Temples

In Josie & Ben's last 3 days in Kathmandu, they managed a bit of sightseeing.

We visited Bouddha, a big Buddhist temple in the eastern outskirts of Ktm and watched the sun go down.

Sheila, Josie and I walked through the tourist shopping area of Thamel down to Durbar Square. Everyone was fascinated by Josie's wheelchair - an electric rickshaw!



More evidence of Derek Rowe's global business empire


And Ben went off to visit Swyambu (commonly known as Monkey Temple), another Buddhist temple the other side of town....

...and made friends with some saddhus (Hindhu holy men). Yes, I know I said it was a Buddhist temple but Hindu and Buddhist religions intermingle a lot here - a lesson for other religions perhaps?


...followed by a visit to Pashupati, a Hindu temple, where he made friends with a designer sadhu (yes, those are his legs behind his head)...


....who invited him back to his room.


(I tried to keep the mystic touch by cropping out the TV and hi-fi speaker that were originally in this photo)

Thanks to Josie and Ben for their photos on these last 2 posts. A shame their stay was so short but I'm sure they'll be back before we leave here.


Just a final note to the British Airways baggage handler who smashed Josie's battery box - thanks mate.

Cheers
Roshan

Chitwan

Josie and Ben arrived on Saturday afternoon after a long stop-over in Delhi. No major problems at Kathmandu Airport although they are not the most wheelchair accessible place.

On Sunday we set off in a hired minivan to Royal Chitwan National Park which is about 200km SW of Ktm. There are 2 routes down, over the hills (Mahabharat Range) or the highway which runs along a river valley. For maximum sightseeing we decided to go down over the hills and return via the highway. So the trip there was on windy, occassionally broken up, roads climbing up to almost 3,000 metres (Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in the UK is about 1,400m) and took 8 hours. On clear days the view of the Himalayas is meant to be spectacular but we were in cloud at the top which meant there was little to see and it got quite chilly.

Royal Chitwan National Park used to be the hunting playground of the Nepali rulers and their special guests such as Indian Maharajahs and British sahibs. How times have changed, in the 1920's George V and the then Prince of Wales visited and slaughtered 39 tigers and 18 rhinos in 11days, it is now a sanctuary with protection for most animals.

Ben and I took a canoe trip - good thing Sheila didn't come, the canoe was a very wobbly dugout - where the guide pointed out lots of birds and crocodiles. Some of the crocodile sightings could have been anything as only snout or tail was showing but there was no doubt what this was.

The canoe dropped us off and after a short walk through a field of cows - tikka'd (decorated with coloured paste) from the previous days festival, Gai (means cow and pronounced "Guy") Tihar, which celebrated cows - ..........

..... we arrived at the Elephant Breeding Centre

Meanwhile, Sheila & Josie had been enjoying the glorious sunshine at the river front, just like a Caribbean beach but with the added scenery of the Himalayas in the background. Behind the dark hills in this picture are the snow covered peaks of the Annapurna range which is about 150 km away - a bit like seeing the coast of France from Bognor.


Having got a taste for the sunny beach, Josie declined the elephant safari....

.... which took us through a wide variety of terrain before getting to the jungle. Sheila's imagination of what might emerge ran riot as we went through long grass and rushes so I didn't take much notice when she said the mahout (driver) had spotted a rhino. She was right! Elephant and rhino seemed to ignore each other so we were able to get within 5 metres of it.

The next (and last day), we opted for a lazy morning by the river before Ben and I joined in with elephant bathing.
The trip back along the valley turned out to be more spectacular than the trip down. For much of the route the highway is carved into the side of the river gorge with amazing views of hills all around and glimpses of Annapurna towards the end.

The highway route is probably longer in distance but as it involves considerably less hill climbs and almost no broken sections, our trip back was only 6 hours.

Its Christmas!

Forget Diwali, its Christmas here. Josie & Ben arrived today laden with goodies. Thanks to them, Reg, Gill, Mary, Kate, Annie and anyone else who sent bits for us. Unfortunately the weather has been ungrateful and the kids were greeted by drizzle and the coldest day since February. Off to Chitwan tomorrow which is further south and lower altitude so hopefully Josie will get the warmth she is desparate for.

 

Will post pics when we get back.

