The flight to Kathmandu was pretty uneventful, but if you enjoy queues, Kathmandu airport is the place to be. First you had to queue up to show your Covid vaccination. Then after queueing to fill in a visa form online, you had to queue to pay for it. The guy INSISTED I had to pay for my visa with cash, and I INSISTED that I didn't have any. The standoff was eventually broken when he begrudgingly gave me a shiny new EPOS machine (maybe he didn't want to wear it out). Then it was a queue to actually get the visa, and another queue to go through a metal detector (a measure apparently implemented to catch gold smugglers). It went off for every single person but the airport staff didn't give two hoots, thus rendering the entire operation pointless. Then I just had to avoid the queue of drivers trying to inveigle me into my taxi and I was on my way.
My first hotel was quite nice, although I had two major gripes with it. One
was the route I had to take to get to my room (trigger warning for
acrophobics! Oh, and I got bitten by something halfway through the video so excuse the crude language)
My other gripe was the incredibly pushy guy who owned the tour agency
attached to the hostel. He was giving me his sales pitch before I'd even
checked in, and again at dinner, then twice at breakfast the next day. I
eventually told him that the more he tried to sell me stuff, the less likely
I would be to buy. It's a shame because his website was one of the best I've
seen selling tours, but he'd already pissed on his chips by this point. And
judging by the rinsing others gave him on booking.com, he does it a lot. (but
only people who stay in private rooms. He knows where the money is).
I therefore decamped to another hotel for the remainder of my stay in
Kathmandu where everyone was very nice and nobody tried to sell me
anything.
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The view from the roof of my second hotel |
Anyway, Kathmandu itself ... it's certainly not without its charms, although
the noise, traffic, and pollution would certainly make it one of the top trumps in my "cities" Top Trumps game that I'm thinking of making that I almost certainly won't.
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| I've even added a "fun fact" about each city at the bottom |
Thankfully, the heat was manageable. And I know I've said this about a lot
of places, but Nepalese people are so polite and nice, that it makes up for
the fact that I nearly got run over and I was struggling to breathe
sometimes!
Traffic lights don't appear to be a thing in Nepal. Instead, they employ up
to three policemen to direct traffic at busy junctions. Like in Thailand and
Vietnam, crossing the road was like having a game of Frogger. Someone
advised me to just tag along with an old person crossing the road - bikes
and cars are more likely to slow down for them, and the fact that they've
reached old age would suggest they're quite good at crossing roads.
To get my daily dose of culture, I visited Swoyambhu Mahachaitya, which
thankfully also goes by the easier-to-pronounce name of the Monkey
Temple. My heart sank when I saw the temple in the distance, as it was on a
massive hill. Whilst Kathmandu wasn't uncomfortably hot, 30C is fine for
sitting about enjoying a cool drink, not for hoofing it up hundreds (365 to be
precise) of stairs, whilst simultaneously trying to avoid thieving monkeys and
people selling you stuff you didn't need.
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Yay. A hill! |
Once I made it to the top, there were cracking views over Kathmandu to
enjoy.
Also at the top, there were a stupa with crazy eyes that appears on plenty of
postcards and other souvenirs. It was surrounded by scaffolding, but I still
managed to take a couple of (terrible) photos. This is the best of a bad
bunch.
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Not sure I really need to be in this picture, but nevertheless, here
I am |
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Watch yourself ... |
There were various other Buddhist and temples and shrines at the top, all
very pretty and all completely over my head.
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Oh, and lots more monkeys, which you always have to keep an eye on, as they'll
nick your glasses for japes apparently. If you are a fan of monkeys and random stuff
on fire, this is the video is for you.
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The Instagram garden |
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| Lakshmi, the Hindu Goddess of Wealth and me (I'm on the left) |
A special mention has to go to the food in Nepal, which is delicious, and
served with proper eating utensils. Fans of the game "Guess the Cutlery" will be disappointed to learn that every meal seems to be eaten with a
fork and spoon, but at least I can use both implements without throwing food
everywhere (except into my mouth).
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| Dal Bhat and some other stuff. I don't think I'd make a very good food writer. |
I was also lucky enough to meet up with Derrick, my aunt's friend from Niagara-on-the-Lake (although I would like to think he is my friend as well!). He works an engineer, and involved with dam-building projects here, so he was a fount of useful information about Nepal. He was also very good company, and kindly took me out for dinner and a drink afterwards, so if you're reading this Derrick, thank you very much and I'll hopefully see you in September.
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| Derrick and I enjoying a spot of French cuisine |
Next up. A slightly bumpy bus journey (which deserves a page all to itself) to Pokhara.
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