How Can I Say Thanks To You?

Hello and welcome back to the show! This will be the last post about my travels in Nepal. If I told you that I went to a place in Nepal from which you can't see any mountains whatsoever, would you believe me? Well, I did! This magical place is called Lumbini, a village in the far South of the country. It's worth travelling to for one thing, and one thing only: Buddha was born there. Fede and me took a bus there from Pokhara. This time around, I was the one who could enjoy the view and Fede was the one recovering from food poisoning :D Coming from the beauty of Pokhara, the landscape around Lumbini is pretty shocking. It's completely plain and very dusty. No matter though, we weren't there to admire the landscape after all. We spent one day exploring the area around the temple commemorating Buddha's birth by bicycle. The most impressive part of the temple isn't actually the stone on which Buddha was allegedly born, but a plain stone pillar. This pillar was erected by king Ashoka (reigned over much of the Indian subcontinent during the 3rd century BC) in 245 BC and grants the village of Lumbini tax deductions for being the birthplace of Buddha. I thought this was cool because it shows us that there was already a pretty sophisticated system of governance on the Indian subcontinent at a very early time.
In the surrounding area there are around 20 monasteries built by Buddhist communities from all over the world, which means that in an area of about two square kilometres you can discover architecture from many different countries. It's definitely a place worth visiting, although I doubt that you could spend more than a day there. There just isn't much besides the temples and monasteries.

The temple and the pillar.

More of these :)

The Eternal Flame.

Myanmar.

Thailand.

International Peace stupa.

Austria...sponsored by Switzerland :D

Inside the Chinese monastery.

Germany. On point as usual.

On the next day, we took yet another tourist bus to Chitwan National Park, also close to the Indian border but further East than Lumbini. This National Park is known for its population of rhinos, elephants and, wait for it, BENGAL TIGERS. So what do you do in a National Park full of animals that could potentially kill you? Walk around looking for them, obviously. We spent two days hiking through the grassland and jungle (yay, the first jungle of my life) with two local guides. I cannot really describe how amazing it was :) You can't go 30 minutes without sighting some animal or other, less if you count birds of course. We saw deer, monkeys, peacocks, an elephant and four rhinos! Most of the time, you're walking in silence so as not to scare the animals away, hence all you can hear is the sound of your own footsteps and the rustling of leaves and grass. It's overwhelmingly beautiful. We spent the night in a small village on the edge of the National Park, where we met a 12-year old boy who was fluent in English and could even say "Enjoy your meal" in German. He taught us a Nepalese card game and also tried to teach us a joke in Nepali. Sadly, I've already forgotten all of it. The Nepali language is a deep mystery to me.

Do you see it? Hint: It's grey and BIG.

Little cotton eating bugs.

Tiger markings.

Parasite tree.

Crocodiles do it right.

Camouflage experts. End of day 1.

What a sight.

The only tiger we saw.

Rhino #1.

This was one of the happiest moments of my life! Three rhinos, a mother and two children. Bathing together.

Look at their little ears!

The baby taking a break from swimming.

After two amazing days in Chitwan, it was time for us to return to Kathmandu. We had one evening left there, which we spent at Pashupatinath temple. As a non Hindu, you can't go inside the actual temple, you can however walk around the complex and watch the goings-on there. What happens there? Well, families cremate their dead. If you think that the temple is a sad place though, you are very mistaken. The general atmosphere is actually pretty relaxed, not very different from other Nepalese temples. The whole thing left me weirdly emotionless, no deep life reflections. It was very interesting to see though and I did enjoy my visit there a lot. Afterwards, we had our last Dal Bhaat in Nepal before we had to leave. Goodbye Dal bhat, I miss you dearly!

The cremation site.

The temple, which we only got to see from the outside.

The next day saw my return to the safety and regularity of China (haha, I know). I hope you enjoyed my (ridiculously late) recount of my travels. If you're more interested in what I do in actual China, rest assured that from now on my posts will resume their usual form :)

Nepali Word of the Day: फेरि भेटौला pheri bhetaula, See you again!

She Dreamed of Paradise

Our second stop in Nepal was the beautiful city of Pokhara. It might be the second biggest city in Nepal, but it sure doesn't feel like it. Coming from the chaos of Kathmandu, it's wonderful to arrive at the shore of Phewa lake. No loud sounds, no rush. A small paradise.

