Vanessa and I, we spent 1st of december in India at a wonderful wedding. Not even a month later we headed back to another country, where hinduism was a big part of the country’s culture. It was about time to visit a new country, this time it was Nepal.
We were hopelessly looking for fair flight deals during the winter holidays, as every single destination was super expensive, the prices bursted up to 1500 - 2000 euro a ticket. There weren’t many destinations available, that we really wanted to visit, for a price we would/could afford. Nepal and Egypt popped up, and Nepal was a clear winner. After having become a fan of India over the last two years, the landscapes, the buddhist and hindu culture, the food, … it had to be Nepal.
New Year’s Eve in Nepal.
Nepal was one of the few countries, where we got our visa here in Luxmbourg. We got the travel-visa of 15 days at a lawyer’s office in our capital, and paid around 20 euro for it. It took about 10 minutes to get the stamp in our passports.
To be honest, I didn’t know much about Kathmandu, nor Pokhara. Being a regular customer at our local nepalese restaurants, I didn’t see a big difference between India and Nepal. Now after having turned back, I would understand, why nepalese people would feel offended if they are getting compared or equalized with their neighbouring country.
After 3 flights we landed in the capital of Nepal, Kathmandu. The arrival was quite an experience as it almost took an hour til we could reclaim our luggage. While waiting for our backpacks, hundreds of cardboard-boxes popped out of the baggage carousel. Many of them were lcd-tvs. Huge screens landed on the distribution belts, however no luggage. We had to be pretty patient until we noticed our bags after almost an hour later following our arrival.
Kathmandu.
“Same same but different” the classic quote among asian people. We headed towards the exit, where we were asked for a taxi. The ride to the center of the capital was 700 nepalese rupees (around 5 Euros, 6 us$). We approved, however without a dime, a clerk brought us to the nearest ATM, where we already got introduced to a tourorganizer, the same guy who would be the translator during our taxi ride… the same trick that happens in every asian country. Everybody wants the white folks’ money.
25 minutes later we arrived at our wonderful hotel “Kantipur Temple House” located in Thamel, the busiest and lively neighbourhood in Kathmandu (touristwise). I usually don’t like spending much money on accomodation. However after having compared the Temple House with other bargain hotels, this one just looked like a whole different league. It had the feel of an old castle / temple, with free early morning yoga classes. The look of the whole building was magnificent, and because of that, I went for the 200$ for 3 nights. The only thing I didn’t know was, that they didn’t have any heaters in the rooms, as they considered themselves as an ecological hotel.
Later we figured out that barely no one owns a heater a Nepal, except the richer community. And it really gets pretty cold at night during the winter months. As our room didn’t get heat up, after winter season kicked in, it was obvious that the space between the concrete walls of the room remained pretty cold all day. They offered us a mobile electric-heater which we could stand right next to the bed. It helped keeping us warm at night. What an experience.
We strawled through the streets on our first day, and really liked the worn down looks of the alleys that formed the maze of the city center. We already got lost after an hour as all the alleys looked alike, and there were just too many in the Thamel neighbour hood.
Many temples, grey buildings, thousands of wires that formed the powerlines, millions of scooters and many free-running dogs, made the vibe of Kathmandu. It kinda felt like India, but much colder.
Right away, the first minutes, locals approached us, to start the usual smalltalk, and they introduced themselves as art-students, that they were being thaught how to draw mandalas, and if we were interested in visiting their academy. The academy was actually just a little art-shop, that was selling Thangka paintings (traditional nepalese paintings). The people who would bring us to the shop would get a commission if we were willing to buy something. Suddenly everybody was an art-student in Kathmandu, the ages ranged from 16 to 45. And it got pretty annoying all over our Nepal trip. This mainly happened in Kathmandu though.
The nicest stupa in Thamel was “Kaathe Swyambhu Shree Gha Chaitya”. It’s charming side were the hundrest of pigeons flying up as soon as you approached the golden stupa. Besides the the holy golden monument and Kathmandu’s Durban square, there wasn’t that much to do. As the little temples (type of chappels) all looked the same. We enjoyed the locals shops, and vendors on the streets selling all kind of local products. However we decided to book a sunrise tour for the next morning and get out of the city to visit Nagarkot and Bhaktapur. Two totally different cities.
Nagarkot & Bhaktapur.
