Nepal - The Reception!

The great benefit that our hotel had was a comprehensive and delicious $5 breakfast. Home-baked bread all crusty on the outside and chewy on the inside with a mango spread and topped with a sharp cheese was my personal triumph but they also offered eggs, muesli, fruit, and thick tangy Nepali yogurt. (I wanted to show you the menu at Ting's but it doesn't really work.) So the morning of A's reception, N and I padded down to the dining room, snuggled into our respective piles of cushions and had a leisurely breakfast  before heading out for a high-stress day of shopping.

Our first stop was the tea store. Evidently tea yields several harvests a year and each 'flush' has distinctive taste characteristics. To illustrate this, the chai wallah brewed us a few cups which we gladly sipped daintily (because it was in glass cups that could burn your face off.) Thus caffeinated we fell into an empty fair trade shop and bought everything under the sun. I very much like the idea that my purchases are going to benefit specifically low-income, low-opportunity communities and am willing to pay more for the experience but this store was surprisingly inexpensive. I'm convinced that every item in there was cheaper than it would be on the streets. I think that in the absence of set prices, foreigners are often fleeced a bit. Note: The store was called Folk Nepal which almost caused an international incident when, at the wedding reception, people misunderstood N's Korean accent as she described our shopping luck.

We then hopped in a cab and headed off to Boudanath, Asia's largest stupa and center of TIbetan Buddhist worship in Nepal. (Also had low-stress shopping.) I had been to Boudanath in 2015 and was curious to see how it had been rebuilt after the earthquake. Almost immediately upon existing the cab we were set upon by a close-talking guide and I am CONVINCED that it was the same man as last time. (Read about that here.) This time we politely ignored him, if you can politely ignore someone, and were not approached by ANY other guides. Hmmm. This time around, we were able to go into the shrines attached to the stupa itself and climb up to the second tier to do our three laps around it.

We tried to follow the tourist map but it didn't seem like the numbers on the map matched up to the numbers on the descriptions so I can't honestly tell you which monasteries we explored. We ate lunch at a chain pizza place between a table of white monks and a table of brown monks with a little baby monk! Unfortunately I couldn't hear what the white monks were talking about; I was so curious what someone who has vowed to have limited possessions and live a life of mediation and chores talks about. Do they gossip about the other monks? Do they discuss politics? Do they plan events?  Had they just met or were they old friends? N did say that one was Canadian and one was European so they evidently discussed a bit of their personal histories but she did not eavesdrop beyond that.

We shopped a little bit after lunch but the mood was spoiled when someone addressed N in Chinese. You would think a fellow Asian would know better. We stopped into Ghyoilisang Peace Park because I thought it might be peaceful - it wasn't - and then headed back towards the hotel so N could continue her quest to find cashmere scarves. She spent a ridiculous amount of money.

At this point I voted for napping and being late for the reception but N wanted to go on time and leave early. She won. We made a beeline to the happy couple and immediately had our photos taken with them even though we hadn't taken our coats off or had opportunity to fix our newly moisturized faces. So N and I sat for a bit and took advantage of the roaming waiters before opting for a photo redo. We did a quick lap of hellos and goodbyes and then left before the dancing started. On the way back to the hotel we bought a chocolate cake which we didn't actually eat.

Stay tuned: we take our chocolate cake across the country!