Pokhara - escaping from it all, eating bad chicken, fighting the good fight on a glimmering commode

Pokhara is a small city about five hours west of Kathmandu - an adventurer's Shangri-la.  People come here to para-glide, start treks around the Annapurna range, hunt spiders, get food poisoning, climb mountains, go rowing in the lake, and other stuff. 

Kristin and I came here to see the sunrise over the Annapurna range of the Himalayas, among other things.  After a butt clenching 6 hour drive from Kathmandu on a two lane road filled with garishly adorned trucks and buses, we arrived in Pokhara, thankful for cheating death on the dangerous mountain bends.  The traffic went both ways, many a head-on collision was narrowly diverted, and at one point, we got stuck in a traffic jam behind a guy trying to shove a newly purchased coat rack into his small car.  It didn't work.  He drove off in what I imagine to be a fury of disappointment. We were also starving.

Durbar Square in Patan

We took a ride over to Patan with our homeboy Monaj. Since it was the birthday of Buddha, we witnessed some sort of processional.  Taking it in like great travelers, we watched and talked about Nepal.  It is such a beautiful place.  With the mountains looming and Everest champions coming back with tales of the most extreme place on the planet, it is easy to fall in love with the lore of the rooftop of our world.  The pace of life in Kathmandu is frantic, but just a few miles in any direction are small Tibetan villages, soaring peaks, and lush rolling hills.  It has been days since I have passed a solid stool, but Nepal makes this sort of sacrifice worth it.  At times I regretted it, at times my heart soared, but in the end, Nepal added up way past the sum of its parts.  For every poisonous chicken mushroom dish, a snow capped monster soars.  For every traffic jam that seems inescapable, a quaint mountain village filled with tea-houses begs to be explored.  Patan seems to be the place where this truth materialized for me.  That, for every malady or setback, Nepal would reward me with the epic grandeur of an old magical kingdom. 

Rhinos I have known and loved

In Chitwan, an area in southern Nepal, we went on safari on the back of a lumbering elephant and saw these solitary beasts lurking in ponds and green glades.  Rhinos.  One even charged at us as we approached on foot - not for the faint of heart.  Exhilarating though. Luckily, we outran the strange wrinkled goons.

Boo's corner - Kristin's blog

Irma Returns

Last year in Lao we stayed in the jungle and had an encounter with a huge spider that the hotel named Irma. We all noticed it after dinner hanging out above our door. Ryan and I packed up shop and were ready to get the hell outta there. Justin and Megan did not think it would be good to leave during the night in search for another hotel in the jungles of Lao. So we stayed. It was pretty much the worst night ever.

We spent the last 2 nights in the jungle of Nepal.It was pretty awesome. I got to bathe an elephant AND touch its nose ( I will post more pics later) it was seriously the best day of my life.

So yesterday when I heard the words "uh oh, Irma returns" from Boo, I freaked. I grabbed Tweet and jumped on the bed with my camera.  This is a pretty funny video of Justin trying to kick Irma #2 out of our room. He did not know I was filming.

I am actually kinda glad Irma returned. I pulled the "I did not picture us having to escort a huge spider out of our room during our honeymoon" act, and squeezed out a trip to the Maldives! We were suppose to spend 8 days in Sri Lanka, 4 days in the jungle and 4 days on the beach. Instead of us going to the jungle we are going to the Maldives. This was my dream honeymoon location but it was a bit pricey and not adventurous enough for Justin. But he agreed this was not the ideal honeymoon setting he had in mind and so we booked a last minute deal to Male, Maldives....

A ton of pictures of Kathmandu with little to no explanation

Okay, its time for me to open up the floodgates on my photos.  I have been pretty stingy with them, but no more, you have earned it fair reader, behold a flood of Kathmandu... 

The flaming ghats of Pashupatinath - where the dead turn to ash

In Kathmandu, in an area called Pashupatinath, the Nepalese cremate the dead on raised platforms along the Bagmati river.  Running down from the Himalayas, the Bagmati river meets up with the Ganges and flows down to the holy city of Varnassi. 

The air is thick with the smoke of the dead; mourners shuffle about in silence.  Monkeys pick through the offerings like oblivious goons. A ghost like presence haunts just above your shoulder at this Hindu burial site.  The bodies burn slowly and the ashes join the river. 

King Tibs the Bold - Furmonster royalty at Hotel Courtyard in Kathmandu

Upon our arrival at the Hotel Courtyard in Kathmandu, the hotel gates swung open and a dog with the bouncy gait of an Arabian horse came racing towards our car.  It was Tibby, ruler of the Hotel Courtyard kingdom.  Sometimes racist (it is said that Coca Cola was not delivered for a month because the Nepalese delivery man would not come near Tibby and thus the hotel), always sauntering about like royalty, Tibby is one of the finest furmonsters ever encountered by the goboogo staff.

Going medieval in Bhaktapur

 

Bhaktapur is a medieval town where little has changed in the last thousand years.  While the year in Nepal may be 2068, this hamlet of brick and chaos makes that collection of digits seem arbitrary at best.  The city's narrow lanes are flanked by leaning brick towers and the savageness of its back alleys is told in goat slaughter and starving dogs.  Truth be told, it is not a place for a first date.  You bring her here AFTER you marry her. 

Sunrise over the Himalayas

Sunrise over the Annapurna range, snaking up the switchbacks with our hoodies on at 4:30am was a trip in itself 

Boo's corner - Kristin's blog

So I thought this trip I would give blogging a shot. I am in no way a writer like Justin at all. I actually despise writing. But I thought it would be fun to upload the pictures from my camera and give my point of view of the trip. Please do not judge my grammar, I went to Celina High School and we colored signs to put on the lockers of football boys and practiced game day stuff during class. Grammar was the least of my worries then..

Nepalese cucumbers are massive

This woman cannot fathom why her cucumbers are so large

Passing though Changu Narayan

The Kathmandu valley is filled with medieval hamlets, rolling hills, brick factories, and goats.  We had a driver take us up the hillside into Changu Narayan.  

Bryan Adams is huge in Nepal

A strange undercurrent has taken a turn for the surreal during our adventure through Nepal. On our first day in Nepal, we befriended a 16 year old named Monaj and when we got to talking about music, he was only interested in talking about one man - Bryan Adams.  He even sang the first few lines to summer of 69.  We thought it was odd that a teenager was so fond of the aging rock icon.  The Bryan Adams madness only ballooned from there.

After you become aware of something, it seems to occur everywhere.  After Monaj spoke of his love for the crooner popular for such songs as "I wanna be (your underwear)" and 18 going on 55, we could not escape the stylings of the Nepalese heartthrob.  I could not help but picture him bringing down the house in Kathmandu to a crowd of weeping Nepalese with a heartfelt rendition of "(Everything I do) I do it for you."

And it happened, he performed in Kathmandu a few months ago.

The mask-maker at work in Changu Narayan

Here, in the Kathmandu valley village of Changu Narayan, the mask-maker cannot possibly make enough masks.  He toils away in a ghost like trance carving and painting, carving and painting.

The longest of journeys

Thursday, May 12  - St. Croix to Miami followed by Miami to Dallas
Friday, May 13 - Dallas to Amsterdam
Saturday, May 14 - Amsterdam to New Delhi
Sunday, May 15 - New Delhi to Kathmandu

We are in Nepal, where roads come to an end.