We paid around 70us$ for the whole daytrip (35$ per person). They picked us up at 5:30 at our hotel to drive up to Nagarkot which would take a little bit more than an hour, to witness the sunrise over the himalayan mountains. As for myself I think it was worth the drive, even though we didn’t know that we would have to get on a balcony on the backside of a hotel, to witness the sunrise.
After being outside without movement, we were happy to heat ourselves up during breakfast, as the hotel offered a pretty inviting buffet in the early morning. Nagarkot’s sunrise was ok. But I wouldn’t consider it as an absolute must-see while being in Kathmandu.
We drove down the serpentines from the top of the hill to the city of Bhaktapur. While approaching Bhaktapur in the morning, with freezing temperatures outside, it felt like being in Mongolia. The suburbs looked very poor, many buildings were left without windows, the foundations of the houses left barely untouched. I enjoyed the views of the deserted cold streets of Bhaktapur. I asked our taxi driver if he could stop for 20 minutes, so that we could walk back to a group of three women, who were sitting on the frozen ground and channting mantras at 07:30 am. Fascinating.
Weirdly I would have loved to spend more time in those alleys and watching how people would live in those neighbourhoods, instead of visiting wooden temples. Below you can witness a couple of shots from those streets.
The city center of Bhaktapur looked like the durban square of Kathmandu. It seemed bigger, but kind of the same. We strawled along the alleys, checked out some shots, took some photos and went to our first Thangka Art shop, where I fell in love with the beauty of those tradtional paintings. They carry an endless amount of details, painted in all shapes and forms. We bought two painting at the shop, while being educated about the pantings by the charming shop owner.
Spending the day outside of Kathmandu, was worth spending the 75$, just to witness something slightly different.
Temple Tour.
As we pretty much enjoyed our driver. We decided to book him again for another day, which would only cost 35$ for a whole day, as we didn’t book him through an agency.
We visited 4 different spots surrounding Kathmandu: the monkey temple, the crematorium, the city center of Patan and the fabulous Boudhanath stupa. Considering it was just a temple hopping tour, it was quite diverse as the several locations didn’t look alike.
My favorite part, was the cremation temple Pashupatinath, as it reminded me of the burning ghat in Varanasi (India).
The main golden stupa in Boudhanath looked pretty impressive as well, as it was the biggest stupa we witnessed on our Nepal holidays. And their shops also offered the best prices for singing/healing bowls. The prices went down from 25.000 to 8000 rupees for a big-size bowl.
Pokhara.
After having spent 3 nights in Kathmandu, it was about time to head over to Pokhara. The travel agent in Kathmandu told us, that mostly all the planes from KTM to PKH would usually be late, and that people who booked through a nepalese agency would get a certain priority. This actually wasn’t true. Online we found that, that the delays are mostly due to weather conditions, as fog in the mountain areas or landing sites could become pretty much dangerous for the flights. We booked through “swoodoo” (online website) and book a one way flight from KTM to Pokhara. It was about 80$ a person. The flight only took 25 minutes, however it was delayed by two hours, as almost every airplane at the domestic airport was delayed. We arrived around 12:00 at the airport, and landed in Pokhara around 15:30. Still we were lucky, that it didn’t take longer.
(Days later, to get back to Kathmandu, we decided to book a taxi, which took a little bit more than 6 hours. It was only 110$ for 2 people. The cons are that it takes longer (6hours vs 3 hours), but you can enjoy the landscape sceneries from the taxi, and you can ask the taxi driver to stop to get some photoshots. As our morning of depature was crazily foggy, we were glad that we opted for the taxi, as the planes weren’t able to fly, because of the unlucky weather conditions. We left at 07:00h and arrived at KTM after 13:00h.)
After our arrival in Pokhara, it only took us 15 minutes to get to our accomodation, nearby Phewa Lake. Instantly we noticed a big difference in traffic. There way less cars in Pokhara than in the capital. The citiy seemed much more peaceful and less polluted. It was like comparing Bangkok to Chiang Mai.
On our first day, we explored the neighbourhood of our hotel: Lake Phewa, the shopping street nearby the lake. As we landed on the 30th of december, there was a big celebration on lakeside. The party went on for 3-4 days. In the evening after sunset (around 17:45), the streets got pretty packed with locals and tourists. There were stages with folk dancers, people were chatting and selling endless street food. It looked quite festive for a new year’s eve, which actually isn’t the nepalese new year, which is being celebrate in april. Never the less, everybody enjoyed the party.
