bicrom abroad

this has been an odd long holiday, without the easy flow of our time in south america. this is largely because it was sandwiched between two non-travelling events, our wedding in cal and boropishi's kaj. we saw and did some amazing things but this was six weeks that lacked a common unifying thread. it was the holiday where my kindle came into its own: three jeeves and woosters, two amitav ghosh's, if on a winter's night a traveller and the richard hill autobiography was a edifying return (and vicki was not far behind with her oh so last century paperbacks). finally, this was the death of our backpacking dream; we're too old for it and besides, in the advent of the internet, it's simply not as good, or as cheap, as it was back in our day. the kids today just don't know how to do it right...

best natural sight: the himalaya bathed in the rising sun at sarangkot. nothing else could come close (although on any other trip radhanagar beach would be hard to beat).

best manmade sight: the taj mahal. again, hard to top. on retrospect we really did see some amazing things this holiday.

best experience: one of the joys of leaving penniless backpackerdom behind is being able to afford to do things. the best one on this trip was the ride in the two seater up to the annapurna. honourable mention to vicki's swim with rajan the elephant.

biggest disappointment: jaipur. dirty, unimpressive and a blot on the rajasthani landscape.

best journey: flying from pokhara to kathmandu, eyeball to eyeball with the himalaya. exhilarating. kathmandu to doha gets an honourable mention for serving up mountain views together with seatback entertainment on a spiffy new plane.

best hotel: the leela palace udaipur. this felt like a honeymoon. honourable mentions for the radisson in delhi for rescuing us after a day of travel gloom and the himalayan vista to which we woke up at trekker's inn in pokhara.

best food: the finger chips at barefoot and the tortilla chips and (especially) salsa at new orleans cafe in kathmandu. being vegetarian for a large chunk of this holiday did not help.

best drink: sweet lime soda at barefoot (all imitations thereafter increasingly disappointing). vicki was tucking into the hot lemon ginger and honey in kathmandu as well. finally, the entire bengal club wedding party chowed down more old monk and thums up then was strictly healthy, with clumpy getting a special mention for her gin and fanta combo.

touristiest ghetto: thamel. like a hundred khao san roads stuck together: nepal is more backpackery than anywhere i have ever visited.

most ridiculous public schoolesque nickname for city: katters for kathmandu.

best dog: assistant, apparently.

best wedding: our wedding!

flying into and out of kathmandu gives you a sense of the majesty of its setting as, on reaching any kind of altitude, you immediately begin to nervously flirt with the awesome himalaya (including, when flying back from cal, the clump of 8,000m plus monsters proudly standing guard around the highest mountain of them all). sadly, things are a little different down at ground level. kathmandu is a dirty, smog ridden city filled with freewheeling motorbikes punctuating cars belching smoke and carelessly pushing tired, wary pedestrians to the edges of the roads or, where available, viciously potholed pavements. it is also filled with tourists and backpackers, with thamel putting the khao san road to shame. this is a city (and in fact pokhara was the same) where travellers uncaringly live up to stereotypes, down to their individual uniforms: the streets are prety much a 50/50 split between the trekkers, bedecked in north face and mamut and making light work of the ragged footpaths in their hiking boots, and the finding themselves, faces proudly sporting uneven piercings and, of course, the obligatory dreadlocks and unwashed clothes. vicki and i were happy to be in neither camp (although if push came to shove were both wearing a bit of north face: and more pertinently had, like all reasonable people, found ourselves around the time of puberty).
because of my need to go back to cal for a few days we, and in particular vicki, ended up staying much longer here than initially anticipated. predictably given our track record on our travels we woke up on the first morning to be confronted with a bandh, with student unions forcing all cars to stay at home. as such our first foray into the city was along roads deserted by cars but fringed by crowds of bored looking youth perched on railings, chewing cigarettes and trying to look impressively rebellious. our mooch around the durbar square which is the heart of the city was enjoyable without being exceptional, with the concentrated mass of historical buildings starting to recede and fade into the squalid realities of the 21st century city, replete with thousands of pigeons and their poo.
so unimpressed was vicki by the sights that kathmandu had to offer that she eschewed the opportunity to see a few extra things whilst i was in cal, chosing instead to go and help out at KAT, a charity helping the stray dogs of the city: i was somewhat relieved that her pet puppy for the day assistant (a ridiculous name for a dog) only made it as far as our camera and not, as i had feared, back to our hotel room. we had an enjoyable day wandering around patan, an old city neighbouring (well now fully encroached by) kathmandu, with its own durbar square which was significantly more impressive than its counterpart in the main city and, pausing only to gasp up some steep steps to swayambunath, the temple and stupa infested by monkeys perched on a hill overlooking kathmandu, finished off our time in nepal with a slightly whimpering bang. well that and one final trek, abandoning our impotent taxi to scurry a couple of kilometres through protesting pre-pubescent students, too young to grow facial hair but old enough to bring the roads to a halt, to catch our flight home. just once it would be nice to go on holiday and not face some kind of civil unrest.
and that was that. nepal was in some ways an odd experience, perfect if you have 20 plus days to commit to a trek but hard to fill two weeks otherwise. being in the shadow of the greatest natural spectacle on the planet means that stunning views abound but beyond looking up and exclaiming with delighted surprise everytime a granite behemoth punctures the smog and cloud it is hard to get much more from the himalaya on a short timeframe (something more easily achieved if you are based at altitude somewhere like ladakh). the syncretisation of hindu and buddhist iconography, with hindu gods embedded into stupa walls and prayer flags fluttering at temples was interesting but this was very much quantity over quality. there is something satisfying about walking through a crumbling city where dilapidated squat buildings are interspersed with gaudy pagoda style temples, their own neglect kept at bay by the fresh daubs of vermillion on the walls and incense in the air, but there was no angkor wat or shwedagon paya here. it provided amazing photos, but like a girl who's listened to her mother nepal retained her most wondrous mysteries for those who are more willing to commit to her.