More Thoughts on Monsoon Trekking & Travel

A glance over at the sidebar of this page shows that the most popular page (as of today) on this site is a post I did called The Big Monsoon Lie. This has been the case, almost since I wrote that one, and it continues to be the most common question I get asked about on this blog or via e-mail from people who have stumbled upon this site. Having spent almost another full year here since I wrote it, and talking to more people and friends on the trails, I am even more convinced of what I wrote now. Increasingly I'm starting to think that people who trek during peak season put up with far more hardships and problems than those who trek on the cusps of the monsoon, and possibly even those who go right in the middle of it.

It is now the beginning of June and most guide books list this as a time when you shouldn't travel to Nepal, but truth be told the weather has been even better than last year. Sure there are occasional afternoon storms but those have been going on since April, and they are just short one or two hour rain storms, nothing to get excited about or to make travel difficult. Another American couple we are friends with just got back from a trip around Annapurna (and can read about the trip on their blog; The Kathmanduo) and they had a very similar experience to myself as far as weather. Now true, this isn't officially monsoon season yet, but because of the way most advice is dished out I know they were quite concerned about weather and views before they left. Not only are the views quite good (there pictures and mine seem to prove that) but the lack of crowded trails, avoiding temperatures well below freezing and snow on high passes just seems like such a bonus.

Wanting to Write Something Positive

The more settled I get in Nepal the harder it is for me to find things to write about it, as nothing seems all that different to me. So just like back home, conversation and thought about the country turns to the events and politics that the country engages in. In this area it is quite difficult to say anything positive about Nepal, and so I have put off writing about it. For instance I really wanted to write something about Nepal Tourism Year 2011, but as I started writing about it, I found that the entire piece was cynical and disparaging. Indeed it is hard to look at what has been done for this and come up with a single good thing to say, and what makes it worse is that the general population seems to have high expectations of it.

Sure people should come to Nepal, it's a great destination, it has the best trekking on the planet, it's temples, people and culture are something that can be spellbinding, and places like Chitwan offer some of the best jungle safari's in the world. For all these reasons and more people should come to Nepal, and more tourists could certainly help the economy here, but that really isn't the issue. The issue is that Nepal declared 2011 tourism year, and then proceeded to create no new incentives to come here, did not reduce the archaic paperwork or ease the terrible visa process, they actually upped the fees for tourists at places like Bhaktapur and infrastructure throughout the country continues to get worse instead of better. There were no new trekking routes opened, no permit requirements eased on some of the more interesting trails, etc. At the airport the visa lines are still terribly long, but there is a nice shiny newly painted gate as you leave the airport that declares "Welcome to Nepal". Sigh.

Is Nepal a Culinary Gold Mine?

To most people that have spent any time here, the question on its face may seem like some kind of joke. When I did some travel writing on Nepal early this year the book's editor asked if I could do something on Nepali food, as all the submissions she had so far received had been mostly foreign adaptations. I explained to her that Nepal lacks the kind of culinary diversity of its neighbors like China and India, and that Nepali cuisine could for the most part be summed up in four words; dahl baht takari, mo-mos. Now to be fair there are plenty of regional and ethnic cuisines here that are good, Newari food in particular takes advantage of many different ingredients and subtle flavors. Many Nepali people are also very proud of their dahl baht, they love the stuff and often explain to me that they just don't feel right if they don't have a meal of it at least twice a day. Still in a country that has access to such an awesome array of fresh fruits, vegetables, herbs, and neighbors with such rich culinary histories one can't help but think of someone in the Louvre that is content to sit and play with an etch-a-sketch.

Experimenting with some gourds

Silence of the Goats and Celebrating Dashain

So the holiday season is in full swing in Nepal. Someone might wonder what qualifies as a holiday season in country that has holidays every week. Well you see those holidays are only a single day, now that we're into the big ones they get entire weeks.  Dashain is a a full 10 day holiday and it is followed not long after by Tihar, another multi-day extravaganza. The first few days of Dashain were rather tame, but the festivities come into full swing in the last three or four days. It reminds me in many ways of Thanksgiving back home, comprising of family get togethers and lots of food. There are plenty of other ritual and religious overtones, but the result is essentially the same, only they don't watch Football.

Nepali Goat at a Temple

Feeding Frogs, 9 Bean Soup, Sacred Lakes, and Cows Leading Spirits

Nepal, I think, has more festivals than any other place on the planet. Yesterday was Janai Purnima, which is a Hindu holiday that doesn't make any sense to me. All I know about it is that it has something to do with a string that gets tied around you and on this day it is replaced. Somehow this is also associated with the feeding of frogs (yes even frogs get holidays in Nepal) and a very tasty nine bean soup. The soup seems to be the thing that most people actually take part in. It is also the holiday that attracts many people  to the pilgrimage site up to Gosainkund lake that I was trekking through recently. Supposedly a dip in the high altitude lakes during this holiday cleanses a person of their sins. A hotel owner up on the trail told me that usually some people get sick from exposure to the cold water and cold conditions up at that altitude. The presence of thousands of pilgrims at a site that normally supports around a hundred people or so can't help the sanitary conditions either. 

Procession for the Deceased over the Last Year

One festival just isn't enough, so today was another festival known as Gaijatra, which is a festival to help lead the spirits of those who have died over the last year to the God that judges the dead. Or at least that is what I was told. Now in the past it use to be that families bought a cow and donated it to a priest and that cow pulled a chariot for that person, and it was believed that by the spirit grabbing on to the cows tail that the cow could help him find his way through the challenges of the after life. Personally I'm not sure I'd trust a cow to be my spirit guide, I'd be worried about just hanging out in a field with grass or something, but then again I'm not Hindu.

