Advertisement
Published: October 24th 2018
Edit Blog Post
October 6th - Kunming - Dia 107
Needing to catch a flight from Kunming to Kathmandu the 7th I traveled a lot today. All the fast trains were sold out and weirdly my slow night train reservation got cancelled on the last minute. So I was left to take a bus ?
Not the most memorable time. Today I literally traveled from 7:30am all the way to 11:30pm. Traveling really tests your patience. Especially in the buses of China which are not made for medium sized people, their is not a lot of space to get comfortable.
Finally made it to the bus station of Kunming at 11:30pm. I had hoped to catch the cheap metro train to my Hostel but got unlucky since the metro train was closed for the night. The buses were also not running anymore. And I did not have enough Chinese money with me to cover the expense of a taxi in addition with the Hostel for tonight and the food for tomorrow. Why didn't I just pay for a taxi and take more money out of the bank tomorrow you ask? Well my bank charges me 8 dollars every time I take money out and
it was my last day in China so I did not want to have excess Yuans. Jajajaja. Based on what I am about to tell you I should have still done that. I did not have a sane travel partner to drive me out of the idea of walking all the way to the Hostel.
And that's what I did. Walked 9kms, which did not sound too much at the moment, all the way to the Hostel. Took me 2 hours and a half to get there since my phone ran out of battery mid way. Which required me to do a pit stop in a convenience store to charge my phone and eat ice cream ?. I had to walk though some dark alleyways proving that China is an extremely safe place. ? Made it safely, at around 2am, to my Hostel surprising the owner for what I had done.
He never seemed to understand my reasoning behind it though ?
October 7th - Kathmandu - Dia 108
Catched a plane to Kathmandu today at 3:30pm. Bye bye China! I have traveled across your beautiful lands enough. Time to explore other places.
I love those cultural shocks you
receive once arriving in undeveloped countries. The airport was a mess... Everyone was running around trying to get their visa on arrival sorted. After around 3 hours I finally managed to get my passaport stamped and took a step out into Kathmandu.
It was dark by now and taking a taxi to my Hostel made me realize how cayotic Kathmandu is. No traffic rules whatsoever. Just a mess off motorcycles and cars in road which does not seem to have any traffic symbols ?
Once arriving to the Hostel I decided to walk around Thamel, the touristy part of Kathmandu for a bit. I would like to describe it as being extremely entertaining. So much movement and life in the narrow streets where people merge with the traffic. Looking for a place to have dinner I found the perfect place. A rather local shak with only Nepali people inside. I ordered a traditional vegetarian MoMo. Which to my surprise, when it was brought to me, its pretty much like the steamed dumplings in china! I have not gone too far away it seems Jjaja.
While eating, a local Tibetan sat next to me and started drinking his afternoon beer. We
ended up talking and I found out he had his own guiding company.
My first intentions when coming to Nepal was doing a trek by myself. I wanted to evade the guiding companies and have an independent experience. But once arriving to Nepal I find myself noticing how hard it is to catch a flight to Lukla due to bad weather and flight delays. People that travel independently have a harder time getting there and find themselves stranded in Kathmandu for days. Lukla is a little town up in the mountains which is the start of any trek surrounding the Everest region.
The man offered and promised me a flight to Lukla. Even went to the effort of telling me he could fly me in by helicopter if I did not catch a plane. I don't know how true this statement was jajja.
I left the dining place promising to talk with him in greater detail tomorrow morning. Only an extra 15 usd per day with a promised flight to Lukla, an experience sherpa and the company of a local Tibetan. Something definetly to consider.
October 8th- Kathmandu - Dia 109
I met up with Nara, which was the
one in charge of the Master Himalaya tavel agency, at 10am. I already knew I was going to get a Sherpa ?. After dropping the price to 15 dollars a day and shaking hands he got to work in trying to get me a flight for tomorrow. Not finding anything immedietly, I left them to their work and wondered off into the city of Kathmandu.
Wow I had never visited some place as crowdy and busy. I asked some people who had been to India to compare both and they agreed Kathmandu felt busier. Agreeing that is was because the roads were narrow and there was less space to walk ?.
So entertaining to walk through the city of Kathmandu. Seeing markets, construction, beggers, cars and motorcycles all at once. Walking through extremely narrow alleyways where vendors had installed themselves on both sides of the alley. The best one so far has been a sector which was only selling textiles. The amount of different colors and patterns seen at once was exilirating.
Getting tired I found myself on the way to one of only parks. Amazing how little green space they have in the city, I wanted to see how the parks behaved around here. As I was told: due to the problem of beggers living in the park they had to place a fee to access the small area jajaja. So after paying the fee I found a place to lay in the grass and join the rest of the Nepalese. Being many couples having their romantic dates jajaja. I stayed laying under the sun and reading until I did not feel the warmth of the sun anymore.
At around 5pm I received a call from Nara informing me I had a flight to catch tomorrow at 8:30am! ? Spent the rest of the evening arranging everything for an amazing 18days in the mountains. Could not have asked for something better!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.11s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 10; qc: 47; dbt: 0.0561s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb