K-K-K-K-K-K-Kathmandu!

K-K-K-K-K-K-Kathmandu!
That’s really, really where I’m goin’ to!
If I ever get out of here,
I’m goin’ to Kathmandu!

Am I the only one who remembers that song? Whenever I think about Kathmandu that song pops into my head, and since I was just in Kathmandu, it’s in my head a lot these days. The other song that’s in my head all the time is one from “Veer”, the Bollywood movie we saw in Varanasi. It’s incredibly popular in the region right now, and we heard it all over. We declared it the song of the trip, and played it back to back to back whenever we could. Patti even bought the sound track.

So – Kathmandu. It’s a weird mix. We stayed in an area called Thamel, which is backpacker central. Every other shop in the crowded streets is selling knock-off trekking gear – clothing, boots, sleeping bags, trekking poles, hats, mitts, blah blah blah. The real manufacturers of this stuff must tear their hair out because I’m pretty sure there’s very little actual genuine product in Thamel, despite the fact that everything has got the proper labels. I bought two “North Face” shirts for a total of 1,400 Nepalese rupees, which is about $21.00. I also mounted a serious search for new pants, and tried on about fifty different pairs in five or six shops, but only had luck when I went to a real brand name shop, and even then I have some issues with inseam length (the story of my life…).

A trekking shop in Thamel

The shops in Thamel that aren’t selling trekking gear are selling trekking tours, or knock-off CDs and DVDs (where do you think Patti got her sound track?), or carpets and tourist tat. There are even quite a few nice bookstores, which was a treat. And there are lots of bars and restaurants, many of which have loud live bands every night, so you can have the odd experience of wandering through the streets of Kathmandu, past shops selling exquisite Thanka paintings of Buddhist mandalas, while listening to a cover version of “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic” and contemplating the purchase of a –30 degree-rated sleeping bag by “Nurth Face”.

A typical Thamel Street

One of the optional activities offered by Intrepid in Kathamndu was a short flight along the Himalayas to see Everest. Patti was keen to go, and after consulting those who had done it before it sounded like something that was not to be missed, so I signed up too. The costs was considerable - $165 USD - but I figured that was well in the ballpark of the hot air ballooning in Turkey or the helicopter ride over Victoria Falls. As always seems to be the case with these kinds of things, it was an early morning start. Patti and I were up at 5:00 am were picked up at the hotel at 6:00 am. The taxi drove us out to the airport, and that was the beginning of a series of “Oh, really?” events for me that morning. I suppose because I was thinking of this like a private tourist flight similar to the helicopter at Victoria Falls, it surprised me that we got dropped at the domestic terminal of the Kathmandu Airport (“Really?”). And then we had to pay the 169.95 NPR departure tax (“Really?”), and then we had to pass through security and wait in the departure lounge, just like any other commercial flight (“Really?… huh.”). Except this was a flight leaving from the domestic terminal in Kathmandu, so the wait was chilly, and there was absolutely no information about when the flight would leave, and no one to ask, and the guy selling chai was running twenty minutes behind.

Eventually we boarded a small sixteen-seater plane (with propellers!) and got underway. I was a bit out of sorts, maybe because of the early start or the unexpectedly uncomfortable nature of the set-up, and I was also really tired. Even though we were on a flight along the Himalayas, there were times where I really could not keep my eyes open. It was a bit stupid. Especially when the scenery was like this:

The plane was small enough that everyone had a window seat, and as we flew along, the flight attendant let each person go up and look out the cockpit windows a couple of times.

Inside the plane

Certainly it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but even so I didn’t end up coming away from that flight feeling like I’d do it again. I’m pleased that Patti enjoyed herself, but I left feeling rather like I would have enjoyed a couple more hours of sleep. Perhaps it was the long days of travel catching up with me, or perhaps mountains just aren’t my thing. Regardless, I’m glad I did it, because I always would have wondered if I hadn’t.

My best shot of Everest – it’s the peak on the left.

