To the land of the Yeti

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After 12 days in India, we were ready for a new country. Today it was time for Nepal, and in particular, the capital Kathmandu. We had seen a movie staring Kathmandu airport once before, and it had cows running around the airport, so we were sorely disappointed to find a rather modern looking bland airport awaiting us.

The taxi ride to the hotel was interesting, giving a brief glimpse of various parts of Kathmandu. The most notable thing was that it was a lot cleaner than most of India. Considering that it's a much poorer country, this was rather surprising. You could still see signs of poverty around, but there definately weren't as many beggars and rundown hovels, and definately not as many cows standing in the middle of the road mooing at the cars going past.

However, we got a major shock as we pulled into Thamel, the suburb we were staying in. This was touristville, complete with much cleaner streets, pretty lights, and more non-Nepalese restaurants (eg. Japanese, Italian, German bakeries, Steakhouses) than you could poke a stick at. And on every corner, there was some white tourist wearing tight trekking pants browsing through a souvenir shop.

After dumping our stuff in the hotel and doing some chores like organising laundry and our travel plans within Nepal and to Tibet, we headed over to the Durbar square, the major attraction in Kathmandu. To our surprise, today happened to be the Nepalese New Year, so we were hoping to see some cool festival stuff.

Dubar Square is basically a big town square chock-a-block full of temples. Perhaps the most interesting of these is the temple of Kumari, the Living Goddess. The Nepalese believe that Kumari is infact a real-life, living, breathing goddess, who reincarnates herself continuously. To our surprise, the current Kumari was actually a little 7 year old girl. You have to feel sorry for the poor thing, because she's cooped up in the top floor of a building like a captive, where she is visited regularly by Nepalese pilgrims seeking blessings.

There were some other interesting temples in the Durbar Square, but it was much more interesting watching how the people interacted with the temples - watching them getting blessed by the priests and offering up their prayers.

We also got to peek in on a Sai Baba conference (Sai Baba is a big prophet in India with hair like Side-Show Bob). Nothing much was happening there, apart from a lot of chanting and guys running around in white and red robes.

That night we ate dinner in a Newari restaurant. According to the Lonely Planet, most of the food in Nepal is bland and boring, except for Newari stuff which is very spicy. We found this to be the case - this stuff was delicious, including really tasty curries and even a cool fried potatoey hashbrown thing.

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Photos

Not-so-holy man
These guys wander the street posing for tourists and then demanding money. What a job. Not as holy as you'd expect I guess.

Temples everywhere
One of the many temples in the Kathmandu Durbar square

Heaps of Idols too
This would be a scary place to walk at night I think. Lots of ugly statues everywhere.

The living goddess
The living goddess lives behind those windows. She's a 7-year little girl that the Nepalese believe is a living incarnation of the goddess Kumari. When this one dies, Kumari reincarnates in another baby.

All a part of life
There are heaps of old temples that tourists think are amazing, but that the locals just treat as huge old benches.

Touristy Thamel
Thamel, the suburb of Kathmandu where all the tourists stay, felt more like the gold coast than one of the poorest countries in Asia.

The local butcher
Nobody here believes in keeping meat cold or away from the flies

Newari-style thali
Delicious spicy newari (a nepalese people type) food. Thali just means its all you can eat.