Katmandu, Nepal 10/15-10/19

     

We have officially been initiated into the world of budget traveling – or traveling on any budget for that matter. It was a good run. 15 years of incident-less jaunts for me and another 10 years for Mika. This all came to an end 15 minutes before our train departed from the Varanasi train station on our way to Delhi 2 nights ago. In an almost magical fashion, our backpack containing our passports, camera and journals was lifted off our train seat and vanished. I wish it was a better story but like I said it just disappeared. One minute it was there, I turned and then it was gone. We went to the tourist police, whom I found slumped in a plastic chair in some corner of the ticketing area. He expressed interest in telling his buddies about the story and simply said we should report it when we got into Delhi – 12 hours later. I think we handled it pretty well. After the initial shock wore off and we safely chained and locked everything else down, we accepted the incident – and the 1 week of lost photos and complete journals. Lessoned learned and initiation complete. We now had a story like everyone else. Whoopee.

On a bright note – and fairly ironic now that I think of it – we met a nice guy who was sitting with us from Germany. His name…..Merlin! You just can’t make this stuff up. (And NO he did not steal our bag).

So here we are, in Delhi, making plans to get new passports and our Indian Visa again! Supposedly it won’t be that bad this time…we shall see. The good news is that we finally have our computer courtesy of our loving downstairs neighbor Praveen and his sister Sangeeta. Nothing like a new toy to ease the pain of a lost one!

Anyway, enough of that. Back to the story.

Last we left we were in Istanbul, hurriedly rushing to catch an early flight because our ticketed flight had been cancelled. Long story short, the flight we had booked with Gulf Air had been deleted – meaning it no longer existed – which we found out at 11:45pm the day before! Instead of the 3 days we thought we had in Istanbul we only had 1 day with another day spent at the airport getting our new flight worked out. Luckily it went pretty seamlessly which was a nice change! No time for Turkish baths, bazaar shopping or for the Blue Mosque. We will have to go back. We, or better I, did manage to buy a Tupperware container full of some honey concoction that we were told would give us tons of energy on our trek. This will come back to haunt me later on at 7,000 ft in the Himalayas!

We landed in Kathmandu without any real problems and then hit the visa counter. This wasn’t so much of a problem as it was a “logistical issue”. See, the Nepalese do not accept Nepalese Rupees to get their own visa. And as an added bonus, the closest ATM is not in the airport (of course we landed in Nepal without any money). So, after leaving Mika as collateral at the visa counter, I headed to the ATM. (I had to do this 2x because in the hurry of it all I did the math wrong on the conversion to US dollars. I took out $10 the first time!). Finally back in the airport, we had to convert the Nepalese money back to USD so we could get a Nepalese Visa. And so our stay in Kathmandu began!

Kathmandu is a wild place. For me it was the first taste of real third world living. I’d like to say that its controlled chaos but I really don’t see the control. However, everyone seems to understand how it works. There are no traffic lights, stop signs or pretty much any signs whatsoever. If the roads are paved you’re happy. And even then they are riddles with pot holes the size of small cows. Oh yeah, the cows. We are now in Hindu territory – Cows are sacred and they wander wherever they want whenever they want. They are the only thing that anyone seems to yield for. They also poop anywhere they want so you better keep alert. And yes cows get diarrhea. Speaking of animals, goats, sheep, chickens and dogs seems to wander everywhere too. Except for the dogs, they all seem to belong somewhere but have their own agenda. And they all also poop everywhere!

So the “roads” are a moving mass of cars, bikes, rickshaws motorbikes, animals and the daring walking people. Everyone seems to get where they are going but never fast enough and without enough horn honking. Although they do have some creative horn sounds which I found amusing no matter how many times I heard them. But looking beyond all of this controlled chaos, Kathmandu is a wonderfully colorful place filled with the absolute nicest people. Nepalese are acutely aware that tourism is there main industry and they go out of their way to make sure you are enjoying your time there. Of course there is the haggling in all the shops and the normal touts that would rip you off in a split second, but in general they are good people.

There is also the issue of garbage. People here have no idea what a garbage can is. There is an “out of sight out of mind” policy that allows everyone to throw anything anywhere. As long as it is away from them it’s gone. So the streets are littered with everything imaginable, most of which the cows try to eat. After a while this fades into the background (as much as it possibly can of course).

We arrived in Kathmandu 2 days before the Laksmi festival. Lakshmi is the goddess of wealth and this was a time to celebrate and basically pray for good fortune. The festival lasted for 4 days and each day was a celebration of something different – however they all seems to deserve a copious amount of fireworks until the wee hours of the night! The city was adorned with flowers (mostly marigolds), candles and electric “Christmas” lights. Most houses and places of business had offerings laid out for Lakshmi at the front door with a pathway of flowers or dyed powder to the interior for the goddess to follow and bring her good fortunes. Funny thing was that the power would go out pretty much every night so the electric lights were mostly ineffective. This is Kathmandu!

We spent our days walking the town, buying some gear for our trek and learning the ways of the Nepal. We learned how to play the pool game Snooker with a couple local guys we met in a bar with a surprisingly good cover band and got a taste of the local flavors – which is mix between Indian and Chinese cuisine. A visit to the Monkey Temple, more than a couple walks through the streets of Thamel and a visit to the Rum Doodle (famous restaurant for all the climbing legends) We were ready to begin our journey into the Annapurna Range.

-Alan