Mother-Daughter Memories

Greetings from Kathmandu!

My Mom made it here safely on Thursday, July 29 at 2:45 pm as planned, and it also took her ‘only’ 32 hours, as opposed to the 80-some it took me, haha. Everything went smoothly on her trip, except for the fact that the airport in Delhi opened a brand new terminal on July 28th (what are the odds?!), so my Mom’s flight into Delhi from Munich and out of Delhi to Kathmandu were literally two of the first flights in and out of this new terminal...she said it was very disorganized! At one point ,she and other passengers were ‘held’ in a room for about 3 hours with no access to a bathroom, food or drinks, and the room was being guarded by approximately 10 members of the Indian armed police. Her arrival/departure cards she filled out were never collected, and luckily she was not checking any luggage, because there was no system for collecting bags and getting them on the correct planes...crazy!

The night she got here, my good friend and classmate Upendra took us out to dinner with his family at their favorite Chinese food restaurant. I convinced Mom that if she could manage to not take a nap and could stay awake until bed time on that first night, she would be better off the next day and might be able to avoid some of the jet lag. She made it through dinner like a trooper, only nodding off at the table a couple of times :) Upendra’s wife, daughter and son are all three beautiful and so nice; I have heard so much about them, so it was so nice to finally meet them and share an evening out together.

The following morning, Friday the 30th, I had arranged for a taxi to pick us up and take us sightseeing around Kathmandu. We went to two famous Buddhist temples, or gumbas - Swayanbunath and Boudhanath - a famous Hindu temple - Pasupattinath - and two different ‘Durbar’ (palace) Squares in Kathmandu City and Patan. We actually had amazing weather, which means that a lot of our pictures, especially from Boudhanath, are amazing, with blue skies and white puffy clouds in the background. Luckily the temples are peaceful, because riding around in Kathmandu City is not! Traffic is crazy and congested, and there are far too many cars, buses, taxis, scooters, and motorcycles all trying to fit on such narrow roads all at the same time...it’s amazing that traffic accidents are rare! To be honest, we didn’t read the Lonely Planet section on Kathmandu City’s Durbar Square before getting there, so we were ‘the typical tourists’ who fell into too many of the ‘tricks of the trade,’ haha. First, we agreed to letting this random Nepali man be our ‘tour guide,’ which then led to a friend of his walking along with us and claiming that he was his ‘helper.’ Of course at the end, they both wanted to be paid at least 10 Euro (or about $15 US), even though at the beginning when I inquired about the price, they said anything would be better than nothing. They also convinced us that the men in the middle of the square who were dressed in all orange and wearing elaborate face paint were collecting money to build a monastery in the mountains. Turns out, after we fell for both of these tricks, Lonely Planet warns against both ‘illegitimate tour guides’ and ‘sadhus,’ who only pretend to be religious men and who pose for pictures for ‘tips’ in the Square. Oops to our being naive!

After sightseeing for most of the day, our hired taxi took us approximately 90 minutes outside the city to a beautiful place up in the hills called Nagarkot, which is the most famous place to go to watch the sun rise and set over the Himalayas. Our hotel was nestled right into the green hills of the valley. We did not get a good view of the mountains or the sunset in the evening when we got there because there were too many clouds; actually, in general, since this is the rainy/monsoon season, the mountains are rarely visible at all. We did get lucky this morning, though! We woke up at 5:00 am and wandered up the many flights of stairs to the highest view point at our hotel. There were still clouds around the mountains, but some of them subsided enough so that we were able to see the northern-most edge of one portion of the Himalayas, which included about three of the big, famous peaks of the Annapurna portion of the mountain range. We could only see them for about 10 minutes, but we got some great pictures!

The same taxi driver brought us back to Kathmandu this afternoon, where we have spent the remainder of the day walking around Thamel (the touristy shopping area of the city) and sipping coffee and tea while playing cards in the garden of our hotel. The Kathmandu Guest House where we are staying is very peaceful, and is providing a perfect setting for my Mom and I to catch up on life.

Tomorrow we are going on a mountain flight, which will take us up and around the Himalayas, and we will even get to see Mt. Everest, weather providing! And then we are moving to a different hotel outside of the city a bit, where meditation and yoga classes are offered. There are many gardens at the hotel where we will be able to go bird watching and simply enjoy nature - some of my Mom’s and my favorite things to do together! There are some short trekking trails near the hotel, which will provide another opportunity for us to be outside and truly take advantage of all that Nepal has to offer. Our plans after that are still up in the air, but whatever we do, all that matters is that we will be together :)


Pictures coming soon...


Miss you and love you all, from both of us!