Author: Claire

This week we wish our family and friends who celebrate, a very Healthy and Happy New Year! We learned here in Nepal that our 2017 is actually their year 2074…

Loren and I started our week in Bhaktapur, about an hour away from Kathmandu by car. We walked around Durbar Square, appreciating the incredibly intricate detailed hand carvings on the wood at so many of the temples, and, mourning the need for ongoing rebuilding from the destruction that occurred in the 2015 earthquake. For example, stairs to some of the temples remain, but the temples are completely gone. 

At dinner in our hotel’s restaurant we tasted our first Juju Dhau, a traditional sweetened yogurt that is famous in Bhaktapur. I should also mention that our favorite dishes in Nepal have been, for Loren, vegetable Thuppa which is a noodle soup, and, for me, vegetable Momo, which are dumplings, or, Loren likes to call them Nepali ravioli. We have also both enjoyed vegetable Pakouda, a deep fried delight, and Papad Masala which is papadam with veggies peanuts and a light sauce sprinkled on top, a bit like nachos. I also appreciate vegetable Dal Bhat – rice with lentils, and sometimes served with a piece of papadam, pickle sauce, Nepali spinach, and curried vegetables. Over dinner on this particular night, we met an interesting Italian man, and enjoyed conversations with him at dinner and over breakfast. This first photo is a morning view from our hotel rooftop.

With our newest friend from Lombardia, we visited the “Peacock window,” walked to the river where cremations are done, visited the museum, and, saw the “55 Window Royal Palace.” There were none happening this day, however, we did witness a ceremonial – what we surmise was an offering – of a cock, that included methodical decorating of a shrine before and after the beheading. We also saw the before and after – again we assume to be an offering – of two goats, which was accompanied afterwards by a lengthy musical tribute by about a dozen men sitting in a circle playing horns. We bade our friend farewell after lunch together, then Loren and I returned to Kathmandu by taxi.

This week included Christmas. The Nepali were honoring their tourists, with lights and special offers. We first enjoyed celebrating with FaceTime visits with Loren’s Mom and Sister, and, with my Brother, Sister-in-law and one of our Nieces.

We then had a light dinner on Christmas Eve in the restaurant downstairs from our hotel, and returned there on Christmas at 2pm for a most leisurely dinner, which included sparkling wine, appetizer, main course, desert, cognac and coffee. We thoroughly enjoyed the peaceful atmosphere of the quiet restaurant… for nearly 6 hours!

Santa brought us each a massage and we watched a video of Little Buddha which our Italian friend who we met in Bhaktapur had suggested we see. 

One other memorable experience for us this week was in visiting Pashupatinath with our New Zealand friend from our hotel. We went by taxi to this, Nepal’s holiest Hindu site that is devoted to Shiva. It is located on the banks of the Bagmati River. One writeup suggests that it is “always abuzz with pilgrims and sadhus (Hindu holy men), a place of somber worship, as it is also the city’s most important cremation ground.” It too is a World Heritage site. Here we respectfully witnessed some cremations, and, we saw the body of one deceased elderly man being prepared, which included a ritualistic foot bath. 

I also want to mention how impressed we have been with the hardworking people we have met, including many who are young adults – in our hotel, the restaurants we have frequented, and elsewhere, and always with a greeting, smile and generosity of spirit. It is so touching and endearing! At the same time we have been dismayed to observe some abject illness, disease – some seeming worthy of medical care or hospitalization, and extreme poverty, that we have come across in parts of Nepal. Certain memories of Lumbini, Bhaktapur, and Pashupatinath stand out as examples. How I wish the turning of the western year could bring a turning of fortune for all these people! We are consoled with the notion that at the very least our tourist dollars are helping in some small way. 

This week we wish to those who celebrate, a very Merry Christmas! This will be Loren’s and my second Christmas spent away from home on our Journey…

We were finishing our second trek in Nepal at the beginning of this week. At breakfast in our hotel in Dhulikhel, a bird came to the nearby balcony and serenaded us for quite a while.  

