Nepal 1: Kathmandu to Pokhara

            We got into Kathmandu at midnight, exhausted from a 5-hour flight from Hong Kong and a 6 hour layover in Delhi.  Adriana, Monica and I could tell before leaving the airport that we were not in Hong Kong anymore.  Dusty concrete floors led us past blocked off, newly painted white walls into a square brick room with low ceilings and crowds cluttered around in tight groups.

          We queued, then entered details into a visa-processing machine, then queued some more and paid a fee.  We posed for pictures, got inspected, got stamped, got welcomed to Nepal—then staggered to the money exchange counter where 300 US dollars gave me more 500 rupee notes then I reckoned I could spend in an entire lifetime.  Crowds pushed by as I crammed rupees into my wallet, passport holder and three different pockets.

We got a taxi and headed for the tourist district Thamel through dark, narrow, dusty streets.  There were tiny brick shacks held up by scaffolding and already we saw piles of bricks left behind by the earthquake.

We got to Thamel where groups of people were milling about the street and police officers looked military and scary.  But everything looks scary in the night when you arrive in a foreign country without orientation.  We parked in the middle of the busy intersection and the driver took out his mobile, dialed and started muttering the name of the hotel “Aryatara” into the phone.

One of the military men came over, glared, and motioned that we had to move.  The driver continued muttering “aryatara” as the officer started to yell. Finally the driver gave in and pulled forward before veering across traffic to a dark side street where he stopped and continued: “aryatara, Kathmandu, hotel aryatara, Kathmandu.” He repeated this into the phone for 3 or 4 more minutes and something somehow clicked and he sighed in satisfaction: “Yes, Aryatara Kathmandu” then he jolted into action down another dirt road.  We bounced up and down a potholed road along a chain link fence that wound up and down a collapsing brick wall strangled by tropical vines, begonias and jumbled barbed wire.

            We reached the hotel gate where a smiling security guard waved us in with a salute: “I am here to watch over you.  I am going to stay awake all night to make sure you are safe!”

After a long sleep we had breakfast along with the first of endless cups of masala tea, then headed out into Kathmandu.  Even after having traveled to many poor countries we were shocked at the level of poverty in Kathmandu—the pollution and damage from the earthquake were difficult to grasp.  Thamel is a tourist district, jammed with little international cafes and restaurants as well as more local shacks with dirt floors crammed full of short men on short stools wearing the traditional hats called dhakas and drinking tea. There were rows and rows of shops selling all the typical backpacker souvenirs and mind blowing Tibetan mandalas and artwork, woven blankets, scarves, etc.  Walking from our hotel we went by the North Face, Patagonia, Marmot, and other world-class outdoor gear retailers and then dozens more stores selling “Nepal brand” North Face knockoffs.  Nepal must be the only country on Earth with a North Face store and no McDonalds.

We walked towards the historic centre and went by beautiful stupas and temples covered in Tibetan prayer flags blowing in the wind off open plazas surrounded by little brick houses with open wooden windows.  Everywhere there was gold and glitter and beautiful geometric patterns.  It was enchanting but the air quality was so poor that it was hard to enjoy the experience: we wore down quickly.  The pollution in Kathmandu is primarily from diesel fuel as opposed to the pollution we experience from factories in China.  Combine this with the clouds of dust that come from heavy city traffic on run down dirt roads and its difficult to breathe or see at all.  Throw in incessant honking of horns, stray dogs and cows, touts trying to sell hash, tours, tuk tuk rides, bracelets, whatever.  Then there’s tornadoes of pigeons whirling towards thrown seeds then away from cars, and groups of monkeys used the jumbles of telephone wires as an acrobatic playground: they are always looking down with scheming, suspicious, lustful eyes.

 Kathmandu is not more hectic or polluted then a place like Bangkok, nor more poor and rundown than Cambodia, yet for whatever reason I found it hard to survive for long outside here without getting worn down and overwhelmed.

            Along a long walk we passed huge piles of bricks where buildings once stood, and others half collapsed with scaffolding holding the remains up.  We got to the historic center of Durbar Square and hired a tour guide to show us around the complex.  This area is known for its temples and palaces, and the kings and queens of Nepal have been living here since 300 BCE.  Its also a communal gathering point where people sit, drink chai, read the paper, chat, pray, play cards, smoke and so on.

