True to his word, I was having my breakfast on the roof of the hotel and I heard his Italian accent behind me. We chatted for a couple of hours and the arranged go meet later for dinner and a few beers. This was the first day of Divali and the town was dressed up with pretty lights and all the trimmings. The first day of the festival ( it does go on for several days ) was supposed to be the biggest.
Spend the afternoon in the garden of dreams, dreaming. It was a lovely afternoon. Who would have imagined this could have been in the centre of KTM, quiet and really pretty. Only 160 NRP too. I stayed there a few hours till the sun went in and it got cold, hatching a plan.
I finally decided on my plan. It was getting cold at night and you could tell winter was drawing in. I lay on a mat on the grass and decided that I would head to India but not as my original plan which was to head east and cross the land border into Sikkim,. It was going to be even colder there as it was further north and much closer to the mountains. Another factor that influenced me was the fact that the travel agents couldn't seem to sort out a flight, I was really reluctant to book a 17 hour bus journey as at least one went over the cliffs each month. In addition, I had seen the mountains, the choice of getting there was one of the worlds most dangerous roads or one of the words least safe airlines. It was a bit of a no brainer really....
I had looked on the sky scanner app in the mooning and noticed it was the inaugural flight from Delhi to KTM of an airline called Indigo. The price was ridiculously cheap. When I got back I booked it. I would leave on the Friday afternoon.
Met Roberto as agreed at 7:30 and we headed out for something to eat and a couple of beers. As we were walking towards Thamel an extremely loud fire cracker went off about 5 feet from my foot, I nearly had a bloody heart attack. Once recovered my composure, I defiantly needed a beer. We found a nice local restaurant and managed to quaff a nice local meal and a couple of beers. Momo and chicken chilly with a couple of beers. Happy days.
It seems somehow sacrilege to have been in Kathmandu for so long, almost three months and still not have visited that Icon of the city, nay country, Bouda. Roberto and I walked onto the to grows and jumped into a microbus for the 30 minute trip. It was a fine day, quite hot in fact.
The place is quite stunning, it is supposed to be the biggest stupa in Asia. I'm not sure that is quite true, from what I remember the Swedagon pagoda is bigger. Nevertheless it is certainly impressive. Some years ago Roberto had a girlfriend in Nepal who lived actually next to the Stupa. When he was seeing her they had both rescued a dog they found nearly dead in a field close by to Kathmandu. As we were there, we decided to visit the family. Without doubt the dog had a good memory, when it saw Roberto it went absolutely berserk. We had a cup of coffee with the family, the ex girlfriend was not there but it was really interesting to meet her mum, dad and sister. The house was a typical Nepali although the family were Tibetan. The father was a retired doctor and ex Tibetan monk. He was well into his 70s but was still working, making herbal remedies in his house. It was fascinating.
In the afternoon Roberto had a meeting arranged with an "estate agent", I use the expression loosely because he was absolutely useless. We took a micro to Boudankanta which is a village, well off the beaten tourist track but a really nice little village right on the edge of the Kathmandu valley. After much confusion (the estate agent had run out of credit on his mobile) we managed to catch up with him. The first place we looked at was not furnished (despite the fact that furnished was a pre-requisite) the second was on a 1 year lease (despite the fact that short term lease was a pre-requisite) and the third was 50,000 NRP (despite the fact that 30,000NPR was a pre-requisite) it was actually getting to be quite funny. Roberto had not quite got into the Nepali mindset and you could see was looking a little bit stressed. He once again pointed out the requirement, making it very clear that this was non negotiable and if he turned up again as unprepared then we might as well just sit and drink tea. A very entertaining afternoon.
Today is yet another festival day in the never ending Diwali, I am actually getting confused about it all. It's actually Nepali new year as well, the years in Nepal are different. It's now 2067.......
Anyway, as it's new year quite a lot of the local places to eat (the ones in Thamel that are reasonably priced) were closed. We did fine a place and as we sat down inside, (it's defiantly quite chilly at night now) I asked if it was OK to smoke. The response was that it was fine and an ashtray was brought. The chicken curry was great, the everest was great and the ciggie after the meal was great. As we were eating a group of people had come in the restaurant. They were westerners and obviously a tour group with tour leader. One of the women was looking at me, almost as if she wanted to say something, and giving me a sort of snarl. Next thing she got up, went to the bar and said something. A couple of minutes later the owner came up and asked if we could put out our cigarettes as one of the group had objected. I perfectly understand this but we did ask. it is actually not allowed to smoke inside restaurants in Nepal but they just ignore it. Anyway, we went and sat on the patio before heading back to the hotel and grabbing a couple of bottles of beers and some nuts to spend my final night in Nepal chatting and looking over the Diwali festooned Kathmandu. A nice end to a perfect trip.....
Tomorrow I leave.....
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Location:Kathmandu, Nepal
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