In the morning, the Boddhisatva and I woke early so we went off to the alu wo (pakora) place for breakfast. Luckily breakfast places are open, though they seem to close very early and not even a cup of tea is available. The pakoras were fresh and delicious this morning and the light was clear. […]
A friend arrives
A friend from Malaysia arrived today, none other than the Boddhisatva, though without the Woodland Creature, sadly. She is stayng upstairs from us in the same building. Unfortunately she has come just as everything shuts down for Dasain so, for instance, we found a restaurant open for dinner and learned they only had pre-cooked foods […]
Tourist town
I went into Thamel today to arrange my hiking trip. It is proper tourist town, filled with backpackers in elephant pants or unsuitably bare tanktops, lined with shops selling more elephant pants. I made all my arragements, hiring a porter and getting my TIMS card arranged, only to learn that there were no buses to […]
Eight goddesses go to battle
Last night, we were walking back from Sanepa (more on that later) when we saw some bustling around the Nakbahi shrine. We stopped to watch and saw a group of men in coloured silks and jewellery being tended to, and a great air of excitement in the crowd. We stopped to watch, of course, and […]
Rare delicacy
Today and yesterday I have been engrossed in what I can only call busy work, rather than the work I actually have to do and that is starting to worry me a little. Well, there it is! It occurred to me that very soon I will have left my AirBnb as the GF will have […]
Daily rituals
From yesterday work began and I have since started trying to get daily routines in place. It’s less easy than it was in Byblos where restaurant options were few but the flat was comfortable, there was a convenient daily sunset, and there was little or no risk of food poisoning. Here the risk of food […]
Three meetings
A long day today. We started off with breakfast at Patan Dhoka, the gate to this old royal city, newly painted with colourful figures, then ventured to an artist’s studio set off the main road in an unusually green and treelined street. We were let in by a student who called the artist, Lok Chitrkar, […]
The Saarc advantage
We went around Patan’s Durbar Square and I was delighted to find one of the few benefits of belonging to a SAARC country is that one gets discounts on tourist admittance. I have taken to carrying my Pakistani ID card around for this reason, though to be honest they just look at my appearance and […]
Patan
We are in Kathmandu. Or rather, we are in Patan, one of the three royal cities in the valley. It is like and unlike home, and I think that made it it even more intense for me than I would have expected, because my mind was continually readjusting its expectations – to stupas and temples […]
The biggest stone in the world
In the morning we walked to what is known as the Roman quarry, though I believe it is pre-Roman, and possibly alien. This is about 10 minutes down the road, behind a derelict petrol station and some piles of rubbish, where an enormous hole is scooped out of the earth. Along the sides are small […]