After breakfast we hiked to Namo Buddha for our last overnight of the trek, and stayed  at the monastery called Thrangu Tashi Yangtse. This is much bigger than the other monastery where we had stayed in Lumbini. Where that one had just 3 adult and 3 youth monks, this one had 200 adult and 150 youth. It was built as a tribute to the “place of Great Compassion,” the site where Buddha, in a former life, had selflessly given his body to a starving tigress to feed her cubs.

The meditations at Namo Buddha were more elaborate in that they included a larger number of percussion instruments, and some parading of sacred objects during the prayers. The meals too by contrast were very simple, methodically dished out by the youth from huge containers – as we sat seat by seat, row by row, compared to the generous, more family style meals in Lumbini. 

From Namo Buddha, our return drive included a stop in Sanga to see an enormous status to Lord Shiva, The Destroyer, one of the three most prominent Gods of Hinduism. We had originally intended to hike here and spend the night, but we opted to continue on back to Kathmandu by car from Namo Buddha instead, as we had taken an extra night earlier in the week, and, it would have been “hiking” strictly on paved city streets. We also stopped at Boudhanath Stupa in the eastern outskirts of Kathmandu. This is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and considered the holiest Buddhist temple outside Tibet. With Dil, we enjoyed our lunch at a rooftop restaurant with great views of the stupa. I asked him if he would please write our names in Nepali script, which he seemed happy to do, writing first the characters, then adding the line at the end over each word.

Back in Kathmandu, we said goodbye to Dil, and settled back into our cheerful hotel room, which Loren has decorated with two strings of prayer flags. We have enjoyed two fun dinners out as well. One with the young woman who we had met in Nargakot, and who was preparing to leave for her trek to Everest Base Camp. The other with our friend who is staying at our same hotel. At her suggestion, today we are on our way overnight to Bhaktapur – about an hour from Kathmandu to see Durbar Square there. 

We wish our Dear Family and Friends a Happy Hanukkah, to all who celebrate!

This week we met some fellow travelers at our hotel. With one, we made a date for a night out to dinner together. Originally from Chile, then Easter Island, she now lives in New Zealand. She is not leaving Kathmandu until the same day that we are, so we will be able to spend more time with her. We also met a couple of American filmmakers who had sold their home in Florida. Before they left for the airport we enjoyed a couple of conversations, one about the film they just made about building a volunteer Earthship in Nepal. Loren and I had stayed at an Earthship in Taos, New Mexico last year, where the architectural design was developed. We learned from this couple that PT stands for Perpetual Traveler. Loren and I know that we are not PTs, we are simply on extended travels, for now.

We also had an enchanting afternoon and evening at the Garden of Dreams. This was once a palatial garden that had fallen into disrepair, and has been reopened now for some few years. It affords innumerable nooks with bench seating, where it seemed that nearly as many couples sat close, enjoying the quiet solitude. We spotted our first Christmas tree at the cafe here and splurged on a light meal. I noticed that some dishes on the menu included the GOD acronym in the name. At dusk, flocks and flocks of crows cawed and cawed as they flew nearby, as they do each  morning near our hotel, but this evening being outside reminded us both of the Alfred Hitchcock thriller, The Birds. By staying to eat, we were then treated to the attractive night lighting of the grounds. This park offers a welcome respite from the chaotic city streets just outside the Garden walls.

The rest of the week found us with Dil again. This time he was guiding us on a trek in the Kathmandu Valley. On the way to our starting point by car, we stopped at Gokarna Mahadev Temple. I had read that this is “a visual A-Z of Hindu iconography.” The only image I could identify with any certainty was Brahma, from his four heads. Brahma is the supreme Hindu diety, called the Creator. Dil helped me identify a few others that were less known to me.

We then began our trek in the town of Sundarijal, along the southern edge of the Shivapuri-Nagarjun National Park. We trekked north, on trails in lush forested “hills” – which to us are more massive than that name implies. True to the write up I had read, we passed through several traditional villages, and saw many, many small farms, each home to a buffalo or two, some goats – more so than sheep, and usually several chickens.

