In Gangtok

We are happy to be in Gangtok having been greeted at the Bagdogra Airport by our guide Tenzin and driver Sachin. Tenzin presented us with the traditional Buddhist silk scarves placed around our necks. Gangtok is a great place for us for several reasons. They have turned a main downtown street into a walking mall which is so nice without the cars and motorcycles whizzing past and all the horns honking and exhaust and dust. There are some very good coffee shops and some really good pizza and chocolate. No tourist touts trying to sell us tourist stuff and the people are very nice.

Calcutta seemed to be poverty and filth in our face all the time. We had to wade in some flooded streets in water that was not so appealing. The city spreads what they call bleach - a white powder all down the gutters so that it will prevent mosquitoes from multiplying and hopefully hold down the spread of malaria so when it rains and the water washes the poison down the drains it becomes very wide spread. Calcutta is built in and surrounded by wet lands and swamps so rainwater drainage is a problem and many streets flood. It is very hot and humid this time of year. A hard place for us to be even for the short time we were there, but we were able to visit with a friend we made in Ladakh last year. He has been living in Calcutta for some months now and is studying the sitar with a really good teacher. Catching up and comparing experiences with a fellow American was very good for us.

For some reason tomorrow morning we are leaving our very comfortable guest house in Gangtok for a trek. It is cold here at night, but we will drive to Yuksom where it is below freezing at night and barely 40 in the day. It is raining here daily and snowing up there. From Yuksom we climb for two days up to around 14280ft and then in several more days up to a 16,350 ft pass. It has been snowing up there all this week. We are not at all sure exactly what to expect. We will let you all know when we get back to Gangtok in 10 days from now.

We have now spent two evening with the girls at the Happiness Home here in Gangtok. What a great group of girls and what a good time we have had! We have laughed and had a great time. We are all relaxing with each other now and enjoying each others company. We are so happy to have the opportunity to be a small part of the Happiness Home.

I have to go .. Need to get some sleep and be ready to go in the morning. We will write in about 10 days with an update.

Nepal Trek Photos

Trekkers enjoying the view from the trail.

Sites visited today in Kathmandu

We had a good day going to several old and important Buddhist and Hindu religious sites in Kathmandu.  We hired a taxi driver with good English and set the agenda for the day.  We went to what the Internet references list as the top two holy pilgramage sites in Buddhism.  To save some stress in writing about the history etc of these places -- below are Internet links.

Wade through as much as you want. 

Bodinath 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boudhanath

The Monkey Temple

http://www.google.com/search?q=monkey+temple+kathmandu&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&client=safari

We then visited an important Hindu temple.  Wikipedia: Pashupatinath Temple is one of the most significantHindu temples of Shiva in the world, located on the banks of the Bagmati River in the eastern part of Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal. 

This is where Hindu cremations take place with the ashes being put in the holy Bagmati river which runs into the Ganges -- Ganga -- in India.  There were three cremations in progress when we were there. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pashupatinath_Temple

An area of Kathmandu known as Patan has an historic square -Durbar Square full of temples.  It was much less hectic than the Kathmandu Durbar Square, which we plan to visit tomorrow.  So I just included that link.  Kathmandu Durbar Sq is interesting because a young girl is selected to be a living goddess and lives in the square until puberty.  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patan_Durbar_Square

A couple of blocks from the Patan Durbar Sq is a Buddhist temple -- the Golden Temple.  Beautiful place. 

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/nepal/around-the-kathmandu-valley/patan/sights/religious-spiritual/golden-temple

Kathmandu Durbar Square Link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basantapur_Durbar_Square

Wikipedia:  At the southern end of Durbar Square is one of the most curious attractions in Nepal, the Kumari Chowk. This gilded cage contains the Raj Kumari, a girl chosen through an ancient and mystical selection process to become the human incarnation of the Hindu mother goddess, Durga. She is worshiped during religious festivals and makes public appearances at other times for a fee paid to her guards.

http://www.sacred-destinations.com/nepal/kathmandu-kumari-ghar

Nepal Update

We have been relaxing in Pokhara Nepal since returning from an 8 day trek into the the Himalayas but not too high and cold .. Maybe about 12,000 ft. We hiked a loop from Niapol to Ghorapani - Poon Hill to Tatrapani to Gandruk to Landruk and Australian Camp then out. I left off some stops and probably misspelled some. It was a lot of steep ups and downs with some days being all day climbing and some felt like all day steep down hill. Many beautiful panoramas of the Anapurna Range of the Himalayas. The cyclone that caused eastern India so much trouble reached us the last night and day of our trek so we had some hiking in the rain. All in all a very good trek and it was good to get out into the traditional Gurung villages. They are happy friendly people and the villages are clean and prosperous. It is harvest time here also.

Pokhara Lakeside is a tourist town with tropical weather, butterflies, good food and lots of Europeans, Aussies, Chinese, but very few Americans. It is situated on a large beautiful lake with a hindu temple on an island in the lake and boats for rent. We are in the same guest house as last year .. Between 15 and 20 a night. Thanks to Peggy Emberson for introducing us to Nepal and the Nirvana Guest House last year. This guest house seems to have a loyal following with people who come here every year and have been coming here for 15 or 20 years.

We're on our second full moon in Asia and this one marks the end of the Dasain festival in Nepal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasain

On the trek there were nights of traditional music and singing by the guides and porters at the guest houses. People are dressed in their best clothes and wearing large Tikas on their foreheads. Little girls in what look like our princess dresses. Everyone happy and smiling and big bamboo swings erected everywhere with many children using them enthusiastically. We didn't see any of the early festival goat and buffalo sacrifices which was fine with us. We did see many herds of goats being taken to town for festival.


