Kathmandu in the Daylight

As we entered Kathmandu we hit the rush hour wall of traffic and it took a very long time for us to get to a point where we could be dropped off. When we finally did get off there was a swarm of taxi drivers waiting. We quickly got our bags and started walking south with no real idea of where we were, just that Thamel was south of where we were and that it must be somewhat close. Needless to say we had to ask about 5 different people to get where we were going, but we finally arrived at the Kathmandu Guest House. Ariel and Johnny had recommended the place so we thought we could give it a try. When we arrived we were quite impressed with the outside and lobby of the building. The front gate was large and guarded (though we walked right in) and outside the front door was a very nice café and bar. Inside there was marble and dark wood. It seemed promising. I asked about a room and was shown a list of options and prices, about 10 in all. I chose the cheapest room with a television and made sure that the room did indeed have a television as it had been a week or so since I watched and in China the TV shows are terrible so I like watching TV when I am abroad. Content with the knowledge that I would have a TV, and heater, we proceeded to our room. This was around 6pm. The room was nice enough; a bit disappointing for what we paid, but not so much that we were mad about it. I turned on the TV to make sure it worked and then we headed out for dinner.
About an hour later we returned, me with beer in hand, for a quiet evening watching news shows and movies on the television. Some of you may empathize with my disappointment when I realized that the power in Kathmandu had gone out, as it does every 6 hours or so, and neither the TV nor the heater was able to be turned on. I went to the front desk to inquire as to when the power would be back on. After consulting a schedule the desk man, the same who checked me in, told me 1am. Crestfallen I asked when I might expect it to go off again and he informed me sometime around 7am. I was upset that basically the only time the power would be on, and hence I could watch TV, would be when I and any normal person would be sleeping. When I explained that to him he was unmoved. I asked to then change rooms, since I had no use for a room with a TV and heater that would not function. He was unmoved. In fact he said, “You asked for a room with a television, it has a television.” Which didn’t work! He could have easily told me that when I checked in, but failed to do so. I felt cheated.

The next day we got up late, enjoyed a very warm shower and headed back to our original hotel, the Shangri-La, where we had stayed earlier. After staying at the Guest House we figure Shangri-La was reasonably priced for what we got. We checked in and then headed over to Pilgrims Bookstore/café for breakfast. While there I noticed that the bar had a locally brewed traditional beer. I was looking forward to coming back that night to try it, but unfortunately it was out of stock. Afterwards we moved around to a few bookstores, lazed around at the hotel and then went to the Swayambhunath Temple (monkey temple). It has a magnificent stupa crowning the hill. There were quite a few monkeys and I must admit that the temples were beautiful. It was a very unique place despite the hordes of people that were there and the touts. Afterwards we thought we would use the fact that we were away from Thamel to go to Durbar Square. When we arrived we tried to walk into Durbar Square only to be stopped by a guard. He wanted 300 rupees each for us to enter. We decided it was too expensive. In retrospect maybe it wasn’t since that is about 4 US dollars each, but we were pretty sick of being jerked around and decided that rather than pay to go in we would go to the rooftop restaurant nearby and get a good view of the square while having lunch, no charge for entry. It was pretty nice. By this point we thought we were pretty far from Thamel. On the map it seemed awfully far so we flagged down a bicycle taxi to bring us back. As I was flagging down one guy a really scrawny looking guy cut in front of him and swooped over to us. We figured, why not and away we went. Turns out we grossly overpaid because it took our driver about 10 minutes to get back to Thamel and we easily could have walked, but there you have it. We felt so bad for our driver that we gave him an apple and a bag of chips along with our fee and then I took a picture of his feet. I wanted a keepsake of the scrawniest man who carried us in his rickshaw. By this time it was getting a bit late so we decided to have some dinner at a local Italian place and then pack it in for the night in order to enjoy the electricity that on until 9pm.

