Khusi naya barsa! (Happy New Year)

We celebrated New Year's Eve by going to Thamel House, a restaurant across the street from the alley leading to our hotel. We had Nepali wine, made from yellow raspberries, lovely, and a set Nepali dinner. Accompanying the meal were traditional dances performed by young women (and one young man). Altogether lovely!
Our dinner was on a patio-- Kathmandu is an outdoor city, with usually warm weather, but there has been a cold snap lately, so one just bundles up and finds a heater nearby (or open flame burning whatever is at hand).

This morning the city is quiet and somber--how much is the New Year, and how much the threat of a transport strike / blockades, is unclear. No taxis on the street. We are scheduled to go to Bhaktapur today, but may end up just strolling the city.

Boudanath

Thursday we visited Boudhanath, an enormous Buddhist stupa, which is a mound or dome. I'm still writing from internet cafes so I can't upload pictures easily. Everytime we sit down in a restaurant that offers wi-fi so our laptops can connect, the power is out 10 minutes later. Currently it is out 4 hours a day, soon to be 8 hours a day, in part because of low water levels that reduce hydroelectic power. Everyone has generators so essentials such as lights are (mostly) kept on, but non-essentials such as internet go down. Also it affects what kind of foods we can order in restaurants.

Good news, though: the garbage collection strike is over!

Back to Boudhanath--it is the size of a football field, and the crowds circle clockwise, spinning hundreds of prayer wheels that surround it. It is home to many Buddhist monks, many of them refugees from Tibet. (Nepal is careful not to offend its powerful neighbor China on the Tibet issue, and recently declared its agreement with the "one China" policy on both Tibet and Taiwan. ) Yesterday we met in a restaurant a buddhist lama (teacher, not necessarily the same as a buddhist monk) who was originally from Italy. He had a very forward personality and was fun to talk to. -- Atop the stupa at Boudhanath is a great golden tower, with eyes painted on each face. It is hard to describe. We also toured a thanka (sacred painting) school-- not so sacred that they weren't willing to sell us a couple of thankas, one a peace mandala meditation and the other a representation of the Wheel of Life, or Samsara, appropriate since we are staying at the Hotel Samsara (but ironic, since Samsara in Buddhist theology is a bad thing).



Tomorrow (New Year's day) we hope to go to Bhaktipur--but there may be a strike. That is life in Nepal.

Aaja budhibaar ho (Today is Wednesday)

Hello all you out there half a world away. I will post comments first and then add pictures.

Overall we are really enjoying ourselves. Even if this is a very idiosyncratic vacation that requires negotiating power outages, garbage in the streets, and tailor strikes.

Our hotel is very clean and safe--in the heart of Thamel, yet down an alley so we feel a little barrier from the chaos that is Thamel. The hotel propriator is very friendly and his brother, not coincidentally, runs his own tourist bureau and eager to book tours for us. Before coming I predicted the hotel owner would have a cousin who ran a tourist bureau--I should have guessed a brother! The food also is good, throughout Kathmandu, and even the hotel's food is very good.

The only downside is the internet access is not as advertised. Compounding this difficulty are the frequently power outages in Kathmandu--about 4 hours a day. It seems assured that whenever I manage to get a connection, or have just sat down at a restaurant with free Wi-Fi, then a power outages hits five minutes later. A schedule is published but we seem to always misread them. Or they are just wrong.






Yesterday we visited the famed Swambhyu or Monkey Temple. Most noted for a huge stupa or stone monument. And of course monkeys. Hundred of prayer wheels surround the stupa; surround them are people offering to interpret the site. For a small fee. We had our own driver, Ram, and it seems the main reason to hire a guide is to fend off other would-be guides. In addition to monkey there are dogs, dogs everywhere. The dogs are often sleeping, curled up like the devnagari script we are endeavoring to learn.

Last night we ate at a place we are coming to enjoy, the Pilgrim Bookstore Read-and-Feed cafe. Excellent food, with large plates for small prices. We also tried Tibetan millet beer, where one ferments millet and then pours hot water over it to extract the drink. It comes in a metal pot that that sips from through a metal straw.

Today we took it slightly easy, trying to catch up on Nepali lessons (I think I mentioned we booked 12 hours of instruction in the Nepali language; we are halfway through, learning a lot but it is not easy. I think only we would take a holiday that involves homework.) We also tried to find internet connections; we could check webmail but little success.

Donna had the ambition to have a woman's business suit made. We tried a couple of tailors in Thamel, but that wasn't working for us. So we mentioned this to Mr. Lamsal, the tour-guide-brother-to-hotel-owner, and before we knew it his wife and daughter had whisked us into a taxi, dodging Kathmandu traffic (as close to a near death experience as I wish to enjoy for many years) to Bagbazaar to a good tailor. Only to find the tailors were on strike, demanding hire wages. Hire wages from whom is not clear to us. Nonetheless, Donna purchased some pretty fabric and going to a different part of town, or perhaps a different kind of tailor, she is having a traditional style Nepali dress made for her. The irony is the cost of the tailoring itself (not including the fabric) is what the two taxi rides cost.