The bus from Kathmandu to Pokhara takes about 8 hours. Because of obvious reasons, there are no trains in Nepal, so the only way to get from point A to point B is on wheels (I guess you could also walk if you really wanted to). The bus ride was quite an uncomfortable experience for me since my stomach hadn't fully recovered from the whole food poisoning debacle yet. I still managed to enjoy the senery though. Once you get over your fear of falling off the road, it's pretty spectacular. Luckily, as there is only one road that leads from Kathmandu to Pokhara, everyone has to drive VERY SLOWLY. So we got to Pokhara without a scratch and first of all had to look for a place to stay. We were accompanied on this endeavour by Taka, who we had met at the hostel in Kathmandu. The place we decided on was...well, let's say different. It was a small house built on top of a hill overlooking the lake. The room had two mattresses, one on the ground and one on a wooden bed. There was no running water, if you wanted to shower you walked for 20 minutes to a small waterfall. The undeniable advantage of this place was its view. It was also a little out of the way, ergo very quiet. And most importantly (to travelling students), 70 Rupees per night per person. That's 0.60 Euros. That does a lot to help you through cold nights without water and electricity. I just realized that I haven't even mentioned the whole electricity situation yet. Because Nepal doesn't produce/purchase enough power to meet demand, the power will just be out for large portions of the day. Technically there is an official schedule of when the power will be on/off, but apparently it's more of a suggestion than a rule. The first thing we would always do when coming into a hostel room? Plug our phone chargers in and cross our fingers. It's alright though, you get used to it after some time. Who needs lights anyway?

The first view of the lake.

 On our first day in Pokhara, Fede and me decided to go to the World Peace Pagoda, a big white stupa built on one of the hills surrounding Phewa lake. To get there, we took a little boat from Lakeside, Pokhara's tourist quarter, and then walked up the hill. On our way there, we came across an incredible number of Chinese travellers. They really are everywhere. Slightly related sidenote: We met a lot of Nepalese businesspeople who were studying Chinese. Some shops in Kathmandu and Pokhara even have trilingual signs: Nepali, Chinese and English. The view from the pagoda was pretty amazing, it was there that I caught my first glimpse of the Annapurna range. Safe to say if I hadn't been in love with Nepal already, I would have fallen in love right then and there. On our way down from the pagoda we took a wrong turn somewhere but miraculously arrived at another one of Pokhara's famous sights: the Gupteshwor Mahadev cave/Devi's Falls. Here, you can pay twice to view the same waterfall, once from above and once from below :D The view from below is without question the better one, you walk into a fairly deep cave and finally arrive at where the waterfall enters it. It looks really cool in real life and really lame in photographs, maybe because my camera is a potato. Anyway, the rest of the day was spent relaxing in a café on the shore. They gave us free popcorn *_*

Same view, different day.

The pagoda.

Profound caption.

The falls from above.

And from below.

On the next day Fede, Taka and I went on a little hike. Wait, I went to Nepal and actually climbed a mountain? Don't worry, it was just a small one, 1500 metres if I remember correctly. Anyway, the walk was really beautiful, leading us through endless fields and small villages. It took us about 2 hours to arrive in the mountain village of Sarangkot. There, we booked a room that much to our surprise had a hot shower! So we enjoyed that obviously, and afterwards spent our evening playing cards with a few of the other guests of the hotel. And would you believe it, I learned 斗地主 (Fighting the Landlord), the most popular Chinese card game with ridiculously complicated rules. One step closer to complete integration into Chinese society!

Giant haystack!

:)

There we go with the sunsets again.

What an attractive group of people.

We got up very early the next day to watch the sunrise. But this was not just any sunrise, this was the sunrise over Annapurna. And for this sunrise, you have to pay. No joke, you have to pay to get onto the observation platform. No matter though, that was some money well spent. The sunrise was breathtakingly beautiful. Pink sun on white mountains. Alo known as heaven on earth. The rest of the day? Walked back down and then went back to the aformentioned free popcorn café. Give me free popcorn and you will have my eternal loyalty. Sadly, the food poisoning hit Fede that evening, so he missed out on our last lakeside evening. 

The first touch of pink.

There it comes.

And la voila, that was our time in Pokhara. It was pretty amazing :)

Nepali Word of the Day: धन्यवाद dhanyabad, thank you! 

On Top of The World

After the absolutely idyllic days I spent in Taiwan it was time to return, briefly, to the considerably less idyllic mainland. Just kidding, I love it here as well, but it's true without a doubt that people in general are less friendly and everything's just a smidge dirtier. Also, there are noticeably more uniformed policemen around, something that I noticed as soon as I arrived at Kunming airport. I only spent one night there so I sadly didn't have enough time to actually see the city. It's definitely on my list of places to visit though.

