Christmas in Kathmandu

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On the afternoon of Friday 21st December my parents, my newly-arrived-from -the-UK brother and I set off for Dhaka airport on our way to Nepal. Those of you who have encountered Biman Bangladesh Airlines will not be surprised to know that we were severely delayed, which is even worse when you are in the world’s a) coldest b) most boring airport! Anyhow after nearly 4 hours of shivering, wandering, reading and general waiting we made it onto the aircraft and 1 hour and 10 minutes later arrived at Kathmandu airport. Out of sheer luck I got a window seat on the left hand side of the aircraft, which is a perfect spot for viewing the Himalayas and in particular, Everest, so a point worth remembering. Strangely, Nepal is 15 minutes behind Bangladesh (India is 30 minutes behind), which is quite a random time difference!

We arrived in the dark and were met by a couple of staff members from the Summit Hotel, which is where we were staying. My mum says my blogging this holiday is a bit of a ‘swizz’ as I was not ‘roughing it’ but I don’t care, it’s blogging travel, isn’t it, and I was/am travelling! The Summit is in Patan, outside central Kathmandu, overlooking the city and with a good view of the mountains, so I was told, as in fact we barely saw them all week thanks to the immense fog and pollution. The hotel is Dutch-run with simple rooms, a garden area and even a pool but as the pool temperature was 13’C there was no way I was going in! I was glad we stayed in Patan as although most people urged 'Stay in Thamel!' when I went there it was extrememly touristy with everything under the sun you could buy there so thanks but no thanks. At the moment in Dhaka it’s about 25’C, perfect temperature, but in Nepal it was a wee bit chillier, 20’C in the sun perhaps but as soon as you walked into the shade it dipped considerably and at night it’s a few degrees above O’C. I have become a real wuss after living in warm climes for 18 months. I even wear a cardigan when it’s 25’C so I found Kathmandu pretty chilly...but it was a nice change.

The next day we got a taxi down to Patan and stumbled upon the backstreets walking tour, which is marked by small blue arrows painted on various walls saying ‘Patan Tour’, quite hard to see, but good if you’re not in a rush. We saw various stupas, small squares and courtyards, small temples and alleyways, very different to Dhaka, which has very few ‘old’ buildings or remnants as much was destroyed before and during the war. During this walk my mum spotted a dark wooden carving of Ganesh (the elephant god) that she fancied. Turns out the shop that displayed it was run by this Nepalese guy who spoke impressive English and insisted on demonstrating what I call the ‘singing bowl’(s) on my mum!

Each bowl is made of different material and of varying size. With it you get what looks like a paintbrush, and you pass this around the part below the bowl’s rim rapidly to produce a ‘hummmm’ sound (each bowl has a different sound) due to the bowl vibrating. Its vibrations are used traditionally to help with ailments, such as headaches, migraines, back pain etc. So, if you suffer from headaches, you should put the bowl on your head, someone else (or you, with difficulty) pass the ‘brush’ around and it will help. I tried not to laugh watching my mum sit down on a small stool, move her hands into the ‘om’ position as instructed by the guy (thumb and forefinger together), and feel the vibrations of the bowl on her head as the guy passed the ‘brush’ around it. My parents were arguing (sorry, discussing) about which bowl to get as they both liked different tones that different bowls gave. This guy said to my mum ‘You’re type O aren’t you? Blood type O always like these kind of sounds.’ My mum was astounded as he was correct, and my dad is type A, who apparently like a different tone. Anyway so that sold it, they bought a bowl, however I predict it will be either gathering dust in a corner somewhere or be a room for sweets or nuts before the New Year is out!

We reached Patan’s Durbar Square and immediately made a beeline for a rooftop cafe and enjoyed a pancake looking out onto the Square below. All around the edges are stalls and shops selling turquoise jewellery, Thanka-style paintings, pashminas, different kinds of tea, handmade paper and cards, knives almost as tall as me, ‘yak yak yak’ T-shirts, bags...the list goes on. The Kathmandu Valley also seems to be the valley of the dogs. There are dogs EVERYWHERE, in the countryside, along the roadside, in the city centre. I have never seen so many in one country in my life. They aren’t mangy as such, just dirty, and very tame so often come up to you sniffing for food. There are also lots of puppies and you get boys shouting ‘one dollar madam!’ for a puppy. On our first day in Patan we bought between ourselves some (real) turquoise jewellery, tea and a Nepal T-shirt (gotta have one!). Taxis are mostly everywhere so it’s pretty easy to get one wherever you are to wherever you’re going. They don’t use the meter though so you have to state a price before you get in, which you’ll be used to if you’ve been to/lived in Asia.

The next day we set off for the small town of Dhulikhel, which is about 40 minutes taxi ride from Patan. It said in the guide book that it was a good place to view the Himalayas, but even though we climbed the umpteen (I estimate more than 300!) steep steps up to the Kali Temple, the haze was such that we could barely see anything - however we had to content ourselves with seeing a few peaks through the fog plus a drink and a pancake (again) at the Duerali Restaurant that’s near the temple. It was very pretty though and good to get into the countryside and away from the pollution of the brick factories and traffic that you get back in Kathmandu (and Dhaka). On our way back we saw lots of graduated rice fields and mustard seed fields with little orange/brown bricked crumbling houses in between. The buildings of Kathmandu Valley are reminiscent of medieval structures and European buildings I thought, narrow alleyways, tiny windows with ornate decorations and all encroaching in on one another.

