Nepal - we leave

On our very last day in Nepal we decided to walk along the lake to lounge at Krazy Gecko, which happens to be owned by A's cousin. We didn't introduce ourselves but instead ordered a slow progression of drinks and snacks while lounging in the sun. Well, I lounged in the sun while wrinkleless N opted to remain in the shade. 

N had a flight that afternoon back to Kathmandu and on to Korea so we returned to the hotel. The elevator wasn't working so she asked one of the front desk staff to help her get her luggage down from the 5th floor. By the time the man arrived, the elevator was working again. After saying goodbye to N, I despondently headed back up to my room. I decided to take the elevator. It started to go up and then suddenly stopped. There were no lights so I couldn't see the emergency button so I just knocked like a madwoman on the door. The elevator got power again briefly so when it went off another few seconds later I knew where the buzzer was and I pushed that like a madwoman. Finally the doors opened and I got off on whatever floor that was and walked the rest of the way. My best guess at the time was load-shedding -- the power in Nepal is selectively turned off at certain times of the day so some lights and outlets don't work -- but I think it's more likely that they turned off the elevator manually and had forgotten about me.   

Nothing exciting happened the rest of the day. I wandered around from coffee shop to coffee shop reading, writing, and drinking tea. I discovered the boardwalk along the lake that we had somehow missed in all of our adventures, I packed my luggage, and I watched some terrifying serial killer movie.

The next morning, I too flew back to Kathmandu. I was even less calm about the flight without N to die with me. I hung in the KTM airport for what felt like forever -- running into the newlyweds! -- and flew on home -- through China and NY. It was by no means fun and I'll never do it again... 

...until next time.

 

Nepal - sunrise, sunset

The next day I was legit sore but I think looser. We woke up at 4 in the morning to take a cab up to the town of Sarangkot to watch the sun rise over the town and mountains. As this is a pretty popular outing, N and I made sure to pay attention to what our driver looked like and note his license plates. We walked up about ten flights of stairs to a cement viewing platform that became increasingly crowded as the sun came up. There was even a barefoot white man dancing along to the dulcet tunes of a digiridoo. It was just one of those moments. I was torn between wishing that I was the only one there to experience the light diffusing over the snowcapped Annapurna range in silence and enjoying the fact that I was having this experience with the chatty riot of people from all over the world whom I had never met before and would likely never encounter again.

We walked back down the stairs, somehow coming out in a different spot, and saw our driver. N doubted my recollection of his face as his license plate was not the same. Turns out this car had different front and back license plates. The driver thought it was funny that we checked but I thought we came across as a smidge racist -- all these Nepali look alike!

Then we returned to the hotel for breakfast. N and I both ordered fruit salad and cereal (mine with yogurt and N's with hot milk because she's weird) and juice and tea and eggs and potatoes and pancakes. Turns out I have no idea how to eat a soft-boiled egg from an egg cup. WHY did no one teach me that skill?

Our vacation planner had recommended a nap and then catching the sunset at the Peace Pagoda, a Buddhist shrine on a hill above the city. I would have been down with such a fitting close to the day but we wanted to hike the hill and a sunset hike did not seem wise. So we skipped the nap and set right out for the shrine. We hired a woman to row us across the lake. She gave us an hour and a half before she would head back without us. After about forty minutes we were worried that our timetable would not match the boatwoman's so N wanted to ask a woman coming back down the mountain how much farther it was. She asked this woman (in Korean), "Do you speak Korean?" and this woman answered (in Korean), "No I'm Chinese." And then she said in English that it was five minutes to the top. It was linguistically confusing but we pressed on.

We did our three rounds of the stupa, ate a granola bar, and headed back down the hill. On the boat ride back, our oarswoman started singing. I think she was trying to drown out N's annoying tuneless humming but whatever her motivation, it added flare to the trip.

For further flare we ate lunch at a Korean restaurant. N has a rule not to eat Korean food while travelling but the owner was a friend of a friend so I sat awkwardly drinking free tea while they chatted away. The restaurant was called Nattssul which evidently means "day drinking" so I was all about it.

Then we napped. Suitably groggy, for dinner we wandered to a restaurant that had a stage and a traditional Nepali dance show. We didn't really last long. Tomorrow: we do nothing and  N leaves.

Nepal - We take our chocolate cake on vacation

When all of us Yale ladies were out at a dinner, we exchanged terrifying flying stories. Featured heavily was Yeti airlines, one of the Nepali national airlines, which has a 1 out of 7 in international travel ratings (don't tell Mom) although the UN Food Programme uses it. So I faced our morning flight with a little trepidation.

The hotel gave us wrapped cheese sandwiches which we x-rayed along with our chocolate cake and luggage. When we checked in, the man at the counter made sure to repeat our flight number several times which tipped me off to a situation I had been warned about: sometimes Yeti Airlines puts you on an earlier flight so that they fill up the planes. Not sure if they just cancel the last few planes...

Although the flight to Pokhara is only about 20 minutes, a flight attendant passed through the cabin with cotton balls for your ears and hard candies and instant coffee for your tummy. And if you're going to die in a fiery plane crash it may as well be with this view.

The one side effect of leaving on an earlier flight is that you arrive early and your taxi is not there to meet you. Not content to wait in the beautiful sunlight, N asked a policeman to call our hotel and get the taxi to come. They were a little surprised to say the least. (At one point while I was standing in the warm sun eating my radioactive sandwich, someone stepped over casting a shadow on me. Without thinking, I plaintively whined "you're in my suuuun"....and they moved out of it!)

We had tentative plans but when we relayed them to the woman at the front desk of our hotel she told us how cute and misguided we were. So suddenly N had plans to go paragliding that same afternoon. We spent the morning wandering around Pokhara as N got more and more nervous about jumping off a mountain. (She made me promise to tell her parents if she died which made me freak out a little bit about the thought of that conversation.) I hugged her for luck and set of on my own adventure -- getting a massage. 

I think my experience might have been more uncomfortable actually. I went to Seeing Hands, a massage clinic staffed entirely by blind masseuses. I had a deep moment of ableist worry but reflected on the ability of anyone to make a living wage in Nepal and decided it wasn't too exploitative. (Different opinions welcome, reader). My masseuse was a man and kept asking if he should massage my butt as that is, as it happens, a part of the back. I said that I was cool and he could concentrate on my shoulders. My shoulders are a bit screwy as a result of a car accident when I was 23 and a few years of swimming and rowing recently -- and this massage huuuuurt. I actually started to cry. Gah. 

I recovered by wandering around the city (even the non-touristy bits) and treating myself to beer while waiting (worrying) for N's triumphant return. 

She had a slightly traumatic experience as well when she and her paraglide buddy blew backwards (instead of jumping off the cliff on the first go) and then landed on the wrong side of the river. I think we both came out of the day ok, and enjoyed being in a town where we could cross the street without danger and breathe without ingesting a year's worth of pollutants.

 Last point: this is the elevator door in our hotel. What say you, Japanese maple or pot?