I arrived at Kathmandu airport on the 6th February. It's the cutest airport I've ever been to, the border officers were all standing off to the side in a little group drinking tea and they just sent two guys to deal with everyone who had been on my plane. I then had my first encounter with Nepalese traffic, which left me in a state of mild shock. First of all, they surprisingly drive on the left side of the road (you can tell I did a great deal of planning on this trip) and also they seem to not really care about things like lanes or traffic lights. Add to that the fact that the roads are sometimes just dirt and always full of potholes and you can imagine my reaction. I got to the hostel safely, if a little shaken up, had my first of many delicious meals and went to bed.

The only decent plane picture I have.

My friend and classmate Fede who travelled through Nepal with me was meant to arrive at noon the following day. Timetable changes and flight delays however led to his arrival being moved to 10 in the evening. So since I had an entire day to spend on my own, I decided to join two German travellers staying in the hostel on a walking tour through Kathmandu. We saw a lot of small temples and shrines and I slowly started getting used to the crazy traffic. The tour ultimately brought us to Durbar square, the plaza in front of the old royal palace. It was really fun walking through the alleys of Kathmandu. A lot of them are filled with small shops selling cloth or spices, the atmosphere is incredibly vibrant and alive. In the evening I went to get a Nepalese SIM card. You'd think that getting a phone card would be pretty easy but nope, think again! In Nepal, you need to give the phone company a passport-sized picture of yourself, your thumb prints (?) and also your grandfather's name (???). It was all very mysterious but the important thing is that I did get my SIM card in the end. After returning back to the hostel, I stayed up waiting for Fede who finally arrived around midnight. He was welcomed with a bottle of delicious Gorkha beer, in my opinion the best beer in Nepal :) maybe even the best beer in Asia.

Random chickens everywhere.

Also pigeons.

I love these little old balconies.

Durbar square. With pigeons.

On the next day we had our first experience with taking public transport in Nepal. We had to take a "micro-bus" to a suburb of Kathmandu because we wanted to meet up with Bharat, one of the friends I made while studying the IB in Hastings. So what exactly is a micro-bus, you might ask. Well, it's essentially a van with space enough for seven people to sit. These drive along fixed routes through the city and can pick up passengers anywhere. To get onto the bus, you just wave at it to stop it and then hope you can still cram in. They usually get very crowded, but at least they always have music playing to make the ride more enjoyable. The most unfortunate person in all of this surely is the ticket boy. He hangs out the door, shouting the destination of the bus at potential passengers. Once a person gets onto the bus, he collects money from them and then returns to his precarious position. I hope that using that description you can envision what a bus ride in Nepal is like, at least a little bit. To me it was kind of fun once you got onto the bus, the problem was finding the correct one. With no knowledge of the language, our only chance was to ask strangers on the street and hope that they would point us to the right bus. For your information by the way, we somehow managed to not get onto a wrong bus during our two weeks in Nepal. Now, back to the show. We met up with Bharat in Kirtipur, the district of Kathmandu where he currently lives and first were treated to a delicious lunch at his home. The traditional food of Nepal is called Dal Bhat, and because I'm too lazy to explain what it consists of right now, you're welcome to read this. It's great food and I really miss it. After lunch, we walked to the Chovar gorge through which the Kathmandu valley's water drains. According to legend, a Bodhisattva whose name I don't remember (don't judge me) divided the rock with his sword to drain the lake that was covering the valley. From there we took a bus to Swayambhunath (a name I miraculously do remember), more simply called the monkey temple. It's a temple complex built on a hill overlooking Kathmandu and it has both Buddhist and Hinduist buildings, the main building though is a big Buddhist stupa. The place is also called monkey temple because, as you might guess, there are monkeys everywhere. They hang around waiting for people to feed them which they do, because apparently it's good karma. The place was beautiful and I'm so thankful for Bharat for showing us around :)

The gorge.

View from Swayambhunath.

The stupa itself.

Sexy group picture. Lesson of the day: Don't ask random Nepalese people to take a picture of you.

The next day we spent at Bodhnath visiting one of the largest stupas in the world. After circling it about five times (always in clockwise direction), we decided to walk to Kopan monastery, located on a mountain with a very nice view. To get back to our hostel we had to catch one last micro-bus and after a very bumpy ride we were back in the relative safety of Kathmandu. We spent the night playing poker with a few people also staying in our hostel. Sadly, it ended in food poisoning for me. Apparently it's just a thing that happens to you in Nepal.

The watchful eyes of Buddha.

Pretty, right?

View from the monastery.

So that were my first few days in Nepal. Next stop - Pokhara!

Nepali Word of the Day: नमस्ते namaste, Hello! Also apparently it means goodbye.