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Kathmandu, Nepal

Our blogs don’t need any more content. I was all ready to tell you about the first hour in Kathmandu, that cows sit peacefully in the middle of the road and how our plane was full of monks and about the Arrivals Form that states “you are only allowed to bring one bicycle and one tricycle into the country”. But that mustn’t have been exciting enough. We arrived at our hotel, sat down and realised Dave’s English passport was still on the plane. Talk about a stressful 30 minute trip back to the airport with the hotel manager. Thai Airways were ****** off and confused when we arrived at their office. They had spent hours looking for us in customs, which consists of a tiny room full of people. They took us into what felt like the principals office for a serious talking to – luckily Dave was experienced with this! They were dumbfounded as how we had left the airport without a passport or how Dave flew in on an English passport with not one stamp. We owed this lovely hotel man so much yet he felt the need to upgrade our room, give us faster Internet and a special flower…. Namaste Kathmandu… Looks as though this next venture isn’t going to have a dull moment!

Just arrived back from our meeting with the ‘new group’. It feels like forever ago we were meeting the last lot of people sitting around, making small talk yet 14 days later it feels like we’re leaving our best mates. As fast as they have come into our world, they’re gone. 12 like minded people put together, to share everything together. It’s impossible not to share an instant bond. This time our group of 12 consists of a Mexican family who own a private school, an Australian who worked in Gillard &amp; Rudd’s office, 2 Brazilians engineers, and 3 English people (social worker and pharmaceutical researchers) and us…. Unemployed Bums.

A side note for those who knew about our China debacle with the visas, the one where we had paid for a trip from Beijing to Tibet/Kathmandu to Delhi but due to the Chinese/Tibet visa issues and the requirement to have 5 people of the same passport type which required us to cancel our trip and do Vietnam and Cambodia instead. Weeeellll, two people from the Beijing to Tibet part of the trip, are in our group. Based on the awesome friends we met in Vietnam we knew we did the right thing doing what we did, but by the sound of it they had the WORST trip. I thought ‘we’ hated China, but after three weeks there, they despised the place. The way the officials treated the Tibetan guide and locals was horrendous. There were black boxes in their private buses and under cover people everywhere so free speech about anything wasn’t an option. Not to mention the 43 hours on a sleeper train, 6 to a room with a toilet ankle high in.. Then there was the severe altitude sickness at Everest at 5,000 ft. BUT the funniest part is there was no regulation for the ‘5 passport’s requirement’ So, we could have gone on our New Zealand passports and obtained a Chinese visa easily. There was a mixture of 10 people from many nationalities and no one was told about the 5 passport thing. Another example of how life leads you in ways you should have found on your own!

Everest before breakfast! We decided to take a tiny plane over Everest as our major ‘optional extra’ for Asia. We were fortunate to be able to go as it’s very weather dependant. From the cockpit and our window seat we saw Everest and the surrounding mountains for 15mins without cloud coverage. Quite apart from the height, 8,848 metres above sea level, you could spot Everest easily as it is very pointy and the tallest. I took a few pics of what I thought was snow covered mountains, before realising they were mountain shaped clouds! Although disappointed we didn’t go to base camp as planned on the Tibetan trip, this was a fantastic second best – and realistically much more ‘Julia style’. A real highlight of sights seen. What makes Nepal so different to much of South East Asia is the types of tourists, I’d say a small percentage of the limited foreigners we saw were tourists. Many are here for trekking, aid/volunteer work and pilgrimages, including a girl we had an hour long breakfast with. We didn’t know her name but she works for an NGO (non government organisation-aid work) doing disaster prevention and training in Thailand, Bhutan and Nepal. The random reason I mention this is, I learnt all about Bhutan. One of the poorest counties in the world but there are no beggars and the country refuses to measure their country by wealth but instead by happiness!!!!! She said although they are poor they are so happy, content and an all round amazing race.
What a fascinating first day. Kathmandu is really quite something. It’s so charming, quaint even. Narrow little streets, women in saris, monks and men dressed in Sikhism, sadhu (see the holy men in the pictures). The people of Nepal are something else. Such a pleasure being in their town of Kathmandu. It kinda feels a bit hippy, but it’s not. The continuous hum of Buddhist chants, coming from the shops and Stupas make for the perfect setting. We are really in our zen here. I’d say mountains surround Kathmandu valley but the locals call them hills. To them Everest and the other 10 sites we flew over are mountains – fair point really. It doesn’t even feel as if we are in Asia here, completely different look and feel to the southeast.

