Muktinath

Posted on August 9, 2013 by Alan Stock

Day 123 – Location: Muktinath; Nepal

02/01/13

I had a terrible night’s sleep, tossing and turning, I had a bad headache and felt sick, light headed and weak. In the morning I realized I was probably suffering from altitude sickness, the symptoms fit and in the jeep we’d climbed almost 1000 meters in just a few hours. It might also account for Sophie’s continuing heart problems. We decided to see how we got on and head back down today if possible – the best remedy for altitude sickness is to descend before the symptoms get worse.

After an early breakfast we ventured forth through Muktinath village, it reminded me of a Wild West town with a wide barren high street and balconied buildings lining it. Souvenir stalls, especially of homemade stripey scarves, or fossils, were being set up all along it. We walked to the edge of town to admire the views into the crater below. There were only a few other tourists around.

Sophie in Muktinath’s main street

Engraved stones in the main street

Next we walked to the other side of town and through Muktinath temple gate, where some babas (holy men) were sitting wanting money for blessings or photos. Then we climbed a long flight of steps towards the white temple walls wiggling along the rocky hillside. Prayer flags were strewn like spider webs on the rock face behind, some attached to seemingly inaccessible rock clusters.

A big prayer wheel by the main entrance

We could really feel the altitude affecting our oxygen, after five steps we would already feel knackered and we kept stopping for rests on the way up. At the top we passed through the wall gate into the temple complex. It was quite large, possibly 300 meters square – a collection of buildings, a copse of trees and a barren section of small scree-like rocks. We explored the temple buildings, and saw homes inside the complex – a few women were going about their daily chores. Presumably the families who take care of the temple. We walked along the scree section which turned out to be full of little stone towers made by visitors for good luck. Me and Sophie made our own too.

Mount Al-Soph

The building in the corner of the complex had a nice Tibetan style temple room, filled with colourful carvings on the roof and pillars. Unfortunately photography is banned inside. Out in the courtyard was a circular reflective dish, like a satellite dish. We’d seen these around the area, this one had a kettle on a holder suspended in the dish’s center, confirming that they are used to focus the sun’s rays to heat water or cook food. Ingenious energy saving idea, the sun is so bright up here and they are using it. Solar panels are also used in some of the hotels, like much of Nepal. I put my hand in the heat field and sure enough it was very warm.

We continued wandering through the rocky part past some traditional stone shrines, and into the copse, where the main temple building is hidden. Clusters of different sized bells were hanging in a mishmash on a stand. A pool by the temple was filled with blocks of smashed ice, guess they want to keep it clear. The inner courtyard of the temple was lined with bells as well, had bell clusters hanging around. I haven’t seen the bell clusters before and I wonder what the significance is?

Outside the temple, surrounding it on three sides, were rows of gargoyle head fountains. Long icicles hung from railings where the water had struck. I walked through the copse to get some shots of the prayer flags strewn on the hillside.

Check out his icicle beard

We wandered back to the temple complex entrance past a tower and some old locals sitting on their roof in the sun. They were friendly and we noticed how incredibly weathered and wrinkly their skin was. One of the women had her breasts practically hanging out, modesty isn’t such a big thing in this culture! Didn’t really do it for me I’m afraid, I prefer them a few years younger!

Back in Muktinath village we stopped for lunch in a rasta restaurant (yes, they are everywhere in this part of the world!), and watched some of the local kids from the balcony, a little girl was spying on us and gave us a wave. I gave my big zoom lens a go, now it had been repaired. Seemed to be working fine.

