There was a famous Tibetan festival going at the time we were in Lhasa, and we of course could not miss this opportunity. Since it was called Tashilunpo Thangka Festival and Zhigatse, the town where the Tashilunpo Monastery is situated, is not extremely far from Lhasa, we decided to check out of our hotel and spend some time there. This festival is explained as follows: the huge appliqué thangkas of the Buddhas of the Three Eras are displayed on two consecutive days. Already when we passed through Zhigatse on our way from Kathmandu to Lhasa, we had sworn to come back, and the festival formed a perfect incentive. So we took a public bus, which left even earlier than scheduled, maybe because all the tickets had been sold (no question here of allowing people to stand ... read more

Lhasa is the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region and has been the centre of politics, economy, culture and religion since ancient times in its history of more than 1,300 years. The city has mainly developed in three distinct phases, the first one in the sixth and seventh centuries, in which the Jokhang and some other temples like e.g. the Ramoche Temple were constructed. The next major period of development stretched from the 15th century, three major monasteries were founded then, to the 17th century when the Potala Palace was built and the 18th century shaped by the construction of the Dalai Lama summer palace Norbulingka. The most recent phase of construction in Lhasa has been carried out under the Chinese occupation (from 1951 onwards), subjecting the city to unrelenting expansion and transformation, its polder buildings ... read more

The second day trip which we undertook from Kathmandu brought us to Bhaktapur, the smallest of Kathmandu Valley's three cities, lying some 10km east of Nepal's capital. The city retains a simplicity far removed from the trappings of 21st century life and gives the impression that little has changed there for centuries, that little is set to change and, happily, that it is a city at ease with itself. With its three main squares, Bhaktapur has arguably the Kathmandu Valley's finest panoply of the regional temple architecture. Either side of the squares is a network of narrow lanes, earthy red colours dominate the cityscape and the architecture is still very traditional: typically, two or three storey wooden or brick houses with protruding upper floors or roofs, decorative window frames and a low entrance. Although Bhaktapur has ... read more

We left Pokhara in the morning, all buses to Kathmandu leave from the same place at 7:30 a.m., very practical. We had the choice of different companies and chose any bus, rather convinced that they were all the same. The bus was better than most we had experienced in India, but this time we had opted for a so-called 2x2 (only two seats per row on each side of the aisle) tourist bus. The drive from Pokhara to Kathmandu took only five hours, but it was the most scenic we have had in almost four months! First of all, Nepal is a very green country, soothing to your eyes, then we followed the course of a river all the way to Kathmandu. Actually, we were on one of Nepal's highways, the road was either in excellent ... read more

It was not easy to leave India, not because we did not want to but because several obstacles were put in our way. Our plan was to reach the Chitwan National Park (Nepal) in one day, but as you can imagine it did not work out. Somehow we got the impression that national parks - be it in India or Nepal - must be hard to reach to give them an air of exclusivity. Theoretically Varanasi is a perfect starting point for Nepal, but due to the political problems tourist numbers are dwindling and it was difficult to find transport other than local. Our train to Gorakhpur was due to leave shortly before midnight, we would arrive around 8 a.m., then take a bus to the Nepalese border and from the Nepalese town of Sunauli somehow ... read more