Kathmandu-do-do-do

---

Namaste!
Once again I've ventured off the beaten track to see a more simple way of life. Getting out to a culture like this, for me is like pressing a reset button. You get so caught up in Dubai with your career, nice food, fancy bars, shopping malls, fast cars and massive buildings. It's amazing that a 4 hour flight is all it takes to realise what's important. No matter where I go in the world it seems true that less is more. Those that have a few woven leaves over their head do truly seem to smile more...

Enough of my spiritual realisation and back to our journey. We got up at 3:45 to get to the airport by 5 and catch our flight. Budget airlines always sting you with terrible flight times! After a rather uneventful yet entertaining flight (the Nepalese don't suffer from the social stigmas we do and have no problem with downing whiskey at 7 am!) We arrived in a sea of people waiting for their "on arrival visas", stood in the queue for 45mins and only made 4 tiles of progress- at this rate we calculated it would take 4 hours to get out!!! A 20 dollar silent bribe, an “is there any way we can make this queue go and faster?" wink and we were shunted to the front, magically had visas and didn't even go through customs! Khalid and I faced some mixed emotions, we were very please with ourselves for having the ingenuity to think of bribing the right people and the Dubai-honed skills to orchestrate such a deal, yet equally very morally wrong. I think the worst bit was the sad realisation of what living in a society like we do has done to us: we have become "that person" the one that rocks up to a night club in his fancy Ferrari, flashes some bling, tips the bouncer and cuts the queue.... Oh dear...
As planned our hotel had organised a pick up and we were off, finally here in Nepal! We sat in mouth-gaping silence as we tried to take in as much as possible of our new surroundings. I suffered the same sensory overload I always do when I fly into a big Asian city. Everything is absolutely manic: the roads, the cows, the traffic, the buildings: some tied together with string, the faces, the people, the noise, the pollution just all so hectic yet somehow it works. Five lanes of traffic fit where 2 should go and a good measure of cows, dogs, cycle rickshaws and motorbikes squash in the holes between them.

