Day 4, 5 & 6: Kathmandu & surrounding valley

The past couple of days, I've been doing alot of sightseeing. I noticed that when days pass by, I get more interested and even attached to this country. Especially to the people. I had some great tourguides helping us to learn more about the sights, the culture, the religions and the country. The guides don't really operate on a fixed rate basis. They just help you around and at the end of the day you may give them whatever amount of money you please. This was the first time I encoutered such a form of providing service. If you think about it, these people are more likely to earn more than guides who handles fixed rates. Because at the end of the day we gave the tourguides more than we would have in case of the latter. The guides who we have met were quite about our age and they could answer any question we had. Because of the similarity in age, we could also learn things about the youth culture of nepal. What are their interests, what keeps them busy, what kind of image they have of western countries, how they spend their spare time and so on. At the end of the day, we were like a group of friends walking in Nepal and learning new things about each others cultures/countries.

So about the sightseeing. Day 4, we went to Swayambunath, Bonath. Pasupatinath and the Durbur Square of Kathmandu. Swayambunath is a buddhist temple on top of an hill. The million stairs wore us totally out, but the great view over the city and the Swayambunath stupa was well worth the effort. Afterwards, we went to Bonath, where you can see the largest stupa of Nepal. The views on top of the stupa were amazing, not to mention the stupa itself. The Bonath is situated in the Budha city area of Kathmandu, where alot of Tibetans (including refugees) live. The Pasupatinath is a Hindi temple. Here we met our first guide, Ramesh. He is an university graduated 25 years old guy from Kathmandu. He explained alot about the Hindi religion. Here are some things which still lingers in my head:

-In the Hindi religion, not only the cow, but also the dog and the monkey is a sacred animal. That explains why I see them everywhere.
-At the temple, I saw real life cremations. This is strongly connected to the Hindi religion. It really gets to you when you experience it from upclose. These ceremonies are very accessible because in Hindi, they act very openly about death. This is just a part of life. I totally agree. Anyways, a man's body takes 3 hours to cremate and a female's body 4 hours. This is because of the difference in the spine/backbone.
-Only "normal" people will get cremated. Holy men and sacred animals will get buried. Normal people can come back reincarnated, but holy men en sacred animals will go to heaven and once you are in heaven, there is no way back.
-In Hindi, the holy men can not participate in any sexual activity. This is because of sacrifiying yourself for the religion. But sexual desire is seen as a normal human emotion. So to cope with this desire, a holy man uses a 80kg rock to get rid of this desire. So the emotion "pain" will replace the sexual emotion (the rock hangs on to a typical body part).
-When a woman looses her husband, then she isn't "aloud" to remarry. So she stays with the family of her husband. If one chooses to remarry, they usually have no other option than to run away. This kind of custom is especially hard when something happens when a couple just got married. She is destined to be alone for the rest of her live.
-Nepali people used to respect their king just like their father. But nowadays, people are more self centered and so they don't respect their king just like they don't respect their father.

Ramesh told alot more actually. I'll try to add some more later. So then after that, we went to the Durbur Square of Kathmandu. This is situated in the center of Kathmandu. At this place we could see the no.1 Kumari of Nepal. A Kumari is a living goddess. She is believed to be the bodily incarnation of the goddess Taleju until she menstruates, after which it is believed that the goddess vacates her body. The guide asked the father of the kumari, if we could see her to bless us. She showed up at the window (fourth floor) and she would look at us (photos were not aloud). So now we are blessed by the kumari. Afterwards, Ramesh brought us back to Thamel and so we said goodbye.

That was the end of day 4. Day 5 was packed with a day trip to Patan. This city is divided with Kathmandu by a river. Maybe one day they will unite the two and call it Kathmandu. At this place we met two other guides. I forgot the names (difficult Nepali names). We have it on a piece of paper, so i'll edit this message later. They are about our age and good friends of each other. Compared to Ramesh, they were less serious, more relaxed, but equally knowledgable. They showed us Patan and afterwards they took us to a festival which was going on at the edge of Patan. The place was very lively and remote from other foreigners. We could really see the untouched Nepali way of live. After that, we would through some beautiful ricefields to end at a small village up in the hills. Amazing view. Just check out the foto's and you'll know what I mean. We got their contact details, in case we are coming back to Nepal one day. At night, Jacky and me went back to Swayambunath to enjoy the great nightview of Kathmandu. And that was the end of day 5.

Once we got back to Kathmandu, we went to arrange our day 6 plans. We wanted to go for another rafting trip and the amazing bungee jump of 160m at Bhote kosi. This bungee jump is one of the highest in the world. Unfortunately, the tour agency couldn't find enough people to organize this trip. So I had to postpone this great oppertunity to a later stage of my life. After we got out the tour agency, we wandered around Thamel, thinking of what else to do. Suddenly a local guy came to us and asked us if we are interesting in hiking or other activities. So we said that we wanted to go rafting and bungee jumping. He told me: no problem, and he showed us his office. Unfortunately, he also couldn't arrange this trip for us. So we had a dilemma. Suddenly, he proposed an other idea. A two day trip to Nagarkot. This is a place east of Kathmandu up the mountains, where you can see the great views of the mountains. I grabbed the lonely planet guide and checked it out. Suprisingly it really was a good idea. So the guy set up the whole itinerary for 85USD per person. At the same moment, I was browsing my lonely guide and it seemed we could do the same trip for much less. So we just kept their hopes up (how evil) and said that we are very interested and had to think it over at diner. And so we did.

The next day (today) we got up early to take the local bus to Nagarkot. Finding our way was quite an hassle and the busses were very crowded. We just wanted to experience the real life. Luckily the Nepalese people are quite helpfull, otherwise we wouldn't know which bus to take (the details in the lonely planet were outdated). So there we were, in the bus to Nagarkot. Halfway, while Jacky was sleeping (like always) and I was looking around. I noticed it was very cloudy. I already heared some things about the bad views in Nagarkot during the monsoon season. The hotel lady said this: My japanese friend from hawaii once went to Nagarkot during the monsoon season. Once he got back, I asked him how the trip was. As a true japanese, he tried to be as polite as possible because I recommended Nagarkot to him. So he said that the clouds were very beautifull. This anekdote stayed in my head, so I slapped Jacky awake and suggesting him that we should change our plans and go to Bakthapur. Luckily, we hadn't passed Bakthapur yet. And so we got out the bus after 5 minutes. Bakthapur is a city between Nagarkot and Kathmandu. It has got a very rich history and the atmosphere is very relaxing (no busy traffic and fresh air). I still have to find out alot of things about this city. We were quite tired from this whole week, so we looked for an hotel and took some rest. Because of the low season, we managed to get a big room with two kingsize beds for just 1100 rupees (about 7 euros p.p.), plus a complementary drink and room service with no extra tax. You can't find this kind of deals in Kathmandu. And so, here we are in an internet cafe in Bakthapur. I'm glad that my story is coming to an end, so that I can go to bed now. Tomorrow, we will check out Bakthapur and go back to Kathmandu. Saturday we will be leaving for Tibet. The beginning of a new adventure...