The subcontinent: now I remember…
Two weeks in Paris, Rome and Istanbul – when you’ve been to all three cities before and lived in two of them – is about as easy as travel gets. We rose late, strolled around these magical cities, ate very well, congratulated ourselves on our own good fortune, and sighed in happiness rather frequently as we consumed French pastries and Italian gelato and Turkish apple tea.
Then, like a punch in the face: Kathmandu.
Festivals one day, riots the next. Cows walking the streets (two years in prison for killing one); fruits and vegetables being sold off the ground at every corner; motorcycles, bicycles and anything else on wheels nearly taking you out every time you look away; electricity dropping out every day; more colours and smells than you can imagine; and almost everyone trying to bother you: guides, trekking agents, beggars, tiger-balm sellers, store owners, temple flower sellers, drug dealers and on and on. And the Nepali at the guesthouse trying to tell me that Nepal wasn’t like India…
Needless to say, it’s been a bit of an adjustment, but what a fascinating place. It’s been more than four years since we were in India and more than two years since we were somewhere remotely like this (Sri Lanka), so it’s taken me a few days to get reacquainted with this part of the world. There’s more hassle in South Asia than anywhere else but it’s worth it – the assault on your senses and feeling of ‘Wow, is this really the same planet?’ is unmatched anywhere in the world.
From what we can gather, it’s a pretty good time to be in Nepal. The Maoist insurgency that has plagued the country over the past five years is over, as the Maoists now form part of the coalition government. It’s the very tail end of the monsoon, so it’s only raining a small amount (and even then mostly at night) and when October rolls around we’re hoping for uninterrupted blue skies as we tackle the Himalayas.
Since we have a couple of weeks to spend in the Kathmandu Valley first, we haven’t overextended ourselves so far. We spent our first couple of days around Kathmandu’s Durbar Square, an open-air museum of temples and religious fervour, and one of the better people-watching places in the entire world.
Yesterday we branched out a bit and walked to the impressive, centuries-old Swayambhunath (‘Monkey Temple’) on the outskirts of town, and today we took our first bus on a mostly dreadful road (the roads are getting worse, we’ve been told) to a peaceful and also monkey-laden temple in a jungle setting about 20km outside Kathmandu.
We’ve got quite a few other places of interest near Kathmandu to visit over the next week and we’re also going to see if we can spot some rhinos and (perhaps) tigers at the Chitwan National Park before heading for the mountains.
Tags: Asia, culture shock, Kathmandu, Nepal, South Asia
Nick