After Patti and I got back from the flight we had time for a bit of breakfast before rejoining the group to see some of the more sacred sites of Kathmandu. Our first stop was the Swayamvsu Temple, commonly referred to as the Monkey Temple, because the Monkees played there in 1967. Ha! I’m kidding. Of course it’s called the Monkey temple because there are loads of monkeys hanging around there being photogenic.

Awww… (another in the series of Pictures of Baby Animals Kathryn Can Not Have)

Of course there’s more to the area than just a few monkeys, but since I don’t know much about Buddhism, the religious significance of the site was mostly lost on me. In fact Patti commented - and I agree - that we really needed a “Buddhism for Dummies” cheat sheet of some kind in Nepal. Hence, you get photos of monkeys, and I reveal myself to be the shockingly ill-informed about one of the world’s major religions. (I actually thought that this Monkey Temple was one that I’d seen in an episode of “The Amazing Race”, but it turns out there is more than one Monkey Temple in the world. And now you know that my knowledge of Buddhism is not just shallow, it’s also at least partially based on “The Amazing Race”. I really need to stop writing about this now.)

After the Monkey Temple we went to see the area surrounding the Pashupatinath Temple. It’s a large complex of temples along the banks of the Pasupati river. We didn’t actually visit the complex itself, since only Hindus are allowed inside the temples, but we did take some time to view the Pasupati, which runs through Kathmandu. Like the Ganges it’s also considered a sacred river to Hindus, partly because it later flows into the Ganges. Also like the Ganges in Varanasi the Pasupati is a site where Hindu ritual cremation takes place.

A couple of ghats, both in use. Also, garbage-pickers in the bottom left.

The river itself was miserable – it was nothing more than a grey trickle flowing sluggishly across a wide, muddy, garbage-strewn riverbed. You could see piles of ash and charred wood and… other things… that had simply been shoveled, still smoking, into the river. And there were people picking through those piles looking for anything of value that might have been left on the deceased’s body after the cremation. I understand that it’s a scared site and that cremation under these circumstances is traditional and holy, but it was such a grungy area that it was hard to feel like this would be a pleasant place to make your last exit.

After that charming interlude it was nice to head to another Buddhist site, this one was a stupa called Boudhanath. A stupa is a Buddhist religious monument, originally they were large mounds or dome shapes that often covered some sort of religious relic of the Buddha. Now stupas don’t always have a relic inside them. Generally they are simply large, solid domes that act as an object of veneration (And yes, you’re right. Since my embarrassing lack of knowledge about Buddhism was revealed in the paragraph above, I consulted Wikipedia about stupas. So sue me.) The Boudhanath is a particularly large stupa, with strings of prayer flags hung from its top. Like other Buddhist sites we saw it was pleasant and calming to walk around.

Boudhanath Stupa

The stupa was also equipped with a lot of prayer wheels – cylinders on a spindles that are marked with prayers and are meant to be spun by hand while you walk past. In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, it’s believed that spinning a prayer wheel has the same effect as reciting a prayer. At Boudhanath they also had an enormous prayer wheel inside an enclosure – it was about ten feet tall and about six feet in diameter. You grabbed onto a railing that encircled the whole thing and walked around in a circle, turning it as you walked.

Normal-sized prayer wheels at Boudhanath

After finishing up at the stupa on Monday, there was time for more shopping (Patti certainly won the prize there, making the rest of us look like amateurs). And we had that nice meal I’ve already talked about – the one where everyone else wimped out on the yak cheese fondue. Even though it was the last day of our tour, Patti and I still had one more day in Kathmandu, and it turned out that Jonno, Sheila and Adam did too. So we made plans to spend the next day touring around a city called Bhaktapur, and even privately hired the same guide we’d had to show us around Kathmandu. Bhaktapur turned out to be a lovely place. So lovely, in fact, that it certainly deserves its own blog post.

I should get on that.

