Jomsom to Muktinath

Posted on August 6, 2013 by Alan Stock

Day 122 – Location: Jomsom; Nepal

01/01/13

New Years Day. What better start to the new year than trekking around some of the highest mountains in the world? From the bedroom I heard and caught a glimpse of a few old-looking light aircraft landing and taking off from the airport. Trekkers can fly into Jomsom from Pokhara. The safety record isn’t great though, the aircraft aren’t in the best condition and the weather and wind can be unpredictable up here. There have been two crashes (1 fatal) in the past two years! But after yesterday’s torturous bus journey I could appreciate that it might be worth the risk! We had breakfast in the restaurant with the baking sun shining through the windows and admired the mountain ridge looming out the window. We tried the local buckthorn berry juice which was very tasty and refreshing. Buckthorn (or seabuckthorn as it’s also known) is unique to the upper Himilayas and is grown in fields here, generating good money from exports. It is one of those amazing “wonderberries” which is super-healthy and people back home will probably pay 5 dollars for a shot of it, and immediately be cured of all ailments. Well at least it tastes good. After brekky we left most of our stuff at the hotel and set off with lighter bags with enough stuff to last a few days up in Muktinath, our destination.

Jomsom’s main street

Outside in the sun at midday, we took in our surroundings (having arrived in the dark last night). We were in a big valley surrounded by mountains and ringed by sandy-coloured cliffs, which rippled in buldges. I was unlike anywhere I have been before or even seen, it felt like we had wandered into a planet set from the original Star Trek. The only thing missing was Kirk punching up innocent aliens. We walked through the middle of Jomsom passing the airfield and an army training camp which looked like it could have been in Afghanistan, sandy stone bunkers and all. There were some trekkers walking around and rugged-looking locals with flat faces. I was happy to see my first ever yaks – some wooly females and scruffy looking youngsters were tied up by the path. Bare, skeletal trees were planted all over the place, presumably buckthorn or apple trees (this area is also famous for its apples).

We crossed the icy-looking river flowing through Jomsom over a suspension bridge covered in colourful prayer flags. The sun was very bright and it was quite windy. We were hoping to catch a bus up the dirt roads to Muktinath, a small village higher in the mountains, and trek back down. But there was no one around the bus stop in Jomsom and the bus office was closed. We walked to the edge of the town where we thought we could find private jeeps, passing a few male yaks being herded along. Compared to the females they are big shaggy beasts with magnificent smooth curved horns. I was pleased, I’d been refusing to leave Nepal until I’d seen one!

At the outskirts of town was a little bus park and a big red Tibetan temple under construction. We asked the jeep drivers there but there wasn’t a jeep going up the mountain till 3pm, so we decided to walk and see how far we could get.

We set off out along a grey dusty track aside a vast shale field covering the valley floor, segmented by strings of meandering river. At the cliffside on our right groups of women were sat on the scree, cracking rocks open with hammer and chisel. I’m not sure what they were doing, perhaps looking for fossils to sell which I had seen in the souvenir shops in town. If you know, send me a message!

Sophie walking away from Jomsom

Sophie started to get some heart pain so we slowed the pace. She was concerned because she was still recovering from tonsilitis and if that disease becomes more serious it can infect the heart or lungs. We continued along the track admiring the mountains around us. All the rock was layered or scattered in interesting patterns, and the scale of the valley was awesome. A bus in the distance was a mere dot snaking around the shale field, making good progress, not that there seemed to be any track out there though.

The bus bumping over the shale down on the right gives you a sense of the huge scale of this place

Grey sand lined the edge of the rock field, scattered with humps from which round thorny bushes poked out. Now it really felt like we were in a cheap episode of Star Trek. I was glad I wasn’t wearing a red jacket (fans will get the reference)! We passed some other groups of trekkers, all heading the other way. The motorbikers from India who we’d met yesterday passed us and stopped to stay hello, they were heading up to Muktinath today as well. They had seen in the new year in Jomsom with some other travellers in a more busy hotel than ours!