Nepalese are Buddhist and Hindu. Being that it’s the birthplace of Buddha, monks are everywhere. Everyone is calm and relaxed. If I was to convert to any religion, that’d be the one.
We visited two famous Stupas today (similar vein to temples) except you can’t go in them as they are solid stone. We saw the Swayambhunath Stupa (known to tourists as the Monkey Temple) – Kathmandu’s most important Buddhist shrine. The sleepy, all-seeing Buddha eyes that stare out from the top have become the symbol of Nepal. The other was Bodhnath Stupa – the largest stupa in Nepal and the holiest Tibetan Buddhist temple outside Tibet. It’s the centre of Tibetan culture in Kathmandu. Stupas express the nature of the human mind in a perfect way. It symbolises the enlightened state of the Buddha with body, speech and mind. Each is covered with thousands of Prayer Flags inscribed with symbols, invocations, prayers, and mantras. The 5 colours of prayer flags represent the 5 basic elements: yellow-earth, green–water, red-fire, white-air, blue-space. Balancing these elements externally brings harmony to the environment. Balancing the elements internally brings health to the body and the mind. A seriously amazing place to visit and absorb it all.

We celebrated Lauren’s birthday tonight at a local restaurant – the token Aussie in the group. Travelling on your birthday is awesome when ‘Happy Birthday’ is sung to you in Australian, Mexican and Brazilian. Our Indian guide who said they don’t sing happy birthday in their culture has his own culture of arranging birthday cakes for those celebrating. He said the **********e to achieve was on a sailing trip on the Ganges with a 7 hour bus ride prior or a desert safari – both of these required logistical planning to get a surprise cake there in 40 degree heat on public transport! The place we went for dinner last night was equally as awesome. When trekkers arrive back from Everest they can go to the restaurant/bar called Rum Doodle and write on a mammoth-like-footprint, which is hung from the ceiling. Pretty cool thing to witness.
Although we have only been here two nights, we know to take a headlight out to dinner or to bed. Candles are a regular part of a table setting. Power goes out so often. The infrastructure is limited and Internet over the next few days will be impossible.

Travelling is about experiences and being open minded…and that we were when we got out of our van, still in Kathmandu Valley, to have our noses filled with smoke. We were unsure what it was until we passed random cows, on a bridge where a river met the Ganges in India. On the side of the river were stone platforms, maybe 20 of them. Many had what looked like a bonfire on them. But
of course the only thing they were cooking were people. We were there about 30mins and saw it all – all the different stages of the 6 hour cremation process. We saw the start, with a body under a cloth with a little bag of precious things such as money on top. They move the body onto a bamboo platform before putting it onto the stone platform then covering it with straw before setting it alight. Then on to the middle stage, where its just the burning process. You can’t see anything it just looks like a bonfire. Then the last stage, the body is completely gone. What’s left is swept straight off the stone ledge and into the water. Literally seconds later kids are jumping into the water – starkers, while bits float by. Our new guide gave us good advice at our welcome dinner. You travel because you want to see new things, not so you can judge or try and change a place. True dat!

Kathmandu is the largest, and pretty much only, city in the country. In parts it feels like any other developing-world city, but walking in the back streets its completely different again. On day two, seeing a cow in the middle of the road doesn’t phase me!

Kathmandu is a city that fascinates us, It’s one of those places you’re thankful to be able to have visited. This is the point Mum and Dad started their Kathmandu to London trip on the back of a truck when they were younger than us. I can only imagine what a culture shock they would have got first time out of New Zealand. They said it was the people that they remember. I wholeheartedly agree. Based on the last few days, we look forward to the next week exploring mainland Nepal.

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