Me waiting for lunch

The wee girl who was checking us out

This girl was collecting water from the public tap

Weaving handicrafts on the street

Weaving rig

We discovered there was a jeep leaving at 4pm back to Jomsom so we walked to the jeep stop. There were a lot of people waiting, locals and trekkers. We bought a rather expensive ticket and piled into a jeep. We bumped our way for a few hours back to Jomsom. Sophie got stuck next to an annoying local man who wouldn’t give her any space and kept nudging her to try and get her to move (we were jammed in like sardines, so much that one girl was bending over sat on her husband’s knee). Us and the other locals kept telling him to stop but he just thought it was funny, though he did relent a little bit. We passed on the opposite side to the “crater” as on the way up, giving us great views of the huge rippling cliffs below, and we passed more of the villages which looked like they came out of a time machine. Again photography was nearly impossible due to the bumpy ride, tiny windows and clouds of dust.

On the valley floor we stormed over the rock field that me and Sophie had crossed, in only twenty minutes, fording rivers and bouncing around all over the place. We arrived in Jomsom as the sun was going down and walked back to the hotel we’d left our stuff at. My altitude sickness had been improving during the day and I was feeling a lot better now. We had a relaxed evening reading and enjoying the tasty restaurant food. I tried to buy a torch from their attached shop, only to find that literally none of their torches worked. They all looked about 20 years old and many were rusted inside. The cheeky woman tried to make me pay for the batteries separately but I pointed out I only needed them for the torch! We turned in early, tired after our restless night up in Muktinath, but we were feeling a bit better.

Bridge at Jomsom’s entrance

Mules hanging out, smoking, burning bins, as mules do…

A yak chilling in the street. These things are big!

Sunset over Jomsom’s valley

Dhulikhel

Posted on March 23, 2013 by Alan Stock

Day 70 – Location: Kathmandu; Nepal.

11/11/12

First order of the day was to head to the travel clinic for a rabies booster injection. I walked through the Durbar Square and north amongst the little streets. Today they were looking even better than usual, with coloured metallic ribbons strung between the buildings, and the place was buzzing with people. It seemed today was a big market day and the squares and streets were packed with fruit and vegetable sellers, colourful produce stacked everywhere. There were lots of flowers and tikka powder sellers too, presumably there to sell wares for the upcoming Tihar festival. The area was a riot of colour and noise, it was pretty fantastic to walk through.

After half an hour I reached the clinic and received a quick and painless injection. I then contacted Ashman, the waiter from my hotel restaurant, as he had the day off and had suggested taking me to see Dhulikhel, a nice town south of Kathmandu. We met back at the hotel and walked to the bus station where we took a big, comfy local bus. I learned a bit more about Ashman on the hour-long journey. He was 22, had been working at the hotel for 6 months and was from a village a few hours from Kathmandu. He lived with his uncle in the city, who also worked at a hotel. He was from a Buddhist family and returned to see them about 4 times a year, giving money to his parents who can’t get work in their village.

Drying rice at the temple in Dhulikhel

We passed through the suburbs of Bhaktapur and went further out into the countryside passing through a big, dusty place called Banepa. We passed a huge standing, bronze-coloured statue on a hillside complete with trident, visible from miles away, and soon climbed up a hill into the town of Dhulikhel. It wasn’t anything remarkable to look at initially, but the views were already nice over the terraced hills below. It was a really hazy day and you couldn’t see far.

We walked uphill into the maze of old backstreets which were reminiscent of Kirtipur where I’d been yesterday. It was really nice, and the streets only had the occasional motorbike puttering past. Everywhere the strong sun was falling, women had rice out on mats to dry, and were raking and filtering it. We came to some nice little temples in a square and went down some alleys, coming out at a school where they were having a sports tournament. It looked a bit like the handball I’d seen in Thailand, with a volleyball net, but with a ball the size of a tennis ball, which the boys were keeping off the ground using their feet.

Ashman asked an old lady for directions and we climbed up some steps to a tiered temple on the hilltop. We had a good view in all directions and could see for miles. All around the temple, rice was laid out in swirling patterns where it had been raked. Ashman chatted to a woman up there as I took photos.

We could see a really big golden Buddah statue rising out of the forest on a hillside some distance away, and he asked her about it. We decided we’d head there after lunch, walked back to the main road and ducked into a little local restaurant where we ate some tasty chow mein and tried some Choyla, a local snack – fried buffalo pieces covered in chili sauce – and Sandeko – fried meat with onions – which was much nicer. Ashman insisted on paying, saying I was his guest, despite my protests!