We reached the shale field (the track went down into it and faded from existence) and struck out across it in the general direction indicated by our map. The rocks were small but the footing was tricky, it would be easy to sprain an ankle here. We crossed streams and step-stoned across shallow rivers. We shuffled through heat-cracked sand bars and saw locals in the distance collecting rocks and flitering soil with sieve struts.

Me standing on the valley shale fields

After an hour we finally reached the track again and investigated a little set of shrines surrounded by prayer flags strung out over the surrounding rock faces.

We followed the track to meet a change of scenery. Around the valley’s bend it had turned to a flat, sandy coloured plain dotted with wirey, leafless trees. On our left side was barren terrain, across the valley huge flat steps ascended the hillside, the steps made up of undulating cliffs. The mountains were only populated with tough grass, stones and bushes, reminding me instantly of footage of Afghanistan that I’d seen. Again the scale was immense. On the right a stoney valley wound up to a jagged Himalaya a river flowing down to the basic wooden road bridge in front of us.

The road ahead

The stoney valley on our right

The amazing view to our left, with the incredibly flat steps with rippling cliffs. You can see a village up there on the hillside, and the temple in the middle of the top ridge – now that’s high!

Looking back along the valley (we came from the left). You can see Sophie down there on the left too!

We crossed a pedestrian log bridge over the river and continued straight, down a drystone walled road and past a flat-roofed house which ominously had in its perimeter both a mummified yaks head and yak skull on stakes. A souvenir stall was outside. Buy a souvenir, get staked? It all smelled very Wolf Creek to me.

We continued past certain death and followed the road for another hour as it snaked above another shale field on our left. This one had a river too big for us to cross on foot, although we saw a bus fording it. Traffic had been light, with the occasional jeep, motorbike or tractor rumbling past us (and creating big dust clouds!). We rounded into the next part of the valley and passed a long suspension bridge which was closed. Up the hills on the opposite side you could see little villages as dots against the wilderness, and there was even a little temple spire at the top of one of the ridges on the horizon. The road soon descended to the shale field and a cluster of buildings which we crossed over to. It was so windy here that we had to force our way forward so as not to be blown aside, the sand whipping our faces.

The track took us along the side of the valley

The cliffs were super jaggy here

The settlement we stopped at for lunch

The buildings turned out to be lodges, only about five of them, and we stopped at one for lunch. We seemed to be the only tourists around. Sophie’s heart was still giving her trouble. As on the ABC trek the food selection was staples like Italian, Chinese and tibetan dumplings, I settled for a “lasagne” (made with tagliatelle of course, not lasagne pasta!). Checking the map, at our current rate we weren’t going to be anywhere near Muktinath before nightfall, we’d left Jomson too late. Instead we decided to walk to the next village a few hours uphill. But just after lunch a jeep approached. I ran outside and flagged it down (the sun had vanished forcing us inside from the bitter wind). It was full of locals and the driver didn’t speak English, but said he was going to Muktinath. We hurriedly agreed a price, paid our lunch bill and hopped in. How lucky! It was expensive (about 14 dollars one way) but all transport up here is for tourists. Locals pay a fraction of the price. We’d already seen this on the bus up to Jomsom, where we were paying a fortune compared to the locals despite our protests. We later found there is an official tourist rate they use up here though where the money goes I don’t know.

Another jeep passes the orchards, I took this through the back window of our jeep.

The jeep rumbled along up towards the next village, climbing above the shale fields and offering us good, if dusty, views of the river and the surrounding terrace farming and walled orchards of bare trees. I was sat next to a sheep skin and in-between us all were sacks of vegetables and rice. On the way we stopped and two local women got off to be violently sick! They don’t handle motion too well in these places (I’ve seen the same elsewhere in Asia). We reached the next village and the jeep was unloaded, passengers departed and jumped on. It was a charming place, very rustic, the people were all dirty and working out in the streets, the roofs were flat tops and animals and kids romped around. Colourful flags poked out the top of every flat building roof.

This was taken from the window but it gives you a feel for the village

We departed and started to climb a winding and bumpy road heading right, going high above the town allowing us to look down on the vast valley which continued into the distance.Herds of animals being shepherded across the rock field were just dots from here.

