Steintore
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Steintore
About Nepal:
According to Wikipedia, Nepal has a population of approx 27 million people, with almost 1 million living in the capital Kathmandu, and is one of the least developed nations in the world. 82% are Hindu and 12% Buddhist. There are three main regions - southern lowland plains, hill region and mountain region.
Nepal lies within the collision zone of two tectonic plates and the mountain range is being pushed higher at the rate of 50mm per year effectively making the mountains "grow". It also means that the country is prone to earthquakes with one major earthquake every 100 years. The biggest were in 1934 (8.4 magnitude) and 2011 (6.8 magnitude).
Nepal contains the highest elevations in the world including 8,848 metres (29,029 ft) height Mount Everest and another seven of the world's eight thousand metre peaks all on the border with China - Lhotse, Makalu, Cho Oyu, Kanchenjunga, Dhaulagiri, Annapurna and Manaslu. (There are 14 mountains over 8,000m and Nepal has 8 of them.)
The country has been a monarchy throughout most of its history and was ruled by the Shah Dynasty of kings from 1768 until 2008. In 1996, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) started a bid to replace the royal parliamentary system with a people's republic by violent means. This led to a long Civil War and more than 12,000 deaths. On 1 June 2001, there was a massacre in the royal palace when the Crown Prince killed the King and Queen and seven other members of the royal family and then committed suicide.
In 2008 Nepal became a federal republic following a bill passed by the government, and thereby abolishing the monarchy.
Wed, 26.02.2014: Flight to Kathmandu, Nepal, cloudy, 20°C
It was a short night for us and we had to get up early. We were served breakfast in our room - buttered toast (barely any butter), boiled eggs (already shelled - Oh God, someone's dirty hands on our food!) and tea (that was coffee!). Okay, so they didn't get everything right but we were still impressed that we got a clean room and clean sheets.
We walked back to the metro station and got to the airport where the Jet Airways counter was chaotic - one extremely long queue for all flights. It took 1.5 hours just to get to the counter to check in and then another long queue to get through immigration. A number of passengers were already getting angry and then we hit the chaos of the security checks for hand luggage. There is no system and even if there is, it is completely unintelligible to us!! Arrrgh!!! We want to get out of this country!!!!
We just had enough time to get to the toilet before boarding the plane which sat on the runway for over 30 minutes so we were late taking off. Kirsten was sitting in 17C and I was in 31B sitting between two Indian men, one of whom smelled badly and was disgusting. I thought he was going to spit on the plane!!
Finally, we took off and got out of India. We celebrated! Yeehaw!
We got some pretty spectacular views of mountain peaks jutting above the clouds on the way across the Himalayas over Nepal.
We landed at Kathmandu airport at 3-45pm (Nepal is, oddly, 15 minutes ahead of Indian time) and stood for over an hour in the queue to get 3 month visas for Nepal. ($100 per person and one photo).
The ATMs in the airport didn't work and we had no Nepalese Rupees so we got a pre-paid taxi without paying until the taxi driver could get us to an ATM along the way that worked! It took 6 different ATMs but we finally found one that worked except there was a limit of $100 per transaction. As we get charged every time we use our bank cards, this was going to prove expensive - $10 charge to get out $100. (There had been a limit in India aswell but it was for $160 per transaction).
The price for the taxi went up before we even got in and then the taxi driver wanted more money once we arrived at the hotel for taking us to the ATMs which had all been along the way, without us having to take a detour. Besides, it wasn't our fault that they weren't working! I felt as if I was back in India - surrounded by lying, cheating men!
We got to our hotel at 6pm - we are on the third floor (no lift) and there was currently no power. Kathmandu has power sharing which means that each area has only certain times when they have power, at different times each day. No power means we will have to be careful about using the computer, no internet and no hot water for the shower.
Not a very good welcome to Nepal so far and yet another exhausting day. We were already missing Myanmar and wished we were still there!
Thu, 27.02.2014 - Sun, 09.03.2014: Kathmandu, mostly sunny with some rain, 18°C - 20°C
The first thing we had to do was to read up on Nepal! With all the travelling we are doing, we simply don't have the time to do any reading and planning ahead of time. We had set off on this trip last November with just a broad idea of which countries we wanted to visit and had never been so unprepared for a trip. Somehow we are muddling through as we go along but it all takes a great deal of time.
