Nepal picture mania, part 2 4 December 2007 6:40 am
Posted by Tracy in : nepal, Kathmandu, travel, pictures, agriculture, eating , 1 comment so farSo last time I got a little distracted by the deliciousness of momos thanks to a random fast food place in Kathmandu, but today’s pictures are pretty straight-up travelogue. First, a few notes about flying in Nepal: it’s all about patience. A few days of uncooperative weather can wreak serious havoc, and we were pretty lucky in that regard — only a few hours worth of flights had been cancelled and rescheduled to October 14. Still, this was enough to overload pretty much the entire domestic terminal at Kathmandu airport: ticket counters, security, and above all the seating area where we waited our turn to check in. Behold the awesomeness of Kathmandu airport security theater:
Another picture post, this time with flashback to Nepal! 28 November 2007 10:17 am
Posted by Tracy in : Kathmandu, tea, nepal, travel, garden, pictures , add a commentI keep having these weird moments when I realize where I was one month ago — today it’s Mani Rimdu in Tengboche, for which my automagical post predicted. “Picture me taking notes furiously, till my hand cramps up with the effort” and was exactly right on. The masked dances alone take up pages 14-22 of the second paper journal I ended up filling on the trip (eventually I had to start a third) and then there’s three or four more pages of other writing for that day. It was a doozy.
So this morning as I bravely sipped my first cup of the milk tea I bought in Kathmandu (so strong it actually demands milk and even sugar), remembering Tengboche got me motivated to wrangle a few more Nepal trip photos, this time from the morning before we left on our trek, October 14. (more…)
Monkey Monday: now with actual monkeys! 19 November 2007 7:34 am
Posted by Tracy in : nepal, Kathmandu, America's Test Kitchen, travel, monkeys, seasonality, pictures, vegetarian , add a commentSee? On the roof of the Patan Museum, even:
Nepalis were always pretty entertained by how excited we Western tourists got whenever we saw monkeys, except when they were busy warning us not to get too close. Apparently monkeys have been known to snatch purses, but that’s nothing compared to the trouble caused by monkey bites, or so I’m told. (New Delhi’s monkey trouble even made the New York Times last week!) We were all pretty happy to have avoided first-hand experience of all that. Anyway, (more…)
Nepal Trip 2007: Day 3: Kathmandu-Rumjatar Camp at Aaderi 14 October 2007 12:30 am
Posted by Tracy in : Kathmandu, nepal, travel, pictures , add a commentFirst and foremost, I uploaded a few pictures to my Flickr pages today. Not many, because internet cafes have sporadic connection speeds and also we were about to get on a plane flight, about which I will provide a little more information below. Yes, I probably need a Flickr pro account just for this trip alone.
Fun fact! Please note that my spellings of place names are generally based on the itinerary I was emailed, but that doesn’t mean they’re spelled correctly (not that anything can be transliterated correctly considering I’m not using the right freaking alphabet). What that means is that this trip can be very hard to follow along on Nepal websites or library books like I tried to figure stuff out with all last month. Anyway. Like I said before, today is another air travel day, but within Nepal this time, I believe on the national airline, Yeti Air. Awesome! We’re flying from Kathmandu to Rumjatar, on a tiny little 12- or maybe 16-seat puddle-jumper airplane so small it has very strict baggage weight limits (except if your trekking party is so big that they take over an entire flight, as is our case; we’ll still have to be careful on the way back). The last time I flew on a plane like this it was between Vieques and Culebra, little islands southeast of Puerto Rico (and it may have been from Culebra to Vieques — I’m not entirely sure anymore). On that flight they actually arranged passengers by weight, to make sure the plane was evenly balanced. Whee! (more…)
Nepal Trip 2007: Day 2: (almost) LIVE POST! 13 October 2007 12:00 am
Posted by Tracy in : Kathmandu, nepal, travel, eating, friends , add a commentGreetings 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.) (more…)