Steve's Weird Food for Nepal: Yak Cheese Fondue

Time was running out on the SWF: Nepal timeclock when we went for our last supper as a group, in Kathmandu. So imagine my delight when I opened the menu at our chosen restaurant and saw “Yak Cheese Fondue”. It was an excellently odd mash-up of flavours and cultures that seemed very appropriate in Kathmandu, where on the same menu you might see a traditional Nepali meal of dahl baht, or pizza, or fish meuniere, or a cheeseburger and fries, or chicken cordon bleu. (In fact, that list above is the exact order placed by our group for dinner.)

(Aside: This diverse menu phenomenon was common all over Nepal and India. We could generally be guaranteed traditional local foods, pizza and pasta, Chinese, and “Continental” anywhere we went. Emblematic of this was the place next to our hotel in Varanasi, whose sign proudly proclaimed “Authentic Mediterranean, Mughlai, Continental, Indian, South Indian, Chinese Food and, in parenthesis: Special Pizza.)*

But there was one small problem – the yak cheese fondue was only available for two people or more. Apparently the delicate intricacy of the yak cheese fondue is simply not scalable to a single serving. And, inexplicably, no on else in the group was interested in sharing with me. Dejected, I ordered the traditional Nepali meal, but when I thought about it I realized that two orders of yak cheese fondue would only cost 760 Nepalese Rupees, or about $11.00. With the integrity of the Steve’s Weird Food Project at stake, there seemed to be little debate about what was to be done. I called the waiter back over and changed my order, though it took a while to get the idea across that I was ordering two meals, but I was only one person. (Clearly these are a people not accustomed to the North American appetite.)

Nevertheless, the order went through, and fondue preparations began. A second table was pushed up to ours so we could spread out and make room for all the necessary fondue paraphenalia, and there was quite a bit. The Nepalese don’t waste their time with wimpy little pots of sterno for keeping the fondue warm. Instead, a large gas burner was brought over, accompanied by a two foot tall cylinder of compressed gas.

The set up – no fooling around.

This occasioned much merriment in the group, and anticipation was high when the actual fondue arrived. It had been described in the menu as yak cheese flavoured with rum and cinnamon, served in a clay bowl. And that’s exactly what it was – an enormous clay bowl full molten yak cheese, bubbling away like a science experiment.

Bubbly fondue

It was accompanied by a large bowl of cubes of white bread, and a big plate of coleslaw-like salad. Thankfully, the Nepalese fondue tradition has not evolved to include the ridiculous and non-functional two-tined spear-like fondue fork, so I was able to use a normal four-tined dinner fork.

And the taste? Mild, pleasant, no discernible flavour of rum, and mercifully little essence of yak. Everyone tried it, and they all had the same reaction, “Nice.” It was a thinner mixture than I’d expected, but I think that because yak cheese doesn’t seem to melt very well. This makes it an odd choice for a cheese fondue, but I can only surmise that the supply of Gruyere and kirsch in Kathmandu is probably not ample.

Me and the fondue

With SWF: Nepal safely taken care of, a second round of drinks was ordered and the cards came out for another game of Presidents and Assholes. It was a really nice time. The dinner conversation was as good as ever – that night it was about the common Indian practice of arranged marriage. The general consensus was that it might not be a bad idea; certainly the divorce rate for arranged marriages is much lower than the overall divorce rate. We also discussed the best live concerts we’d ever been to, and asked Akshay why toilet seats in India never seem to fit the toilet bowl to which they are affixed and therefore always give an unpredictable sideways lurch when you sit down. He had no real answer for this burning question, so we wandered back to the hotel with that and other imponderable mysteries in our heads, and went to bed.

Per the request from Rob H, here's a photo of the gang taken in Sauraha. From left to right: Jonno (with Sheila cleverly hiding behind, though you saw her on an elephant yesterday), me, Akshay, Adam and Patti.

* Rob H.: Notice how I did that aside without using an asterisk?