We arrived at our guest house and were pleasantly surprised that they had upgraded us to a 'super-deluxe-double" for no extra charge, very nice thank you very much. Its still dirty and falling apart but I loved it. A quick bag drop then we were off exploring... Central Thamel - where we were staying- is the tourist central with trinkets-galore, bags, cashmere shawls, Ghurka knives, fake 'north face' trekking gear, massages, food and bars all at your fingertips. A quick-fix for all your traveler needs. We stopped for the most delicious vegi-thali and fried veg momos ever, washed it down with a good measure of Everest (the local beer) and watched the world go by. Ahhh bliss.
An early night for us after a long day and in preparation for our 6am bus the next morning to The Last Resort. We set two alarms and somehow neither went off! 6:20 we woke up in a panic, pulled our boots on, grabbed our pre packed breakfast parcels (complimentary of the guesthouse) and ran! I literally mean we ran to the meeting point. Somehow in our panic/confusion/half-asleepness/only seen it at night-ness we managed to take a wrong turn somewhere and got hopelessly lost! We got in a taxi, he had no idea where we were talking about so jumped out again, asking locals left right and centre if they had any idea where mandala st was. The best we got was "Nelson Mandela monument? Yes I can take u there" finally we found a cycle rickshaw guy that knew what we were talking about and jumped in his carriage. Poor guy only managed to cycle about 200 meters before slowing to a near halt with the weight of us. Feeling like the terribly useless, sweaty, fat white tourist we took pity on him, threw too much money at him and ran in the direction he vaguely motioned. I'm not sure if it’s a religious thing or not but no one seems to point here, it’s more of a wave in a general direction. We finally made it: breathless, sweating and in a panic that only a western person could muster from being late. (Side note: it was totally a scene from the Amazing Race for those of you that know what I'm talking about.) The guy at the desk didn't seem phased at all; there was a second bus that leaves an hour later for jet-lagged, hung-over tourists like us! Luckily, the bus was full of young kind-hearted Danish volunteer students so we didn't get any death-stares as we shuffled our way to the back of the bus with our eyes cast to the floor!
2 hours into our supposed 3hr journey we hit a queue of traffic that was at a complete standstill, our bewildered driver got out and soon learned that there had been a landslide 3km up ahead the night before and they were working to clear the road. We were told it would take an hour but I should have known that an hour out here is not exactly what I would call an hour... We waited...met some locals, were entertained by a guy whose business card said "folk-singer" and just watched the world go by. After a while Khalid pitched the idea to the driver that we walk to the land slide, and a bus from the resort collects us from there the other side. Somehow, they had not thought of that and decided it was a great idea! It’s odd, the Nepalese just take things like land slides in their stride and hundreds of people just sat and waited, for what would be hours, for the landslide to be cleaned. If this was elsewhere in the world, there would definitely be a few men in suits, late for meetings, in a real huff about things. As it was people started little fires on the side of the road, toasted nuts, served the local delicacy of chili-cucumber and lugged sacks full of water (carried by tying it round their forehead and bending forward - the preferred method of carrying) up and down the road in hope of making a quick buck. So we gather our things and start walking up the hill to the landslide. An hour later we get to a sea of people and for the first time I really came to terms with exactly what they meant by Landslide. For most of us, landslide is just a lyric from Oasis’' Champagne Supernova but I'm talking boulders the size of cars that have slid down the mountain and filled the entire road! And there was only one dumper truck working to clear the path.
We got to the other side and had to walk to the end of the queue (another 2-3km in the heat) to wait for the bus. 8hrs into out journey and we were faced with the decision as to whether we should just go back with the other bus load of people or change our flight to Pokhara (which was lunchtime the next day), cut our losses on the hotel and continue on to The Last Resort. Obviously, we chose the latter. A few phone calls later and we were all sorted. We finally arrived at the last resort after a long 10hr journey and crossed over a wobbly bridge, 200m above the Bhote Khosi River to a wonderful green haven. Lunch was waiting for us and we sat barefoot, cross-legged in the wooden gazebo-style bar and once again absorbed our surroundings. A cup of tea and a full belly later we set off to explore the resort. It was so peaceful, completely different to Kathmandu. We jumped in the plunge pool figuring that it would be our only opportunity to wash our bodies in a while... The whole resort was an inter-connecting series of semi-permanent tents with simple wooden beds, stone pathways and ample greenery. We however were not booked to stay over night so they put up a camping tent for us, near the staff huts which was fantastic. It rained all night long but luckily it was well pitched and we stayed dry. Up early the next day and ready for the reason we took this side trip: THE CANYON SWING!!! You launch yourself off the centre of the bridge and free fall 160m over the river, as the tension kicks in you swing like a giant pendulum! Amazing. The other option was to bungee but I had. Promised my mum that I wouldn't bungee due to the recently broken ankle - wouldn't want to break a promise would I? But I'm pretty sure she didn't say "no canyon swinging!" They write your weight on your right hand and it somehow makes you feel a bit naked; you can't help but notice who is fatter than you and who is not! Haha! Khalid was the first up and he looked pretty calm, (I was secretly disappointed: As I don't get scared of these things, there is a slight sadist in me that loves the fear in others.) In a full body harness and the chord attached to the front he leaped from the platform and plunged down at an alarming speed to the river below. About 4 seconds into the freefall there it was: the panic I'd been expecting his arms started flailing in a ridiculous attempt to slow his fall and I got the laugh I'd been wanting. Brilliant! The mechanism here is so simple yet clever and by the laws of physics: pretty fail-safe. No fancy hydraulics, rotors or anything to go wrong just gravity. Once you slow enough, they raise a rope for u to pull yourself to steps at the side of the gorge, disconnect you from the harness, and put the harness in a (now empty) bucket. At the top, they fill the other bucket with water and the weight of the water lifts the harness back up to the top via a simple pulley system: genius! I ran and launched myself off the platform to meet Khalid below. The only way back up is to climb/trek up the jungle path back to the resort, through water falls and little villages but all in all an exhausting journey! The physical exertion coupled with adrenaline puts you on quite a high. We reached the top, had some water then went straight back for round two! This time I got connected from the back and did a triple back flip off the platform- I know, total show off- but the simple jump off the edge just doesn't cut it for me. Khalid didn't want to be showed up by his girl so decided he would also back flip off the platform. I watched from below as he casually strolled to the edge, looked way too calm and launched into a beautiful back flip! I was so impressed and then - there it was again, 180degrees in and the arms started flapping and the legs wiggled in the vain attempt to slow his decent. You can just imagine how much I enjoyed that!
Another laborious walk up the mountain and our bodies were drained partly from the exertion and partly a come-down from the adrenaline high. We relaxed at the resort and made friends with some crazy Israelis which is somewhat of a novelty to us Dubai citizens. A much less eventful journey back to Kathmandu, we shared dinner, drinks and laughs with our new found friends followed by a deep deep slumber.
Day four... (Well that's if you count our travel day as day one) a nice relaxing start, then we tackled the hectic streets of Kathmandu to the airport. I've decided that the level of safety over here really makes a mockery of our bubble-wrapped society. There are no men in bright safety jackets, no inter-connecting gangways that lead straight onto the plane; you just walk out and directly up to your plane, past spinning propellers and everything. The planes are teeny tiny, you can't stand up in them and you can see right into the cockpit, no autopilot here and in place of the usual "life vest is under your seat" we got "please use bottom cushion for flotation" - very reassuring....
From the second we stepped off the plane in Pokhara airport (I use the term airport lightly) we felt an amazing sensation of calmness; we had left behind the buzzing centre and were now ready to relax... Pokhara is where most treks start for the Annapurna circuit so the tourists you do see here are generally hard-core trekkers either about to embark on or just returned from a 21 day trek - wow! We arrived at our hotel -a day late due to the landslide- they were not fussed or even surprised and showed us to our room. I feel I will cheapen it by attempting to explain it, perhaps I should just leave the description as: breathtaking... No, let me try; it’s a little Nepalese house (you each have your own one) literally on lake Fewa - a breathtaking mountain-surrounded lake, hand built from stones, mud and wood: simple yet beautiful. The living room had a separate kind of 'sleeping platform' elevated on stilts with another attached bedroom. It was total overkill for what we needed; we could have slept a small village in there but was so beautiful that for one night it was worth the hefty $45 price tag! Lake Fewa, as briefly described before is beautiful, we hired a boat with a couple of oars and paddled out to the little shrine mid-lake. The locals made paddling look so easy but somehow we spent most of the time zigzagging to our destination. I find mountains really powerful and there is nothing more awe inspiring than being in the middle of a lake surrounded by the Himalayan Mountains. Green forests on the bottom and snow capped peaks behind that; it makes you feel so small and insignificant in the little wooden boat. Unfortunately we timed it 5 mins out and just as we were heading back to dry land the heavens opened and we got completely soaked in the last of the monsoon rain. We spent the walk back to our hotel accompanied by a guy trying to sell me a traditional Nepalese violin. In the end I caved, and bought an instrument that sounds like a dying cat when I play it but on the plus side, matches my furniture! Haha! Warm shower, clean clothes then tasty dinner and another deep slumber.
Hotel Fewa (our hut place) is apparently renowned for its breakfasts, we were a little surprised to see that there was only one empty table, but after 'Mikes special' and the fact that if you stood up too quickly you would probably knock your chair in the lake, we could see why it was popular!
Now, we're obviously not fit enough nor do we have that kind of free time to trek the entire Annapurna circuit but we had set aside 2 days for a taste of trekking. We asked some locals at a trekking company where they would suggest and all said the same thing: get to Phedi and trek up to Dhampus. Done deal. We ditched our big bags, got out the trekking-poles and packed little more than clean underwear, waterproof, toothbrush and water purification tabs. Now that we would be carrying everything uphill for the next 4hrs my usual travel 'necessities' like ukulele and iPod dock suddenly became only luxuries.
Off we set, up a kind of devils staircase, the most part was a pretty massive 45degree incline but the whole walk only took about 3hrs with a couple of tea stops in between. The view was amazing, every time the hand-laid steps snaked out to a clearing you could see a little higher and a lot more mountain like one of those magic kids colouring books. You can see the picture then you paint over it with water and the colours come through. Although the view we were gawking at was in fact of the same thing we could see at the bottom, it somehow became more and more beautiful as we climbed.
We arrived, sweat drenched and pretty breathless in Dhampus. I tell you, another 'mockery' that is made of our approach to life is that we're there in our super high tech, light-weight, heavy-duty, fully waterproof boots, aluminium extendable trekking poles, quick-drying, non-chaffing trekking pants, 'intelligent wool' socks (no joke that's what they're called) Camelbaks giving us constant supply of water etc. yet we were no faster than an old lady who carried a bale of hay on her back the size of me and Khalid put together with sandals on her feet, wearing a kind of Nepali version of the sari and that's it... Mockery... My other personal favourite was a porter carrying a backpack not in the conventional method of straps over the shoulders but with a piece of rope looped round the bag and back round his forehead. Mockery!