We had our first views of the snow-capped Langtang range of Himalayan peaks as we approached Chisapani at the north end of Shivapuri Park. Also spelled Chisaapaani, it means cold water. This tiny village where we spent our first night had been all but eliminated in the 2015 earthquake. We learned from our guesthouse family that sadly, “six people were killed here, and everyone was injured.” The owners of the most badly damaged buildings have chosen not to rebuild and since relocated to Kathmandu. Such a tragic event for such an idyllic setting… 

We continued on after breakfast with our next night’s ambitious – for us – destination of Nargakot. The  downward slope to Jhule village was incredibly steep, demanding that we take it extra slow, so we stopped for overnight accommodations with a lovely Nepalese family just outside Jhule instead. 

The panorama of surrounding mountains on our Kathmandu Valley trek were supposed to include Mount Everest, but, for our two whole days out, the easterly direction toward Everest had been completely shrouded in haze. We did have wonderful views of the Ganesh and Langtang peaks though…

As we set out again in the morning for Nargakot, I spoke out loud my prayer for the haze to clear off. And with each string of prayer flags that I saw as we walked, I silently said my plea. When we arrived in Nargakot, not only was it was completely clear, it remained so until sunset, and we were able to pick Everest out in the distance from a detailed map provided by our hotel. In the photo below, she is barely visible in the background to the right of the highest peak in the center. There were some friendly people at our Nargakot accommodation, and we especially enjoyed talking in Italian with a couple from the Lombardia region of Italy, and, a young woman from New Zealand. Another young couple with their year old son, from Canada, will spend the year working in Kathmandu.

Nepal is home to 8 – more than half – of the world’s 14 highest peaks over 8,000 meters. We had already seen Dhaulagiri living up to its name, “The Shining White Mountain,” and the Annapurna Massif from our first trek to Poon Hill with Dil on another beautiful, clear morning. We had seen Manaslu, ‘The Mountain of Spirits,” the Annapurna Massif, and Dhaulagiri, from a distance when Loren and I had hiked up to Sarangkot from Pokhara too. But Mount Everest, known in Nepali as Sagarmatha, is the tallest in the world at 29,035 feet or 8,850 meters from sea level, striding the border with Tibet. It is also known as Chomolungma or Qomolangma in Tibet, and Zhumulangma Feng or Shengmu Feng in China. Most westerners refer to her by the British surveyor’s name.

We were so lucky that the skies remained clear on through to sunrise to see her again, with an even better clarity to our view. Our Italian friends were up on the rooftop early too, to share in the excitement. I asked Loren to help point out Mount Everest in the distance so that there is no mistaking now just which peak is hers.

As we continued our trek and viewed the surrounding Himalayan vistas, I came up with a way to help me remember the names of the peaks from west to east. It started out as just mangle:

     “DAM5-Mach-ManGLE (SCZ),” which stands for Dhaulagiri, the Annapurna Massif
     with peaks named I, III, IV, II and South, Machapuchre, Manaslu, Ganesh, Langtang
and Everest (also known as Sagarmatha, Chomalunga, or Zhumulangma Feng).

Everest was still visible as we began our day trekking to Dhuilikhil. Can you find her again? As the morning wore on, our views of the unfolding scenery were similarly spectacular.

We began this week enjoying the postponed dinner date with our newlywed friends from Shanghai, then had one more full day in Lumbini. Over breakfast at our Tourist restaurant, we met a couple from the Piedmont region in Italy who Loren enjoyed talking with in Italian. We learned that, like us, they have no children. We hope to visit someday at their home in Turin, and to meet their beloved cat. We said farewell to our friends from Shanghai at breakfast too, they went to stay at the Canadian Monastery.

