Category: nepal

we had a superb time in kathmandu! my good nepali friend and apartment-mate from college prajjwal grew up there, so we stayed with his family. i had no idea that his father was a gordon-conwell seminary educated pastor who started from scratch what is now a massive church there that has planted 60 other churches. he is also the country director for about every agency doing good things in nepal, as well as a university architecture professor. they have a really nice house with mosquito nets over the beds (which saved our lives), and we got amazing home-cooked american breakfasts (cooked just for us – apparently nepalis don’t eat breakfast) and nepali dinners along with lots of good discussions in the evenings. as if that wasn’t enough, prajjwal’s brother ujjwal and some of his friends took us on a tour of kathmandu on sunday. all the tourist sites were rather expensive, but they insisted on paying for everything which was very generous of them.

we went to a couple durbar squares – groups of ancient temples. also went to a museum devoted to a late king (since recently there is no longer a monarchy in nepal), and a “monkey” temple complex on top of a big hill with a great view of kathmandu. all the houses are three to eight stories tall, and very distinctively nepali. the streets are all very narrow, except for one big ring road. during the recent maoist strikes tens of thousands of maoists joined hands on the ring road – completely encircling the city so no one could get in or leave unless they were desperate enough to run people over. after our tour i got to go on a long run around prajjwal’s house! in india it had been too hot to even think about running, so i’ve really missed it.

the next day, we got to deal with some more of the stupid, arbitrary bureauracy of the indian government. they just decided to implement this rule that if you leave the country, even though you have a multiple entry visa, you can’t come back for two months. that is, unless you get a special stamp that costs a lot of money and, as we found out, takes a full day of waiting to get. and the rules go on, but this is already probably boring you. you would think that they would understand that making tourists jump through randomly placed hoops of stress will only translate into less tourists and thus money. i haven’t even finished college yet and i can figure that out. anyways, this caused us to miss our bus to the far eastern end of nepal but luckily there was another one later. we took it, arriving 17 hours later in kakhadvitta, nepal, from where we walked across a river into india and caught a bus to silguri, from where we caught a crowded jeep to take us up an infinitely switchbacking road way up into the himalayan hills to an epic best-tea-in-the-world-growing/british hill station/remarkably exotic town called darjeeling!

we are in nepal now, and it is wonderful. people actually have a concept of personal space here! and we need blankets to sleep at night – its that cool! we didn’t think we’d even be able to come, as there was a week long, rather intense maoist (d*** communists) strike that shut down the entire country. the maoists were out in the streets to beat any shop owner or taxi driver who was working. so the whole country was brought to a complete standstill. thankfully they eventually called it off, and as soon as we heard it was over we headed in.

we took the bumpiest all day ride possible from varanasi, india to the nepali border at sunauli – a ride that got started moderately late by indian standards because they were under the bus hitting something with a piece of rock for two hours. the bus had this cute horn that played a little song every time it was engaged – about every five seconds for 14 hours. the next day we took another all day bus from the border to the town of pokhara. we got to stay with an uber cool nepali guy named neeraj, who is a friend of some of my cousins. the first night we had a delicious nepali dinner with him and his parents and family members. his father is the director of the international nepali fellowship – one of the biggest christian ngos in nepal! they have some sort of rule that foreign ngos can’t do anything here, so that basically means that we had dinner with a very important man. and they gave us a room that was the nicest i have slept in for many a month.

pokhara is right on the edge of the annapurna range in the himalayas, probably one of the most famous trekking areas in the world. on the first day we headed out for a two day trek. haha, it sounds a lot more intense than it was. the first day involved a two hour hike up to a little village called dhampus at neeraj’s suggestion. it was just outside the annapurna conservation area – so we didn’t have to pay the large permit fee. the village was idyllic, and we didn’t do anything for the rest of the day, except for eat some more nepali food and watch the odd cow go by. the place was completely deserted. we got up the next morning at 5 am and there was the huge annapurna mountain range right outside our window! during the day the mountains are shrouded in clouds. we then climbed another two hours (after a while on the wrong path) to a village called pothana where the views were even better. had breakfast, and then came all the way down. that night we had a fine dining experience in pokhara. the place is rather upscale, and we had to search for a place we could afford.

the next day was a truly epic day, soiled by only one little thing. actually, when i write the word soiled, more than one thing, but i won’t get into that whole issue this time. when we got up after sleeping in, neeraj cooked us a satiating breakfast of buffalo burgers complete with fresh lettuce washed with clean water and coca cola to wash it all down. we then checked into a hotel because neeraj is heading up to dhampus himself for a romantic weekend. we then rented scooters! $3.50 for the day! on these scooters we had more fun than one knew was imaginable. we found a waterfall and a cave with a river and a temple in it. then we went out into the countryside to a river with rapids that we swam in. but then it started to rain.

as we were grabbing our stuff, my friend devin dropped my camera onto a rock, from which it bounced into the river, ruining it. i miss it already. the last parts of my trip will be pictureless. but i forgave him, because he’s my friend, and that is what friends do. even if he wasn’t my friend, as per the words of Christ. plus it was in no way his fault. even if it would have been he more than made up for it by being the best scooter partner. after that, it started raining very heavily, so we went swimming more because it was warmer in the water than out. it started hailing huge half inch hail balls. when, after at least an hour, that finally ended, we headed back, but the rain/hail started again, along with intense wind that threatened to blow our bikes off the road and was rather painful when combined with the hail on our tender, north american skin. it was exhilarating. tonight we cruised around pokhara in the dark on our scooters. the only thing better than unexpectedly hitting a speedbump on a scooter during the day is hitting one in the dark! we got lost, which added to the fun. tomorrow we’re heading for kathmandu….