Looking back down the valley, taken from the jeep

The terrain flattened out and became a barren plain full of the small round bushes. The sun began to set and we had a great view of the Himalayas all around us, poking out of the clouds. There was a lot of dust and getting photos was very difficult, we couldn’t open the dirty windows and were bumping around all over the place. I would have loved to stop to take pictures but instead had to take them through the windows!

We bumped into a vast new area lined with huge cliffs in strange ripple shapes, peppered with round caves far below us. The area was like a massive crater surrounded by mountains. The terrain was completely uneven in this crater and villages hung onto the sides of the strange shapes. Unfortunately it’s hard to make out from the photos. Terraced farming and walled orchards littered the inner landscape. It was getting quite dark now. We passed through a village stacked on the hillside, a ruined hill fort towered above it. Some people got off and we got to see more of the hardy locals. It felt like we’d entered another world again, this really felt like we were in the heart of the mountains.

You can just about see the “crater” here, but its hard to make out the rock formations and villages dotted down there

The sunset had turned incredible, one of the best I’ve ever seen. The sky was baked in gold and orange light shone around the gleaming snowcaps, with dramatic clouds sweeping past. Glorious!

For the next hour we rumbled along, climbing the edge of the crater winding along the track and past some perilous drops, passing more orchards and villages. We were now the last ones in the jeep. Sometimes the track was so steep the driver needed to reverse and take a run-up to get us up the slope. We passed a cluster of temple buildings and prayer flags strung out over the hillside which we assumed was Muktinath’s famous temple. It was almost dark now and we had finally arrived in the village proper.

Despite the remoteness of the location there was plenty of civilization around, Muktinath was a sizeable mountain town with some big basic hotels. Some of them were constructed from very modern materials, ferried up the roads. Everywhere had 24 hours electricity even all the way up here. We walked along a track into the town centre as it got darker and darker, and found a cheap lodge in the centre of town. It was quite a basic affair, classic trekking lodge with a restaurant downstairs furnished in Tibetan drapery and very basic but clean rooms upstairs. There were only one other group of guests, some other Nepalese on holiday. It was bitterly cold up here, we were wearing all our 50 layers and we were happy to find they had a hot gas shower! I realized my head torch was missing. I’d had it since departing the jeep to see the way, it must have fallen out of my pocket. I wandered around in the night using the dim light from nearby houses to see, but after half an hour gave up – it was a well-used road and any local finding a good headlamp like that wouldn’t hesitate to take it. Just add it to the epic list of things I’ve lost on my travels!

Sophie all wrapped up with her blanket waiting for dinner in the restaurant

We had some hot, filling food in the nice (but cold) restaurant. The waiter gave us some blankets to sit under as it was so freezing! I ordered some Mustang coffee as an experiment, the last time I had tried (on the ABC trek) it was awful. It’s a mix of coffee and rakshi, the homebrew whiskey. This time though, it wasn’t bad. We went to bed early – it had been a tiring day – wearing all our layers and each with two blankets – and we were still cold!

The Bumpy Bus Ride up to Jomsom

Posted on July 21, 2013 by Alan Stock

Waiting in Ghasa for a bus! (this becomes a theme in this entry!)

Day 120 – Location: Pokhara; Nepal

30/12/12

Me and Sophie enjoyed our last breakfast in the sunshine by Phewa lake (the only restaurant in Nepal that does good poached eggs – mmm!) and then went to the chaotic bus station where we arrived just in time to get the bus to Beni, a town around 3 hours from Pokhara. The route was the same as I’d taken to Naya Pul for trekking, crossing the bottom of a valley filled with rice fields and climbing up to the top of a ridge with great views of the Annapurnas.

