11/4/22
Despite having a morning flight, which arrived in Kathmandu around 12 noon, immigration took foreverrrrr so I left arrivals around 15.00 and arrived in Kathmandu tourist centre Thamel shortly after this. Already people were trying to sell me guides for trekking, but I was tired and starving so I took the number of the guide the taxi driver was trying to sell me and asked the hostel guy if I could go and eat before he tried to sell me a tour! I asked for food recommendations and set off for a Tibetan restaurant round the corner. I ordered thenthuk (a kind of noodle soup) as well as chilli momos (a kind of dumpling either steamed or fried) and ordered a Tibetan butter tea with it, which honestly wasn’t as good as I remembered it from Dharamshala!
I wandered around Thamel a little, enjoying the bustling streets with crazy traffic and colourful Buddhist prayer flags, the same as in Manali. There were glorious coffee shops everywhere and I was excited to try them. I stopped in one for a coffee and read. On my way back to the hostel, I got a massage. It wasn’t the best one, but it was still quite relaxing for only a tenner! I bought a snickers from a corner shop since it wasn’t really a thing in Sri Lanka. Then I watched some (a lot!) of Bridgerton in bed! There were two other girls in my room a German girl, who I’ve now forgotten the name of, and an Indian girl from Mumbai, Ambica. We chatted a bit before they went out to be sociable and I continued with Bridgerton!
12/4/22
Today I got up and headed back to the same coffee shop as the day before. I was ready for good coffee and glorious pancakes. I found a great spot only about five minutes from my hostel. After eating, chilling and reading my book, I headed off towards the Monkey Temple. I walked through busy streets, past piles of rubbish, over a stinking river and towards the mountains. Once you leave Thamel, it gets significantly less touristy. I headed up the hill and stopped at a tailors to see if they could fix my tailor made Somali top since the button had fallen off. They told me to come back and collect it later so I tried to memorise where it was so I could find my way back! There were a lot of steps up to the Monkey Temple and also a stressful amount of monkeys. After the aggression of Indian monkeys, I am really not keen on them! I tried to avoid them and made my way up the steps pretty quickly. I navigated past many a street vendor selling bracelets, juices, snacks, Om prayer flags and the like.
The view from the top was pretty nice, overlooking Kathmandu with green parky patches and mountains behind. It was also pretty hazy though! I went around the temple and took a photo with the stupa. As I was doing so, a monkey crept up in me and grabbed my skirt. I wasn’t there long!! After escaping, I went to a rooftop cafe within the Monkey Temple grounds. Weirdly, there is a story about he monkeys. The original deity had long hair and consequently got lice. Since then, Buddhists tradition says that these lice have transformed into monkeys and consequently the monkeys are not seen as skirt-pulling-nusiances but blessed. I got talking to a girl, Silpi in the cafe. She was from East India and travelling with her boyfriend whom she had met travelling around India. We had a good chat before I left to escape the monkeys grasps for good!!
On the way down, I collected my top – it costs me 50 rupees, around 33 pence! I walked back towards the town, stopping to get street food. I sat in a small square beside the river, with street food stalls and locals chilling out. Then, I crossed the stinky river once more, walked through another temple before getting a Pathao (a local Uber) to Kathmandu’s Durbar Square, with Durbar translating to ‘old’. I wasn’t ready for another full temple wander, so I skipped the entrance fee and the main temples and instead headed to a rooftop cafe which overlooked the old square and bustling market. I had a drink and chilled out in the shade. I read and blogged.
I wandered through the narrow streets away from the square and found smaller temples and shrines as well as smaller, newer squares with other streets vendors and small stall holders selling treats. I stopped at a stall with a lady selling savoury pancakes to try one. Then I continued on before walking back to Thamel. I headed back to the hostel to Netflix and chill (really chill) and went back out when I was hungry. I went out around 20.30/21.00 to find most places close to the hostel were closed. I went to a pizza place, one of the guys nly places that was still open for quite a nice pizza, considering, before heading home nto the heart of Thamel for a cocktail. I had eyed up a nice bar earlier and was surprised to find it quiet. I ordered a Margarita and relaxed. After fifteen minutes or so, an Indian guy introduced himself and asked if he could join me. I didn’t see why not so he sat down and we chatted. I left an hour later and he insisted on walking me home, which I didn’t appreciate. We had already exchanged numbers and sadly the next day he sent me inappropriate messages.. You win some, you lose some, but the actual evening of conversation was good!
13/4/22
Wednesday the 13th. Unlucky for some!