We found a little guest house - which was really just someone’s house - they had a spare room and for 200 Rps (11dhs, 2 quid) was our home for the night. Having not eaten since breakfast and Khalid had used our biscuits to fend off the small children that were literally attacking us for something, anything of value. We set off to fine a meal, found another guesthouse and ordered egg-veg rice, we waited patiently (very hungry by this point) and watched the chickens, cats, dogs, children and builders all live side by side. Anywhere else in the world the babies would be crying, the labourers tripping over the dogs that would be chasing the cats that would have already eaten the chickens but somehow they all just minded their own business in perfect harmony.
Power went out at 7 and we drank tea and read by candlelight in the foothills of the Himalayas... Wow.
The next morning, we rose at sunrise exchanged bizarrely similar mountain dreams, had amazing freshly made gaurang bread (some kind of deep fried flat bread) and relaxed with the locals. I realised that we hadn't seen any tourists up in the village in the clouds. I had half expected to wake up and see rolling hills, mountains and blue skies but instead we were in the middle of a cloud and couldn't see more than a few metres, quite an eerie experience.
Halfway down the mountains it started to rain so we ducked into a teahouse and got talking to the locals whilst we waited out the rain. After an interesting hour of philosophy, horror stories about working in Saudi Arabia and tea we realized that the rain was not planning on easing up. The Owner offered us “Plastic” for 50 Rps which we assumed would be a disposable poncho so we were prepared to pay the price for it (half a nights stay) as our rain coats wouldn’t do u around our bags. Turns out that “Plastic” just meant a big bin bag - most expensive bin bag ever but luckily my Bear-Grylls-wanabee-boyfriend always carries a knife and jumped at the chance to fashion a garment out of a bag. We got back to Pokhara aching a bit and both in awe of our friends who had recently climbed Mt Kilimanjaro I’m not sure I could get up day after day and keep moving!

