Back to Kathmandu - Trek begins soon

View Kathmandu Guest House in a larger map


I am now in Kathmandu. Today is my last day of aimless roaming in Kathmandu. I find aimless roaming quite interesting. It was rather enjoyable walking through the older part of the city which is now a market bustling with people. The design of the place reminds me somewhat of fantasy game books - one street sells hardware, another lane sells pottery, another alley sells electrical goods and so forth. The lanes are all quite specialised. If you want to find spices in a lane that sells electrical goods, then too bad - it is in the other street. I would have found it confusing if I wanted to buy something because the lanes are like a maze. Also there is a sense of serendipity - occasionally, you find something spectacular out of the blue. Today I found a stupa that was actually very nice in one of the streets.

Tomorrow my friends will be coming from Singapore and pretty soon after we will be starting our trek. We will have one evening to stock up on whatever we are lacking and then we will head out on Saturday. We will be doing part of the Annapurna Circuit. I say part because we do not have enough days to complete the whole trek and have to shorten some part of it by taking a flight from Jomsom to Pokhara. I think that is generally the plan as I left it all for the trekking companies and the guide. I will just follow along leisurely. Hopefully, none of us will be hit with any serious altitude sickness. Since the trek is starting, I think there will be very limited internet connection and so I might not be posting anything for a while.

Back to Kathmandu

Well I only managed to spend a little time in Pokhara. If I knew earlier, I might have just came straight to Pokhara because there are more things to do here - short hikes, paragliding, river rafting, etc. However, all these things do take time - 2-3 days minimum stay to wait for the schedule - and so I have decided to go back to Kathmandu tomorrow morning to wait for my friends who will be arriving on the 18. Besides, most of these activities would be better done with friends for companionship sake and economically. Most everything is cheaper for a few people rather than alone. For example, if I rent a boat it will be $12 a day for myself. If there were 5 person, we could still sit in the same boat. The locals pack 20 on to the boat meant for maybe 8 persons. Similarly, the room I am staying at sleeps 2 but I use the other bed to put my clothing.

Talking about money, I have overspent a little. I ate too much too frequently. Bought some useless stuff and went for too many nothing-to-see sights/temples. Anyway my budget of $50 a day is not lavish but for local it is likely a quarter of their salary. I was talking to the church leader and he mentioned that one of the Christians needs to get a better job if he wants to start a family. A better job is $200 SGD a month. Naturally, I did not share that I am blowing my $50 daily budget by eating at restaurants for most meals and hiring taxis.

Pokhara

Since I had a bit more time to kill but not too much, I took an easy trip to Pokhara. I just did not realize that the trip would take about 7 hours. As I will have to do this trip again when I start the trek when my Singapore friends arrive, it means I will be spending quite a lot of time sitting on the Kathmandu-Pokhara bus ride. The ride is not awful but neither is the bus extra comfortable. The tourist bus seats are the typical 'Bus Kilang' seats - stiff seats with not too much leg room. As a consolation, I still get a chance to roam around a little in Pokhara tomorrow. The only consideration is whether to spend Wednesday night in Pokhara or in Kathmandu. Today after spending some time eating and looking for a guest house, there's little left daylight. I went for a stroll near the lake area and it was getting dark already. Over in Nepal, it gets dark around 5:30pm so if I wanted to do something outdoor I would have to be out a little early. Quite likely, I will just rent a boat for half a day tomorrow and row around the lake. I hope I will not get wet because I don't really have any extra stuff to change into.

Durbar Squares near Kathmandu

I spent the last two days roaming around the few Durbar Squares near Kathmandu. If you don't know what Durbar Squares are, I don't either. Quite likely, they are like a trade and parade center for the towns. Walking up to the Durbar Squares is quite impressive because you are strolling through these small maze-like streets that barely large enough for a car to pass through and then you come up to a huge open space with impressive looking temples, scultures, pagodas and palaces. The temples are all quite unique with the huge foundations and impressive stone statues at the bottom but rather small temple up above. Many of the walls and the doors are richly decorated with carvings and frescoes. Most of the windows are equally well decorated. My favourite Durbar Square so far has been the one at Patan. The focus of these old architectures seemed very different from the modern architecture where the art and the aesthetic play such an integral part of these buildings while the functionality seems of a lesser concern. Most of the heritage sites require a ticket to
enter - about $10 SGD.

