One update that is seriously overdue relates to last November’s trip to Nepal. What an astonishing country! About the size of North Carolina and with only about 30M inhabitants (Shanghai alone has 20M!), what it lacks in scale it more than makes up in diversity. In only two weeks we visited Katmandu to take in the colours and the chaos, we saw some of the remote villages of the beautiful but chilly Annapurna foothills, then travelled by raft down the Seiti river to the jungles of the Chitwan National park. The country feels a lot bigger because the roads are terrible (with the biggest potholes I’ve ever seen and generally plagued by slow moving cows) – and as a result flying everywhere is by far the most effective way of getting around. Otherwise we travelled mostly by bus.
When I was a student I went travelling with a friend in Peru. We just rocked up in Lima and spent the next couple of months just going where the fancy took us, heading first south down to Arequipa then up to Cuzco and the Inca Trail, and briefly over to Bolivia. We were most dismissive of anyone who went on an organised bus based trip, referring to them as “cultural bubbles”. We both swore we’d never stoop so low.
The thing we hadn’t fully appreciated at the time is the fact that when you work, the bubble approach is really the only way of getting things packed into a short timeframe. That’s how we ended up on a cultural bubble but one that allowed us to pack a LOT into under two weeks. We managed to experience a surprising amount of the country’s diversity. Actually it wasn’t JUST bus travel. We could count, airplanes, taxis, canoes, rafts, paragliders, elephants, bullock carts and ultralights among our modes of transport while in the country.
We saw so much but here’s a selection of memorable places/ experiences:
I loved the mountains, particularly the trip in a plane to fly along the Himalayas. I was lucky enough to be in the cockpit when we flew past Lukla – probably the most challenging airstrip in the world, and the gateway to Everest for many. More on my newfound fascination with mountains later…
I was utterly charmed by the elephants we met in Chitwan. So very intelligent and so very big! What astonishing creatures. I loved the safari on the elephant’s back – three of us sitting back to back in a sort of platform strapped to the elephant’s back. We soon got used to the rolling gait but it was distinctly odd when our steed broke into a rather bouncy trot.
I loved the Stupas – the temples in Katmandu with their multi-coloured prayer flags and Budda’s all-seeing eyes that look out in the four directions.
I was somehow left saddened after our visit to Kumari in Katmandu. Kumari is a young girl, plucked from a village somewhere to become a living goddess to be worshipped until puberty at which point she returns to her previous life. We only saw this Kumari for a few minutes, she looked bored out of her mind. What a strange and probably lonely life.
I don’t think I could ever get used to all the street vendors who descend on tourists in swarms and attempt to sell all manner of random trinkets. They seem to consider price the only possible objection you might have for not purchasing, so if haggling is a favoured sport, Nepal is your dream destination. I didn’t particularly want what they were selling but the chap, a soft touch by all accounts, ended up with armfuls of brightly coloured hats, small bags and various amulets to guard him against all manner of ills. These will all likely be distributed during birthdays and Christmases for some time to come.
Here are some of our pics from the trip.