We had Hair cuts this morning .. Both of us in the barber shop ... "Sir head massage too for you and madam? Yes yes. Shoulder and neck massage sir? .. They say I am as good as going to the doctor sir! Yes yes.".

When all was over and Susan had long ago fled to go shopping I owed him a couple thousand rupees! The haircut started as 195 rupees. I am a real sucker sometimes --- a rupee is equal to a US penny, but it adds up fast!

There's a nepalese restaurant down the street with great Dal Bhat and then I saw Chang on the menu and they said yes we make our own Chang ( rice beer). I had a big glass and it was milky white and a little thick but had a pretty good flavor and evidently a lot of alcohol! Good Stuff .. Almost. ( 90 rupees a big glass).

We catch a bus for Kathmandu in a few days. Then fly to Calcutta India from there. We will be going to some other historic cities in Nepal before we leave --- like Bhaktapur.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhaktapur

In the morning we will meet the Nepalese waiter we met here last year and stayed in touch via email -- Himal -- and go take a boat for a paddle in the lake.

I'll add more photos as I can.

The Baba Adventure Bus

We're in Pokhara Nepal in the Lakeside district. In Kathmandu we tried to get tickets on the Green Line Bus but couldn't get tickets for the day we wanted so they recommended the Baba Adventure Bus and held up a brochure of a new looking blue bus. I was skeptical but they assured us that it was the same quality as the green line. So the next morning we took a cab at 6 am in the rain to where the bus leaves. Sure enough there was a line of bright blue busses along the side of a busy street. The cab driver put us out across the street and I paid him and started across with our bags .. Then we saw the barrier in the middle of the road! Ha! Out in a busy street with full bags dodging cars etc looking for a way across. Susan found a section with a rope strung across instead of a solid barrier. It was a big step across the rope and into a lane of also busy traffic. All the cars and motorcycles honking and us trying to get across best we could. Oh yeah, this is the adventure bus! Thank goodness that was the end of the adventure except for the standard road adventure which didn't seem so personal while riding in a big bus. Some things were very different here... There were nice seat belts laid out neatly on each seat which we used and the road that was so bad last year has been repaved and mostly smooth and wider. Still scary steep drops off the sides with no guard rails. But...Wow some infrastructure progress. The roadside food during the 7 hour trip was not so great but the scenery was interesting and the fresh bananas were good. Getting off the bus a man was in the middle of the crowd of cab drivers all yelling taxi sir at the bottom of the steps. He held up a sign with our names on it. I pointed to him and yelled yes and he grabbed our bags and we were off to the guest house. Almost a choreographed exit!

At the guest house the road alongside that was dirt and gravel last year is newly paved also. We wonder how much has been done on the mountain roads that were encroaching on the Annapurna circuit last year. But we won't see that because we are staying lower in the Poon Hill Annapurna Base Camp area this year. We meet with a porter tomorrow and leave the next day for about 10 days of trekking.

We met with the waiter Himal whom we met last year here in Pokhara. We took him to lunch today and he treated us to dinner at the place he works here in town. We had no idea he was going to pay and we probably ordered too expensively. We will make it up before we leave.

It is hot and humid here so we'll be happy to get into the mountains. Also people are saying that it will begin to get cooler soon.

In Kathmandu

We arrived in Kathmandu yesterday afternoon. Getting out of Leh always involves a lot of security checks. We were physically searched three times by the time we boarded. Our bags were checked several times and our carry on bags were taken and checked, which made us over weight for checked bags. So I had to go back to the start of the security checks because that is where they collect the over weight fees. Then back through the searches again. This time the soldier did not like the cough drops in my pocket and told me to eat one of them and watched me. He then asked if he could have one and when I said yes he laughed and sent me on through.

In Delhi we changed planes for Kathmandu but at baggage claim we managed to get a bag of unneeded things out to Lalit ( who was nice enough to drive to the airport to get our bag - very nice) to hold for us for the southern India portion of the trip. A very nice well educated Indian couple we met at the guest house in Leh helped us by taking the bag outside to Lalit. We were sorry to have not been able to visit with him but we would have to go up a floor and through security to get back into the terminal. Air terminals here are not like in the US -- no one without a ticket for that day and time and proper ID ( passport) exactly matching the names on the air ticket can get in the front door of the airport.

The lines to get an entry visa ( $40 USD for a 30 day visa) in the Kathmandu airport were very long. We were in line for a couple of hours. Then out to find the hotel car and to the hotel in Thamel - the tourist district - well maybe the tourist zoo. Seems like it is just bedlam all the time with very narrow streets, hundreds of shops wanting to get us into their shop, 100s of tourists and trekkers, and all kinds of traffic going by seemingly just missing us barely. http://wikitravel.org/en/Thamel

Last night we ate at an Italian place, Dolce Vita -- Very good, as it was last year. Good coffee and desert!

Woke in our large 18 dollar room and had a wonderful hot shower this morning - we had slept in. We walked in Thamel when we got up and found Gaia - a place we ate last year for dinner, but their breakfast was really good too. We will go back there!

Yesterday when we checked into our hotel our room number was in the 100s in a building across the street so naturally I thought - great we are on a lower floor. Nope, after a four floor walk up there was our room! Where we are now after shopping and walking around Thamel.

We will go over to the Bodinath Stupa area tomorrow to find the Monastery where our Ladakh guide's aunt lives. She is a Buddhist nun. Our guide's mom sent a package through us to her and we need to deliver it. Stanzin says that she speaks very good English and will show us around that area.

We have not decided on a trek yet but maybe north of Pokhara around the Annapurna Base Camp trekking area. Also maybe something north of Kathmandu. ?

We are fine, enjoying the sights here and eating well. Also enjoying a lower elevation than Ladakh but we miss being in Ladakh also.

D&S