Surat Thani, Thailand to Kathmandu, Nepal: Ten hours on a second-class bus to Bangkok. Two nights in the big, bad city. Five-hour flight from Bangkok to India. 19-hour layover in the New Delhi airport. One last 2-hour flight in to Nepal.
It was a taxing and tedious journey
but after 96 hours of travel we had reached our destination and the real
adventure could finally begin. I
stepped out on to the metal stairway connecting the exit door of the plane to
the airport tarmac. The cool
Kathmandu air was a refreshing change from the damp, sweltering heat of summer
in Thailand. I eagerly made
my way through the airport, collected a visa stamp from customs and some
Nepalese rupees from the currency exchange counter, and started to search for a
taxi.
I should’ve known that I wouldn’t
have to look very hard. My
three friends and I were immediately swallowed by a crowd of competing
cabbies. Cab drivers in Asia never
cease to amaze me (especially at airports), but this was by far the most aggressive
group I’ve ever come across.
Usually I have to haggle for a bit to get a good deal on the fare, but I
didn’t even have to open my mouth this time because the driver’s kept elbowing
each other out of the way and undercutting one another. For some reason they thought by
changing the currency they were offering a more appealing price.
“Where are you going?
Thamel district? 800
rupees! Ok?”
“No.”
“Where you fly from?
Thailand? 300 baht! Ok?”
“No.”
“Oh, you’re American?
8 dollars! Ok?”
For fear that a fistfight might
break out in competition for our business, we decided to choose the driver with
most teeth, push through the disappointed others, and pile into the compact,
corroded, car he used as our transport.
As an evil spring poking through my seat stabbed me in the back with
every jerk and turn of the cab, I stared out the window at another new
city.
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| Kathmandu canal filled with trash. |
The typical chaos of an undeveloped
country filled the streets around us.
Honking horns and barking dogs.
The smell of burning. Street-food
vendors setting up for the evening rush.
Rivers of trash, literally.
Swarms of people making their way through the grind of another day. Every new place I visit, it’s always
different but it’s always the same and it’s always
exciting.
We arrived in Thamel, untangled
ourselves from our luggage, and happily stepped out of the tiny taxi. Thamel is the area of Kathmandu popular
for tourists and backpackers and is full of guesthouses, hotels, restaurants,
bars, and shops. The four of us
made our way through the congested streets taking in the new environment
surrounding us.
One of the first things I noticed
was the heavy Indian influence in everything: the architecture, the attire, the
accents, and the people in general.
I’ve been able to travel pretty extensively over the past year and a
half: Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia, Cambodia. Though all of these countries are unique, they are all
distinctly south east Asian. It
was exciting and refreshing to be in an entirely new place, completely different
from anywhere I’ve ever been before.
Tired and eager to put down our
backpacks, Peak Mountain Guesthouse, a minimal but cheap accommodation option, turned
out to be where we would stay for the night. We dropped our bags in the rooms, sampled the local cuisine,
and Mike and I enjoyed our first bottle of Everest beer. After that, we walked up and down the
streets scouting stores for the trekking gear we’d need to purchase for the upcoming
two-week climb to Everest base camp, the reason we’d come to Nepal in the first
place. But the shopping could wait
until tomorrow.
Brittany and Leanne retired to the
rooms while Mike and I grabbed some more beers and found our way to the rooftop
of our hotel. The sun had just
retreated behind the mountains in the distance and the darkness of our first
night in Nepal began to creep in.
The guesthouse sat on top of a hill and was tall, giving us a widespread
view of the city below. We
appreciated the fact that we’d made it to Kathmandu as we drank our beer, watched
the people in the streets below, and looked out at the silhouettes of the
neighboring buildings. Windows lit
up one by one across the cityscape as people illuminated their homes and
businesses for the evening. A
light rain began and for seconds at a time lightning would fill the sky as if
someone turned on a giant black light over the city, then quickly turned it
back off. We sat there, beer in
hand, as Kathmandu was momentarily frozen in electric purple. It was better than TV, but with the
frigid air of the Nepali night biting at us, we decided to call it a night.
Over the next two days, we all woke
early to hit the trekking shops and run errands to prepare for the upcoming
trek. If you need anything hiking or trekking related,
Kathmandu has it. Most things are knockoffs,
but of excellent quality and available at only a fraction of the price that it
would be back home. After looking
around and negotiating with several shop owners to get good deals, I’d purchased
everything I would need for the next two weeks in the Himalayas. Check it…
(If the sound cuts out at the end, I'm just say that I bought everything for UNDER $120 USD, TOTAL!)
We booked our flights from
Kathmandu to Lukla ($275 USD roundtrip), where we’d be starting the trek. Then, with Leanne as our trusted guide
and navigator, we gave ourselves an unintentional (but interesting) walking
tour of the city outside of Thamel while we tried to find our way to the
Tourism Authority to acquire our TIMS cards (mandatory registration permits
required for trekking in Nepal- $20 USD).
After two nights in Peak Mountain
we decided to try some place new. The
staff had been friendly but the place was dirty, the water barely ran and was
cold, and just next door there was a late night spot where clinking bottles and
howling drunks made it difficult to fall asleep.
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| Traveler's Home Guesthouse- Kathmandu, Nepal |
Luckily, from her prior travels,
Brittany knew of a friend of a friend- a Spanish guy our age named Toni- that
had recently opened a guesthouse nearby.
We checked in to Traveler’s Home Guesthouse on our third day it
Kathmandu. I’ve stayed in hostels
and guesthouse all over Asia and Traveler’s Home is by far one of the best. The staff is friendly and the rooms are
new and clean. There’s a hot
shower, garden with tables and hammocks, rooftop porch, a bar, and a kitchen
where “Mama” (Toni’s mother) cooks delicious Spanish and Italian food alongside
local Nepali and Indian dishes.
Best of all it was less than $5 USD/ night. If you’re in Kathmandu, stay here. [OK, that’s my plug…]
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With time to kill, we spent our
last afternoon walking the streets of the city, dodging rouge rickshaws,
denying beggars, and making our way to historic Durbar Square. This was a great opportunity to see the
real Kathmandu outside of touristy Thamel. I wasn’t too happy about paying the 750 rupees (about $9
USD) for admission, but it turned out to be worth it. Durbar Square was bustling when we arrived. The age-old architecture was an
interesting marriage of Oriental and Indian influence like so many other
aspects of the culture in Nepal.
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| Me, rallying with the crowd... "Power to the People!" |
Noticing a mass of people and
dozens of heavily armed policemen, we made our way over to a huge crowd where
thousands of locals were attentively listening to a speech. It turned out to be the country’s Prime
Minister that was speaking and he was addressing the recent changes in their
newly found democratic government (Nepal has struggled with a corrupt and
derelict political system for centuries).
This was an historical speech and we just happened upon it… pretty cool
experience. We made one more quick
stop to see the “Virgin Princess” (or something like that) stick her head out a
window for a few seconds (this, for some reason, is a big draw each evening),
then went back to Traveler’s Home.
Back at the room, I was excited as
I crammed my new gear in my new pack and prepared for the epic adventure that I
would set out upon early the next morning. There’s only one way to spend your last night before being
thrown into the mountains for two weeks and that’s eating good food and
drinking tall beers… maybe too many tall beers. And with that I stumbled to bed a few hours later to grab
some much needed and deserved sleep.
Although I thought I knew what was in store for the upcoming weeks, I
had no idea.
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| Durbar Square |