The Annapurnas tower above the mere mountains we are driving up

The Annapurnas come out of the cloud to tower above the mere mountains we are driving up

We continued past Naya Pul and descended through steep valleys and past craggy rock faces along a shingly river until eventually arriving at Beni around 3pm. As usual the bus was rammed and we were subjected to Nepali and Hindi pop music blaring from the speakers for the duration! Nepali people are quite small and so leg room is usually a valuable commodity for us freakish lanky westerners, after a few hours leg amputation definitely seems like a good idea to avoid the suffering of squished limbs! We were hoping to catch a jeep or bus in Beni to take us further north to Tadapani or beyond, which would make our journey the next day shorter. The entire west side of the Annapurna circuit, which is a popular 30 day trekking route around the Annapurna mountains now has a dirt road running along the route. We wanted to take transport up that road right up into Jomsom in the north, to avoid 5 days of trekking, time we didn’t have.

Driving up by the river towards Beni, taken through the never-clean Nepali bus windows

Beni turned out to be a grim, poor, grey and characterless town on the banks of a big rocky, glacial river. At least the kids were enthusiastic there, excited to see some foreigners in their part of town. After instant noodles at a local restaurant (noodles commonly being the only thing you can point to when there is no menu and the owners don’t speak English!) we asked around for jeeps to Tadapani. We got pointed down to another part of town. After some time of wandering around asking directions we eventually were pointed across the river and found a bus park. But when we asked, it turned out the last bus going in that direction had just left – damn! We were stranded in Beni. We booked into a depressing hotel by the bus park and went for dinner when it got dark, a tasty local place. As Sophie said, at least in the dark you couldn’t see the town’s grimness! On the plus side, our room had some western TV channels so we watched The Hulk before bed, ready to get up early to start our trip to Jomsom tomorrow.

Approaching Beni. In Nepal you often see trucks and tractors down by the rivers with people filling them up with rocks

Day 121 – Location: Beni; Nepal

31/12/12

New Years Eve. After a sleepless morning overlooking the bus park below, we got up at 8am and hopped on the first bus in the dusty bus park outside up to Tadopani. Unfortunately we arrived just as it was leaving and it was full of locals. We crammed in, having to stand. The road was slow and very bumpy, we had to brace ourselves to prevent being flung around. We juddered our way up the edge of the river through villages reminiscent of the ones I’d seen on my ABC trek. We eventually got a seat but Sophie almost concussed herself when she bashed her head on the metal shelf above from a particularly nasty bump!

A village close to Tadopani

The valley slopes on either side got steeper and higher and after about 2 and a half hours of jolting we arrived at the small village of Tatopani, getting our trekking permits checked at a booth and hopping off at the start of town. There was some kind of school festival going on below us by the river, music was blaring from speakers and school kids were milling around. Volleyball nets were being set up and one of the death wheels, a rickety ferris wheel, had been set up. Up the valley we could see a snow capped Himalaya.

Tadopani with a Himalaya in the distance

We walked up the road past Tatopani’s famous hot springs, uninspiring concrete pools where tourists were lazing around in the steaming water. The edges of the river were steaming too and covered in thick algae. There was no time for us to relax though, we reached the bus terminal and climbed some steps to the village proper. Here it was like any other trekking village, a narrow stone path with little walls, lined with shops and trekking lodges. Colourful flowers and laden fruit trees added some colour to the street. We went into a lodge with a nice patio garden for some breakfast and stayed for an hour waiting for the next bus which would take us to Jomsom.

Some of the natural hot springs steaming away in Tadopani

The clothing of the people is already quite Tibetan up in Tadopani

Tadopani’s main street

When we got to the bus terminal it turned out to be the same bus we’d been on before! The young conductor said they could only take us as far as Ghasa, about half-way to Jomsom. Up here in the middle of nowhere, you take what you can get, so we hopped aboard –the only passengers. The track got even worse, bump hell! The terrain became much more barren with impressive cliffs and life clinging to the hillsides as we climbed along the steep valley walls. Sometimes the conductor had to jump out of the bus to shift big stones on the track out of the way. We crossed little rivers on dodgy looking wooden and metal bridges which rattled when we drove over them. Waterfalls cascaded down the cliffside. In some places we were less than a meter from a death plunge into the river far below, with no barriers.The ride was very uncomfortable, the most bumpy of my life, and extremely dusty. We saw a few suspension bridges from the old trekking route crossing the ravine.

