neon signs of Thamel that are beckoning me, accompanied by a familiar tune being played by a live band in one or another restaurant... Purple Haze...

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Part of trip: The great journey east!

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