There was a famous Tibetan festival going at the time we were in Lhasa, and we of course could not miss this opportunity. Since it was called Tashilunpo Thangka Festival and Zhigatse, the town where the Tashilunpo Monastery is situated, is not extremely far from Lhasa, we decided to check out of our hotel and spend some time there. This festival is explained as follows: the huge appliqué thangkas of the Buddhas of the Three Eras are displayed on two consecutive days. Already when we passed through Zhigatse on our way from Kathmandu to Lhasa, we had sworn to come back, [View Full Entry]

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The Jokhang is Tibetan Buddhism’s most sacred shrine, because the temple is not controlled by a particular sect of Tibetan Buddhism it attracts adherents of all the sects as well as followers of Bon-Po, Tibet's indigenous religion. Everyday, pilgrims from every corner of Tibet trek a long distance to the temple. Some of them progress by prostrating themselves throughout their journey until they reach the threshold of the temple. Pilgrims kindle butter lamps with yak butter, or honour the deities with white scarves while murmuring sacred mantras to show their pieties to the Buddha. [View Full Entry]

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Lhasa is the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region and has been the centre of politics, economy, culture and religion since ancient times in its history of more than 1,300 years. The city has mainly developed in three distinct phases, the first one in the sixth and seventh centuries, in which the Jokhang and some other temples like e.g. the Ramoche Temple were constructed. The next major period of development stretched from the 15th century, three major monasteries were founded then, to the 17th century when the Potala Palace was built and the 18th century shaped by the construction of [View Full Entry]

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Day 1 We had to get up fairly early that day and walk to the meeting point close to the travel agency where we had bought the package. As we were ahead of the scheduled time, we were obliged to wait for about 20 min, in addition to that it started to rain (once again) and it was not easy to find shelter. When a representative of the travel agency arrived, we were told that we had to walk a further short distance to the bus. Klaudia absolutely did not want to get wet, so she decided to take a bicycle [View Full Entry]

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The second day trip which we undertook from Kathmandu brought us to Bhaktapur, the smallest of Kathmandu Valley's three cities, lying some 10km east of Nepal's capital. The city retains a simplicity far removed from the trappings of 21st century life and gives the impression that little has changed there for centuries, that little is set to change and, happily, that it is a city at ease with itself. With its three main squares, Bhaktapur has arguably the Kathmandu Valley's finest panoply of the regional temple architecture. Either side of the squares is a network of narrow lanes, earthy [View Full Entry]

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Patan has a unique atmosphere which is due to its compact scale and the remarkable vivacity of its temple architecture, with a Durbar Square more densely packed with Hindu temples than Kathmandu, and a total of 55 major temples and 136 monasteries. Also known as Lalitpur ('beautiful town'), Patan is officially the Kathmandu Valley's second largest city, although it has now been effectively absorbed into Kathmandu. It is said that the city was designed and built after the Buddhist wheel of righteousness. Patan is surrounded by four big stupas - one at each corner of the cardinal points; [View Full Entry]

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We left Pokhara in the morning, all buses to Kathmandu leave from the same place at 7:30 a.m., very practical. We had the choice of different companies and chose any bus, rather convinced that they were all the same. The bus was better than most we had experienced in India, but this time we had opted for a so-called 2x2 (only two seats per row on each side of the aisle) tourist bus. The drive from Pokhara to Kathmandu took only five hours, but it was the most scenic we have had in almost four months! First of all, Nepal is [View Full Entry]

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Due to the bad experience with our first night in Nepal and to reports from fellow travellers that parts of the road to Pokhara were under construction causing massive traffic jams, we opted for some luxury and bought two flights. We had reserved the tickets with a local travel agent, but had neither paid them ($ 43 per person) nor had them physically in hands. We were told that we would get them at the airport, so we hired a taxi and the whole staff from Hotel Parkside accompanied us. First we had to find a bank, for up to now [View Full Entry]

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It was not easy to leave India, not because we did not want to but because several obstacles were put in our way. Our plan was to reach the Chitwan National Park (Nepal) in one day, but as you can imagine it did not work out. Somehow we got the impression that national parks - be it in India or Nepal - must be hard to reach to give them an air of exclusivity. Theoretically Varanasi is a perfect starting point for Nepal, but due to the political problems tourist numbers are dwindling and it was difficult to find transport other [View Full Entry]

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We were in the train station of Katni at 9:30 a.m., enough time to buy tickets. We split up to different queues, a strategy that has already proved quite helpful in India. Suddenly, a policeman led Stephan to a different ticket counter in a car outside the building, a man was sitting there with a computer on his lap. This was supposed to be the express counter! We did not really trust this arrangement, so Klaudia stayed queued, it’s better to be safe than sorry. Soon, the policeman turned up again, violently dragging the Indians in front of Klaudia from their [View Full Entry]

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