For the Durbar Square in Buktapur, I took a public bus from Kathmandu. I took it because it
seemed more fun and I am a cheapskate who doesn't want to spend money on taxis. (However in Singapore, I take taxis all the time.) It would likely cost me $12-$15 SGD for the 16km ride to Buktapur whereas it costs $0.50 taking the public bus. Of course the bus itself is part of the fun - squeezing with the locals. In fact, the bus I took to Nagarkot (one of the mountain resorts that I went to after Buktapur) was so packed, the roof had over 20 people. If there wasn't a bicycle on the top of the bus, I am sure they would have tried to pack at least 6 more person on the roof. Anyway the bus roof ride is definitely not something I recommend for us city people, sitting on a metal railing on top of a rattling bus for an hour and a half is not that fun after 10 minutes. On top of that, it was already dark and cold (about 10 degrees outside). I was shivering cold after the trip but fortunately I quickly found a shop with good hot tea and a delicious Nepali rice set.

Cold....Brrrr, Kathmandu

It's only 13 degrees C in Kathmandu and I am freezing in the motel room. In fact it was so cold, I decided to go down for a cup of tea. That's why I can type this blog. Earlier I was stuck in the room because the electricity was out for a couple of hours. As I was telling a friend, I can't take the cold anymore. Too used to the warmth of the equatorial weather. With the cold, there's so much packing to do. I spent most of Monday trying to figure out what to bring - t-shirts, thermals, jackets, etc. I realize I likely don't have enough warm clothing for the negative degrees trek. Ooops, no sub zero sleeping bag. Guess I'll just have to buy it here. Fortunately, there is no lack of sleeping bag shops. Kathmandu is the warm part of the trip. Maybe I am getting a little too old for all these types of adventure trips. Maybe it's time for the 4-5 star hotels luxury trip.

Silkair flight to Kathmandu

Grrrrr, it's been a rather bad morning so far. Currently I am griping about a credit card booking made for my silkair/singapore airline flight. When I tried to check-in to the flight, the counter lady asked me for my American Express credit card. (Why I booked using the Amex card is really beyond me because I rarely use this card?) Anyway, since I have booked this ticket about 2 months earlier, I have paid fully for the bill. Last month, American Express wanted to charge me $160 for an annual fee so I decided to cancel it. I thought it wasn't a big deal because I have no installments and I have paid everything in full. So when the Singapore Airlines lady asked me to produce the credit card I couldn't - it was cut in half and thrown into the rubbish dump. Instead of checking with the credit card office, they made me cancel the air ticket and bought a new ticket. Imagine the trouble it will cause me? I need to wait one to two months for a refund for a ticket that I have paid for about 2 months back. Moreover, will the refund go to my American Express account? Who knows? I was fuming mad because they made such a big deal on something I have paid for. With a budget airline I might understand but with a big airline like SQ, I thought they wouldn't bother their customers with these types of hassle. Anyway, I'll have to worry about it when I get back from holidays. I hope the holidays will help me get a new perspective. Maybe it's a small lesson for me to not fuss over all the smaller things in life.

Dusting off the blog

Blame it on facebook. After mindlessly joining the hordes in opening a facebook account, this blog has been left on the shelf untouched for more than 3 months. Instead of writing a full paragraph in the blog, I have broken up what I wanted to say into little mindless sentences - washed away in the sea of facebook comments. Work is also partly to blame - the last few months have been very busy. In fact, I have been doing something that I loath - working on weekends. Moreover, it is not like I am happy working to begin with. Anyway, there is light at the end of the tunnel. I am free. For the next 4 weeks at least - Christmas holidays. Hopefully, the holidays will make some of my hair grow back - I seriously doubt it.

With a little more free time, expect to see the blog active again and I have a trip to Nepal coming up. So if possible I will keep you updated on where I am that is if there is internet access on the treks - again which I seriously doubt. It will be exciting and I am keen to see a new country. From what I have been told, the mountains are magnificent and the adventure shop guy promised me that it will be freezing. Or maybe he is just trying to sell more of his thermals to naive trekkers.