The steep hillside we were cutting across

A rare bit of road with barriers, a death plunge is below. As usual, the Nepali bus cabin is filled with decorations and Hindu images

After a few hours we were glad to arrive at a bus park in Ghasa, having picked up a few more passengers on the way. There weren’t many people around, no one we asked knew of any transport going further north today. I got chatting to some passengers from our bus, a group of Indians who were doing a motorbike tour up to Jomsom. One of their bikes had broken down so some of them had had to get the bus. The rest of their party soon arrived on their bikes. The last night they’d had trouble with a bike and had ended up stranded in a random village. A local woman had kindly put them up for the night. They were going to try and get the bike repaired here so they could continue north.The valley here was covered in trees and sheer cliffs, quite different to the scenery I’d seen by the Annapurnas.

Ghasa

Looking back down the valley from Ghasa

With no information to go on, we decided to wait around the bus park to see if any buses or jeeps came through. After a few hours we were getting desperate, the only vehicles had been some full jeeps of trekkers rumbling past, and buses coming from the wrong direction.

Ghasa’s bus park, where we entertained ourselves (read: bored out of our minds) for over 2 hours.

It was already 4pm and we were preparing for a night in this village at a lodge. Eventually a Nepali guy appeared, started up one of the buses and we asked him if he was going north. He was, all the way to Jomsom! Sweet! We piled in with some other trekkers and so began another bumpy four hour journey up into the mountains. The bus became full quickly with locals (who by this point were all looking quite Tibetan) but at least we had a seat. We bounced our way through trekking villages and further up started to pass through a forest. On the other side of the valley there were a row of huge landslides which had decimated the sides, dotted with rocks as big as houses. Up ahead there were a few craggy Himalayas peeking over the ridgeline. Behind us, rocky and barren peaks glowed orange in the setting sun.

The road behind us as we enter the forest, the following photos are all taken through the dirty bus windows – in Nepal you are lucky if they open at all!

Huge landslides cover the hillside. It’s hard to convey the sheer scale of them here, check the size of the pine trees on the right.

The last sun reflects off the snow covered Himalaya above us

The view behind us as we climb to the uppermost valley

After a few hours of rattling and snaking ever-upwards we emerged into a flatter, very different landscape, skirting the edge of a wide valley. The valley floor was flat, a huge bed of shingle with little rivers meandering their way through it. The sides were lined with pine trees rising to cover steep mountains looming above. We sometimes drove down onto the pebbly flats (which was even more bumpy!), and forded through shallow streams and rivers. We passed through villages with flat-roofed cottages which had chopped firewood stacked on the roofs and walls, covering every surface available. Colourful Buddhist flags fluttered from poles on the roofs.

The flat valley we emerged into

When the sun went down me and Sophie both fell asleep despite the jolting. We woke at around 7pm – it was pitch black outside and we passed through a pretty village full of lit-up lodges. I could make out bare trees here, orchards, lining the sides of the road, separated by stone walls. Half an hour later we finally arrived in Jomsom after our 11 hour endurance trip. It was a big town with a main paved road striking through the centre, passing the little airport which was a bare strip of land with a control tower and small terminal. Jomsom was effectively just the same as the other trekking villages but scaled up. Lodges, restaurants and shops lined the main street and dogs wandered around. The people up here all looked Tibetan with flat faces, brown skin and weathered features and there were still a number of locals milling around. Here we were only a few hundred kilometers from Tibet to the north.

Sophie celebrating New Year with as many layers on as possible!

We were lucky to depart the bus to find ourselves right outside the recommended hotel from the Lonely Planet! They had plenty of rooms, in fact there only seemed to be one other set of guests in the whole place! As Jomsom is such a popular trekking destination we were surprised, especially as it was New Years eve! It was a family run place, a friendly bunch. Our room was surprisingly clean and homely compared to most trekking lodges, and the hotel had a nice wooden restaurant. They even had hot water and we enjoyed our first hot shower in weeks! We soon ordered dinner and huddled next to the gas heater in the restaurant wearing all our layers, it was freezing. As it was New Years, I bought an expensive Yak Steak with their homemade sauce, it was really tasty – I say expensive, but that’s by Nepali standards – 8 pounds is hardly breaking the bank! With no one else around to celebrate with, we bought a bottle of rum and some coke and drank in our bedroom pumping out tunes from the iPod until midnight, giving a little cheer to bring in the New Year. We soon turned in, it had been a very long and bumpy day and a rather bizarre and very remote place to spend New Years Eve!