I started my day in the usual way. I returned to the same cafe as the day before and ordered an omelette and coffee. I met an Australian guy in the cafe and we chatted for an hour about what we were doing with our lives, before I headed to the Garden of Dreams. It was hot by the time I got there and the garden’s cafe was closed. I asked to go and get a drink before returning to the cafe. I did so, thanks to the nice security. I grabbed an iced coffee before heading back to the gardens and walking around. It was just like the gardens if Bridgerton – clearly I had been watching too much Netflix!! I chose a shady spot and then read my book while watching people pose with pretty flowers and fountains. On my way back from the loo, an old Nepali guy stopped me and asked if I had five minutes for an interview. Since my plans were limited and my time was plenty, I said yes. He was collecting stories of the tourists of Kathmandu. He asked basic questions of who I was, what I did, why I was in Nepal as well as questions of dreams and humanity. I told him I thought Nepali people had kind faces and were good people.
Afterwards, I left and got a very sketchy motorbike taxi to Pashupatinath Temple – the Varanasi of Nepal. We very nearly scraped many a bus and bike, and I was very much not a fan, and we went down many narrow bumpy lanes which we then had to retrace since we were lost.
When I got to the temple, I was very pleased to get off the bike! It was not clear where to go since tourists needed tickets so I asked various people before finding the ticket office. It was expensive by Nepali standards but its the #1 thing to see in Kathmandu, so I paid up before telling aan that was following me talking that I didn’t need a guide and heading over the bridge past where some cremations were being done. Similarly to India, there is a caste system here and depending on your caste depends where you can be burnt. If you are low caste you are burnt right on the river bank , but if you are higher caste, you get a grander send off. I headed up the hill to see what was there since the temple area was massive. I walked past many beggars with leg ulcers and dirty bandages hanging off their wounds. I should do a dressing round I thought! I continued on and past a small temple with ‘holy men’ with painted faces, that mainly wanted money for photos of them. Then I headed past a small caf and went into a courtyard with some pagodas.
Inside the courtyard there was a monkey in there which I gave a wide berth to, and two dogs sitting together on the floor. The dogs were looking at me so I clicked my mouth once and continued walking towards them to head out the side gate. They barked once, and then jumped up on my legs and bit the top of my thighs through my Somali maxi skirt. I had a dog hanging from each leg briefly and I started screaming. They then were no longer on my legs, having slunk off somewhere and blood was pouring down my legs. My bag was on the floor with its entire contents somehow emptied on the floor! My screams alerted a few Nepalese men, one of which tried to touch my wounds and one of which put all of my things back in my bag before trying to give it back to me. I was beside myself and did not take my bag. The dogs tried to run towards me again and one of the men chased them off. Most of the men wandered off after that, so I wandered around the main temple balling my eyes out looking crazy. Since I was wearing a maxi skirt, noone could see I’d been attacked by dogs so noone knew what to do. When some Nepalese girls were looking at me pitifully, I showed them my dog bites and they helped me. They took my bag and each took an arm and walked me all the way back down to the entrance trying to calm me down. They mopped the blood from my legs with a cloth. I was inconsolable, was in shock and yet, the pain was still hitting me in waves. I got down and someone suggested I go to the hospital on motorbike. I was horrified! I requested an ambulance and a first aid kit. The girls left. Noone seemed very concerned and I had to chase the ambulance! Eventually it came as I popped some paracetamol. I slowly hauled myself in the ambulance and some guy got in afterwards. We travelled through the traffic, with some traffic moving aside for us. Alarmingly, the first hospital we went to didn’t have a rabies vaccine and I thought I may be doomed!! I tried to Google international hospitals to see you f they would have the vaccines. I was ringing them as we arrived at a second hospital. Thankfully, they did have the anti-rabies vaccine and I went into ED. I was sent to Minors and lay next to a boy having his head stitched up. I was still beside myself and crying and the doctor and nurse looking after the boy laughed ate. They didn’t understand that it wasn’t so much the bites, but that I was soooo far from home and very alone to be sick! Eventually the doctor came to assess me, wrote a list and the guy from the ambulance went to the pharmacy to pay for and collect my drugs. Then the nurse came to give me IV pain relief and do my vaccine and dressing. I thanked the ambulance man, who turned out to be fand then I lay there awhile before awhile longer before heading out.
I got a taxi to take me home stopping at my local corner shop to stock up on Snickers, which would be my evening meal!! Then I went back to my hostel, told them what had happened and asked for a private room. A guy came to carry my big rucksack for me to my new room and I settled in with Netflix and my big bag of drugs and plasters I had brought with me from UK! I also had a meditating astronaut on the wall! It was sad I would not be going ht for NYE, but at least my legs were not as bad as they could have been. I had a few calls from kind, concerned friends and chilled, munching my Snickers bars back to back.
I welcomed in the New (Buddhist) Year by changing my dressings around midnight before going to sleep.
wanderingwelshie travels 