Now despite the historical use of cows I didn't actually see any cows being used today. Instead cows were represented on many of the float like things that were carried through the city of Bhaktapur, the city we went to in order to observe the festival. Also on the floats were a picture of the deceased and lots of other ornamentation including an umbrella on the top of the floats.

Young People Dance and Bang Sticks

All around the city the processions were lead by bands and many children and young adults that were dancing and banging sticks together. Supposedly the meaning of this ritual was to ward off the evil spirits. That may, or may have been the case, but very clearly today it was an excuse to have a good time. Many western tourists also had joined in some of the processions and along with some of the locals had put on body paint and danced and banged sticks together to the rhythm of the music. 

Drums and Costumed Youths

Th squares of Bhaktapur were packed with onlookers, mostly locals. The parades on this day seem to be a big event and lots of people gather to watch the processions. Like parades back home bands are mixed in, again with the purpose given that the music wards off the evil spirits. Young boys are occasionally dressed up as Shiva or cows and young girls are dressed in some traditional attire, that if it was supposed to represent something, was lost on me. 

Boy Dressed as Shiva and a Costumed Girl

Onlookers watch the Processions in front of the Old Palace 

We mingled with a multitude of people in Bhaktapur's Durbar Square for a while, just watching the processions go by. Really a great place to watch and experience the festival if you happen to be in Nepal during this time period. Nepal seems to have a festival or holiday for everything, and hardly a week goes by where you can't see some kind of event somewhere in the country. This one was really a lot of fun to witness first hand though and stands out above many of the others I have watched while I was here. It was also nice to watch a festival that took an event that can be as sad for people as death and turned it into something that was a celebration. 

Nagarkot, A Little Dust, and Some Hiking

So last week Helen and Marc invited us to go up to Nagarkot for the weekend with them, which is something that we had been wanting to do since we got here. For those not familiar with the Kathmandu area, Nagarkot is a resort area that sits about 35 KM (roughly 20 miles) from the center of Kathmandu, at the top of the valley rim. It has become a popular destination because it has sweeping views of the Himalaya and is the closest place to Kathmandu where you can see mountains as far away in the west as the Ganesh Himal and in the east as far as the famous Mt. Everest. Normally you get great views between September and March I had read, but we were not that lucky. With only having two rain showers that I can recall in the last month, it is quite dry here at the moment, and it being the end of the dry season kind of compounds this issue. As a result there is a ton of fine dust in the air, and almost like a fog it reduces visibility all over the country.

Above is a picture showing the kind of limit we had due to the haze of dust. Despite the dust we made the best of it and had a good time. Our taxi had no idea where Nagarkot actually was and dropped us about a kilometer past the town proper, which is just a simple road junction with a few restaurants and shops. So our first goal was to find the hotel Marc & Helen had booked called Peaceful Cottage. We made our way back to the village and then half a mile down a road that followed a ridge to the hotel. The Peaceful Cottage had an interesting octagonal tower from which I'm sure you could normally get some great views. The food was typical of uninspired Nepali imitations of what they think foreign food (or Nepali food for that matter) is, and was fairly over priced. The rooms were also nothing to get excited about and where somewhat dank. That all said it did have a great location, the staff, if a a bit pushy at times, was nice enough, and the potted plants and eclectic setting where really nice. We also got some drinks and apple fritters at a restaurant in Nagarkot proper that weren't bad at all and the prices there were much more reasonable. We also walked by some very nice hotels up in the area, though I'm sure the rooms were attached to package tourist style price tags. The freash air outside of Kathmandu, watching the Eagles drift about on thermal winds and just hanging out with friends made for a good time.

On the following day we decided we would trek down to the valley floor and take a bus or taxi back to Kathmandu from there. Above is a picture of Helen, Kim and Marc as we got near the top of the ridge before heading down to the valley. We ended up being a little confused after this as we ended up being pointed down a road that went to where we were going, but not the way that we expected, and thus we were constantly looking for turns and such that just did not exist. The good news is that when ever we asked someone the direction to where we were going they pointed us down the road that we were on.

Above is a picture of Kim with some local school children, her camera as popular as ever. These kids were not quite as sweet as they looked and prior tourists had allowed for a bad habits. They blocked the road asking (demanding?) chocolate, pens or rupees. We got out of it with some photos, but not before a girl tried to grab stuff out of my pocket and they generally acted like brats. Oh well. You can also see somewhat in this picture the very fine almost silt like dust that covers the trail. This stuff has a consistency almost like water it is so light, and with every step you send a plume of it into the air, while sinking up to about an inch or two into it. Still the terraced countryside and the small villages you hike through are really attractive, and I love walking through the Nepal countryside, dust or no dust.
This picture was taken as we came into the village we thought we might end the day at. It was still decidedly rural and there were no signs of taxis and the buses we did see leaving town were so full that we would have had to ride on the roof, something none of us were to keen on doing. So we walked on to the much larger city of Banepa, just to the west of Bhaktapur.
As this photo shows the main road in Banepa was much more urban and there were several buses heading into Kathmandu here via Bhaktapur, there were however fairly few taxis. The problem with the buses again seemed to be that they were packed and the only available seats were on the roof, which we still were not that interested in. As we were all a bit tired from walking in the sun all day, and weren't having any luck finding transportation we went ahead and got some drinks and I got a snack at a local diner like establishment. Feeling a bit more refreshed we set out again looking for transport. A guy in a van offered us a ride back to Kathmandu and we got him down to 1,500 NRS for the four of us. The poor guys vehicle must have stalled half a dozen times and he clearly was uncomfortable driving in the thick Kathmandu traffic. To compound matters he had no clue where Lazimpat was, but once I knew where we were I was able to direct him and we got home safe and sound.

Big thanks to Helen and Marc for a fun weekend!