There wasn’t that much left to do in Pokhara, except for hikes, paragliding and even more hiking. The more ineresting hikes would last severaldays, a minimum of 3-4 days, to witness the beautiful lakes in the mountains. The Anapurna hikes would last more than a week. We were on a tight schedule as we only stayed for 4 nights, and were planning to celebrate NYE in the city center.
We went for 2 smaller hikes. A 2 and a half hour hike up to the World Peace Paghoda, and another 2 hours to get back in town. And a total hike of 6 hours to get to Saranghot for the sunrise and get back. As we felt sick during our days in Pokhara, we took a taxi on top to Saranghot and decided to walk back down. The took the wrong path and it took 4 hours to get back to the lake side.
Walking up-hill for the sunrise isn’t actually that interesting as you’re walking through the dark, and the only thing that you will see further from a distance, would be the city lights.
Downtown you could go a for a boatride on the lake. You can take the paddles yourself (550 rupees / 1 hour) or get a boatmen (750 rupees an hour).
We visited the “Old Bazaar” as we were expecting a colorful market. The only things that remained of the “old” market, are wore down houses and tiny shops, that sell tobacco, chips and drinks.
Along the lake there numerous bars and restaurants, which look pretty charming in the evening.
But I guess if you’re not a fullblood hiker, it’s hard to kill the time in Pokhara. We were glad that we visited PKH as it was the complete opposite of Kathmandu, and the locals definitely were nicer as well. There were zero beggars in the center of Pokhara.
Obviously for the new year’s eve festivities the whole city was on fire. It seemed like the streets were more packed than in our country Luxembourg, where we come from. Forget fancy! We grabbed some cheap street food, bought a bottle of wine, emptied the wine from the bottle, followed the crowds and watched a live band, who was later announcing the classic 30 seconds countdown for the new decade. Following that, we went to the bar “Busy Bee”, where we stayed the rest of the night. The evening started with a live band playing loud Metallica & Nirvana songs. After the gig they played some dance tunes. We met some folks at the bar, and got to know our new friend Ishan from Kathmandu, who was just visiting Pokhara with two of his european guests. His first night drunk as a hindu. The night ended with grilled chicken skewers, the part that I couldn’t remember the next morning.
Last night in Kathmandu.
We had to spend one more night in Kathmandu, to get back home through their international airport. It was a last busy day, as we still had a few things on our list that we wanted to bring to Luxembourg. And we really wanted to buy a handmade healing bowl, as we were introduced to its healing power, and meditating sounds
In the last early morning, we went out to do some filming in the streets of Kathmandu, when the locals started to spread out their boxes and getting ready for the street markets. While we were passing by a group of colorful women, all dressed up in traditional clothes, we noticed a slimmed down buffalo that was attached to a lamp-post. We remembered the cow later, as I was about to film the animal, but then I thought we should move on to more interesting spots in the city.
Approximately one hour later, as we were looking for an ATM in the alleys of the “maze”, we passed by the same spot, and witnessed how the local had already put down the buffalo on the asphalt, and started to bind all legs together with a rope. The locals were building up a human shield around the grounded animal to avoid tourists filming the scene. It was obvious that they were about to slaughter the animal, as the whole scene took place in front of a tiny temple. Seconds later, the first blood drops were staining the pavement. Moment later they decapitated the animal and put its head inside the temple.
Because of my job I already had witnessed a couple of human corpses and too many dead animals. I wasn’t shocked. Even as a kid I could watch my uncles slaughtering rabbits and chicken in the backyard of my grand-father’s house.
Later on, while thinking about what just happened, I concluded that it actually was more impressive and shocking, because of the way they were dealing with the animal. As soon as they got the cow on the ground, a choir of older men, started chanting mantras, and playing musical instruments. Kids, teenagers, adults were watching the scene. Some were holding the rope to avoid the animal to get up on its feet. And it wasn’t just slitting up the throat, to kill it. The animal got decapitated in the most cruel way, while making a celebration out of it. Just for making an offering to their god, and hoping for a better next-life. This became one of those travel memories that we won’t forget.