Part 84 - Return to Kathmandu and अलविदा Nepal!

There's never a dull moment taking a bus in Nepal - overtaking on blind corners seems to be the national sport - and come the rainy season, you've got the added excitement of thunderstorms and the very real danger of landslides sliding your vehicle off a mountain. So imagine my delight when the heavens opened on the way back to Kathmandu just as we were queueing precariously at the edge of a cliff. 

I love it when they're still building the road you're supposed to be driving along 

I'd picked a hotel very close to the "Tourist Bus Stop", but as is befitting a country that turns its nose up at conventional time zones (Nepal is currently 4¾ hours ahead of UK time) and four-sided flags ...

Why do flags have to be rectangular anyway?

... the Tourist Bus Stop is only for picking up passengers. Alighting passengers must be dropped off in a quagmire over a mile away. It was a muddy, soggy, and bedraggled Richie that squelched into his hotel about half an hour later, although as always, they were very kind and didn't seem to mind me traipsing mud all over their nice clean hotel. 

One benefit of all the rain was it cleared away a lot of the pollution, and the next morning I was greeted with blue skies and clear lungs as I wandered round the city. 

The local botanical gardens, known as Bhandarkhal Jungle Park, had more monkeys than I would have liked, but to be fair, they were quite cute and didn't look like they were about to steal my glasses or ice cream...

I even witnessed someone running here, which was a first in Nepal

And while I'm on the subject of ice cream ...

That's not how I'd spell "cotton candy" either

It's quite understandable that a Nepalese company is naming their Brazilian ice cream after a Scottish mountain - I can't think of any famous mountains in Nepal.  

On my last day, I thought I'd visit another couple of religious attractions so first up was the Pashupatinath Temple, a Hindu temple and cremation site near the river. And when I say cremation site, they just hauled the coffinless bodies out of ambulances and took them to the site for the cremation. 

Funeral pyres and a rather forlorn cow standing in the river

Holy cow!

It was quite a large complex with a lot of history and meaning, and it's safe to say that yet again, I had no idea what was going on. In fact, "I've no idea what's going on" would have made a better name for this blog instead of "Travels with my robot".

Just up for the road from the Hindu temple was the site of what one lying guidebook called the largest Buddhist stupa in Asia. However, it is still quite impressive. As is traditional for Nepal, it's got the trademark "half open" eyes that it suppose to convey omniscience, but instead gives the impression that he's "onto you". 

The stupa also had an impressive collection of prayer flags which you see all over Nepal. I liked them so much I even bought the t-shirt!

I took the above photo in the airport in Dubai (I'm a wee bit out-of-date with these blog posts). It was quite the eye-opener flying into the ultra-snazzy Dubai airport, which regularly wins loveliness awards and where everything runs like clockwork, and contrasting it with Kathmandu airport where everything runs on "Nepal time" and the only award it's ever won is for the world's mankiest sugar bowl. 

The amount of "double dipping" I witnessed was criminal 

However, without wanting to repeat myself, Nepalese people really were lovely, and nearly every interaction I had with locals left me slightly happier than I was seconds before. I went to get a haircut and asked the price and the elderly barber told me to pay whatever I liked. A canny move on his part, and I probably paid about three times too much, but he was effusive in his gratitude and probably would have been even if I'd not given him enough. 

Next up, the United Arab Emirates and edging ever closer to home.