Nepal and pictures

Hello everybody,

Here we are again. After this one just one post left. At the moment we are in Bhaktapur, it’s a small city nearby Kathmandu from where we’re flying home.
The last time I spoke about India and that I would tell something about our last days in India.

The last days we spend in Varanasi, it’s the most sacred city for the Hindi in the world. People come here to die and then be burned along the shores of the Ganges.

We (Nicole, Jan and Ilka we met them on the train to Varanasi and Rutger and I) spend 3 days here, the first day we didn’t do that much because we arrived in the morning and it took some time to find our hostel. The tuktuk driver we had drove us to the wrong hotel. They warned us for that so we said to him he had to bring us to the correct hotel. After arriving there we shared a room and we went for a breakfast/lunch, the rest of the day we just walked around in the small streets around the hostel. The hostel was really nice, it had a small temple and we had a view over the Ganges.

The day after we decided to see the city and go to some Ghats. Ghats are the places where the people go to pray. A ghat is nothing more than a long stair into the Ganges. Some places, 2 or 3, are used for the ritual burnings. Here we met a guy who said he was more than willing to explain us about the ritual. In total we stayed there for more than 30 minutes to see and listen to the explanation. For example you’re not allowed to stay there the complete ritual because that gives a bad karma to the body and the spirit. After the explanation of the guy, he said he did it for free and didn’t want any money of us, he asked us to come to his silk shop. So again there was somebody who wanted something of us…. We friendly reclined and moved on to the next ghat.
In the beginning of the evening we took a boat ride down the Ganges to see all the ghats and what was going on, but when we were on the boat a thunderstorm started so we had to run for cover, only Rutger and Ilka stayed dry!

The day after we had to arrange some things for the journey to Nepal so that’s what we did that day and we stayed a bit longer in bed than normal during this trip :). In the evening Nicole left to Calcutta and we had to pack our bags, for dinner we went to a small street restaurant with Jan and Ilka, the food was surprisingly good.
The trip to Nepal started in the morning; we got up at 6 to go to the bus. The complete journey lasted for 26 hours in a local bus; this means no room space and luxury at all….

Rutger and I were a bit anxious how the border crossing would go because we only had Indian rupees and no pass photos for our visa. After arriving there we met a Nepalese guy who helped us really good and getting the visa was no problem at all and it was arranged in 15 minutes. We even could change our money there. Here the trip with Jan and Ilka stopped for the moment they were going to Bhaktapur.

After arriving in Pokhara, this was at 7 in the morning, we went to our hotel and slept a bit. Later that day we had a nice hike for 4 hours up to the peak of a mountain. The view over Pokhara and the mountains in the background was really nice.

The next day we decided to rent 2 motorbikes, 150cc bikes, to drive around. During this trip we saw the Annapurna peak, this mountain is more than 8000 meters high. Just driving around was amazing and we decided to rent the bikes again for the day after if a trekking would be very expensive.
Trekking was very expensive for a day so we decided to rent the bikes again. The second day driving was even better, we drove to the beginning of the Annapurna trek. This was a ride of around 50 km in the mountains, there were a lot of hairpins so it was good driving. The bad thing was that the road was not always that good. On the way back to Pokhara it started to rain and the profile on the tires was completely gone, so it felt like riding with slicks. But we survived and just driving around in the mountains was good fun.

The last morning in Pokhara, again we had to get up early to catch the bus, the sky was really clear and we could see all the Himalayan peaks around us, what was a stunning view. The bus ride to Kathmandu was nice but it took a full day to drive just 200km.

From Kathmandu we took a taxi to Bhaktapur where we are now, here we met Jan and Ilka again. But next time I will tell all about Bhaktapur and Kathmandu. Now I go for breakfast.

Greets from a cloudy but warm Nepal,
Rutger and Tom