            Seeing the earthquake damage throughout the area was overwhelming, as the guide would point to a pile of bricks and recount how it had been a 5 story high temple.  He would point at various piles and say “(20/30/40) people died in there while praying.  He had been in the square during the earthquake and talked about how “the road was dancing” up and down and side to side as in every direction buildings fell and screaming people ran every which way.

            I’m awful with Hindu cosmology, and various descriptions of Gods and rituals didn’t even begin to penetrate my over stimulated brain at this point, but it was lovely to see the people offer incense and flowers to the various Gods, and just to watch the women in colorful saris and men in cute little hats go about their business throughout the square.   In Nepal temples are multidenominational and Buddhists and Hindus use the same temples and monuments for worship, and I could’ve watched the prayers and rituals all day.  We went into a courtyard where a “living Goddess” called the kumari comes out each day to bless people who gather.  The kumari’s gaze can cure any illness or pain.  She is a young woman and she serves as a Goddess until she hits puberty when she returns to mortal life as a normal human.  I would imagine the shift from Goddess to average teenager as an awkward transition on top of all other trials of adolescence.  She was going to come out at 4 PM but we were not willing to stand around long enough to see her.

We went into the old palace itself where there were still some four or five hundred year old carved trees used as columns holding stone roofs up, even as other towers and areas had collapsed completely.  5-story high stones surrounded the square courtyard and there were statues of Gods all around but, sadly, a crack ran diagonally down the entire façade and we could see where enormous sections had fallen.  In the middle were dozens of statues of deities all laid out in rows awaiting rebuilding.   It made a powerful impression, seeing the carvings and about half of the façade of the building standing with so many more of the statues crumbled and the dramatic crack going diagonally down the whole building.  It was tragic to see and think of the recent human cost, and also profound in reflecting on life, death and the transience of even a many hundred year old building.  The guide said the plan was for it to be rebuilt but that it would take at least 20 years with Nepal’s corrupt and inefficient government running the show.

           We went into an incense-filled Tibetan mandala shop where all the walls were covered by geometric designs that blended into a kaleidoscope of colors and shapes.  We sat down on stools by a table and the shopkeeper began to roll mandalas out one after the other, telling stories of how the Dalai Lama or other leaders had designed them and they had first been made as the famous sand paintings that are painstakingly laid out for weeks then systematically destroyed.  


Each sparkled with little bits of gold and the geometric patterns became optical illusions where shapes popped in and out.  There were waves, dancers, swirls, pyramids, all catching the eye then fading away.  One depicted the life of Buddha around the outside then had a circle inside that resembled heaven and hell with nice happy heaven imagery at the top and scary demons at the bottom.  I was fascinated to see this depicted on a circle with heaven and hell part of the same cycle, and the guide explained that in each reincarnation we are born somewhere around this circle, its but a roll of the dice if we’re born into heaven or hell.  Inside this was another circle representing the mind and inner body, then in the middle was the enlightened Buddha state.  I found it fascinating how wherever on the circle you are born you can end up transcending body and mind and becoming a Buddha or you can continue in this cycle, that ultimately heaven and hell can both be real places on earth but are also transitory.  Each reincarnation can lead to transcendence or further into illusion.  Some people are born wealthy or lucky yet continue in their delusion (or fall deeper into it) while others are born in poverty and transcend.

            Monica and I each selected a mandala for about 40 USD.  Mine was orange around the edges with a lot of blue and red.  I wish now I had bought more for family and friends.

            Upon leaving Durbar Square we went into an air conditioned, western coffee shop that showcased fair trade Nepal coffee and watched the people come and go outside from our little sterile air conditioned bubble: it was like watching a movie of a foreign land.  Then we went to get curry on “Freak Street” which is where the hippies settled when they came to Nepal back before Lonely Planet when it was a legendary mystical place.  This area used to sell hashish legally in storefronts until the late 70s when the US government decided as it often does to impose its moral code on the rest of the world and forced the Nepal government to make it illegal,  now ironic based on the US legalizing the plant and exporting it to the rest of the world.  After hash was made illegal the government officials ran around with sticks saying “stupid hippies get off the grass!” for a few years and the hippies left for a time then came back but shifted to Thamel District from Freak Street.  A few coffee shops and restaurants remained.  We had the best curry I have ever tasted for about 1.50 US in a simple but beautifully decorated little restaurant.  It was mushroom curry with peanuts and a sauce that was just spicy enough.  They had a beautiful painting on the wall of all the years when Nepal got hit by earthquakes and “we will rise again” which was very inspiring.

