Kathmandu is a shop isn’t it?
Friday, December 1st, 2006Probably what most kiwis/aussies think. In fact most of us are compleately kitted out in Kathmandu branded gear, I used to think it was just the name of a shop but no it is in fact the capital of Nepal.
I headed straight for Thamel, the major tourist area in Kathmandu and Nepal. Described quite accurately as a ‘tourist circus’ Thamel is a mess of internet cafes, trekking agencies, hotels, restaurants and rip off North face Gear. The tourists all seem a bit different, less hippies and more hardcore trekkers wearing the flashiest gear around. Almost everyone is wearing North Face which seems to be the brand of choice for all the shops around and pretty soon I have my Kathmandu style “North Face’ puffy jacket, ironically brought in the real Kathmandu. But at $40 NZ for a goose-down jacket, I’m not complaining. It’s hard to resist stocking up on Gortex jackets, which cost around $600 at home, but thinking of Philippines beaches in less than a month, I just stick with the essential items. Essential because it’s COLD here, OK so not freezing but pretty damn cold, and in the mountains to which I will soon be heading it will be very, very cold.
The bonus thing about this crazy tourist area is that it has amazing food. Not just lame imitations of pasta like India but amazing bakeries and nice restaurants that all serve wine (OK so its more than the cost of your meal), its great! So I spend a lot of time eating cinnamon rolls and drinking chai latte’s. Nepal does seem a lot different from India, hard to describe but just a bit more…cooler and relaxed. Like although I get harassed by shop owners I don’t get stared at constantly, there’s funky bands playing, more women around, women shop keepers and taxi drivers, there’s even alcohol and condom advertisements which you would never see in India and I saw an ad for ‘The Vagina Monologues’.
So Nepal is quickly becoming one of my favourite destinations. My 3 days in Kathmandu I saw a lot of temples, there’s a pretty amazing square full of all these old temples and holy men wandering around trying to get money by posing for photos. I also walked up this hill to a Buddhist temple, which was over run with angry monkeys fighting. Despite getting freaked out by the monkeys it was really beautiful, all these prayer flags were hanging everywhere and it had a great view of the valley. There’s definitely a Tibetan feel to lots of places, lots of Tibetan restaurants, and shops. And I guess because lots of the city is Buddhist it makes me think of Tibet. There are these huge 10 day tours you can go on and drive over to Tibet and back, it sounded amazing so was the first thing I looked into doing when I arrived. However after a lot of though I realized I would end up rushing everything else and its also very expensive, so unfortunately not this time but definitely am keen to head there on another trip. Had dinner on my last night with some nice kiwi guys one while watching a band which played a lot of Bob Marley, Ben Harper and Pink Floyd which was a bit of fun and filled my bag again with tea, fabric and photocopied lonely planets. Then it was time to move on to Pokhara where I was going to be staying with a friend of Duane’s from church who he had meet in the Philippines at a youth workers conference. So I splashed out on a tourist bus for the 7 hour windy road journey westwards, the base for the most popular trekking routes and where I would chill out before going to do some of Nepal’s famous trekking…which I’m looking forward to but also a bit worried about!
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