Standing soaking wet in the middle of Kathmandu, I have no clue why we originally decided to go to Nepal. We knew that I am not into trekking, so why? I remember that we wanted to volunteer but skipped that intent after not getting an answer from the chosen NGO, and rescheduling our travel plans. The bottom line was: More travelling, no volunteering – been there, done that. Retrospective I am glad they did not bother to answer. The monsoon started earlier, and brought lots of rain, clouds, mosquitos and landslides.
So we landed in Kathmandu, already or still depressed from all the rain in China, and got even more rain. An important thing we needed to accomplish was
getting our India visa. According to several blogs it is annoying but should be doable in one week. Thus, first thing on Monday morning we took a taxi to the embassy and sat in one of the travel
offices nearby. To apply for the visa you need to fill out an online form, which once printed you cannot correct manually. If you want to avoid hick ups it is the best to do it with those
agencies and just pay for it. With our forms, special format pictures and passport copies we went next door and draw a number. Only one hour later we could hand over our application, pay and were
told to come back on Friday. The procedure was very fast and I believe it helped that we wore shoes, clothes with less than five colors in total and have neither rastas nor Chinese
passport.
Still we had a few days to kill and were searching for activities. Problem in the rain season is, apart from the heavy rainfalls, that many roads are in even worse condition, planes are often delayed, mountain covered with clouds, rivers too dangerous to kayak and trekking tracks closed.
Our nice hotel manager recommended a short trip to the Chitwan National Park, a few hours south of Kathmandu. According to him there would be less rain (we just need to carry an umbrella), leeches are not a problem if we would not walk and the elephant ride would be a total different experience, since we would be in Nepal. Not having better alternatives ready, we booked the trip and soon drove across the county.
85% of Nepal’s population lives in the countryside and nearly 60% live with less than 2USD per day. These facts were clearly visible on our journey. Many houses were more shacks, the one’s with bricks made Bangladeshi factories look safe and often it was not clear if they building or deconstruction their accommodation. People still do most of the jobs manually and so you often see women, some well over 60 years old, carrying bricks and other construction material while the men stand on rocky trestles bringing up walls. Seeing those old women working so hard, as well as small children begging in the city is very sad and sometimes hard to understand. Nepal makes a lot of money with the tourists and more than 2 millions Nepali work abroad to support their families, but still the relative young government is struggling and corruption is a big issue, so that despite potential earnings the standard of the majority has not visibly improved.
In Chitwan we were the only tour guests in our hotel and despite the promises from the Kathmandu hotel managers, it did rain – a lot. Thanks to the heavy rain and its consequences we had to skip half of the program parts. What we still did was the elephant ride, which was truly a different experience. In a playpen-like cage we shared the elephant with two Indians and rode through the jungle. Since it poured down, all the animals we saw were dears and peacocks. The elephant would be a great transportation mode to see tigers or rhinos, walking silently around, but we were still out of luck regarding land animals. Another highlight was the canoe ride with our Indian friends, seems they love to sing so instead of observing animals we were listening to a bunch of Indians singing “Hare Krishna”.
Back in Kathmandu we visited the Indian visa center once again and learnt that our application was approved, that we have to leave our passports and could come back on Monday to pick it up. Why they are not able to do the approval/ denial and pick up at the same time or at least day is their secret.
Another weekend to kill and all we knew was that we do not want to stay in the shithole called Kathmandu and were not willing to travel about 14hours forth and back to Pokhara. Nagarkot was the
solution, a hill station at the end of Kathmandu valley known for its view; Needless to say that the view less impressive due to the clouds during our stay. Anyhow, we stayed in the fanciest
hotel and enjoyed the limited view, the nice room and the fresh air.
After another trip to the visa center they finally handed out the passports including the visa. To be really ready for India we checked into a Yoga Retreat for our last days. As if someone above would reward our efforts for a better karma, the weather changed. The retreat is located in the Kathmandu hills and from above the sunny Kathmandu even looked quite nice. In our introduction course we had a meditation class, a yoga class and a massage. The meditation was nice, but unfortunately our legs went numb, so that the total focus was not on the universe but on our feet. The yoga practiced was a very traditional form and reminded me of a sport class for seniors. Looking at the grumpy face of our teacher, he clearly was not happy with our spiritual and flexibility lack. The massage turned out to be the most special experience at the retreat. The therapist focused so intensely on our inner tight, that I started to fear that we booked tantric massages accidently.
After the retreat we drove to the airport and could already make use of our newly learnt meditation technics. For whatever reason they scanned our luggage two times just to search them manually in front of the plane. Luckily we got into the plane before it started to rain again. We also experienced that the touchy therapist was culturally not out of line. The airport security did search us three times; never have so many different people touched my private parts in one single day.
We flew away from a country where they love to clean their throats and noses, loudly and regularly, to the next one. Can you get used to?
Kommentar schreiben