Kathmandu, Nepal (Part 1 of 3)
A crowded valley, bikes on a wire and white stupas
When N. was first purchasing flight tickets for our trip to Nepal, he found direct flights to Kathmandu from Incheon. I remember wondering, “why in heavens name would there be direct flights to Nepal from Korea? Where is the demand?”
At the airport in Incheon, while waiting to get on the plane, I looked around the gate and saw what was obviously a sea of Nepalese waiting to get on the same plane as we. As we passed the gate, I even heard one Nepali man speaking with the Korean gate agent — in Korean that sounded like better than my own.
Our flight was not completely full, and one of the flight attendants had enough time to chat with us. When we told him our plans, he sighed and rhapsodized about how he loved Nepal; how he always requested this specific route; how he skipped the flight back to Korea, in order to use the few days to trek around the mountains. By the end of this trip, we’ll see if we share his enthusiasm.
How are flight passengers not supposed to freak out when flying into Katmandu? The mountains are so big and the plane so small in comparison that it seems a wonder of navigation that we didn’t just smash into one of them hills.
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After breakfast, we saw the Nepalese national cricket team in the lobby, getting ready to leave for a match in Sri Lanka.
As for us, despite the rain, we navigated our way to the National Museum of Nepal. Perhaps because of the rain, the place was empty — not even schoolchildren on field trips.
Within its walls, the museum comprised of several smaller buildings which held mostly different types of Buddhist art in various media — stone, brass, wood — most of which, unfortunately, we did not comprehend. (Reminder to self: do some reading on Buddhism.) The grounds included a little building with a numismatic museum (at least we understood that) and another with life-sized dioramas of the different ethnic groups that comprised Nepal.
Instead of in the museum, the schoolchildren were found on our way back to the hotel, walking home in the rain.
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After breakfast, our trekking company sent a car and driver exactly on time, probably because B. (with whom I’ve been communicating for months) felt a bit bad about picking us up late from the airport when we first arrived. We went to the trekking office in Thamel to finalize plans for our hike. We also discussed details for a shorter (4 nights/5 days) trek sometime next week. In the office, listening to the conversation was a quiet man who looked like a potential guide who answered in the affirmative when we asked whether we needed microspikes.
So on we went to hunt for them. At a trekking supply store, on the 3rd floor, the place was a zoo of people crowded in a small area looking at all kinds of trekking clothes: pants, jackets, raincoats. When I asked one of the workers whether they had microspikes, the young Nepalese did not understand my question, but another young man helpfully translated. No, no microspikes.
As we walked down to the 2nd floor, something made me stop and poke curiously into the room. Another worker followed us in, asked what we wanted and, when told, simply reached into a shelf and pulled out — you guessed it — microspikes. Now we had microspikes. I will not type “microspikes” again.
Upon B.’s recommendation, we had lunch at a local restaurant and had a fish curry thali and momos. They were OK, but since they were a fraction of the cost of what we would have paid in the hotel, they seemed tastier. N. really liked the curry sauce.
We explored the neighborhood and made our way to an ice cream shop where we got a couple of unusually flavored popsicles: spicy mango and peppered pineapple. Even better was the fact that the little shop was in a clean quiet back alley that gave us the illusion that we were in a quaint little neighborhood instead of being in the insane chaos that was Thamel.
Another nice surprise was the Museum of Nepali Art (entrance fee NPR 500) — basically a neat little modern basement with work from modern Nepali artists. This museum was also on the periphery of several hotels, restaurants and art house galleries, all of which created a green oasis of a courtyard garden, with plenty of seating and even loungers, in which N. took one of his cat naps.
We didn’t want to eat at the hotel, so the plan was to buy a tandori chicken and eat in our room. On the way to the restaurant, we stumbled into a barber shop, so N. got himself a good haircut (NPR 500).
Taxi ride back to hotel was NPR 500 (everything in Kathmandu seems to cost NR 500), but it was past 5 pm by now, and the traffic was so horrendous that it took us more than 30 minutes to cross the 4.3 km distance.
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I didn’t make any plans for today because the weather app had indicated it would be raining all day. So I was infinitely annoyed when we were at breakfast and I spied blue skies.
We had planned to spend the rainy day at the gym, but we improvised: N. downloaded the local taxi app, and soon enough we were riding the streets of Kathmandu — scary and dirty and busy as always — towards the Chandragiri Cable Car. (Considering the state of the roads here, I’m surprised that thoughts of cable cars dangling in the air did not cause us mild panic.)
Our daily dose of surprising facts about Nepal came as we were buying tickets for the cable car: N. is considered a senior citizen here — and we had his passport to prove it — so he got the senior citizen 25% discount (life expectancy in Nepal is 68). Funny this should come up — at breakfast, N. happened to mention to one of the servers his age, and the young man had asked him what his secret was to looking so young. The discount brought things down to earth.
Elevation at the bottom of the cable car ride was 1,500 meters; we would reach 2,550 meters. Each car was packed with no fewer than eight people. It was actually surprising to see many Nepalese, instead of more foreign tourists: couples, families with the grandparents and grandchildren, large groups of friends, some of whom had dressed up for the occasion, we learned, because they were visiting the Bhaleshwar Mahadev Temple at the top.
