An adventure around the world that I started seemed to get better and better after arriving in Kathmandu and the luck I had on my first day by randomly meeting two guys from India. I was about to start another adventure visiting the temples in Kathmandu – me as usual without a plan. What I didn’t know at this point was that it would be a full cultural experience in every way.
This morning, I got up fairly early after I had just arrived after traveling for 38 hours from South Africa to Kathmandu (Jetlag ? 38 hours journey from South Africa – Abu Dhabi – Mumbai – Kathmandu). The reason I got up was because I wanted to see things around the area. To ask for information’s and directions, I went straight to the hostel tour desk. While asking, a big Indian guy told me that he and his friend were going around to visit different temples and asked if I wanted to join them. I thought why not and asked them to wait because I wanted to get a quick breakfast somewhere.
First stop: Temple Pashupatinath
The guys I had just met, Akhilesh and Ani from Mumbai in India, were on a vacation, exploring Nepal for a couple of days – lucky they met me ha – and we got ourselves a taxi to take us to the first temple Pashupatinath.
The first temple Pashupatinath is a Shiva (= god) temple and Nepal’s most sacred Hindu shrine and one of the greatest Shiva sites. It is also a Hindu temple precinct on the UNESCO World Heritage Sites’ list. It had a ridiculous entry fee: N1,000 rupees for foreigners (10 USD), N10 rupees for locals (0,10 USD) including Indians – that’s pretty fair for locals but not for foreigners and me, so I didn’t enter and just waited until they returned.
We then decided to walk to the next temple Boudhanath. On our way, it was very interesting to find out more about the Indian culture, a country I was going to visit after my trip to Nepal. I always love to have some basic knowledge to connect better with the locals.
Learning about India and its culture
To my questions about the mafia, they started telling me about a guy named Dawood Ibrahim, now a very “powerful” man who started his career seeking leather belts in Mumbai. Nowadays when anyone in Mumbai wants to build a high-rise building, they have to pay money to him to do so. There is a book “Dongri to Dubai” about this guy, which I have been recommended to read. We then had a rest and got a drink. It was really hot a lot of sunshine, and we had been walking around for ages already.
I asked them to tell me more about the holi festival (the big color festival, which the whole world is in a hype over) and I wanted to know if it is really that big. They agreed and explained that the daemon holica bonfire is the night before and it actually is the celebration of the beginning of spring – this is definitely something for my bucket list.
We then had another deep conversation about traveling while we headed to the next temple. This time they challenged me…
Why do you travel around the world ?
When traveling around the world, you undergo very unique experiences, I explained. These experiences help with your personal development and are absolutely priceless and especially made for you, shaping you into the person you become. It is important to understand that these experiences cannot be bought with money, which is why I think every person should travel more to get out of their comfort zone, experience new things, helping them develop. I honestly have become a better person through traveling. I care more about other people; I learned from experience and I get out of my comfort zone as many times as traveling allows me. That’s something you have to do / experience and I absolutely love it. I encourage people to do it and think they are pretty bumped up about it as soon money and time allows – so glad I can inspire them. It makes me really happy to inspire other people to travel because the best times come with traveling and it always makes me so happy. I am a very lucky man because I’m from a country (Germany) which has pretty much no restrictions on traveling anywhere in the world (keyword: strongest passport in the world). Even more, I’ve had great support from my family and from working hard; I feel blessed for all these experiences.
Nepalese Culture
The journey continued and we walked on a main road, where my friends introduced me to some traditional food (Gol Gappaor also called Pani Puri), which was tasty and spicy.
Even women here work very hard. A woman I saw was carrying at least 15kg of heavy sand !
Second temple: Boudhanath
We then got to Boudhanath temple, which was nice to see with its magnificent architecture and drawings. It’s for free and surrounded by buildings with rooftop bars – pretty nice.
We wandered around and then headed to the monkey temple to watch the sunset. Some taxis tried to pull us over and asked for a ridiculous amount of money, but I used my negotiation skills and we got a good deal – supposedly for the driver too, otherwise he wouldn’t have agreed to it, but it was cheaper than another other driver. The journey was so much fun and there is a song to remember that became a legend which made our day. But slowly slowly, an awesome Nepalese song.
Third temple: Swayambhunath (monkey temple)
Swayambhunath (monkey temple) was where we had to walk up some stairs, not so many monkeys around, but some “cute” ones. Do I think they are “cute”? Absolutely not! Again, I had to pay at least 10 times more than the locals but they forgot to stamp my ticket, so my idea was to sell the ticket after. After getting to the top, we enjoyed a beautiful sunset; we just made it in time – so romantic.
It was funny to see two guys working high up at one of the temple buildings according to the local safety regulations – a safe working environment seems like it counts in Nepal.
Typical Nepalese food and drink
After the sunset, we decided to walk back to Thamel and stopped for some dinner at a local restaurant to eat Momo and drink Raksi, a traditional distilled alcoholic beverage made from rice or kodo millet and a must-eat when coming to Nepal or India. You have the choice to order vegetarian, chicken or beef Momo – I recommend always be safe and order Momo vegetable.
Going out for drinks
Later on, I met up with Akhi and Ani and we went out to have drinks. First stop: Reggae Bar. There, we chilled on the balcony, listened to some live reggae music and enjoyed an ice cold beer – what else do you need in life ? The atmosphere was really nice and it seemed as if everyone traveling within Kathmandu was there with some locals. We even met the airline crew from Qatar airlines. We wanted to go out with them to a club called OMG. However, in the end we didn’t go, which I was pretty happy about because I had all my valuables and all my money (600+ USD) with me, and actually I just wanted to go straight back to the hostel. It is actually a stupid thing to carry around all your belongings, but sometimes you just don’t have a choice – there were no lockers in the 8-bed dorm room and I would rather have it with me. At night there are a lot of gangs on the road, everyone really drunk and a lot of drug dealers and I didn’t want to risk anything, so we got a taxi back to Alobar1000 – I felt relieved when we got there.
When I was in bed, I realised that I didn’t have a map and remembered that Lianne probably wouldn’t need hers anymore. I send her a message on Facebook to ask if she could leave the map at the reception before leaving in the morning to start her bike trip.
I TRAVEL FOREVER’s VIEW & RECOMMENDATION
It was a really nice day with Akhi and Ani from India and amazing that we just randomly met in the hostel that morning. We got along very well; we shared stories and experiences, we laughed, we joked around, we tried a lot of different street food and we sang together. It was a quality day with two good-hearted men that I now call friends. Hope to see them on my visit to India.
Incredible day traveling and such an opportunity discovering what I could not ignore nor would not want to skip because I was rushing to organise my hiking trip to the Himalaya Mountains.
Time to sleep and organise everything tomorrow. Night.
#TW
