Nepal in Fall (a lame title)

There are multiple options for getting to Nepal from Varanasi. You can fly at a modest price, you can take a tourist bus to the capitol for about have the price of the flight or you can take the local bus nfor ten hours to the boarder, walk across and catch another local bus from there. We are intrepid travelers, makers of use of the local transportation, people of the people, travelers instead of tourists, so naturally we took the public bus. The guest house we were making use of recommended we take the tourist bus, as you might expect, and when that failed, they insisted that we use their taxi to get to the bus station at a cost nearly double that of the bus ticket its self. We passed on that too and had no problem what-so-ever finding a pair of rickshaws to chariot us to our departure point.

The bus ride to the boarder was less eventful. It was a long push in cramped space and we got into Sunauli as the sun set. The walk from the bus station to the boarder was brief and we crossed with a minimum of hassle. Negotiating the Nepali side was a little trickier, but not by much. We required passport photos, which we lacked. However, for an extremely modest price, we could photocopy our passports and use that instead.


The Nepali side of Sunauli is about as flea-bitten, depraved and dusty a town as I have ever seen and good only to pass through at as rapid a pace as possible. Feral dogs scrounged the streets for food, drug addled Nepalis and Indians worked various hustles and everyone attempted to separate you from you hard earned pocket money. We had to exchange our Indian rupees for Nepali rupees and were fleeced like golden sheep. I mean royally swindled on the rate. Then we purchased a bus ticket for Kathmandu at a slightly excessive price from an agent that seemed genuinely sorry to be doing it to us. Then we dealt with a drunken Nepali who admittedly hated Sunauli because he “drank and smoked too much.” We avoided him after that. We got to Kathmandu safely, though not one of us slept soundly for longer than maybe 30 minutes (it was a night bus). The road was sparsely paved and the seats were made for people who are six inches shorter than us on average.


We arrived in Kathmandu early in the morning and immediately headed for the Thamel part of town where all the other tourists stay, shop and arrange travel. We checked into the first hotel we could find that wasn’t too expensive, but still paid a lot more than we should’ve. We were promised hot water, but as it turned out, that hot water was only available when it was sunny because the entire town runs on solar power, which is great for the environment, and very respectable, but sucks when you are filthy from 20 hours of bus riding. We dealt with it and scouted out another, cheaper hotel. We spent the rest of the day getting ourselves together, gathering our wits and generally relaxing, resting and rehydrating. The next day we ventured out into the city to see what there is to see, which turned out to be much more difficult than we had expected due to the ineptitude of our map and the fact that every street in Kathmandu seems to bend slightly until you are going in quite the opposite direction of the one you intended. Also, there is a bare minimum of street signs. We first set out for Swayambhunath temple in the west of Kathmandu. The temple is affectionately called the monkey temple due to the number of monkeys that live on the hill that the temple is situated on. Somehow we ended up at Drubar Square where the city’s kings were once crowned and legitimized, and from where they ruled, or so our Lonely Planet tells me. If you enjoy being asked to take a tour repeatedly, this is the place for you. Don’t waste your time looking anywhere else. Durbar Square has more tour guides offering their services than tourists and travelers visiting. We passed. But we did pay to take a picture of a monk or Brahman or some such religious figure who had dreads he said he’d grown for 30 years. They were long. I also took a couple pictures of another similar man, but on the sly. The square its self was pretty exquisite, with extremely old pagodas and whatnot, all intricately engraved with images of various Hindu figures ranging from Shiva and Ganesh to Hanuman and Vishnu. The roofs all had dried grass growing out of them and the wood the structures were made of looked handsomely aged. It was nice.

From there, we headed to Swayambhunath and actually found our way there. The temple is atop a relatively steep hill and you climb a few hundred steps to get to it, but there are several benches along the way and monkeys to entertain you. The pictures we had seen of the stupa made it look stunning but they were not at all fair and could not capture the tranquil beauty of it. The white dome and golden spire are brilliant against the velvet blue of the empty sky. Even with monkeys screeching and taking food from tourists, people snapping photos and chattering on, the temple and stupa have an extremely peaceful feeling. The peace was only broken by a particularly large monkey that had staked his claim to an area and took offense when another monkey invaded it. There was a brief and terrifying moment when the monkeys, squabbling and shrieking, came tumbling toward where we sat. We narrowly averted being in the middle of it and were lucky to escape without rabies or any puncture wounds. It was
dangerous, I’m telling you. We walked around the base of the stupa clockwise, as you are supposed to, spun the prayer wheels and repeated om mani padme hum (hail to the jewel in the lotus – this is also what is inscribed on the prayer wheels). Atop the white dome are the watchful eyes of Buddha and the question mark-like “nose”, which is actually the Nepali number ek or one, and the symbol of unity of all life. It was quite a day.

The next day, we headed out to Bhaktapur, about 30kms outside of Kathmandu. We spent two days in this small town roaming the cobblestone streets and checking out the numerous pagodas which strongly resembled those in Kathmandu’s Durbar Square. In fact, the central area was also called Durbar Square. It turns out that there are Durbar Squares in most of the main cities of Nepal. I guess that’d be due to each city having its own ruler and each ruler living in a Durbar Square.

From Kathmandu, you can hardly make out the luminous mountains that are just beyond the valley, partly due to hills that obscure them but more so because of the thick smog that clouds the horizon. It was very disappointing. We had hoped that it would be different in Bhaktapur, but it wasn’t much. The only things that the city had over Kathmandu in this regard was a higher altitude and a different position in the valley. We could make out more of the awesome and jagged mountains but they were
still shrouded in dust and smoke particles. Also disappointing is the fact that I will not be able to stare in awe at the glory that is Mount Everest. It is impossible to reach a viewing point any other way than flight or trek, which is great because it protects the mountain, keeps it unspoiled and pristine, saves it from the hordes that would surely clutter it, me included, were there to be buses that would take you there. Once again, sucks for me but is good.

We are briefly in Kathmandu right now and head for Pokhara tomorrow. We will be staying at a yoga center for at least a few days and perhaps longer. The town its self looks spectacular, with a large lake and an excellent view of the Annapurnas. We have heard several excellent things about it and are really jazzed to spend some time there.

And now a side note about food. I have been eating Indian food and Nepali styled Indian food steadily from the moment we got into India and have been loving it. I’ve eaten paneers and dhals, rotis and naans, curries and chutneys, rice and raita, and loved them all, however, too much dhal gives you gas that is extremely foul and singes the nostrils. It smells like you hatched a rotten egg into a pan of burned butter and rotten garlic. I mean, it is awful, vile and despicable. Somehow, I keep ordering the dhal, despite this. It tastes too good and is easy on the stomach, no matter how violently it assaults the nose. Anyone who has been here can understand.


(For those wondering what the kids are saying in the video, they are say "Hilary Teacher is beautiful.")