After seeing a number of questions on travelling in Nepal recently and a few travel logs posted, I decided to post my travel notes from my trip to Nepal last Spring. I spent a month there, half of this time trekking part of the Annapurna trek. Please realise that the following are my own subjective, biased and opinionated views. See the guides mentioned for more objective and accurate information about the country.
Exchange: 1.00$US = 47NR (Nepali Rupees)
Guides:
Nepal, a travel survivor kit, T.Wheeler and R.Everist, Lonely Planet 1990
Trekking in the Nepal Himalaya, S.Armington, Lonely Planet 1991
A Guide to Trekking in Nepal, S.Bezruchka, The Mountaineers, 1981
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25.02.92 - Zurich - Frankfurt
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(Flight to Frankfurt)
I left Zurich early afternoon with a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt. There I changed to a direct Frankfurt-Kathmandu Lufthansa flight. It was obvious that the particular Zurich-Frankfurt flight is normally used by the people transferring to the Kathmandu flight in Frankfurt. There was one guy who looked as if he was teleported from the 60's who rolled up a joint while waiting for the Frankfurt flight in the waiting area of Zurich airport. Smoking hash is legal in Switzerland, but I did not think someone would do that while waiting for an international flight. There was another guy, a westerner, about 25 who had his head shaved; he was dressed in pale purple colours. During the entire short flight to Frankfurt he prayed using some sort of praying beads that were attached to an embroidered cloth case-glove with a hole for his hand and thumb. Several other backpackers and trekkers with packs in the economy section of the aircraft were a great contrast to the jacket-and-tie wall-street-journal reading business.
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26.02.92 - Frankfurt - Kathmandu
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(The flight, Arrival to Kathmandu; Getting the hotel; Kathmandu)
The Frankfurt to Kathmandu flight seemed amazingly long. It took about 13 hours altogether. There was one refueling stop in Karachi, Pakistan. Karachi is a strange city if you look at it at night from the air. It is very big and spread out with lots of lights. But all the lights are very two-dimensional, defining only very flat structures. It is almost as if there were no buildings on the ground. Only few roads are lit up, so there is very little pattern in this large flat maze of random lights.
In Karachi no-one is allowed off the plane, so you have to be inside and cannot leave your seat for security reasons for a couple of hours while the plane is on the ground. The flight from Karachi to Kathmandu took about 3 hours. The approach to Kathmandu airport was fantastic. I sat on the left side of the plane and could see the whole panorama of Himalayas. It took three attempts to land in Kathmandu, apparently this is normal because of the haze and clouds. Most planes are usually held in the air for a while, until the approach to the runway is clear.
When I got through all the customs formalities at the airport, I was surrounded by the crowds of very loud and aggressive young men trying to sell me a hotel room or a taxi ride. They kept on talking to me even as I was changing the money at the bank. After 13 hours in the plane I was not in a particularly good mood and was afraid that I would end up hitting one of them with something heavy. Fortunately the only heavy thing that was around was my pack, and that was too heavy.
Eventually I gave up and ended up agreeing to go with one guy to his hotel. The hotel was clean and the staff was friendly, but it was very near a construction area and the streets around it were exceptionally dusty and smelly. It was in Chetrapatti, about 10-15 min walk from Thamel. The price was $6 US per night for a single room with a toilet and shower (originally he asked for $8, but I bargained $2 off). By Kathmandu standards that was expensive, as I found out later. In Chetrapatti you should not pay more than $4 for a room like that, In Thamel a room like that should cost no more than $5. A single room with a common toilet/shower should cost no more than $2 - $3 per night.
When you arrive to Kathmandu and are in the same precarious situation as I was, tired and dazed after the flight, surrounded by all the hotel representatives, the best advice is probably to insist on a taxi ride to Kathmandu Guest House (centre of Thamel) and then walk around and choose among the thousands of hotels. The cab ride to the city should cost no more than 100NR. Another option is to agree to look at one of the hotels being offered and then turn it down. If you agree to look at someone's hotel and then turn it down, they would charge you less than the cab fare for the ride to the city. In that case you will end up paying only about 40NR or as little as you manage to bargain for before you accept the ride. Just make sure that the hotel they are taking you to is in Thamel (or whatever part of the city you want to stay in).
After I checked in the hotel, I went for a walk in the city. The abundance of colours was the most startling. All colours were bright. Women were dressed in bright blue, bright yellow, bright red, bright green saris. All Hindus had ``tikas'' (red marks on their foreheads). Bright coloured doors, window shutters. Red, white and golden temples. Tibetan Buddhists wore saffron and magenta coloured gowns. Sadhus (the Hindu holy men) in ocre ``dhoti'' (loin-cloth), their foreheads painted white with red marks. Rickshaws painted in all colours. And everything is under the bright sun, blue sky and with the snowy mountains in the background. I got the impression that no matter where you point your camera, you would still get a good picture.