Khalid had been gagging to hire a scooter and I had stopped him in Kathmandu as I feared for his life but over in Pokhara, nothing moves very fast so he picked up a little Honda 125cc and off we set. Unfortunately the monsoon raised its ugly head again and after only 5 mins of buzzing about it decided to pour for the entire afternoon, evening, night and even next morning! We did what any good traveler would do and sat under the gazebo, ate, drank and read our books…

A rather scary flight and we were back in the capital and decided to spend our last night on Joyche or as its affectionately known: ‘Freak Street’. This is where the hippies first started coming to, its cheap as chips and full of tattoo/piercing parlours and dread-locked travelers for whom time seems to have stopped. We timed our return perfectly as it was the ‘Indranee-Indradeep’ Festival or ‘Festival of the living gods’. I really wish I could tell you more about this but unfortunately I’m rather ignorant and we got about 7 different answers from people we asked so I’m not sure what it was all about. The streets were heaving with locals and the centre of attention seemed to be on these 3 small boys who I assume are the ‘living-gods’. They were ornately dressed and placed in massive wooden chariots which looked like they should have been from medieval days and should have been pulled by horses. Instead around 20 men dragged the chariots through the streets in a very out-of-control manner. At one point we got caught up in the commotion and suddenly one of the chariots was heading straight for us, we ducked under the arms of the crowd controllers and attempted to get out of the way. With no where else to run and the chariot heading straight for me I am eternally grateful to Khalid who plucked me up, as if I weighed no more than a feather, and catapulted me to safety! Milliseconds later the chariot crashed into the stone pillar I had been standing in front of and broke it… I cant even begin to think of what damage it would have done to me… I wonder if my super expensive Extreme-sports-travel-insurance would cover ‘chariot damage’?!?! I’m glad I didn’t have to find out!

Our final morning (another 5:30 get up to catch the sunrise) was spent doing the ‘must-see’ touristy thing and we visited Swayambhunath a.k.a Monkey Temple. It’s a breathtaking stupa with beautiful eyes painted on the top that overlooks the entire valley. Swayambhunath means ‘self-arisen’ because when the plates collided some years back the hill seemed to rise out of nowhere and was deemed sacred. The other name: Monkey Temple is as it’s comes from all the monkeys that live there.

We were sad to leave what an amazing week we had had. Nepal really is a wonderful country but I’m comforted by the fact that I’m sure I will return in the not to distant future.

Dhantubaa

---

Photos

Landslide
Some day you will find me caught beneath a land slide... with a Champagne Supanova.. lalalala

Breakfast
Pre-jump Breakfat

Canyon Swing
If you look carefully you can just see Khalid's arms flailing!

The Bridge
160m off a rickerty cable bridge - insane anyone?

Rainbow
The most beautiful rainbow I have ever seen

Lovely Tea-house couple
Emma: Your wife is beautiful
Rakesh: She is old now

Comments

[Aunty Cass]

A whirl week in Nepal
dearest emma, how have you got the energy to write all that after a week like that! It sounds absolutely out of thsi world. Brilliant descriptions, I feel like I have been watching a film. How will you get back to normal? Mind you ,you are definately not normal if you like jumping into canyons! fondest love Aunty Cass xx

[Andy in Mauritius]

Well done Em.
Your site looks great and the trip sounds cool. Well done. Here's my traveling mantra after thirty five years on the road, for what it's worth... 'You're a traveller once you realise that the further you go the less you know' All going brill here and looking very exciting. Will set up my blog slowly slowly but need to thoroughly understand what I'm up to, but have a great lovely guy whose already completely revamped my laptop, so playing with that at the moment. Also now Skyped up and today had my first conversation which was with Le Frog and Christine. So loads going on what with settling in, findind a home and vehicle. All go. Love yer. Andy. X.