Our last full day in Kathmandu we woke late and went to find a laundry service. We were at the end of our fresh undies and I hadn’t washed my pants in about 10 days so I was ready to get those cleaned. Unfortunately I only had shorts and long underwear as an alternative so while our clothes were being laundered I wore those around town. After we had gotten our laundry we set off to the National Museum. Since yesterday’s rickshaw ride proved much shorter than we expected we took a glance at the map and decided the museum was close enough to walk to. After about 1 ½ hours we arrived at the museum.
It was interesting to say the least. The grounds and buildings were fairly well dilapidated. We entered the main building of historical items containing mounted animals, coins, panoramas, paintings, and memorabilia. Some items were quite interesting, but the general feeling of the museum was that Nepal did not have enough items to fill a museum and any thing was put in a display case to fill up the building. It was funny, but also sad and really I felt bad for the Nepalese people who certainly had an interesting and rich history, but could not afford to upkeep a museum of national quality. We visited a few more buildings on the grounds and then began our walk back. Eventually we flagged down a taxi and got back into Thamel around evening. We had dinner at a lovely little place that served Nepalese cuisine and went back early to pack and get ready for an early flight the next day.
We got up at the crack of dawn and took a taxi to the airport where we again waited for hours as our flight was delayed due to haze. After a security guard made sure I wasn’t able to stab anyone with my nail clippers by taking it away we were off into the blue skies and back to India. While I was disappointed to be leaving Nepal I was very excited to finally be seeing the Himalayas albeit from an airplane window.

Kathmandu

Landing in Kathmandu was an experience. On the flight in I was hoping to look out the windows and see the Himalayas, but there was too much cloud cover. From some of the readings that I did about Nepal I learned that this is a long standing condition and flights are never guaranteed to leave when they are supposed to, just as ours did from Delhi about 4 hours behind schedule.
However, within an hour of leaving Delhi we were breaking through the cloud cover and descending into the Kathmandu Valley. I must admit it was beautiful. Steep mountains and terraced farms surround the outer limits of the city and because of the availability of space the plane descends rapidly adding to the experience. Unlike many other flights I have taken I could not see the airport or the runways until we were almost on the ground. Very exciting.

Planes stop on the tarmac and then buses are sent to fetch passengers. The terminals themselves are very small and the airport in general seemed more fitting of a city of 100,000 rather than 1 million. Again, I imagine this is because of space considerations as the valley is slightly smaller than the country of Singapore. Thankfully we got through customs very quickly. Aya and I had both packed for our trip with bags just small enough to be considered carry on luggage. We never had to check our rucksacks and so never had to risk losing them or having to wait for them upon arriving and of course it was much easier to carry them around than large bulky luggage. Of course this means that what we had in our bags was limited, but we never wanted for anything and to keep our clothes clean we paid for laundry service every 5 days or so. It is one of those things that I have learned in traveling, pack light, move fast.
A man from our hotel and a driver were waiting for us and soon enough we were off into the city. We soon learned that our guide, Ram, was actually the tour operator for the hotel we were staying at and he had learned that we were interested in a trip to Chitwan National Park south west of Kathmandu. We were and within the hour we were checked in and at Ram’s office talking over details of the trip. Unlike a lot of the tour operators we met in India Ram and his associates seemed to run an honest business. We booked for a few days in Chitwan and then planned to return to Kathmandu for a few more to see the sights of the city.
By this time it was late in the afternoon and we decided to walk around a bit, get some dinner, then head back for showers before bed. We had to be up pretty early the next day to get our bus to Chitwan and we assumed the hotel’s solar heated showers would be best in the early evening after a day of charging. They were ok, but because of the night chill in Kathmandu it was still a bit of a dance to shower and get dressed as quickly as possible. We learned that night that Kathmandu has periodic power outages and so the main power would go off at different times of the day throughout all of Kathmandu with private businesses and households running small generators of their own to keep essentials going. Assuming that we would not have anything more than our flashlights and some candles to pack the next morning we made sure to pack before going to sleep.
Early the next morning we left our hotel in darkness and arrived at a nearby bus stop in the neighborhood of Thamel. We put our bags in the back of the bus, I stood outside until the bus was ready to go, and we were off to Chitwan.
The ride itself was long, grueling, beautiful, and scary all at the same time. The seats were not comfortable and for the first hour or so we stopped at places around the city picking up another person or two. Once we finally left the city we entered unto a narrow two lane highway that wound its way around steep precipices almost the entire time. This time around, driving in the left lane further away from the ledge was not as nerve racking, but we could see a few cars and trucks along the way that had tipped off the edge, I can’t imagine what happened to the people inside. Another hour into the trip and we had made our way out of the suburbs of Kathmandu and started following the Trisuli river, which was a beautiful shade of turquoise adding to the already beautiful landscape of the valley with its occasional narrow rope bridge crossing.
After a few stops along the way for food and bathroom breaks the mountains began to recede and we entered into a flat area, the Terai. It is here that Chitwan National Park was located and here that royalty and big game hunters used to come to bag tigers. The tigers are still there, but are no longer hunted. As the bus pulled into a parking lot outside of the town of Sauhara we were met by two gentlemen from our hotel and escorted to it nearby.