We begin the next day with a short drive to Gyantse, a smaller Tibetan town with another important monastery, Palcho. The monastery was founded in 1418, and is perhaps best known for the Kumbum Chorten, the largest chorten in Tibet which was built in 1477. Kumbum means '100,000 images', and in its 6 or so levels are chapels and alcoves containing the numerous icons. Gyantse is dominated by a fort perched impressively on top of a rocky pinnacle with the monastery tucked inside a fairly forbidding wall near the base. After grabbing some lunch in town, and admiring the solar water heaters (reflective dishes with a kettle in the middle... which I thought were satellite dishes when I first saw them! doh), we walked over to the monastery through an old part of town... past a ... read more

Apologies now for the Abba-esque title, but I couldn't resist! On either side of Kathmandu, up in the hills, are pretty big stupas - Swayambhunath to the west and Bodnath (also known as Boudha) to the east. I decided to have a bit of a stupa-thon and do both in one day, so I set of from Thamel in the early morning cool to walk the few kilometres to Swayambhunath. As with quite a lot of temples in this part of the world, Swayambhunath is also known as the monkey temple... an unimagniative moniker applied to any temple where monkeys hang out, and this temple does indeed have monkeys. They're a big scraggly and unkempt, but pleasant enough and they seemed to delight in climbing on religious icons and eating any devotional food left unattended. The ... read more

After the brief stop back in Pokhara, I board a tourist bus for Chitwan National Park. Ever since seeing a wild tiger at Ranthambhore in India, I'd wanted a chance to experience the same thing again, so deciding to skip the Jim Corbett Reserve in Uttaranchal for the sake of a swift exit to Nepal, I booked myself in for a few safaris at Royal Chitwan, another bastion of the Royal Bengal Tiger despite recent poaching for Chinese medicine. However, knowing how difficult these animals are to spot, I didn't really hold out much hope of seeing one, so for me Chitwan was more about seeing the rare one-horned rhino, as well as getting up close and personal with the park's population of elephants. We arrived at Sauraha, the nearest town to the park, early afternoon, ... read more

Having seen the mountains from afar in both Shimla and Pokhara, it was now time to get into the heart of the Himalayas. I'd decided to do the Annapurna Sanctuary trek, which would take 12 days to go from Nayapul, via Poon Hill and Machhupuchhre Base Camp to Annapurna Base Camp, the destination of the trek at 4,130m above sea level. Day 1 - Nayapul to Tikedungha The day started in Pokhara, where my small trekking group assembled for a taxi ride to the starting point of the trek. There would be me and 3 other trekkers - Kirsten from NZ and Lisa and Nina from Sweden. Our guide was Ratna, and our porters were Ratna (#2 - later to become the 'yoga porter') and Gopal (aka 'the laughing porter'), all Nepalese. We drove to the ... read more

Varanasi - once Kashi and Benares. An ancient city, known as the City of God and the City of Life... a thriving mass of humanity on the holy Ganga at the confluence of the Varuna and Assi rivers. Unfortunately, as the last stop on my trip through India (until re-entering in December to fly out of Kolkata), all I could think about was getting out of the place and onwards to Nepal! I chose a hotel in the old town, down near the ghats, which is Varanasi's main draw. Now, every place I've been in India has been dirty. Plastic bags, food waste, excrement and all manner of other undesirable things can be found pretty much anywhere, but for some reason, the overriding thing that struck me when walking through the old town was the constant ... read more