Goodnight, Goodbye, Namaste Nepal

On my last evening in Nepal, I hiked up to the roof of my guest house to catch the sunset and catch up on my travel journal. As the sun sank behind the hills surrounding Kathmandu, it happened to silhouette a Buddhist monastery perfectly. Om mani padme hum.

“Not possible!” … Bhaktapur to Bodhnath and Back Again

Exhaust choked the road and burned in my throat. Long-idling cars turned off their engines. My taxi driver got out of the 3-cylinder Suzuki Maruti for the third time, scanned the road ahead, and got back in, shaking his head and muttering in Nepali. I looked at my watch. It had been 35 minutes since I got in the cab about 4 blocks back.

About 50 minutes into the journey, we’d moved about a mile from where I’d gotten in. A traffic police officer waved my taxi over. After some back-and-forth in Nepali, the cab driver heaved a heavy sigh and told me, “Not possible. Bhaktapur, not possible.”

It seems that the one English phrase that every Nepali involved in transportation knows is “Not possible.

Apparently some strike or accident had jammed the main road out of Kathmandu and thus to Bhaktapur, my destination, a medieval city about 13km from Kathmandu. I thought quickly, thumbed through my guidebook, and asked if he could take me to Bodhnath, a neighborhood in Kathmandu, instead. “Bodhnath possible,” he said.

Though Bodhnath hadn’t made it onto my must-see list, it turned out to be one of my favorite places in Nepal. I was skeptical at first when my driver let me out. The dirt road was full of potholes and the entire neighborhood seemed coated with dust. But then the driver pointed me down an alley and said, “Stupa there. Bodhnath.”

Wow. I walked down a narrow alley, making sure not to hit the yak butter and prayer flag salesmen with my bags. The alley opened onto a large square surrounding the Bodhnath Stupa, the most holy place in Nepal for Tibetan Buddhists. It’s a beautiful and inspiring place, with thousands of prayer flags catching the breeze and dozens of monks walking clockwise around the stupa spinning the prayer wheels, all under the watchful eyes of Buddha. The neighborhood around it, Boudha, is Nepal's “Little Tibet”. It’s the center of activity for Tibetans in Nepal, and many of Nepal’s 50,000 Tibetan refugees live here.

I wandered off the square, looking for a guest house, and smiled to myself as I passed several maroon-robed Tibetan monks who were sitting around enjoying Cokes and chatting at the neighborhood cold drink stand just outside the gates of the monastery. I quickly dropped off my bags, and then spent the rest of the afternoon taking pictures of the stupa and prayer flags from every angle, visiting a couple of Tibetan monasteries, and browsing in the cute shops that surround the square.

Young Tibetan monks

As afternoon turned into evening, I climbed up to the terrace of one of the multitude of rooftop restaurants on the square for some tasty fried rice and twilight pictures of the stupa.

After dinner, I walked around the stupa one last time before bed. The crowds had thinned, but a few monks were still making their quiet rounds, and several women were selling butter candles to be lit as offerings.

The next morning I was awoken early by crashing cymbals, thumping drums, and the chant of “om mani padme hum” – first prayers at the monastery next door. Sleeping in was impossible, so I got up and walked around the stupa one more time and had breakfast on the roof terrace of the appropriately named “Beautiful View Restaurant.” My fried eggs and toast definitely tasted better with a view of the stupa.

I headed back to the road and asked a taxi driver if he could take me to Bhaktapur today. “Bhaktapur yes!” he said, so we set off. I became a little nervous as we headed away from the city on a rutted dirt road that got worse and worse. He must have sensed my confusion because he said something like “Road bad, yes, but no traffic jam!” I suppose it was the back way. I thought it a miracle that the tiny tires of the Maruti navigated the giant potholes and wash-outs.

About 30 minutes later we arrived in Bhaktapur, a timeless medieval city that dates from the 12th century. The old city is closed to most vehicle traffic, so aside from the odd motorbike, there’s not much to remind you that you haven’t really time-traveled to 15th century Nepal.

I was in Bhaktapur no more than an hour when I ran into some of the girls that had been on my group trip, so we agreed to meet for dinner. I spent the rest of the day wandering the cobblestone streets and making friends with the local puppies and baby goats. (I’ve learned on this trip that goats are really misunderstood. They’re so sweet, and will be your best friend if you give them a little scratch under the chin!)

Milk pails for sale in Bhaktapur

Bhaktapur is known for its hand-thrown pottery

A fruit seller with his vegetable cart/bicycle

In the late afternoon I found a roofdeck cafe for a cold drink and some photos (yes, it became kind of a tradition in Nepal!)