Sandeko

I needed the loo and he warned me they weren’t good at this place. I didn’t really care, I’ve seen some nasty toilets on my travels. He led me around the back and there was a little shack. The squatter inside was standard but the stench was overwhelming, I’m not going to rose-coat this; a massive stinking poo was just sitting right there in the flat bit, mocking me. There was no water in the bucket to wash it away and no tap. I held my breath, did my business and got out as fast as I could, choking a bit and laughed with Ashman when he saw my face. He *had* warned me!

We set off to find the big Buddah and climb to the viewpoint above it. We followed a road through the town, past a football field where the kids were playing with full team kits.

The road led to an ornate gateway where a long flight of stone steps led up the hill into the woods. It was a steep climb and hard work. We walked for about half an hour passing little shrines along the way, and schoolkids running down, part of a school trip. We reached the Buddah sooner than I expected and walked around it. It offered good views of the valleys around us. It was really peaceful here too, we could only hear the birds and the breeze. Ashman chatted to an old man who maintained the site, who told him that it was 5 years old and built by the people of the Newari caste.

Ashman

A few minutes further up the steps we reached the hill’s summit, where a small army camp surrounds the temple. Nepal still has camps like this as the political situation is volatile and the people in charge fear a return to civil war. Razor wire was pulled back to allow access up the steps to the temple, and guard posts with armed soldiers were dotted around the perimeter. They even had trenches dug here. I wondered if there’d been fighting here during the Maoist insurgency.

On lookout

We soon saw why it was such a good spot for the army – the views up here were awesome, offering a 360 degree view of the hills and valleys stretching into the distance. The temple was only small and just a small hut-like building, with an ugly concrete viewing tower alongside. We climbed up and admired the views for a while. You could see Dhulikhel stretching out below and Banepa, the big town we’d driven through in the distance. It was quiet up here, a nice place – it’s known for its sunsets and sunrises, but unfortunately it was cloudy and hazy and we could only see a glimpse of the Himalayas through the clouds.

We descended the long flight of steps quickly and walked in the lowering sun back to the bus park, where we caught a bus back to Kathmandu. The views on the way back were nice with the setting sun, passing harvested rice fields and towns. It was a great sunset with the sun a big glowing orange dipping behind the clouds, casting golden light on the surroundings. The bus conductors are often young and one of them on this bus must have only been about 8 years old – clearly his education was being sacrificed for work. He was just as loud and energetic as his colleagues though. Bus conductors in Nepal have a chaotic job, they yell out the destinations as the bus cruises past bus stops, they hop off and take money, load people onto the bus and usually have to run and grab the rails as the bus speeds off – slapping the side or whistling if it’s taking off without them. I wonder how often buses leave their conductors behind in the dust by accident?

From the bus back to Kathmandu

We hit major traffic entering Kathmandu in rush hour and the trip took an hour longer in this direction. We hopped off at Ratna park and walked through the post-work crowds back to the hotel. Ashman asked if he could use my shower as he doesn’t have one at home (that sucks) and it was the least I could do. I chilled out down in the restaurant, and he emerged happy from a hot shower, a treat for him. I spent the rest of the evening chilling out in a bar across the street with low tables and a decent wi-fi connection, actually managing to almost do a full photo blog post, and bought a bunch of Kindle books online which were downloaded onto it in minutes. Very handy!

Kirtipur

Posted on March 21, 2013 by Alan Stock

Camille

Day 69 – Location: Kiritipur, Nepal

10/11/12

Whilst I was having breakfast at the guest house Camille appeared. I met her and her sister Gersende afterwards. They’d been to Nargakot for the sunrise and sunset, near Bhaktapur. Although I’d been advised it’s one of the best views in Nepal, Camille wasn’t too impressed and said the visibility was poor. They’d had a good time walking around the area though.