Many streets are only partially paved, especially the small ones that are not usually marked on the maps. There is lots of dust in the air, and for a while that was a major problem for me. Eventually I learned to deal with it by carrying a handkerchief and breathing through it when a truck passed by. The locals do that all the time. Many people riding bicycles wear surgical masks to protect them from dust.
There are heaps of garbage with cows (holy animals) rummaging around, picking up bits and pieces. Sort of natural recycling. The drawback is that unrecycled, uneaten garbage smells. The garbage that has been recycled (through a cow) is all over and one has to be very careful not to step in it, but at least it smells less.
Kathmandu abounds with various sorts of transportation. Rickshaws, moto-rickshaws, tracktors, trucks, cars, bicycles, motorcycles. The most important part of every vehicle seems to be a horn or a bell or some other home-made noise making device. The louder the better. Some of the vehicles make so much noise on their own (e.g. tracktors) that they require really powerful signals to be heard over the engine. The result is deafening ``white noise'' that completely surrounds you. First day it was shocking, but after a couple days I got used to that.
Kathmandu is very dusty, smelly, noisy - wonderful. So unswiss that it makes me grin when I think how much the Swiss would suffer if they were forced to stay there. (I am talking about the swiss-Swiss. The ones that are travelling and get there on their own are rather unswiss-Swiss).
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(Street vendors; Trekking Permit; Bus Tickets)
On the streets of Kathmandu you are approached (attacked is a better word) by people trying to sell you: carpets, tiger balm, chess sets, ghorka knifes, rickshaw rides, flutes, violins. Your initial (western) reaction is to look at the product, politely tell them that you like it, but do not want to buy it at the time. Wrong! If you so much as acknowledge them, they will follow you for hundreds of meters, chatting without a stop, running in front of you, sticking the flutes right in front of your face, making some horrible noises with the violins. Even if you say a definite NO, it would only encourage them to tell you more about the quality of their product or how cheap they are willing to sell it for.
There is another type of peddlers, they are usually sleasy characters. One of them would approach you and offer ``Carpet?''. If you ignore that, then in a hushed voice he would say ``Change money?''. If you sill keep on ignoring him, in a really hushed and low voice, he would offer ``Hash? Marijuana? Opium?''.
The best way to deal with all of those is to completely ignore them, and to make sure that they would not get you into a conversation. Eventually you will develop a certain look on your face that they will stop hustling you completely -- the look will tell them that it is useless.
This was my second day in Kathmandu and I needed to get my trekking permit. Trekking permit is really a special visa allowing you to go in a specific region of the country. With the normal visa you are only allowed to stay in Kathmandu valley, Pokhara and Chitwan. I went to the immigration office at 10am, that's when they open, got the application for the trekking permit and got into a line-up. The application form is labelled as ``Appendix-1 (Related to Subrule 1 of rule 3)''. I have no idea what the Subrule 1 and the rule 3 are, but the Nepalis definitely take the administration and the bureaucracy seriously. The forms are completed in triplicate with two layers of carbon paper. The forms are colour coded according to the general region you want to trek in. Since I wanted to go to Annapurna region I had to fill out the yellow forms. After the forms were filled out and after standing for about an hour in the line-up I paid about 1000NR for 25 days of trekking in Annapurna region. That included 200NR special Annapurna Region Conservation fee. I left my passport, two passport sized photos at the Immigration Office and had to come back there at 2pm to pick up the permit and the passport. The whole procedure was much more efficient than what I expected. You also end up meeting lots of other trekkers in the line-up.
I would imagine that later in the season when there are much more trekkers the whole procedure would take much longer. It seems that the best way to get the permit is to go to the Immigration Office and get the permit application a day in advance and fill it out before 10am the following day. If you show up the next day with the completed application and all the documents required before the office opens (10am), you will likely be the first in the line and the whole procedure will take under an hour.
According to the new regulations, you do not need to show money exchange certificates in order to obtain the trekking permit IF the trekking period you are applying for is before the end of your visa (One used to have to exchange $20US for every day of trekking). You still need to exchange $20US for every day of visa extension.
After getting the permit I went shopping for the bus ticket to Pokhara. They can be bought in any of the dozens travel agencies in Thamel. |
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| Copyright © - "Eugene Margulis" |
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