Loren and I rented bicycles again and rode over to see the Visitor’s Center and Lumbini Museum in the Park. We also stopped at a couple of Nepali monasteries, and, the last monastery we saw was the Canadian one. We had been invited to spend more respite time at our Swiss/Austrian monastery where we had stayed the night, where we had another couple of hours of reading, prayer and meditation.

We had an unusual experience, when first I noticed a small dark protrusion on the forehead of the monastery’s dog, which I had not seen before but imagined it must have been there all along. A bit later, Loren told me he had flicked a “worm” off the dog, then took me to see what he meant. I realized then that dog had picked up a leech. I had read about these being most active above 4000 feet and during the wet monsoon. It was therefore interesting to find one at 500 feet in the dry monsoon. In just a short while it had grown from about a quarter inch to more than an inch in length. The Nepali man who maintains parts of the monastery and who speaks little English confirmed, yes it was a “leechee” and that they live in the tall grasses outside the monastery walls.

The next morning we were up quite early for our 5am bus to Kathmandu. Our predicted 12 hour ride turned out to be 15, between heavy traffic, stops for construction, and more standstills while emergency sirens wailed as we approached the outskirts of KTM. The nice comparison of this bus to the other two we had ridden in Nepal, was that it had a video screen and showed Nepali and Bollywood movies. We enjoyed passing part of the time with their music videos, romances and dramas. Even without subtitles, the plots were discernible from the actions.

One afternoon back in KTM we walked the 2 kilometers – just over a mile, to see Swayambhunath Stupa, nicknamed the ‘monkey temple’ for all the rhesus macaques who inhabit the area. It was worth climbing the long staircase for the views at sunset.

We also enjoyed two more dinner dates with our special friends from Shanghai this week. They had returned to Kathmandu to prepare for their flight home, and, we already know that they arrived in China, safe, and to a cooler time of the year.

Otherwise, we have spent the week laying low, planning our next trek in Kathmandu Valley, and preparing for more of the next months of our Journey. We are enjoying our time here. We have neat hotel co-owners, who gifted Loren and all their staff with a Nepali style hat. And, we have the best room – we know so because this week when we asked to  move back to it, the staff confirmed, everyone asks for Room 405. It has a south facing wall with double windows, which helps it feel cheerful and also keeps it warm.

Finally, this week I just had to snap a photo at a restaurant where we have eaten some of our meals, the image on their wall captures our Journey for me.

After returning to Pokhara from our Poon Hill trek, we visited Helping Hands spa for a massage – this is a place where people who are deaf and blind work, and we especially enjoyed our massages knowing that we were supporting this community. Afterwards, we made a short hike up to a giant gold Buddha tribute, nestled on a hillside behind town.

We met our newest friends from Shanghai who stayed at our same AirBnB. They are on their marriage trip and had just returned from a trek the day after us. The husband is Chinese and the wife is originally from Kyrgyzstan. Lucky for us, they speak English very well. In fact I also want to express my gratitude for all the people – both locals and foreigners who we meet as we travel who speak English, which makes our Journey so much easier to navigate and more fun. We enjoyed several conversations in the common area of our AirBnb home together and, as they too were heading to Lumbini the day after us, we exchanged emails and made plans to meet up there. We then bade our beautiful, kind, family hosts farewell, and took our 8:30am Tourist bus to Lumbini.

This bus was the fastest we have ever ridden on such a long, bumpy and curvy road. Our driver had brakes squealing and horn honking nearly all seven and a half hours. We were told it would be a six to seven hour trip, I wonder how long it would have taken if he had had gone slower? But he was adept and we arrived safe and sound.

Between congregating before departure and during three brief rest stops, we noticed some of our fellow Tourists. Once in Lumbini, we would recognize each other as the tourist area in town is small and we took meals at the same restaurant that served food prepared with safe water for Tourists. The restaurant has a creative Earth friendly way of providing candles on each table. Here we shared a few chats with couples from France, and the couple who we talked with the most – beginning on the bus, were from Bangalor, India. These two are platonic friends and retired co-workers. He had been on a long trek before she joined him in Nepal for to visit other parts of the country. 

