Nepal 23 - 30 January

Wife with her paparazzi

Nepal is definitely a country that deserves more than a week, and longer if you plan to do any trekking. The popular hikes to basecamps for Mt. Everest and the Annapurna range can take a couple of weeks to hike to and from, due to the 5300 and 4000+ meter elevations. If you’re really adventurous, there is a flight to the Everest city of Lukla that is widely recognized as the most dangerous in the world due to weather and terrain issues, but looks like it would be really fun to take. Google it if you get a chance. There are also a lot of shorter hikes through the mountain villages that are supposed to be beautiful…supposed to be…if you have more ambition than we did. Or, you can take the easy way up and hitch a ride on a helicopter to the Annapurna side, which would be my mode if we had a bit more time this trip. With only limited time, we spent a few days each in the major cities of Kathmandu and Pokhara. For more words, (mercifully, not a lot this trip) see below!

The Himalayas flying from Kathmandu to Pokhara and back again

Kathmandu - Patan Durbar Square

Kathmandu - Patan Durbar Square faces of Buddha and Ganesh

Kathmandu - Pashupatinath Temple. Famous cremation site

Kathmandu

Temple supports at the Temple of Hugh Hefner - NSFW - View at your own peril

Pokhara - the foot of Annapurna

Kathmandu is the capital and most well-known city and is basically India Lite. It seems similar in nature to Mumbai or Delhi but much smaller, better air, a lot cleaner and slightly less honking, but still a lot of driving chaos and close streets. The food is similar to India but not as good, though, but definitely a world better than Bhutan’s food! But like Bhutan, the surrounding scenery is why you come - it’s other-worldly. For someone that grew up in the flat-ish hinterlands, being around the mountains is captivating. I can easily get lost in my non-thoughts when staring off into the mountains. That doesn’t mean I all of the sudden like the cold, though. Still a warm-weather fan, but the Himalayas are amazing.

We signed up with an excellent tour company (Everest Nepal Tours) for three days in Kathmandu so had a pretty busy schedule, at least for us. The Buddhist temples and architecture are different from those in Bhutan, but equally as beautiful. We toured most of the main temples in and around Kathmandu, the Museum and the old Royal Palace, and very interesting - one of the larger and more famous cremation grounds. The temple structures are mostly brick and wood and many are similar to Japanese pagodas with intricate Buddhist carvings everywhere. One of the features that interested me most was the windows and doors that were often cut into the surrounding bricks in wonderful shapes and angles. There are quite a few pics of the windows, in particular, that show the angular brick moldings…I can imagine this work costing a fortune in the states.

Check out the cremation site pics…it's one of my most memorable and thoughtful visits and they’re a lot less sensational than you might expect. These illustrate a bit how death is treated in Buddhist/Hindu cultures. It’s a much more open and less mournful occasion, at least from what we witnessed and our guide told us, with the body being carried to the river first for ritual washing and then placed on the pyre and covered with wood and straw. This is all done in full public view, although we didn’t see anything but the fires on our visit. The family keeps a vigil until the fires die and the ashes are then swept into the river below. Cremations continue around the clock, so there is always activity at the site.

One of the most visually striking temple features, for me and my 13 year old boy maturity level, are the carvings of the Kama Sutra placed everywhere. The Kama Sutra was initially written centuries ago, from possibly 400 BC to 300 AD, to help calm Hindu fears about sex and encourage baby-making, which increased the population and labor and consumption pools. This is what our tour guide conveyed, or at least what I sort of remember him saying about it. I might or might not have been paying attention to the carvings a little too much to fully memorize all of the words he kept interrupting my imagination with. So, many of the 108 positions (108?????? I thought there were only five…did I get the Clif’s Notes version???)  of the Kama Sutra were carved all over the wooden struts along the sides of buildings. For your viewing pleasure I have added a few of the pictures above - just point your dirty, dirty browser to the bottom of the wooden struts. I’m used to pictures of the chaste and clothed in my temples so these are a little bit of a funny shock, especially since they are always in plain sight of everyone.

From Kathmandu, we flew to Pokhara, the second city in Nepal. It was either a 30 minute flight or a 10 hour drive, so we obviously chose the flight. Flying near to the Annapurna range of the Himalayas and within sight of Mt. Everest in the distance was captivating. For some reason, my social media feeds force feed me a constant diet of mountaineering videos and stories, so seeing these monsters up close was special.

Pokhara is more of the tourist capital of Nepal due to its proximity to the mountains. Most of the Annapurna treks begin here so there are tons of outfitters and guides based in the city. I wish we’d done more here but one of the days was rainy so we decided to take a rest day and didn’t do more than a little town exploring. The highlight of the city for us was the two temples that looked over the valleys from the mountain above. One, a statue of Shiva looked over the adjoining valley while the other, The World Peace Monument offered, well, some peaceful moments, and also some amazing views of Annapurna across the range. Both statues were visible from our rooms across the valley but we didn’t make the small hike up to them until our very last day. Fortunately, the mist and clouds opened up and gave us some beautiful views of Annapurna’s I - IV and the distinctive Fishtail.