Kirtipur sidestreet

They were off to Kirtipur today, a recommended town close to Kathmandu, and invited me to join them. I agreed and we caught a local mini bus from the bus station nearby. It was pretty big and comfy by Nepali standards. We drove through the sprawl of Kathmandu for about half an hour and wound our way through a short bit of countryside up a hill to Kirtipur. I was expecting some charming village but it was a typical, although very colourful town of stacked houses on the hillside. We were dropped off just outside town, where kids were playing football and a team of guys were stuffing blankets on the grass, beating the blankets with sticks to make the down more fluffy.

Gersende and Camille

We walked uphill from the bus stop along the tall streets and came upon a big Thai-style Wat (temple) which we’d seen from the bus stop, decorated in red and gold with a large large golden stupa next to the main building. There was a memorial stone for a Thai airlines plane crash which had happened nearby. We saw two tourists inside, and for the rest of the day we didn’t see any more, which made a nice change!

We climbed up a steep path from the main road where the houses became more old and traditional, reminding me of Bhaktapur and Patan. We followed the sound of music to find a procession of people in black dress playing flutes and drums. We later learned they were promoting the opening of a new museum in the town.

As it was Saturday there was lots of activity as we wandered around the charming backstreets. The people here were really friendly and quite happy for us to take photos of them at work and play. Lots of women were drying rice on mats in the baking heat of the streets.

After a nice little stone temple we found a group of guys clustered around a piece of paper on which symbols were drawn. It was a dice gambling game. The participants dropped paper money from above to land randomly on one of the symbols. Then 6 dice were rolled, and you got a payout if your money was on the symbols which came up on the dice. The guy running it asked if we wanted to try. I gave it a go and got lucky – double my money back!

Shortly afterwards we passed a cute kid wearing a tiny bike helmet which was really funny, his mum let us take a photo.

Soon we found a collection of stupas at the top of the hill, with prayer flags fanning out like webs from each one. The central stupa was unusually painted blue around the top where the eyes were.

Down the other side of the hill we came to a small temple next to one of the big communal ponds that you can find in the old cities, which was covered in algae and had rubbish floating around in it. Cam had been chatting to a local guy who introduced himself. We’ll call him Kamal as I can’t remember his name, it was something like that! Kamal spoke good English and told us some history of the area, this was one of the five big city states of Nepal back in the day, and we were in the main square. I suspected that Kamal was a guide and was proved right later, but he wasn’t offering his services for money, just curious to get to know us and tell us a bit about the area. He explained that the green pond gets cleaned and filled with fresh water at certain times of the year for festivals.

Next to the pond was a very old and ornate wooden building with sloping windows. He said it was the old house for the king and queen of Kirtipur, back when it was a separate city-state. He offered to show us inside, it’s just a normal house now. The interior was quite dark and had low ceilings, with steep and simple wooden steps separating the floors – I had to bend on them to avoid bumping my head. We went into a simple bedroom where an old lady was sitting. After greeting her, Kamal insisted we sit in the windowsill seats overlooking the square, in the same spot that the king and the queen used to sit to watch their subjects.

We chatted about ourselves and found out about our guide. It turned out he is transgender, a devout Buddhist and does a variety of jobs including an unofficial tour guide. He was enlightened about his sexuality some years ago when a German couple was visiting him, they talked with him about his feelings and ultimately encouraged him to try women’s clothes and makeup! From that point he became open about his sexuality – not something to be sniffed at in this conservative country. He was already in an arranged marriage and actually sent his wife away, telling her he liked men, but romantically she kept coming back telling him she accepted him as he was. Eventually he took her back, and now they have a son and have been together for ten years. Luckily for him the locals are now very accepting of him and his sexuality. He’s now a gay and lesbian ambassador for Nepalese people, and goes to Kathmandu to meet other transgenders. It was pretty random to run into one of Nepal’s very few openly gay guys!

