TracyFood

Nepal Trip 2007: Day 2: (almost) LIVE POST! 13 October 2007 12:00 am

Posted by Tracy in : Kathmandu, eating, friends, nepal, travel , trackback

Greetings from the future! I am writing this at 10:30 AM on Saturday in Kathmandu and today’s post wasn’t scheduled to go out for another 10 or so hours but I’ve shifted it to go up at the earliest possible moment on Saturday Pacific Time so y’all can be almost as confused by the time change as I am. Speaking of time change confusion, just for giggles, here’s what I wrote last week or whenever it was I tried to predict what I’d be doing on this trip (it feels like a lifetime ago):

I really, really do not know how to number these days. I’m still getting over the fact that I lost one to the flight from LA-Bangkok. Also, the time change between Nepal and the West Coast is almost exactly 12 hours, but considering all the madness of the travel schedule, I give myself 50-50 odds of just randomly resetting my internal clock by today because it’s going to be such a relief to have regular ol’ 24-hour days again.

On the schedule for today is a day trip to Patan, in the Kathmandu Valley. Patan is one of the three ancient royal cities of Nepal: the other two are Kathmandu and Bhaktapur.

Turns out we actually went to Patan yesterday, but not before eating a delicious breakfast and learning a whole lot about the traditional arts and crafts of the Kathmandu Valley, which in turn helped us appreciate the sights in Patan, and it was awesome. (Also, I am so tweaked out by the time change that I am waking up at 5 AM here, but I’ll have more on that in a bit. Long story short, the crazy early morning internal clock wakeup has already come in handy once.)

So. Here’s the map of Kathmandu again:

View Larger Map

If you scroll south of Kathmandu, you’ll see Patan: it’s the part south of the bend in the river just south of the word Kathmandu on the map; the big bridge across the river (it’s the Bagmati River, to be exact) actually crosses right into it. It’s been around awhile, and is chock-full of history. UNESCO World Heritage sites, all that good stuff. Say whatever you want about the United Nations, but I’ve had a lot of good luck with the World Heritage sites I’ve seen. They are pretty uniformly awesome, and I’m glad they’re recognized in as many ways as possible. So there.

And speaking of World Heritage Sites, the restaurant where we had dinner last night is actually in a hotel which is recognized as a World Heritage site, because it’s built in part out of beautiful carved wood salvaged from buildings that were being torn down around Kathmandu. The food was fantastic, too: nine courses of traditional Nepali food served to us by beautiful women in the traditional finery of many different ethnic groups of this area. Very fancy, very amazing, and well deserving of an essay all its own, which yes I have been working on ever since — I even broke my own personal rule about not taking pictures of restaurant food a few times. (Y’all will have to wait for pictures because while I have intergoogle access, I have not yet figured out how to make with the picture magic.)

I am so very stunned that I don’t know what else to write. Have I mentioned that I’m in Nepal? And that today I got up at 5 AM to see the sun rise over one of the holiest sites in all of Hinduism and there were MONKEYS ALL OVER THE PLACE? Oh it was so amazing. And now as I write this it is not even 11 AM so I have lots of time for more adventures — although probably they will be adventures like writing postcards and getting less chafe-y trekking pants (convertible may be good for some people, but I hate the frackin’ zippers). Oh, and maybe packing for the trek. On the way out tomorrow, our party will take up an entire little bitty puddle-jumper plane. Total way, dudes.

Simone, I am doing my best to take pictures of Kathmandu for you but it’s really hard, which might be why you haven’t seen much about it. Still, I am trying my best for you and for me; it feels like I only perceive maybe one tenth of one percent of everything I see, but I expect to have amazing dreams about things I thought I hadn’t noticed.

CJ, I have a great story for you already.

Ellen, the fellow organizing our trip is a Red Sox fan and he’s been giving us updates about the playoffs. Yay for the almighty power of the internet!

Peter and Zeke, the crazy holy monkey site I went to this morning is a place they do cremations like the one Henry Rollins described at that spoken word show in San Juan Capistrano more than five years ago. I didn’t see anyone getting burned, but it was a big amazing holy site on a big happy holy day and all that was all good.

Peter, I love you and miss you.

Okay, I will now stop with the probably-annoying personalized messages and post this, and then go out to those adventures I mentioned earlier.