Yak steak – mmmmmm! Get in ma belly!

Back to Kathmandu

Posted on July 2, 2013 by Alan Stock

A colourful food market nestled amongst the shrines of Kathmandu’s backstreets

Days 100 > 104 – Location: Kathmandu, Nepal

10/12/12 > 14/12/12

On my last morning in Karmidanda I got up early and said my goodbyes. Jhabraj and his family had been such great hosts and I was sorry to be leaving, but after two and a half weeks I was feeling restless and my health had returned, I was ready to move on. I caught a bus from the track near the house. People piled on, nearly all of them looked of Tibetan origin. Over the next few hours we bumped our way down the valley, some hairpins were so sharp the bus had to reverse to get an attainable angle to take them. We passed through villages similar to Karmidanda and eventually reached the tarmac roads, climbing the opposite valley and stopping at a town for lunch. There were lots of stalls selling big gourd vegetables, must be the season for them. I listened to “To Kill a Mocking Bird” on my iPod to pass the time. We wound our way around the hills and arrived in Kathmandu at 1pm, by which point my bum was completely numb! I took a taxi into Thamel and checked into Hotel Potala which I’d stayed in before.

I chilled out for the rest of the day enjoying some western delights, pizza and coffee! You start to crave that stuff when you’ve not had it for months!

Statue in Kathmandu temple

That night I heard back from the Hong Kong passport processing centre, who were dealing with my passport replacement. They needed a written note declaring why I couldn’t get a countersignature for my passport application, so I sent them a photo which did the job.

Camille, the Belgian girl I’d hung out with a month or so back, was back from a meditation course, so I met her in the evening. She took me to dinner with a big group of people she’d done the meditation course with. They were a mix of all nationalities. The 10 day meditation course at a temple near Kathmandu had been pretty hardcore. They weren’t allowed to talk to each other at all for the whole duration, they slept in dorms, had big meals and cold showers. For an hour in the morning and the evening the teacher gave them lessons about meditation. They got up at 4am every morning and after breakfast sat down for 12 hours of silent meditation with a break for lunch.

A nice courtyard restaurant me and Sophie went to breakfast daily to catch the sun

Camille found it hard to begin with, but after a few days she focused her thoughts and finished with less doubts about life and more of a life plan. Rather than try to eliminate thoughts, you are supposed to just let them come and go. She did get bored after a week though. The reactions of the others in her group were mixed, some like Camille were really happy with the course. Others never got into it and spent it feeling bored and frustrated. Some said there wasn’t enough direction or that it was too hardcore – but they did treat it as a learning experience.

Rani Pokhari, Kathmandu

After dinner we parted ways and she said we’d meet the next day to go trekking with some of the group. However the next morning she didn’t turn up so I assumed she’d gone without me.

I spent the next three days bumming around, working on the blog now I had wi-fi again, sorting out photos, and reading – popping in and out of restaurants and bars. My laptop charger broke (add it to the big list of things that have broken down!) but I managed to find a replacement on the same night in the techhy area of Kathmandu. I took a few walks around central Kathmandu to get some exercise. I was bored but stuck without my passport, I couldn’t go too far from Kathmandu and I’d already exhausted the tourist options in the area. I knew Sophie would be coming to Kathmandu soon to do some travelling in her school holidays.

Traditional potter at work at the street festival

Day 105

15/12/12

Sophie and Jhabraj were arriving in Kathmandu today, both in school holidays. In the morning I ran into Camille. She apologized for standing me up the other day – she’d forgotten where my hotel was! She didn’t go trekking and had been hanging out with some Chinese friends she met at the meditation course. We arranged to meet up later to visit a casino.

