As for Gangtok we had a great time here. Yesterday we had jeeped up to Lake Tsomgo and the day before we had hiked about from one Monastery to another for about six hours. Because we weren’t aware that jeeps get filled up so fast we missed the opportunity to take other wheeled excursions from this town. We did as much walking as we could and then felt it was time to leave. I am really looking forward to seeing if we can get into Nepal.
Well, we did get into Nepal! And it was quite a difficult process. We picked up a packed local bus from the middle of an extremely busy high way in Kakarbhitta. A cop pointed at the bus we should get and we basically just ran after it until they let us on. We squashed up in the back of the bus, thank Krisna we didn’t take big back packs, and sat sweating for an hour until we arrived in Panitanki, the last Indian outpost!
After getting our visas stamped we hooked up with WHITEY in one of the local travel agents. Dave & I had been looking to get an overnight bus to Kathmandu, only to hear there’d been a bus strike for days with no known ending date. So, our only option was to take a flight the next day. Getting a ticket however turned out to be a bit of a game between the towns two ticket issuing agents. Even though there were at least seven people who now needed a ticket we all ended up getting them separately at different times, airlines and with different information. But at least we had the tickets in our hands. We had no choice but to spend a grueling hot night (no A/C in this border town) in a grungy hotel – dash motel which had intermittent electricity and water, with a stop and go fan. To avoid the hot room for awhile we sat with the rest of WHITEY in a tiny Nepalese bar where we ate Momo’s (vegetable stuffed dumpling which you can have with mutton or chicken, very nice) and drank the warm beer.
Searching long & hard resulted in a great hotel in Kathmandu after a smooth and earlier than expected flight on Yeti Airlines. Our room is great – hot water ALL the time. Though we have now learnt that Nepal suffers even more than India from brown outs. Hence a lot of the shops and hotels have their own generator which means we can have one light which works in the evening as well as the candles they kindly left us.
It’s pretty hot here in the day time but at night it cools down so not even a fan is needed. WHITEY is very prevelant in Thamel, the holiday area of Kathmandu and the tourist touts are all over. But the Nepalese seem to be generally very lovely and also, as soon as one gets away from the main drag it is a “normal” working busy city. The pollution is immense however, and about forty percent of the people wear masks to try and filter it out. It is quite a sight to behold.
The elections are tomorrow so we are going to have an easy day after our adventure into Patan today. The abundance of incredible temples and ancient brick and timber architecture is overwhelming. Very impoverished people as compared to any western standard live in these priceless ruins and spend their days collecting water and washing clothes or selling “trinkets” – whatever it takes! Please excuse that last sentence.
We had to actually pay to get into the city of Patan which seemed to match Kathmandu in its magnificence. We spent the day trundling around in this hot ancient place.
I am a bit swamped mentally by all this great stuff to look at. I had an idea that Nepal was steeped in temples and such, but I had not banked on this many. And despite there number, they’re all exquisite. Though some are not well maintained they are at least all used by the Nepalese people.
From what we have seen so far the place is covered by stray dogs, as in India, black pigs and sick chickens that eek out their miserable existence in dried up sewage filled crevices. I was pretty sickened when trying to catch a breath while crossing the half dried up Vishnumati River. Dave spotted a man living in all of this human and other waste. The stench was so bad that it was actually hard to take photos. This guy, I think, spends his days basically sitting in sewage. Kids also flew home made parachutes from the bridge which they made from polythene and other found sewage items. They seemed very happy and the whole thing was bewildering.
We’ve seen dried up riverbeds like this in India too, where people are attracted to, for some reason, and try to eek out a living from its produce.
It’s all hard to understand as we are so used to so many choices that it’s really hard to relate to. It’s like looking at people living hell.
I have since found out that a lot of the single people that one might see living in sewage or trash are in fact lepers. I only found this out weeks later after seeing quite a bit of this in Nepal & mostly India and then reading about it. Sometimes it is the only place that they are "allowed" to stay without being bothered. Others find homes with each other in slum dwellings and such in little communities where they can flourish with all sorts of businesses & what-not. However, something like 80% of the lepers in the world live in India, which is rather astounding & makes one wonder.
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What's the deal with WHITEY?
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I'm white-you're white
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