Once there, visitors got a nice panoramic view of the city below, which, I must admit, looked much better than it did from inside a taxi. One got a great sense of how large Kathmandu valley really was, how much sense it makes that from ancient times people decided to settle in this flat pocket between mountains.
Speaking of mountains, signs around the top of the Chandragiri hills directed visitors’ attention to the mountain ranges that were — supposedly! — visible from specific directions. One identified the Annapurna Himal Range (8,091 m) and the Manaslu Himal Range (8,156 m), but we had to take their word for it, since all N. and I could see were thick gray clouds.
The young people who came to have fun were undeterred by the lack of views. Some geared up to get their turn on the zip line. Others wore harnesses, got on bikes, and pedaled across a high wire. We were mesmerized for quite a while and so were others milling about.
The temple itself sat prettily on top of the hill. A priest inside the small structure was offering bindis to the faithful who gathered in line and offered prayers and supplications.
After the cable car staff lunch hour (12 pm to 1 pm) ended, everyone on top of the mountain was ready to go down, so we all rushed to get in line — narrow snaking corral — and go on our ways. We took a taxi back to the hotel, but sick of hotel food, we asked one of the workers for a suggestion and so found ourselves down the street at a local spot that had cold beer, good chow mein and curries and veggies.
After a nap in the room, we actually made our way to the gym for a solid workout. Gotta train for those hikes.
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The weather got us again!
Despite the forecast (“90% chance of rain”), the skies were blue, sprinkled here and there with cottonball white clouds. Every morning for the past few days, we’ve been making up the day’s itinerary during breakfast while looking at the skies from the square that shows up through the windows.
We took a deep breath and got into a taxi. Mercifully, the ride to the Skywalk Tower Kathmandu was not too long — although it was stressful. How can we possibly count the different ways? The bustling people, the fumes, the combination of cars, trucks, buses, bikes, and stray dogs on the roads, pedestrians who depend on nothing but their upturned hands to cross the streets, the mad bundles of internet cables along the street poles…
I asked the ticket counter at the Skywalk whether there was a senior citizen discount, but alas there was not. We paid our NRP 1,600/pax and took a quick elevator ride — the insides were golden and clean and mirrowy — to an open area where we were handed cloth booties to put over our shoes. We climbed one floor to the open skywalk platform.
The inner circle was covered in tile, but the outer circle comprised of thin metal bars covered by thick plexiglass, although the plexiglass did not seem thick enough for N. Looking through the transparent plastic into the ground below, it was hard not to feel a bit dizzy.
Kathmandu did look much better from on high: the colorful buildings topped by water tanks; the odd temple or stupa; the much taller hotel buildings; the invisibility of the traffic details — all of them circumscribed by the mountains that enclosed the city. The staff photographer approached us to chit chat, and we gave her reason to perhaps regret her friendliness since we peppered her with questions:
what was the meaning of the shape of the Nepalese flag? Answer: the Nepalese flag is the only one in the world that is not a rectangle; the shape is meant to symbolize mountain peaks, of which Nepal has plenty
where was she from? from another area in Nepal? Answer: alas she was from Kathmandu
would she be taking part in the Teej ceremonies? Answer: no, she was scheduled to work on that holiday
where would be the best place to see Teej? And when? Answer: the best place would be Pashupatinah Temple, which this coming Friday would be very crowded with women wearing traditional red saris. And to N.’s question, yes, men were allowed to participate
She also asked us a few questions: where were we from? how long would we be in Nepal? where were we staying?
she also volunteered quite a bit of information: the airport was in that direction; the monsoon season seemed a bit more erratic lately because of changes in the climate; that structure on top of the hill was the Monkey Temple; there were the Marriott and Hilton hotels.
Soon enough, it was time to get down to earth. And I would like to mention, again, that despite the rain that my weather app forecasted, it was bright and sunny still.
The plan had been to walk to and explore Asan Bazaar, but it was getting closer to lunch time and, at street level, it was dusty and hot and chaotic, so we made our way to a coffee shop in Tridevi Sadak. Up on the 2nd floor, the space was large and open and mercifully cool. A young man got to the table next to ours and summarily turned off the fan. I got busy fanning myself dramatically with the menu, and he went to stand under one of the AC unit, fiddled with his phone, and then showed me his app in which he had set the temp to 16 degrees centigrade — he turned out to be one of the owners and so set about making his customer happy.
Having fortified ourselves with food and cold drinks, we braved the streets of Thamel again and headed to Shree Gha, a largish stupa in a city full of stupas big and small. (I wonder what those eyes mean…) The best thing about this particular one was the schoolchildren running around the stupa, seemingly during recess from their classes in the school that faced the temple. The worst thing were the hundreds of pigeons flying around. In the middle was a Nepali just chilling who invited us to take his photo. And it was only afterwards that he put out his hand and asked for his modeling fee.
I also navigated to a snack shop, which sold not only samosas (which on second thought we should have sampled) but also Indian sweets, each bite-sized bar — made of I have no freaking idea — covered in silver-leaf. I don’t have a sweet tooth, but these brought fond memories of eating Bengali sweets in Kolkata long ago.
From there, we took another taxi, which in all fairness seemed just days away from its rightful place in a junkyard, and survived another harrowing ride back to our hotel.
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