Lumbini is birthplace of Prince Siddhartha Gautama, who during his lifetime became the Buddha or Shakyamuni Buddha. The name Shakyamuni or Sakyamuni is a tribute to Shakya or Sayka, the name of the tribe into which he was born. We learned the sweet story of how Queen Maya, dreamt of an elephant under the full moon, which announced Siddhartha’s conception. Later, while on her journey to deliver the baby in her parents home which was tradition, she stopped in Lumbini to bathe. This is where she felt her labor come on. This site, reported “lost for centuries,” is now a vast park. It has a very long, central mall, with most of that designed for water deep enough to allow for boat shuttle. It includes an eternal flame at the Maya Devi end – the actual birth site, and a Peace Pagoda at the far other end.

Monasteries, temples, pagodas, stupas, meditation centers, a museum, and other offerings built by Buddhists from different countries are situated on either the eastern or western sides of the mall. Loren and I rented bicycles to visit many of these sites. We began at Maya Devi where we saw the largest tribute of prayer flags imaginable. I learned how the colors in the flags represent 5 elements: yellow for the earth, green the water, red for fire, white for air, blue for sky.

Finding all the memorial sites was a bit challenging given the park size and layout, and poor maps to little signage, so we visited the ones we could find in random order. On our first day we only had time before dusk to see temples built by Buddhists from Singapore, and another for Germans, where Loren spun one of their four giant prayer wheels.

We had met our Bangalor friends in passing a couple of times during that first day. When we saw them at the side of the boat dock at the end of the day, we learned that she had taken a fall. Her friend appeared unable to comprehend that she could not stand or walk on her left leg due to severe pain, and she remained seated on the bench that the locals had provided for her. It felt fortuitous that we could help a little. Thankfully a rickshaw was readily available to take them to their hotel, across the street from our restaurant in town. We settled in there for a beer after following them back. At the hotel, she was attended by a doctor who referred her for an x-ray in the larger city of Butwal. While she and her partner, who was more solicitous to her needs sorted their belongings, I had a meaningful conversation with her before their taxi arrived.

The next day, Loren and I visited the Sri Lanka site, a monastery devoted to International Nuns, the extensive Myanmar site, and the tributes from Cambodia, India and Thailand.

We had planned to stay 3 nights in Lumbini, and on the recommendation of our hotel owner in Kathmandu, had hoped to spend one night at one of the monasteries. However, easily finding someone to talk with about that possibility never materialized, so we abandoned the plan to cycle around during the days and sleep at our hotel. Near the end of our last full day though, we befriended a Monk at the Swiss/Austrian monastery, with the grand name, The Mother Temple of the Graduated Path to Enlightenment. Loren then resurrected the plan and soon we were rearranging hotels, bus, dinner date, and bicycle hire, to return to a guest room there overnight. We joined in their meditation and prayers, fulfilling meals, and, gained a much better understanding of Buddha’s life and the concept and practice of Buddhism while there.

The next day we learned that our friends from Bangalor had flown by helicopter to Kathmandu, and were intending to soon return to India by plane. I am keeping her in my heart for a full recovery. Loren and I set off on this day to see the temple of Vietnam – where we saw two Sarus cranes – the largest in the world, and tributes of Nepal, France (not pictured), and China. Loren decided to forego this last site, feeling a little “templed out” but more so wanting to avoid the crowd, and a young Nepali girl engaged me here. 

When I returned to join Loren at our bicycles, I saw a peaceful mob of Nepali children.  It turned out that they were all gathered around him! So much for avoiding a crowd. These youth too were visiting the temples of China, then Korea, and were enthusiastic to walk and talk with us. In fact, several adult Nepali have also sought us out in Pokhara and Lumbini to talk and take selfies. While we snap our photos to remember what we are seeing, we are also being photographed – sometimes obviously, sometimes slyly. It seems they want to remember us, for our novelty in their culture.