Nepal - Part 1
To celebrate Eid Al Adha we went to Nepal. It was very spur of the moment decision. We had been so busy the weeks leading up to Eid that it was 10 days before that we sat down after dinner and told ourselves we were going to pick a place. Somehow Nepal came up (at that point we couldn't even remember if Nepal was a city or a country...this is how random it was). We looked it up and saw that's where Mt. Everest was and it looked nice so the decision was made. We mentioned this to a few coworkers the next day and found out one of our friends had just been there. We got her tour guide's name and contact info, emailed him, bought tickets and it was set. I honestly can't say I've ever felt so unprepared/under-researched for a trip before.
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| View from the bridge at Last Resort 14km from the Tibetan border |
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As a precursor to the rest of this post, I've been putting off writing up the blog for a week now because there was just so much that happened and so many things to write about that I just got completely overwhelmed thinking about it. Yesterday, I finally downloaded all 363 photos from the
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The trip started with us heading off to the airport at 10:30 for our 2:30 flight. On our way there it started raining--the first real rain since we've been here. I was pretty excited about it, but maybe I should've taken it as an omen :).
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| RAIN! When it rains, it pours! |
We actually breezed through security (which I was worried about because it is a big travel holiday in this part of the world, plus it was the same weekend as Formula1 here in Abu Dhabi). We stopped at a cafe and had some food and drinks. At the cafe were two locals with their hunting falcons. I'm still not convinced that they were actually traveling, I think they might have just been there for entertainment purposes (no complaints though!) After watching a bunch of people taking photos, we decided to go take some photos and they even let us hold the birds! It was actually kind of scary. In the book we're reading (The Bin Ladens--which I highly recommend) we learned that they way the falcons work is that they swoop in on the prey (gazelle type things or whatever animal they are hunting) and gouge out the eyes with their beaks. These falcons had the mask/helmets on to cover their eyes to help keep them calm--but as soon as I picked one up it looked right at me...I was so scared that it was going to attack my face! Luckily they
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| I'm doing a pretty good job of acting like I'm not scared of the falcon |
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| Paul putting on the glove that the falcon is tethered to The claws are sharp! (Mine started to walk onto my arm) |
Eventually we were told that our flight was delayed a few hours, so we waited around. I bought The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo because, not surprisingly, it became hard to share the Bin Laden book between the two of us. After more waiting we were told it was delayed again. In our traipsing around the airport looking for explanations we ran across an American couple about our parents' age. We ended up spending most of the rest of the evening with them trying to figure out what the deal was with our flight. There was something wrong with the landing gear, so at 9pm (after having been at the airport for 10hrs) we were told that it was "delayed" until the next morning at 8:30am. We convinced them to have a chauffeur take us home and pick us up in the morning. Of course, as anticipated even though we confirmed 5 times with various people, the taxi/chauffeur was not there in the morning. So we drove ourselves. The driver called us 45 minutes late asking us where we lived--typical for life over here. Anyways, we met back up with our friends at the gate, and after the massive crowding and herding eventually got onto the plane and had a nice flight to Kathmandu. Unfortunately we had lost not only an entire day of our trip in Nepal (possibly a blessing in disguise) but we lost an entire day period--I feel like I'm getting more and more possessive of my time, so I was pretty bummed that I had just wasted a whole day that I didn't have to work. Hopefully we'll at least get a free ticket out of it.
Once we got to Kathmandu, we met our travel guide who picked us up and took us to our hotel and then to their office in Thamel which is the touristy section of Kathmandu. Kathmandu is really something else, I can't say that I would necessarily recommend going there, but it is definitely an experience. Our friend said that she describes it as "India-lite"--it makes me wonder if we really want to spend any of our precious vacation time in India. It's so crowded, the buildings are all falling apart, there are wires everwhere, the traffic is horrendous, pollution is horrible. BUT the Nepali people are all very nice, we really enjoyed them. I don't know if our view is just skewed because the Emiratis are so unpleasant, but we both thought that the Omani and Nepali people were very nice.
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| Just picked up from the airport. We were greeted with these marigold "leis" as a welcome--of course I loved it :) |
Our parents were a little concerned about our trip because right before we left there was a security bulletin saying that there might be protests on the 3 days in the middle of the trip. We didn't really witness anything and didn't feel any sense of unrest other than on our last day we did see a bunch of military people on one street with riot gear. But they were mostly joking around and it didn't seem too serious. It was interesting talking to the Nepali people about their government. It's a pretty sad situation. They haven't actually had a functioning government in over 3 months and they don't even currently have a constitution. The country is very poor and their main income generating industry is tourism, but with the government having been so unstable over the past 10yrs, it's really been hurting. We learned that they have about 150 national holidays where the government doesn't work--I can't imagine! We're struggling to get our 3 days off for the week and they have almost half a year off! The government is also very corrupt and dictators keep taking over.
The travel guide decided that we had time to do one site seeing activity that day before nightfall. We went to the "Monkey Temple." Now most of Nepali people our generation and younger speak english and on the whole, it's pretty good. But it's not perfect. So the whole time on the way there I thought they were trying to say "Monk Temple." Nope, there were TONS of monkeys all over the hill, temple, and statues!
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| Monkey Temple |
We got some photo ops and hung out around there for a little while. I guess it's just not growing up around the Hindu architecture, but I really didn't find the temple itself that attractive. It's just too bright and in your face, and weird with the "Eyes of Buddha" which are "always watching." Restoration of the stupa (or middle temple part) had just been completed--there was some crazy amount of gold that was donated to refurbish the temple.
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| Temple behind us--Buddha is watching! |
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| I think this was on a tomb. The red on its head is for good luck. So many people had that over here it was crazy, but they weren't all the same as the traditional red dots you think of from india. They were much larger and higher on their heads. Some had the little red dot and the bigger one above it. I even saw a dog in one of the little villages that had the red smudgd on its head. |
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| I forget what this statue was for--peace & tranquility maybe? |
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| The Monkey Temple is a UNESCO site, so not only was the stupa restored/ preserved, but the surrounding buildings have been preserved as well |
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| Paul and his Nepal Ice (which was delicious) |
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| Josclyn with "Seven Spice" tea at Gaia |
Then off to the hotel for bed. The hotel was...interesting. It was probably really nice 20 yrs ago, but apparently this is one of the really popular hotels. I think Paul was a little more affected by it--while I wouldn't say that either of us are really prima donnas, we do both want to know that our room is clean. I think my standards had been lowered a bit from my study abroad experiences in hostels, but it still wasn't ideal. We found out that the only reason it was a 5-star hotel was because it paid some dues to some organization so that it could be considered a 5-star which then allowed it to have a casino. We asked our tour guide if the next place we were staying (Last Resort Hotel) would be nicer and if maybe we could stay there our last night as well instead of returning here. We were told that wouldn't be a good idea because it's a 4hr drive from Kathmandu to the Last Resort and if something happened on the road we could miss our flight that day. We decided that we would just pay more to stay at another hotel for the last night (good call on our part).
That's end of day
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1 comments:
Day one/two makes you a little uneasy, interested and glad you are back writing this. I wonder if they use marigolds in their leis because they repeal insects?
Mom
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