For the rest of the week we walked around Kathmandu, visited Swayambhunath, also called the Monkey Temple, which again practised my calf muscles; Bodhnath stupa (the largest stupa in Nepal and one of the largest in Nepal); Gorkhana and on our last day, Bhaktapur. A lot of these small towns have their own Durbar Squares that are pretty similar to each other but good to wander around just the same. You see lots of dogs (as ever), monkeys sitting on the walls, monks and pilgrims walking clockwise around the temples and stupas, lots of handicraft places as I mentioned, and oh, a few scattered laowai (I still this Chinese word for ‘foreigner’).

The pluses of visiting Kathmandu when we went is that it was low season, i.e. there were very few tourists so prices were lower and it was quieter than it would have been in the places we visited. It was cold at night and early morning compared to what I am used to but during the day the sun shone, it was dry, and so you could just walk around with a jumper and scarf at most. Also, every Nepalese person we met had great English especially compared to here, and therefore way ahead of the average Chinese person I met when I lived in Chengdu. English of course has no right to assert its dominance over modern society, however it is a fact that it is a bonus to speak English and in Nepal I was really impressed by how many people spoke English well, it made things a lot easier as some of you will appreciate if you have struggled with the language barrier at times in your travels!

However the minus was that it was extremely foggy. This seems to be the case at this time of year in many places in Asia - here in Dhaka at this time it’s quite usual to have foggy mornings and evenings that impact on visibility - but being normal doesn’t make it any less aggravating. No matter how high (or low) we were in Kathmandu and around, we could never see more than outline of the hills a few miles away, let alone the peaks of the Himalayas. Seeing all the postcards of Nepal and the sights we had seen with clear skies made me so frustrated...guess I will have to go back in another season! The fog was most irritating when we booked a flight to see Mount Everest and the surrounding mountains at 7am on Christmas Day. Visibility was so poor that we couldn’t get a flight until approximately 11am on 27 December after trying for three days, arriving at the airport at 6am only to wait until 10am (and believe me, it was cold and very boring!) before being told the flight was cancelled. Anyhow we eventually got onto a flight and it was of course a real bonus to the trip seeing Mount Everest and the rest (I can’t remember the name of every mountain!) and I took lots of blurry photos of it. However if you sit on the correct side of the plane on your way to Nepal (as I mentioned) the view is almost as good.

Despite the fogginess and constantly being pestered by sellers (they are worse than in Dhaka) - ‘pashmina madam?’ ‘very good price, I give you’, ‘taxi madam? Good price’, ‘come inside, have a look, no problem’ - I really enjoyed my trip and next time would love to go further afield into the mountains and maybe to Everest base camp...?!

As we humans love making lists (well, I find it clears my brain somewhat), here’s my Kathmandu list of things I saw/experienced:

-fog and lots of it
-dogs, dogs and more dogs
-monkeys and their babies jumping on power lines and sitting around temples
-monks and pilgrims walking at a surprisingly fast pace around stupas
-being offered a tour guide, pashminas, jewellery, taxis, rickshaws, puppies, food, general tourist tat
-being asked several times ‘where you from?’ and as usual not knowing how to answer
-freezing my butt off for several days running in various airports
-playing cards in aforementioned airports to pass the time
-being impressed by everyone’s English
-trying to take sneaky photos of people and failing
-having Nepalese food
-bumping along in a taxi every day
-being stared at by Nepalese young men (white = celebrity)
-learning how to tell fake pashminas from real ones
-climbing steps and slopes. V different from completely flat Dhaka
-experiencing freezing temperatures for the first time in a long while
-trying to figure out Nepalese currency
-choking back coughs as we breathed in the pollution of central Kathmandu roads
-no mosquitoes. They are the bane of my life in Dhaka
-the friendliness of Nepalese people
-clean air. Although Kathmandu was polluted, it was a hell of a lot cleaner (the air) than Dhaka
-traditional dancing at a restaurant
-trying to restrain buying all the turquoise jewellery Nepal had

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Photos

Durbar Square, Patan
view from one of the rooftop cafes

at the Duerali Restaurant, Dhulikhel
we reached this after climbing up endless steps up to the Kali Temple. The view would have been great had there been no mist! However we could still make out the peaks of the Himalayas.

kids at Bodhnath
they begged me to take their photo, just so they could see what they looked like on the digital camera screen!

Mount Everest!
the view of Everest from the little plane we took...you of course have to take pics from inside the aircraft so the blurry windows get in the way (nowt to do with my camera of course!)

Bodhnath
one of the largest stupas in the world

Comments

[Charlie in China]

Grand adventure
I agree that you don't have to live in a ditch to justify writing a blog. Most of your friends are probably still living where they were born...you're out and about and that is worthy of writing about. By the way, I saw your profile and can say with confidence that you're from Manchester. When people ask where you're from, they don't mean 'Where have you been/lived?' They mean, 'Where are you from?' I'm from New York, though I've lived there fewer years than most other places I've lived.