A few days in the Kathmandu Valley

Picking up in Bouddhanath....the guest house was quite nice especially after our small basement cell, and they had true honest to god hot showers always a pleasant experience. Anyways after both showering and getting settled in we decided to go check out the stupa (See Picture), now the tradition is to make clockwise circuits around the stupa mainly in the mornings and evenings since we were there in the evening and countless other people were doing it we decided to join in. On our first or second round one of the many Tibetan monks circling the Stupa turned around and asked us where we were from. His English was pretty good but a little spotty, after a little conversation we found out that his name was Sonam Tashi and he was trying to learn English so he wanted to practice with us. We were up to the challenge so according to him we became his teachers. After about half an hour of rounding the Stupa we parted ways and agreed to meet the next night. Done with our Stupa rounds for the evening we proceeded to dinner and then back to the room for bed.

The next morning we had our first breakfast at what would become the legendary Saturday Cafe. The Saturday Cafe is a pretty simple cafe with a simple breakfast menu, but unlike just about anywhere else in the country they bake good whole wheat bread, desserts and tasty pastries (I sampled almost everyone they make). After breakfast it was into the big city of Kathmandu to go and explore. We got there without much trouble or fan fare and went to the usual sights. It was all very impressive but a lot of it was falling apart due to neglect, we would find stone work shoved in a corner that many museums would love to have. Other than that Kathmandu was pretty standard, it had its tourist district which we looked around and so forth. On our way back to the bus park we stumbled across the US Embasy which resembled a maximum security prison...

We returned to our guesthouse where Jim took a nap since he wasn't feeling too well. After his nap he went to try to find Tashi while I went to catch up on some Internet stuff. I should mention that using the internet was often rather complicated. Power outages are the norm rather than the exception in Kathmandu, usually right around dark the power will go out..but not always everywhere and for a seemingly random amount of time. This meant that you had to guess where the power would be on and if it wasn't on hope that the cafe had battery backup. Anyways after this I found Jim and Tashi circling the Stupa. We learned that the day before we had a little communication problem and Tashi thought he was coming with us into the city. So we made plans to go visit another stupa with him in two days.

This is now Jim, Adam had a few errands to run. By the time we left the Stupa Circle to find a place for dinner I was feeling a little punk, runny sinus' etc, but was more than game to try to find a restaurant that sounded good in the guide book. At this point I need to explain a little about Nepali towns and the maps of them. There are usually a few honest to goodness paved roads but much of every town is made up or semi paved paths that wander between shops, houses and empty lots, some of these are usually on the map as roads but not all of them and since they are essentially paths they wander this way and that and no map captures them anywhere near accurately. Some of the larger of these semi paths are large enough for a very small car going one way, which happens frequently, all of them are trafficked by lots of pedestrians and the ubiquitous motorcycles. So back to the story of going off to find our dinner destination; with guide book in hand we headed down the path we thought went to the restaurant, it was dark so stumbling down the path might say it better. Along the way we came to several places where the path divided and made guesses as to which way, sometimes doubling back to try the other one. After about a half hour, a lot of walking and not perceptibly closer to our destination we finally gave up and went to another place we had seen earlier in the day and had a fine meal. Afterward we went back to our room had a good nights sleep.

The next day was Saturday, the Sunday of Nepal, when all offices and some shops to close up. I was still feeling a bit under the weather so we decided to visit some of the Tibetan monasteries in Buddahnath and generally have a laid back day. This of course happened after our mandatory breakfast at Saturday Cafe. The first monastery we visited was right next door to our guest house and, in fact, our guest house was owned by the monastery. It was interesting to see how the monks lived, simply but nicely, and to see the very ornately decorated meditation and teaching halls. When we arrived at the third monastery on our list for the day it was obvious that it wasn't a laid back Saturday, lots of monks and westerners were milling around as we approached the meditation hall. Curious, we took off our shoes and went in to find the place packed, a friendly monk put out a pad for us to sit on and we waited to see what would happen. Soon, the head teacher of the monastery, and a teacher with an international reputation, Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche, entered and took his place at the front of the hall and proceeded to give a half hour to 45 min. talk on the basics of Buddhism complete with english translation. It turned out that the monastery was sponsoring, later that day, a seminar at a nearby hotel on translating Buddhist teachings for non traditionally Buddhist countries and the talk we heard was a preliminary to the conference. Afterwards we went back to our room, where I rested a bit, still fighting my sinus', while Adam read in the sun on the piece of lawn we had at the guest house. Lawns at hotels or guest houses give you bragging rights. By late afternoon we went out again to walk around town and shop a bit. Later we decided to pay the minimal fee to go inside the outer area of the big round stupa that dominates the town, it was interesting to see the small shrines inside and the area where people did full prostrations, some of them for hours. We then went outside and walked around the Stupa with the crowd for a while. This is an interesting practice because it seems to be both spiritual and at the same time social. You will see some people repeating mantras as they walk, others offer incense at shrines and many pay to light butter lamps, in fact on a chill night it's nice to stand by the butter lamp area for the warmth they give off, but it is also very social with both monks and lay people catching up with each other as they make the circuit and greeting acquaintances as they go. It gives the town circle a quality and quantity of civility and pleasantness twice a day that it might not otherwise have. After a while I decided to go back to the room, without dinner, because of my cold and Adam tried a new restaurant our. All in all a very pleasant day.