Thus, we needed to extend our time in Kathmandu to 11 days and managed to organise quite a lot within that time. We must be getting used to this Ad Hoc travelling!
Our first goal was to get an update done for our website within the first few days and needed to finish India as Myanmar was going to be a mammoth task! In between, we also had to find out about Nepal, look into how we would get into Tibet and onwards to China because visas and permits would take time, and also work out which treks we wanted to do.
We managed to do all of the above but also went on a shopping spree!! There are innumerable shops in Thamel, Kathmandu (the main tourist area) that sell very cheap clothing and equipment. North Face has their clothing and equipment made here, as do a number of other big names in the mountaineering and trekking equipment arena, and we found a number of extremely good deals:-
Thin fleece pullover for $3; water proof trousers for $14; 100% waterproof jackets for $23; thick thermal trousers and long sleeve top for $23 ... and so on. The list is very long. Of course, there are no guarantees along with the items and Lonely Planet warns that the clothing may only be good enough for one trek so don't expect too much from cheap items that "just happen" to have a big name on them.
Things were so cheap we felt as if we should have left all our old stuff at home and filled our bags with the new stuff. We bought so much that we are a bit concerned about space to get it all back home! Oh well, we'll find that out when we have to pack for a flight - which won't be until we get to mainland China in over 3 months time!
We thought that the power cuts here would be a huge problem for us but during our time in Kathmandu, we got used to the times and worked around them. We also found several good restaurants and some excellent bakeries which sell at half price in the evenings! There is also a bank of ATMs that allow withdrawals of 35,000 Rupees ($350 at one time) which is far cheaper than only getting $100 for the same charges.
We took a day off planning to do some sightseeing. There is plenty to see in the capital so we got into a taxi and followed Lonely Planet's walking tour of Patan and the various temples, including Golden Temple and Kumbeshwar Temple. Durbar Square is an area crammed with temples, shrines, a palace and a museum. We walked through the square without realising that it costs $5 for tourists just to walk around!
On the way back we got the taxi to drop us off just outside Thamel as we wanted to take a look inside the "real" North Face shop. It should not have come as a shock that they were charging European prices. We were actually looking for the same waterproof trousers which had bought for $14 to check whether they were the same. But there weren't any in stock.
Afterwards we went to an Irish restaurant for Irish stew. A trip to the toilet was interesting - there was a plaque saying that the toilet was "dedicated to Sue McGill 2001". I thought she must have had a real problem and felt sorry for her, but it turned out that she was the designer! It was certainly well decorated, clean, had more space than normal with flower pots as a nice touch.
We finally worked out a date to leave and decided we would do the Everest Base Camp trek first starting from Jiri rather than the usual starting point of Lukla, as this had been recommended to us by people we met in Myanmar who had done this trek.
We spent the last two days doing test packing, trying out a new backpack we had bought and reducing ourselves to the minimum as we would be carrying everything ourselves. We had no sleeping bags but decided we could always rent them later on during the trek if we needed them.
We wouldn't have a guide - that would be me! I had spent a lot of time scouring the map and had info from the internet. I knew where the accommodation possibilities were and we would just walk each day as far as we could. The accommodation would be very basic and we wouldn't be able to book. We could just turn up and there shouldn't be a problem finding food and water.
Later on we would have to get acclimatized as we would be going up to over 5,400m and whilst I wouldn't have a problem, Kirsten was a different matter - she had been altitude sick in Bolivia when we went over 5,000m so we would have to allow extra time and the possibility of dropping to lower levels for a day or two before trying again.
We booked a car and driver to take us to Jiri and a return flight from Lukla on 10th April which would give us 30 days. We could always change the date of our flight but we were told it would be better to have a flight in the first place. (This turned out not to be the case because we could have just turned up at the airport and got on the next available flight because the main season was only just getting underway by the time we had finished. This meant that the flights would be full coming from Kathmandu with plenty of space for those wanting to fly back.)
After all our organising, it was finally time to start trekking. The only problem was that I had just picked up a cold and a fever that turned into a cough. So cough medicine had to be carried in the pack aswell!
