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After sleeping in a rather hard bed we had been excited to see a sign for free yoga at 8am. When we went to find it however it took us a while to locate as the sign wasn't out & the shops were only just coming to life. Once we found the place it was still closed & some local stalls said maybe they would be there at 8.30 instead. Of course once we returned there was still no sign of anyone so instead we did our own 'free yoga' in their courtyard getting a few strange looks from the locals as we bent & stretched. We returned to the hotel for another hearty rooftop breakfast & had further discussion with Kaz before getting organised for our day exploring the Kathmandu valley.
We had booked a private car for $32USD to take us around which picked us up at 11 honking & weaving through the dusty manic traffic firstly arriving at Pashupatinath, an important Hindu temple & cremation complex. The tourist prices for tickets had obviously jumped in the last few years as the ticket was 1000 rupee ($10) & we did have to clarify what we could actually see as we weren't allowed in the Hindu temple. We payed our entrance & wandered past some holy cows & random goats to see some glimpses of inside the temple then walked down to the filthy river where they had cremation fires burning & up the other side to another wooded temple area. I was feeling a bit headachy, especially climbing the big stone steps but mostly caused by the horrible polluted air of Kathmandu. After exploring what we could we found our driver & next visited Bodhnath stupa, one of the largest Buddhist stupas in the world. The large domed white stupa itself was nicely complemented by the ring of shops around it filled with the usual tourist products. After completing our clockwise walk we again returned to the car, next heading for Patan. This seperate town was now pretty much an outer suburb of Kathmandu & had a well preserved durbar square which we overlooked as we ate lunch. Exploring the square didn't take very long as it was similar to Kathmandu's & we just had enough time to wander a couple of side streets & see the outside of a Buddhist temple. Our final destination for the day was the Monkey temple, another stupa complex set on a hill overlooking Kathmandu. Because of the haze it was not an overly spectacular sunset but we did enjoy a masala tea on the rooftop terrace of a cafe and spent some time talking with the owner who also showed us the view of the stupa from the family's private terrace. Just before dark we caught a taxi back to Thamel, booked a yoga class (a paid one!) for the morning & had dinner at an Indian/Turkish restaurant before returning to the hotel for the night.
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