Thoughts on Kathmandu

We’re having an amazing time in Kathmandu. It’s so different from anywhere that we’ve been before. Certainly it was intimidating when we first arrived because of the sheer volume of traffic and people on the streets. Everyone wants to be a guide for you / drive you somewhere or sell you tiger balm, daggers, hash, singing bowls etc. However there are also really friendly people who do just want to say hello!

Thamel, where we’re staying seems like a very touristy place but it’s come to feel like home in Kathmandu. It’s certainly as busy as the rest of the city but it’s got an underlying friendliness to it. We know what to expect and it does seem to have everything you could want (a lot of it fake), all in the millions of stalls selling the same items! It does lack electricity for the majority of the time. It seems power cuts are extremely common across Kathmandu and I think we’re lucky if we get about 8 hours within a day, hence why only 12 photos managed to get uploaded the other night. We can’t tell when the power cuts will begin and end during a day so at times Thamel is bursting with music and lights and then it all goes dark and if it’s night time we get out the head torches.

Today we’re taking it easy as Kat has a cold at the moment but hopefully some tiger balm will help! It’s nice to have the time to be able to have a day off from sightseeing!

The sights we have seen are fantastic and at least one building in every street has real character but for the most part they just haven’t been well preserved which is a shame. We’ve seen numerous Stupas (some giant!) which are pretty shrines with Budda eyes, golden tops and lots of multi-coloured prayer flags streaming down around them. We’ve been to Durbar Square which features traditional pagodas, buildings and is home to their living goddess and yesterday we went to the Bagmati river where they cremate their dead (nicer than it sounds!) it’s a Hindu hotspot for their religion. We have also seen lots of monkeys, cows, goats and pigeons (they’re everywhere at holy sites).

We’ll be travelling to Chitwan National Park in the next few days where we will hopefully see more wildlife and go on an Elephant safari! We’ll update again while we’re there if we can get internet and hopefully tonight we’ll upload some more photos to Flickr if the slow internet and power cuts allow!

Love C&K