            We went back to Thamel to shop for the trek as I needed a sleeping bag and Adriana and Monica needed headlamps, scarves and various other items.  We visited a few local shops and I tried to look at the stitching carefully and pretended I knew how to shop.  We tried the authentic North Face store and everything was much more expensive than I wanted to spend so I pretended to carefully and knowledgably inspect more sleeping bags through 2 or 3 stores until I lost interest and took the next fake North Face one that was shown to me which promised to keep me warm down to -5 degrees and only cost 60 USD compared to $300 or 400 at the real North Face store.

            Monica had a Korean friend living in Kathmandu who it was time to have dinner with; we went to an incredibly good Middle Eastern restaurant that filled the table with more bread and hummus and spicy dishes then we could ever eat, then it was time to sleep and dream about the first views of the mighty Himalayas that I had waited for my whole life to see which would take place on the plane ride the next morning.

            And when the morning came we ate a quick breakfast then went to the airport to find our flight was delayed by an hour. 15 minutes before the flight they announced it was delayed again by 1 more hour!  So we paced around the Kathmandu airport and read and stretched and talked, then it was delayed 1 more hour, then 5 minutes before the new departure time it was delayed again so we circled the airport some more.  This cycle continued for 5 hours and it felt like we were in some weird social experiment where they were seeing how long we would fall for it and keep our cool.  Amazingly, we still weren’t at each other’s throats but we began to think Buddha Airlines was a scam and that there really were no airplanes.  The alternative airline was Yeti and perhaps any plane was as likely to appear as an actual Yeti.  The woman at the counter told us they would continue delaying it until 4 PM before finally making the decision to cancel.  We could cancel our flight for a full refund and still catch the last public 6-hour bus to Pokhara.

            So we got our bags and left the airport and a taxi driver asked us if we wanted to go to Pokhara and convinced us to take the taxi for 100 bucks total which was much cheaper than our flight had been.

            We went through truly awful traffic jams and dirty neighborhoods of more crumbly buildings where cows napped and dug through plastic rubbish in the middle of the street.  Finally we got to the edge of the city and onto a windy road down the side of a hill with terraced rice fields all around us, yet the traffic didn’t improve.  I was still waiting for my first view of the Himalayas and envisioning it like my first view of the Rockies on a road trip cross country years before where the white mountains appeared in the distance then got closer and closer like zooming in on a camera until they were larger then life.  But it was grey in every direction.

            We went up and down more windy hills and began following a river through a wide valley.  There was some vegetation but a lot of brown and grey and many little rice farms.  The river was beautiful but not at all what I would have expected.  Our driver was unbelievable at winding his way through cars although it was hard to look sometimes as he passed a bus while a truck raced towards us from the other direction.

The drive went on for hours and hours and it was so dusty and grey:  trucks had bumper stickers with profound messages like “Honk horn!” painted across the back in huge letters. These trucks produced so much exhaust it was hard to breathe.  We then stopped at a little restaurant over the river at a junction and the driver pointed out the road to India filled with heavy traffic and the empty road 2 hours that led on East to Pokhara.  I knew we were close to Annapurna, the 10^th highest mountain in the world, and could almost taste its presence. At each and every bend I still expected /hoped to see the huge snow capped mountains appear but every turn only brought more grey until it gradually faded to black.  Then I started to feel guilty about how badly I cared about seeing a stupid pretty view after reflecting on the earthquake damage and all the poverty around us, the whole idea of traveling so far and spending so much just to look at the mountains seemed petty and irrelevant in the midst of all the pain and suffering.

Finally, we got to Pokhara town and the ground was indeed wet. This confirmed it had at least rained a shower or two to cancel our flight.  We went through Pokhara town and we had booked an unusually nice hotel on the edge of town with beautifully manicured green lawns, a pool, and a plantation-esque white façade.  Again I went to sleep dreaming of my first view of the mighty Himalayas to come in the morning.