The first days in Nepal

Astute GSRED readers may remember that Nepal was not originally on my itinerary – it was only added when I found out that Patti was game to meet me in India and was keen to take an Intrepid tour of the area. Since I was busy with Italy at the time I asked her to wade through the seven zillion options Intrepid offers in India and narrow it down to three or four that fit with our dates and general idea of what we wanted to see. (She had loads of time for this, I’m sure. All she was doing was running her own company in Calgary. I was busy trying to sample as many different flavours of gelato as possible, so clearly I had bigger fish to fry.) Anyways, one of the tours on the short list was called “Delhi to Kathmandu” and as soon as I saw Kathmandu, I was hooked. How could you not be? Kathmandu? I mean is that even a real place? It occupies the same place in my head as Timbucktoo or Mars – somewhere so impossibly exotic that you can’t be sure whether it’s real or not.

So even though I was sad to leave India so soon, I was also excited about seeing Nepal and getting to Kathmandu. We drove from Varanasi to a tiny border crossing, schlepped our bags across the border, and got into another minivan on the other side for the drive to Lumbini. The difference between India and Nepal was striking and instantaneous. For hours that morning we’d been driving through India – crowded and filthy and accompanied by the incessant honking that is required at all times in India. After crossing the border things were instantly calmer. There was less garbage on the roadside, and less honking, and a lot less people. Patti was quick to point out that though Nepal may be a very poor country, but it’s a lot easier to keep things tidy when you’ve got a population of 28 million, as opposed to 1.4 billion. I guess you have to cut India some slack.

We had a quick overnight stop in Lumbini, mostly just because driving much further on that day would have been too much. There’s really just one thing to see in Lumbini, and any Buddhists reading this will probably know what that is – the birthplace of the Buddha himself. We visited the site early in the morning, and though I don’t know a lot about Buddhism, I really enjoyed walking around the site. There were lots of people visiting, some as tourists and some as adherents. And there’s an enormous banyan tree near a large square pool that seemed to be the centre of the site. People were seated under the tree chanting and singing, and there were thousands of brightly coloured prayer flags strung from the branches of the tree. In fact, the whole site was festooned with prayer flags and the effect was beautiful.

Prayer flags strung between the trees in Lumbini

The whole site was really peaceful and it was a nice start to the day to wander in among the flags and listen to the chanting. Then it was back into the van for another few hours of driving to get us to the small town of Sauraha, near Chitwan National Park. Sauraha reminded me a lot of Orchha, it was small enough that it was a relaxing place to be, but big enough to have restaurants and beer and internet access. My kind of place.

Besides restaurants, beer and internet, the other big thing Sauraha has is elephants! There’s an elephant breeding centre near the town and the afternoon we arrived we rode bikes out to visit it. It was excellent! I never had a chance to get up close with elephants while I was in Africa, so visiting the breeding centre was a real highlight. It’s run by the Nepali government and has produced 34 babies, most of whom have survived. We even saw their exceedingly rare set of twin baby elephants! (Note to Kathryn: No, I cannot bring you a baby elephant, twin or otherwise.)

At the centre we met Suk, who was our guide and who gave us some interesting info about the centre and about elephants in general, and then let us loose to take pictures. The elephants were all behind fences and chained by their legs to big posts in the ground. The chains seemed depressingly short, but Suk later assured me that the elephants didn’t mind, and the reason that some of them were doing a sort of sad, repetitive little dance pulling on their chains is because we saw them close to their afternoon tea break when the handlers come around and give them balls of grass. They’re also let loose to forage in the park twice a day, since keeping twenty or more elephants provided with all the food they need in a day would be a formidable task.

A mom and baby elephant.

Interesting elephant facts from Suk:

• Elephants eat 200 kg of food and drink 200 litres of water each day.
• They live to about 75 years old in the wild, but well cared for elephants can live 90 to 100 years in captivity.
• Elephants have a complete change of teeth six times in their lives.
• An elephant’s trunk has 40,000 muscles in it!

The next day we were scheduled for a guided walk through Chitwan National Park, ending up at a “rustic” guesthouse in a very tiny village of Ghatgai. We downsized to daypacks only, left out main bags at the hotel in Sauraha, and set out at about 9:30 in the morning, once again guided by Suk. The day turned out to be… challenging. It’s not that the walking was particularly strenuous. Akshay had warned us we’d have two hour ride in a canoe, and then a six hour walk - that was not a problem. The problem came as we were sitting in the canoe on the Ripta river and it started to rain. I was clever enough to have packed my rain jacket, but it was still pretty cold and miserable sitting in the rain in that canoe.