Strikes are common in Nepal. A garbage collection strike has been on for an undetermined amount of time, and the garbage has piled up.

I will try to add pictures to this post. Our attempts at directly connecting laptops has been frustrating. And then our future plans are quite full. On the weekend we go to the jungle reserve in Chitwan, where elephants, tigers, and malaria await us. After returning to Kathmandu we'll pop over to Pokhara for a couple of days, and before we leave we hope to do a flyby of Sagarmatha.

In advance we wish you all a happy New Year. Nepal has its own calendar, which runs 57 years in advance of the western calendar (so I am writing to you from the year 2066, all you sci-fi fans), so January 1 will be recognized mostly by Westerners here. It has its own time zone niche, 13 hours and 45 minutes ahead of pacific time. That 15 minute shift feels very Nepalese to me.



Despite the power outages, piles of garbage, and internet mishaps, we are really enjoying our time here. It is what we had hoped for.

Technical difficulties, please stand by

Hi, we are having a great time, but internet connection is more difficult than we anticipated. Also phone service is not easy. We can check e-mail but upload pictures takes a long time. But all is well!

Our story so far, with pictures

Now that we managed to catch up with 12 hours of sleep, and have some semblance of internet connnection, let's review our journey.

After Christmas lunch with friends, we finished packing and cleaning (friends were staying at our home while we are gone, in part to do some work at Dorcas House in Tijuana), we drove up to LAX for a direct flight to Bangkok on Thai Air. Christmas Day traffic was light. LAX was bustling but lines not too long.

The flight to Bangkok was 16 hours nonstop, the longest either of us had ever experienced. We flew Economy Premium which gave much better legroom. Even so, I only slept a little, probably from excitement--and, if truth be told, a bit of trepidation--while Donna slept somewhat more than I.


In Bangkok's new (3 years old, according to a sign) and very modernistic airport we had a 4 hours layover.


Then it was a 3 hours journey to Kathmandu's Tribhuvan Airport. It is a rather small airport for a city of over 2 million inhabitants. We obtained a visa on the spot, and then found our driver to take us to our hotel.

The Hotel Samsara is a reasonable mid-range hotel in the middle of the Thamel district, which is the main tourist district (more on that below). Although it is not fancy, it is friendly, and so far we have eaten dinner and breakfast here and the hotel food is quite good. We can see a little of the city out our window.




Our first evening here with walked through Thamel. The streets are bustling with people, motorscooters and taxis. Apparently all drivers believe they have to honk their horn every 30 seconds or else they will cease to exist.



Our walks through Thamel were made more challenging by the fact that there are almost no street signs. I don't mean, "no street signs in English"--there are almost
no street signs whatsoever, in English or in Nepali. (I can read about eighty percent of the script so I could probably puzzle out a street sign if one existed.)

Our first night--we slept 12 hours. The next morning we got up, had a delightful Indian-style breakfast, and wandered down to Durbar Square. In the bright light of day and no longer dizzy from lack of sleep, we were more confident in our ability to manuever around the city.


Durbar Square was an intense clot of history, people, and cows. Yes, cows wander the streets here. So do a surprising number of dogs. Dogs can clearly scavenge food from the ubiquitous piles of trash, especially at this moment as the garbage collection is held up due to a strike, but I had to wonder--who feeds the cows?



In the afternoon we went to the Kathmandu Institute for the Nepali language, where we have arranged to take a six-day, 12 hour micro-course in Nepali. It will prove challenging but interesting. After that we went to a bookshop to purchase notebooks ("kaapi" in Nepali, as in "copy" for copy-book) to keep notes in, and then had dinner at Thamel House, a restaurant across the street from our Hotel.

We Made It!

Arrived safely in Kathmandu and at the Hotel Samsara. Walked around a bit and had dinner at hotel. Very tired now. Very tired. But happy. More later.

First Leg Done

We have landed safely for our stopover in Bangkok, Thailand, where it is already Sunday, December 27. We officially missed Boxing Day.

The journey went smoothly. After a Christmas lunch with a couple of friends, we finished packing and cleaning and left close to our target time. No troubles driving to LAX. The flight left without incident--16 hours to Bangkok. Donna slept a fair amount, I only a little. Although it is a very long flight--I'll repeat, sixteen hours, we choose the slightly better "premium economy" which gives more room. Just a few inches makes a huge difference in comfort. The service on Thai Airways is very good with good food.

Now we are sitting in a coffee & tea shop in the airport, with the seasoned traveler's tradition of curled up with our laptops, typing away to half a world away.

More later when we can connect in Kathmandu. We will have to get visas, change money, and meet the driver from the hotel. By that point we will be tired.

In memoriam: Suenyo, who brightened our lives from 2001 to 2009.

Our First Blog Post.