Tachupal Tole (Square) in Bhaktapur. Check out the huge chariot used for festivals!

The next morning, I caught up on e-mail in a hobbity 15th century building whose ceilings were barely higher than my head. Can you believe this place has broadband?

After breakfast, I met up with the girls again to head to Dhulikel, a town out on the edge of the Kathmandu Valley. It’s popular for its views of the Himalaya, but unfortunately the smog still hadn’t cleared and the mountain views were nil. It was fun to take the local buses out there and back, though, and I managed to snap this photo of a passing bus:

See, I told you you don’t want to ride the bus in Nepal. Especially on top. With the goats.

This is what you get for $4.50 a night in Dhulikel:



Finally, here are a few random shots from Nepal that I wanted to share but didn't really warrant their own blog post.

A sadhu (Hindu holy man) dressed as Lord Hanuman at Pashupatinath Temple in Kathmandu

A man tending his rice fields at sunrise in Chitwan, Nepal

Women crossing a small river with their water buffalo at sunset in Chitwan, Nepal

How to board an elephant: Chitwan, Nepal

Finally, a common sight on Nepal's roadways: an overturned truck. I'm so glad I didn't experience this firsthand!

Coming Together in Kathmandu

Timbuktu. Zanzibar. Marrakech. Kathmandu.

To me, Kathmandu has always been one of those mystical ends-of-the-earth places, so impossibly exotic that it can’t possibly exist in reality. So of course it was one of the cities I was most excited to visit on this trip, and the more I learned about it, the more excited I became. Like my own San Francisco, it’s also one of the greatest melting-pot cities in the world, its history, culture, and people a blend of Central Asian ethnic groups, Tibetan Buddhism, and Indian Hinduism. It has also influenced other cultures more than I previously realized. For example, the pagoda, seen throughout Asian architecture, originated in Nepal.

Getting to Kathmandu involved a 6-hour bus ride which wound through misty Himalayan foothills carved into rice terraces and dotted with traditional Nepali villages. The scenery was serene and beautiful; the ride anything but. In a previous post I described the horror of Nepal’s roads and driving conditions. I’m just glad that I didn’t know then what I happened to read in my Lonely Planet guidebook today during a leisurely lunch: you are more than 30 times more likely to die in a bus accident in Nepal than you are in a western country. I absolutely believe it, but I’m happy for the false sense of security (ignorance) I had during those bus rides. I’m equally happy that my bus riding in Nepal is now over for this trip.

Once safely in Kathmandu, our guide led the group on a walking tour of the old city of Kathmandu, a medieval warren of hobbit-sized buildings on narrow winding lanes which open onto neighborhood squares with open air spice, tea, and vegetable markets and Buddhist and Hindu temples. The buildings look ancient, and many of them are more than 500 years old, with some of them up to 800 years old. Most are built in the traditional style, with a small shop on the first floor, several floors of living space above, and a terraced roof which occasionally has a pagoda-style small temple on the top. Distinctive, intricately carved wooden screens cover the windows. Each building nearly stops me in my tracks. In any other country I’ve visited, any of these buildings would be moved into a museum or at least cordoned off and visitors would be charged admission. In Nepal, it’s just another home and sari shop.

Vegetable market & fruit stall in Old Kathmandu

After our quick visit to Old Kathmandu, we piled into the ubiquitous white 3 cylinder Suzuki Maruki taxis for a ride up the hill to Swayambunath Temple. (Yes, I said 3 cylinder, and yes, I said uphill. The taxi I rode in stalled out on the hill no less than 10 times in about half a kilometer. Did I mention that just getting around in Nepal is adventure in itself?)

Swayambunath (pronounced swa-YAHM-boo-NAHT), one of the most important Buddhist temples in Nepal, is also known as the Monkey Temple because a troop of mischievous monkeys inhabits the hill on which the temple stands. The site dates from at least A.D. 460, though it has evolved over time under the various Nepali empires. It’s a beautiful place, set on the hill overlooking Kathmandu. We were there just before sunset, and a beautiful light spread over the city below us.