I popped into a nearby shopping street where they were holding a street festival. There was live Nepali music and dancing on stage, local food and handicrafts, a small zipline over the street promoting an adventure sports company, and an abseil down the side of the buildings. I watched a bike stunt display for a while as they pulled some impressive moves for the crowd.

Ziplining above the street festival

Bike stunts at the street festival

In the afternoon I met Sophie at a café and Jhabraj joined us briefly. She was staying with Jhabraj and his daughters in their flat in Kathmandu. There had been yet more drama in the village! A girl had committed suicide after failing her exams. She’d supposedly hung herself and left a note. However it was a bit suspicious as no one had examined her body until the police intervened when the funeral was taking place down at the river. We didn’t hear the verdict.

A girl spots us from a temple balcony near Durbar Square

After dinner Sophie had some stuff to do so I met Camille, who was with her Chinese friends. We took a taxi to a casino on the outskirts of town. It was a pretty cheap establishment, though it did have free drinks, free cigarettes and a free buffet which was the reason they were visiting! They got promotional free casino chips from their hotel so they could just turn up, play some games and then tuck into the buffet. The clientele were mostly middle-aged Indian men and a few westerners. Nepalese aren’t allowed in most casinos, except the really rich ones. Aside from tucking into the buffet I bought a few pounds worth of chips and played some roulette. The only games they had were roulette and two card games I had never seen before. I ended up with about the same amount of chips as I started. Some players were on big money in comparison, putting bets of over 100 pounds onto the table. One of Camille’s Chinese friends had a system for winning one of the card games, he went to the casino almost every night and made money using his free guest house chips as the starting bid! He eats for free at the casino and pays for his accommodation with the winnings! Amazingly they haven’t kicked him out yet! Back in town I met Sophie again and we had drink before calling it a night.

Traditional song and dance at the street festival

Days 106 > 111

16/12/12 > 21/12/12

Me and Sophie spent the next few days hanging out in Kathmandu. She had shopping to do for Christmas presents so we toured the streets, ate breakfast and lunch in the sunshine and chilled out in the evenings. I took her to the Garden of Dreams and a tour around the Durbar Square area. Jhabraj met us for coffee one day before he went back to the village. Some of the tourist places in Kathmandu had Christmas decorations and trees by this point, but the atmosphere was very unchristmassy with glaringly bright days of sunshine. It was very cold out of the sun though, but no rain or snow appeared. I Skyped with my parents back in Scotland, they showed me the decorations at home on the webcam, though they didn’t have snow there either.

Me and Sophie in our necessary puffer jackets, next to one of Kathmandu’s few christmas trees!

Finally I got word from the British embassy in Kathmandu that my new passport had arrived. I went there and picked it up. I overheard the guy in front of me in the queue asking for help – he’d had a nightmare, he is living in Kathmandu with his family, and a local guy he’d met, for no reason had invaded their house, beat him unconscious and beat up his wife, his children witness to the whole thing! He’d been in court and the psycho had been sentenced to prison. My passport woes seemed a drop in the ocean compared to what this poor guy had been through.

Abseiling at the street festival

Devices for thinning cotton, used when making blankets

I went to the Kathmandu visa office as they’d instructed me to when my passport arrived. They ended up charging me 180 pounds in fees for the overstay on my visa whilst my passport was gone, which I argued with them was unfair as they hadn’t let me extend the visa without my passport anyway! But as they’d let me stay in the country without a visa or passport anyway, I didn’t want to push my luck and paid up when it was clear they wouldn’t back down. I extended the new visa to allow me some time travelling with Sophie, aiming to leave Nepal in mid-January. I spent all day there waiting for them to sort it out, unfortunately they had to contact the Pokhara office where I’d extended the visa originally to get proof that I had done it, and Pokhara in classic Nepali fashion had no electricity that day! As a result they didn’t get the final stamp of approval but said I could sort it out in Pokhara. Me and Sophie booked a bus to Pokhara for the next day.

More bike stunts at the street festival

Rickshaws waiting for customers

Kumari mask in Kumari’s restaurant, Freak Street

Alan Stock Photography

My travelling (mis)adventures. It's ok to cry.

Category Archives: Nepal