Tip lady

We left the house and I asked to photograph an old women in the courtyard who agreed via Kamal, as long as I paid her a tip. After giving her one small note she kept motioning for more until she had 3 and I wouldn’t give her any more!

Kamal in his home

Kamal invited us for tea at his house a few minutes away. He lives on the middle floor of one of the old street buildings. We took off our shoes at the living area/bedroom where his young wife was, and his two year old son was sleeping in the bed, despite it being about 2pm. It was a simple house, classic Nepali. We sat on cushions and his wife brought us some tasty local sweet tea which I hadn’t tried before. Kamal told us about his wife and his problems making money now he had a son to support. Other foreigners have visited him before and the German couple he’d met had even donated 400 euros to pay for his son’s medical checkups. Because of his sexuality and marital situation he used to have problems getting work, and had to do menial work like cleaning. Now he sometimes works as a guide amongst other better quality jobs. He obviously makes a bit of money from people like us who he invites to his house and shows around – who then pay him for the hospitality.

We were offered food, Kamal’s wife produced plates of beaten dry rice, which is hard and chewy, served with soy beans and pickled spinach. Although it was a simple meal, the flavour combinations were very tasty. Kamal’s son woke up and smiled to see the visitors in his house. Then Kamal did some prayers for us, sitting cross-legged and lighting incense. He prayed for our good luck and health one by one, sometimes murmuring under his breath. At two points he whipped his head sideways, which he told us afterwards was throwing bad premonitions he’d had away, about me and Cam. He’d also forseen a problem with Gersende’s arm and had put a protection charm on it. After this nice gesture we went outside, and he mentioned maybe we could give him something, which is as I’d expected, but it’s not often you get invited into a local house and shown around for nothing!

As we walked up the hill to see a temple we came to a political event in the street, with a big audience and a stage, with a large riot police presence, some carrying huge rifles. There are upcoming elections in Nepal and due to the very troubled political history there’s always the danger of trouble. It was a Maoist event judging by the flags, the party currently in government. First on stage there was traditional dancing by a woman in full Newari dress, twirling, running and swinging her long ponytail around to music. Then a guy came on stage to sing. A band with cymbals and drums marched past the proceedings, we’d seen this setup before, leading political marches around Kathmandu, presumably it was from another party sent to disrupt the occasion, as they were shadowed closely by the police keen to avoid trouble.

Our guide led us uphill to the biggest tiered temple of the town, another really old one with worn wooden carvings on the beams. The stone elephants guarding the steps had big spikes to stop people sitting on them! Kamal told me this was a temple where if you are single you should pray there to get a girlfriend. Of course he made me do it! There was a great view over Kathmandu from up here.

Around the yard there were some Nepali mountain bikers milling around and pulling wheelies. We got chatting to one of them who told us he and his friends go out riding every Saturday exploring the area around Kathmandu. He gave us some recommendations for places to visit too.

View from the temple

We left the temple and said goodbye to Kamal, we figured the cost of a normal lunch each plus a bit more was a fair price to pay him. He thanked us and invited us to visit him for the upcoming Diwali festival. We walked down the hill, passing the political event where an man was shouting animatedly, I guess they got to the meat of the proceedings. A line of riot police had blockaded one end of the street but let us pass. Blacked-out jeeps were waiting nearby, presumably to ferry off the politicians in a hurry afterwards before any trouble could start. The audience were clapping and nodding to the energetic speech.

Skipping game

We twisted our way down the hill through the old streets until the main road, passing some nice views of the Kathmandu valley, until we reached the bus stop. We hopped on a mini bus back to Kathmandu and on arrival tucked into some momos from a street stall. As is quite common here they were served in bowls made from leaves, an eco-friendly way to do fast food! They were really tasty and covered in a tomato and chili sauce. The girls were heading off to a Nepali friend’s house so I said goodbye and went down to the restaurant to write this diary entry, and chatted to Ashman who I’ve got to know the past few days, before turning in early.

Kirtipur “rest station”

Alan Stock Photography

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

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