A boatman in one of the long dugout canoes that took all eight of us downriver

Things were better and worse once we got ashore. It was nice to be out of the boat, but the rain continued and knowing we had six hours of walking on increasingly muddy tracks did nothing to improve my mood. Patti later said that she preferred the rain to the hot and sunny weather we’d had the day before, which strikes me as slightly insane, but perhaps I’ve become acclimatized to the heat after getting through Africa and the Middle East. Whatever, it was miserable. (I later found out that I was the only one who felt this way – everyone else was just fine with trudging though the mud, which leads me to think they might be slightly off, or maybe haven't been traveling long enough to get properly bitter about this kind of turn of events.)

We were supposed to be watching for exciting wildlife like rhinos and tigers, and we’d even had a briefing on what to do if confronted by an angry rhino (In short: run away, in zig-zag fashion, until you can find a tree big enough to hide behind or, even better, one you can climb. We were specifically discouraged from pushing other members of the group in between us and the rhinos.) Unsurprisingly, it turns out rhinos and tiger are too smart to hang around when it’s pissing down rain, so mostly we trekked quietly. Suk, our guide, pointed out some different birds and we saw a lot of deer, and I made up cryptic crossword clues in my head to pass the time. (Best effort: Hill country plane crash (5). Anyone?).

We passed the spot where these walks usually stop for lunch with nothing more than a sad comment from Suk, “This is where we usually stop for lunch. But today… raining.” Instead we pushed on for an observation tower that offered a bit of shelter where we could eat our lunches out of the wet. And to get to the tower we had to cross a small river, which required a trip across the dodgiest bridge I’ve ever seen.

The dodgiest bridge. Ever. (Terrence, if you’re reading this, that picture is for you.)

We all managed to get across, though Sheila elected to take off her shoes and socks and wade, which was probably by far the smarter option. After lunch things improved a lot, mostly because it stopped raining. There still wasn’t much to see in the forest, though, so I don’t think anyone was disappointed when we got to our final destination earlier than expected. There was another short canoe trip across the river and then we settled in to our exceedingly basic rooms. It promised to be a chilly night, and the mattress on the bed was thin enough to see through, which only added to the anticipation. I put on every layer of clothing I’d brought, unfolded all the blankets provided and spread them out onto the bed, and then added the large pink Barbie towel that came with the room for good measure. Then I joined the gang for cocktails.

The rustic washing-up facilities at the guest house. Needless to say, it was cold water only.

It actually turned out to be a very fun evening. We ended up sitting around playing a stupid card game called “Presidents and Assholes” and the whole group took part – me, Patti, Sheila, Jono, Adam, and even Akshay. We actually postponed our scheduled Village Walk (there is a always a Village Walk) because we were having too much fun. We did go eventually, and it was nice. Suk was there again to tell us about the local flora and we exchanged “Namastes” with lots of local villagers, and we got back to the guesthouse in time for dinner and another long round of cards. Patti and I even invented a new drink called either Super Chai, or Chai Plus, which is made up of a nice hot cup of masala chai laced with a generous measure of cheap local rum.

Looking down the road on the village walk.

The night passed surprisingly comfortably, and the next morning we had another few hours of walking to reach a crocodile breeding centre. Things were pretty slow there, mostly because it was still quite chilly and the crocodiles were understandably docile, being cold-blooded and all. After that was some more walking and then a very breezy ride in the back of an open jeep to return us to Sauraha, hot water and blissful free time. We even got there early enough that I had time to go for a run before our last scheduled activity in Sauraha. This is a good thing because my mood was getting increasingly black. This is a good thing, becasue by the time Patti and I were finally ensconced in our room (our third attempt – the first came equipped with a double bed instead of two singles, and the second came equipped with people already in it) I was in that kind of frame of mind where anything other than a private foot massage from Harrison Ford would have left me grumpy and swearing.