Cheers

Roshan

Festival time for rats

Life must be pretty good for rats in Kathmandu at the moment. Garbage collection has stopped for the last week or so as the landfill sites the city council uses have been closed by local residents protesting against them. As a result there are piles of rubbish in the streets and the oil drum at the end of our path is overflowing from the bags all the households in our little cluster have dumped. These mounds of rotting garbage are giving the rats a feast to celebrate the Tihar (Divali / Deepawali) festival, although from the squashed carcasses in the street some have have put food before road safety.

 

From what I've seen in the papers, landfill site is a bit of a grand title for what looks like a field where all the rubbish is dumped before being raked over by rag (plastic or any other recyclable item) pickers. Apparently the local residents are demanding some local infrastructure investment in exchange for using their districts as a dumping ground. Good to see local communities taking on the government, however, according to today's paper, the protest may have been brought to a halt by the Ministry of Local Development sacking the district committee and appointing their own nominees. Not sure this is quite in the new spirit of people's democracy but I guess old habits die hard.

 

In a weeks time we have another (yes, I know the last one only finished a week ago) festival called Tihar. This is what in India is celebrated as Divali, the festival of light. More exciting for us is that Josie and Ben are arriving next Saturday - just a week but it will be great to see them and for them to see our life here. We plan to have a couple of days down in Chitwan National Park so we'll all get to see a bit more of rural Nepal and I think elephant rides are on the itinerary.

 

I've just re-started this after a 2.5 hour break for our weekly load shedding (power cut) - on a Sunday night these are not a major aggravation, Sheila quite enjoys working by candle light and we have one rechargeable lantern + head torches to read by.

 

On the political front, the summit talks continue with mainly positive noises being made by both sides so hopefully we will have a quiet October. Just to be contrary, the Nepalese Chambers of Commerce have called a general strike for Tuesday to protest against lack of government support for entrepreneurs. Unless the buses and taxis join in, I'm not convinced this will have much impact on day to day life.

 

If I can think of anything interesting to write before next week, I'll do another blog, otherwise it will have to wait until after the kids have been and gone - should have some touristy photos then.

 

Cheers

Roshan

 

P.S. As I write this I think John Breach is in Amsterdam slogging his way round a marathon. John - if you read this, well done and I promise the cheque is the post.

Green fingers

For any VSO vols who were on SKWID course with us and talked about taking basil seeds with them...can you beat our basil crop? We can also get pasta and olive oil (at a price!) to go with it but recognise that we are very spoilt in KTM unlike many of the rest of you.

Mary, Gill and Heather - I hope I'm doing your green fingers proud!

Best wishes all, Sheila

Nagarkot this weekend

Blimey, 7 months without venturing outside the valley for R & R then we do 2 trips in 2 weeks. This w/e we went to Nagarkot, a hill resort about 30km to the NE of Kathmandu, which at about 2,000 metres is meant to be one of the best viewpoints close to Ktm.

 

Before leaving on Saturday, we had a minor crisis when we couldn't switch the gas on at the bottle. After investigating I decided that bodge mending a gas regulator would not be very clever so nipped down to the back chowk to get a new one - at the cost of a day's wages for me! Sheila had booked a package deal with a posh-ish hotel which ran a shuttle bus from Kathmandu but as this didn't leave until 3pm, we decided to take public buses via Bhaktapur.This involved 4 separate buses and me standing for the last 1 hour but did get us to Nagarkot about 3 hours earlier than the shuttle would have. Given how hard the seats were, standing was not a great sacrifice and Sheila enjoyed having a granny with little boy talking to her most of the way. The disadvantage was that it was not easy to take pictures of the spectacular journey up the winding road but if Sheila did manage to get some I'll leave her or Josie to add them.

 

Although the views from the hotel were impressive, they were limited by cloud so no sign of the mountains - we'll see them eventually!


The height was noticeable by the lower temperature, apparently Nagarkot is generally 5' colder than Ktm and it was definitely chilly in the evening. Having chosen the hotel for the luxury of an indoor swimming pool and jacuzzi, neither were warm enough to be spend much time in. Waking early to see the sunrise was foiled by more clouds.


However I did enjoy a long soak in a hot bath, my first in 7 months and very enjoyable. As a resort, Nagarkot can really only offer views and the starting point for treks of at least 4 hours (far too long for us even if they are mainly downhill!) so this morning, after Sheila had another short walk to explore, we took the hotel shuttle bus back to Ktm. Much quicker and more comfortable but the trip up on the public buses was an experience not to miss.

