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Published: September 20th 2008
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Thamel
Hotel Potala - our first hotel 19th September 2008 - First full day in Kathmandu
We set the alarm for an ambitious 8am, but didn't make it out of bed until gone 10.30. Had breakfast at the hotel. Glenn had a cup of milk with a dash of tea and I had a "lemon" tea, which had a normal tea bag and a slice of lime!
A friend of the hotel manager turned up and took us to his office to discuss the trek and a mountain flight (uber expensive = no). After 3 hours of minute detail about each of the 20 days, we had our Annapurna circuit trek booked. We start our trek on Sunday with a 7 hour bus journey to the base of the trek - then we trek for 19 days until we reach Pokhara. Not sure what the availability of the internet is like in the Himalayas, so might be a while before we update again.
After we left the office, we hit the streets of Thamel to haggle with the locals. Glenn got a "North Face" fleece and some "oakleys" for about 4GBP. We both got ourselves some awesome mittens, which double up as fingerless gloves. oh.
yeah.
By far the best bargain was tiger balm. This started at 350r and we paid 25r and a shiney 20p piece.
After a few hours we went back to the hotel, had dinner and a beer on the roof terrace and watched the chaos below.
20th September 2008 - Durbar Square & Monkey temple.
Today we decided to do the lonely planet walking tour from Thamel (tourist district) to Durbar Square (over 49 temples). The walk was amazing - we saw lots of temples and Pagodas on the way.
When we arrived at Durbar Square we were immediately bombarded by tour guides wanting to show us all of the 49 temples. We resisted for about 10 minutes, but ended up having a tour from a drunken nepalese man, who looked like a pirate!
The tour was actually really good, and although we didn't understand everything he was saying, we did learn a lot about Nepalese culture. One of the most interesting things was the living goddess. A nepalese girl of high caste is chosen to be the living reincarnation of the god of destruction. To become the living goddess, the girl
Thamel
Roof top restaurant must be pre-pubescent, born at midnight on a full moon, have exactly 32 milk teeth, have no marks or scratches on her body and have eyes like a cow (that's a good thing). Surprisingly there are actually quite a few girls that fit this bill. The winner is then chosen by 3 monks, one hindu, one buddist and another religion we can't remember. She is then locked up in a temple with 4 princes, who stand in each of the four corners, chanting and slaughtering animals. 500 years ago they used to slaughter a human. The theory is that if she is unphased by this, then she is the reincarnation of the god and right for the job.
What we didn't realise when we arrived at Durbar Square, is that there was a festival happening to celebrate the living goddess. However, due to lack of government funding for the festival, the locals were staging a protest. The whole place was littered with police, with big sticks. It started off very calm, but just after we decided to grab some lunch at a rooftop restaurant overlooking the square, it all kicked off. The protestors started to burn the tourist offices
Thamel
Our first beer (where you pay the Durbar Square entrance fee) and were throwing rocks at the police, who then battered them with their big sticks and fired tear gas into the crowd. It was an eventful two hours, which we watched from the safety of the restaurant.
We really wanted to go to the monkey temple, but when we looked out there was more rock throwing, so we had to wait. After 30 minutes we decided to make a run for it (don't worry Mum, we made it ok). Then we walked at a fast pace to the monkey temple on the outskirts of Kathmandu (a large buddist temple at the top of a very steep hill).
Monkey temple was amazing. After scaling hundreds of steps, we were greeted by lots of monkeys, some skanky dogs, and a huge stupa - a buddist monument. There were also a number of statues and shrines, and the trees were covered in prayer flags. We walked around for a few hours, watching the monkeys, monks and skanky but cute puppies. Bought a few bangles (a 'mangle' for Glenn) and some prayer flags (for the highest point of our trek). We then got a
VERY bumpy taxi ride back to Thamel to grab some dinner, do some more shopping and finish off with a cold beer and a cocktail, listening to some live music.
Great day.
PS - there is another (different) protest going on outside right now. No violence as yet 😊
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Amy Matthews
non-member comment
Is there anywhere you can't buy tiger balm?!
Sounds like you're having a fantastic time already. Bet the trekking will be great. I have months of studying for a physics exam ahead! Hope you're going to cheer me up with tales from across the globe on a frequent basis. Take care of yourselves!