Clearly I needed a run, so even though my motivation to drink a beer and have a nap was much greater than my inclination to lace up my shoes, off I went. Of course I felt better right away, though the day was quite hot and sunny by the time I went out. I ran along the road we’d cycled to get to the elephant breeding centre, and it was lovely. I got a few odd looks, but as soon as I gave a friendly “Namaste” the funny looks would always turn into smiles, and I’d get a “Namaste!” right back. Little kids were especially excited by this. And I’m sure I saw more different animals on this run than on any other run, ever. There were: dogs, horses, chickens, ducks, cows, buffalo, oxen and goats. By the time I got back to the hotel, stretched, and had a hot shower, life was much better.

Then it was time for our last activity in Sauraha – the elephant safari! Just seeing elephants wasn’t enough – this time were were going to ride them through the forest for an hour in the hopes of spotting some more wildlife, specifically – rhinos! It turns out that riding an elephant is pretty uncomfortable. Four people were crammed into the sort of saddle/cage that was strapped to the top of the elephant, and there was an elephant driver who rode in front, straddling the elephant right behind its head.

Jonno and Sheila and the back of their elephant.

The elephant drivers were each equipped with a stout length of solid bamboo and an evil looking steel implement that looked like a heavy fireplace poker. Every once in a while our elephant would make some imperceptible error and the driver would wind up and give him (or maybe it was a her… I couldn’t tell from where I was sitting) an enormous thwack on the top of the head. The sound was really alarming, but I had to remind myself that the elephant’s skull is probably about 3 inches thick, and I really didn’t want to be on top of one that was out of control. At least he only used the evil steel thing once, because it made a sickening dull thud.

The parade through the forest

We bounced along with about eight or ten other elephants, all loaded up with tourists and on the hunt for rhinos. We did see quite a few more deer and even saw a crocodile sunning himself on an island in the river. What surprised me most was that the animals were largely unconcerned with us being so close. I suppose that they focused on the elephants, and since none of them were prey for elephants, there was no reason to be alarmed. I was with Patti, Adam, and a woman we didn’t know who had a small child with her. I think the baby was about two years old. She enjoyed herself for a little while, but before long she got fussy, and then the whole forest was treated to her inconsolable wailing for longer than I’d care to remember.

However, all that was fine because eventually we saw RHINOS! The elephant that Sheila and Jonno were on spotted them first, and the cry went out for everyone else to come over. It was a lot like the traffic jams on the Serengeti when a good lion or leopard spotting happens. There was, literally, an elephant jam in that forest. However, the rhinos were completely indifferent, even as the elephant drivers maneuvered to get closer and closer. It was a mother and baby (K: no baby rhino either) and they were fantastic. They were smaller than I expected – bigger than a horse, but smaller than a bison (I know, I know, everything is smaller than I expect, but I thought they were more like elephants). And they looked positively prehistoric – all that tough armour and the horns reminded me of a triceratops. I can’t believe how close we were able to get. See?

Yes, there was some zoom involved here, but really, we were about twenty feet from this rhinoceros.

It was definitely a highlight. After the rhinos we saw a nest of wild boar, most of whom were sleeping. That is to say they were sleeping until our little passenger bumped her head and commenced to wailing again with such fervour that the frightened piggies ran all the way home. Lucky pigs. We had a bouncy ride back with the poor fussy baby, and all involved were immensely grateful when she and her harried mom de-elephanted (well, if getting off a plane is deplaning, then isn’t getting off an elephant de-elephanting?). We got to ride the elephant back into town and got off at a conveniently located de-elephanting stand near the centre of the village.

That night there was a sort of street food festival in town so we camped out at a table and sampled all kinds of different food, and drank beer and rum and played more of the stupid card game. It was another good night, and I’m really grateful that our group is small, and everyone is fun and easy going and remarkably like-minded. And the next morning we were off to Kathmandu, which is definitely another story.