The eyes of Buddha on the Swayambunath stupa and the view over Kathmandu

Spinning prayer wheels and prayer flags for sale at Swayambunath

Tibetan Buddhist monks and a monastery at Swayambunath

Swayambunath Temple, seen from Durbar Square, Kathmandu at dusk

The next morning was the official end to my first group tour, and also was the morning of my mountain flight around the Himalaya. I was incredibly excited about the flight, especially because it’s been very hazy in Nepal since I arrived and I had only caught the barest glimpse of the Himalaya in Pokhara, Nepal’s resort town, which is set on a beautiful lake that usually reflects incredible views of the Annapurna range. Apparently this is the second-best time of year to see the Himalaya, before the monsoon starts, but the drought this year has depressingly reduced visibility. I described the flight in a previous post, but as promised, here are a few more pictures of the mountains:

Makalu, the 5th tallest mountain in the world and my personal favorite of the Himalayan peaks

In the afternoon, I checked out the other main attraction in Kathmandu: Durbar Square. Durbar means ‘palace’, and every major city or town in the Kathmandu Valley has a Durbar Square, where the local royalty lived. The square generally consists of a palace and dozens of temples, usually including some lotus bud-shaped Hindu temples, pagoda-style temples, and small shrines dedicated to the Hindu deities Shiva, Vishnu, and Ganesh. Durbar Square in Kathmandu has literally dozens of these, so there’s lots to see. It’s also the popular hang out for young, cool Kathmanduites, who sit and chat in groups on the temples’ steps.

Pagodas in Durbar Square, Kathmandu

Rickshaw drivers gossiping in Durbar Square

The temple I was most interested to visit was Kumari Chowk, the home of Kumari, a young Newari girl who is considered a living goddess. She lives in relative seclusion (but with her family), appearing at certain times in her screened window and at annual festivals. She becomes mortal again when she bleeds for the first time, whether at puberty or by skinning a knee, and a new Kumari is chosen. The current Kumari, recently chosen, is just three years old. I didn’t see her during my brief visit to her courtyard, but I did see two young girls who ran down the steps that led up to Kumari’s apartment to play badminton under Kumari’s window. I was really curious about who these two girls were: her sisters? I wondered what it must be like to be the sister of a living goddess. It’s probably better than being the goddess herself, who I’m sure isn’t allowed to play badminton.

After my brief but exciting visit to the city, I was excited to head out to the countryside in the Kathmandu Valley to see the even older medieval city of Bhaktapur and hopefully catch a glimpse of the Himalayas from the ground out in the Newari town of Dhulikel.

Mt. Everest!

I'm going to get a little out of chronological order here because I just have to share a photo from yesterday.

It was a good reason for an early-morning wake-up call: I got up before sunrise and headed to the Kathmandu airport to board a little Buddha Air plane to fly around the Himalayas.

The plane cleared the thick haze of pollution over the Kathmandu Valley at around 9,000 feet, and the stunning mountains came into view, looming high above us. We flew eastward, parallel to the range. Peak after peak after peak appeared in the crystal-clear sky. Each was absolutely breathtaking. It was awesome, in every sense of the word. Soon we reached our cruising altitude of 30,000 feet, about the typical altitude of a cross-country flight. The crazy thing was, we were still at eye level with the tallest peaks!

Mt. Everest, or Sagarmatha in Nepali, was the second-to-last large peak. It was a distinctive peak because it forms an "M" shape with its sister mountain, Lhotse. As we flew by, I wondered if anyone was attempting the summit at that moment. It's the most-climbed mountain in the Himalaya, and according to Wikipedia, by the end of the 2008 climbing season, there had been 4,102 ascents to the summit by about 2,700 individuals. 210 people have died on the mountain. That makes it one of the less deadly Himalayan peaks, however; K2 claims 27% of those who try to climb it.

There really aren't words to describe the majesty of the Himalayas, so instead I'll share a photo (and there are more to come, I promise!)

Mt. Everest (left) and Lhotse (right). Click on the picture to view it larger.

Pictures of... me

I've had a couple of requests for some pictures of me, so please forgive me this vain post dedicated to pictures of... me :)

One thing that has really surprised me is that frequently, we tourists become the tourist attraction. On several occasions, a friendly Indian or Nepali has motioned to their camera and then to me and said, "Photo?" I usually reach for their camera expecting that they want me to take a picture of them in front of whatever monument we happen to be visiting, but almost always what they mean is that they want a photo of me, usually with their family. It's very touching, but a bit odd to think that there will be photos of me in half a dozen Indian and Nepali family photo albums!

Taking pictures at the Taj Mahal at sunrise

With a local photographer's son at the Taj Mahal

With a baby elephant at the Elephant Breeding Center in Chitwan, Nepal

With an official mailbox outside the Pokhara, Nepal post office

Snuggling with a Nepali woman's baby goat (the owner is the woman in the orange sari)

I named him "Tenzing"

Drinking Diet Coke (I think that's what it says, anyway!)

It's all about the Gandhis

Showing off my fake henna (an ink seller on the street in Orchha, India grabbed me by the arm and painted me up before I could really protest)