Monday, October 15, 2007
Back in Nepal
Summer holidays arrived again – time to get back on the roads…
This year, in a kind'a spontaneous honeymoon, we decided to visit the mysterious Tibet - leaping over between Amman (great Humus), then Delhi (hot Chapatti and sweet Chai) to finally arrive to Katmandu, Nepal.
Being our 2nd visit to Nepal, not much have changed in the past decade. This beautiful piece of earth, a Disneyland-like country with all the hiking-gliding-rafting-banjying activities, aside to extremely poor people, human-riksha, hungry children, homeless and badly crippled beggars that simply tear your heart apart.
We’ve placed ourselves in the heart of the Thamel, next to the good-old Pumpernickel bakery, Everest Steak-house and the famous “swissa’ agency, and decided to take the outmost of our forced waiting-for-a-Tibet-permit and go out to explore the evergreen Katmandu valley.
A local bus (aka ‘chicken bus’), small, crowded and smelly as always (well, we did ride on the bus roof with 360 degrees of view and fresh air…), took us to Sundarizal, where a not-so-easy endless climb up to ~3000M have started, but still the tiny little villages along green rice terraces up the hill were absolutely rewarding on our way to a charming mountain village called Nagrakot, overlooking the Everest peak.
Going back, we accidentally found ourseleves in a town called ‘Boudha’ – a noisy place build around a huge Stupa (a Buddhist temple), where the locals are circling 108 clock-wise rounds (one per each of the 108 Buddhist Gods). We were also lucky enough to be in the midst of a women festival called ‘Fez’, which is all about finding a good husband and warship him. Women are dressed up in red-green-yellowish dresses, paint their hands and dance on the streets.
Tomorrow we head towards the Tibetan border.
This year, in a kind'a spontaneous honeymoon, we decided to visit the mysterious Tibet - leaping over between Amman (great Humus), then Delhi (hot Chapatti and sweet Chai) to finally arrive to Katmandu, Nepal.
Being our 2nd visit to Nepal, not much have changed in the past decade. This beautiful piece of earth, a Disneyland-like country with all the hiking-gliding-rafting-banjying activities, aside to extremely poor people, human-riksha, hungry children, homeless and badly crippled beggars that simply tear your heart apart.
We’ve placed ourselves in the heart of the Thamel, next to the good-old Pumpernickel bakery, Everest Steak-house and the famous “swissa’ agency, and decided to take the outmost of our forced waiting-for-a-Tibet-permit and go out to explore the evergreen Katmandu valley.
A local bus (aka ‘chicken bus’), small, crowded and smelly as always (well, we did ride on the bus roof with 360 degrees of view and fresh air…), took us to Sundarizal, where a not-so-easy endless climb up to ~3000M have started, but still the tiny little villages along green rice terraces up the hill were absolutely rewarding on our way to a charming mountain village called Nagrakot, overlooking the Everest peak.
Going back, we accidentally found ourseleves in a town called ‘Boudha’ – a noisy place build around a huge Stupa (a Buddhist temple), where the locals are circling 108 clock-wise rounds (one per each of the 108 Buddhist Gods). We were also lucky enough to be in the midst of a women festival called ‘Fez’, which is all about finding a good husband and warship him. Women are dressed up in red-green-yellowish dresses, paint their hands and dance on the streets.
Tomorrow we head towards the Tibetan border.
# posted by Hanan @ 2:29 AM 
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