 

Back to work tomorrow for both of us. I'm expecting an interesting week - we are due to negotiate the Blue Diamond Society's funding for the next year. Thereby lies a whole story worthy of its own blog but I'll wait for it to end before doing it!

 

Cheers

Roshan

 

P.S. For the Rowe family, who I hope are still reading this, and those who know Derek. I saw a little cart with the sign "Gaylord Ice Creams" - crikey, he's everywhere! I was not quick enough with the camera but will look out for it so I can get photographic evidence.

Dashain last week

Weds, 4 October (i.e last week - apologies for delay in posting)

With government offices closed for 10 days, although BDS was only shut from Friday to Tuesday, many of the volunteers have gone trekking for most of the festival time. For us, a local bus to Dhulikhel out in the KTM valley where we could expect comforts of a hotel with good views and perhaps glimpses of mountains seemed a good and much cheaper option. The 2 hour bus ride was more comfortable than that to Bhaktapur and was not, by Nepali standards, vastly overcrowded. Due to the festival having already started, the roads were very clear and with seats we were able to enjoy the journey. The hotel is built into the hillside and views from almost every room superb. There were even glimpses of snow capped mountains early one morning.






We had the luxury of a TV with clear picture and sound and were able to follow the exciting Chinese Grand Prix. We had been lent a book of walks, published 6 years earlier, many of which seem to be far beyond any stamina we wished to employ so we tailored our own, spending time in the Newari town, venturing down only part way towards the valley. We found some lovely small temples including this Shiva temple at the bottom of a gorge. To quote Lonely Planet "this is a temple with everything, images of Hanuman, Saraswati, Shiva and Pravati, lingams, tridents, snake deities and a fine image of Ganesh".


Dashain is such a happy, family occasion with most peopletravelingg back to their family home to celebrate for 7-10 or more days, often travelling for very long distances on overcrowded buses. During the fifteen days of celebration that together make the originally Hindu festival of Dashain, now celebrated by all religions here in Nepal, even the vehicles are given Puja, decorated with the pieces of the sacred plant, sprinkled and splodged with blood from the sacrificed animals and tied with strips of red cloth. Buses, taxis, tractors, like this one we walked past in the village, and even the VSO jeeps are not neglected in having this blessing for the following year.


As we left Dhulikhel on our decorated bus, almost all the passengers had the traditional red tika, large and prominent on their forehead. Small pieces of barley planted on the first day of the festival and grown through the past week are harvested on the 10th day were tied in hair or tucked behind an ear.

Kite flying is a major part of life at this time of year and the children (almost all boys) are amazing clever at flying them. Everywhere high in the sky there are tiny dots which could be birds but are very basic kites like this flying from the sides of roads, rooftops and every bit of wasteland. As we watched from our room at Dhulikhel we saw kites from the valley, way, way up above the hills sadly far too high to show on any of our pictures.


Having brought it down on the wires by the major road, this boy sat on the pavement to mend and within seconds of using his teeth to repair the string, he had this one flying brilliantly.

Most villages set up a ping (a swing normally made from 4 bamboo poles but if a convenient tree branch is available....). On our venture from the hotel towards the valley we watched the children on this ping, horrific when you could see the height and the sheer drop and the size of some of those queuing.




Surprisingly Roshan declined when all tried to encourage him to try. I suggested he might make comparisons with looking down from the top of a 60 ft mast but was reminded that on a mast one has a harness and halyards for security! As the gradient of the path past the children was mentioned in the guide book as 1 in 1, those who know us well would understand that we realised down would mean clambering up so hence we did not venture that much further.

On our return to KTM, with most shops, cafes etc closed we spent much of the next day in the garden of the Manaslu hotel next door, with me yet again enjoying the pool.

Today Roshan has spent the morning at work whilst I revisited the Bodnath Stupa. Last time I went the sky was grey and all was wet but today was just right for photos.


Hopefully when Josie and Ben come to see us in a few weeks there should be a full moon and we will try and visit as the sunsets and moon rises.

Now back to thinking about ECD core teacher training that I need to plan for work next week and resources like story-sacks and persona dolls that need making if I want to use or hopefully get someone else who speaks Nepali to demonstrate... The trouble is that I still have no translation of the new curriculum document or training manual. As I struggle with spoken Nepali, I know I will never manage to crack the script so I am meant to be meeting with an unemployed MA graduate who might support me, He, yes he as those with ECD degrees are more likely to be male here, is out of KTM for festival and does not seem to be able to access his email....

More re: work later....

Love Sheila