Nepal

Our Nepalese driver insured us that we would go slow and drive safely, unlike the Chinese drivers who he described as manic in comparison to Nepalese drivers. Well, the bus driver with a bus load of passages (thankfully none on the roof) driving at a hundred miles an hour on the wrong side of the road around a blind corner was either Chinese or didn't get the memo! A few holy F's passed my lips. It's not worth repeating what Nick said. All this happened within the first hour of a 5 hour drive. Here is more proof that Nepalese drivers are no better.... A common sight on the roads.

Ka Ka Ka Ka Ka Ka Ka Ka Katmandu is Cr Cr Cr Cr Cr Crazy! After the peace and tranquility of Tibet the constant racket of cars, scooters, horns, tuk-tuks and tiger balm sellers we couldn't wait to get into our room and shut Katmandu out. Alas, food and curiosity dragged us out.

Nick was screaming for some western food, well anything but Yak, which lead us to the Lonely Planet recommendation called 'The Roadhouse'. Once we were seated we noticed we were surrounded by other westerners all dressed in the same knock-off Northface puffer jacket celebrating their trek or preparing for their trek. The clothes and conversation may have been slightly different, but it felt all to familiar. We could have been in any restaurant in the UK or NZ not Nepal. It was kinda disappointing after being isolated from Western culture for so long. The food was great, though!

Nick's man flu was peaking and I was refusing to except that I was feeling a bit run-down myself, which most likely didn't help with our first impression of Nepal. We soldiered on regardless making it to Bhaktapur, a Newari town semi void of traffic and tiger balm sellers. Unfortunately, some political party was using Bhaktapur square as a platform to spread their political message. Forcing us to venture deeper in the ancient city. This turned out to more ideal, we no longer had to deal with the crowds or the same annoying boy who seemed to refuse to understand that we didn't want a guide.

The Lonely Planet was no help at all in filling our brains with useful information on Bhaktapur architecture and the many Hindu and Buddhist religious sites and shrines. The Lonely Plant was thrown in favor for just wondering the quieter backstreets of the town observing the normal daily activities of it's residences.

We did strike it luck on day 2 at the town of Dakshinkdi. A Hindu blood sacrifice temple dedicated to Kai, Shiva's bloodthirsty incarnation. Every Tuesday and Saturday devoted Hindu's trek to the spooky open air temple to make an offering of a male un-castrated animal. In return Kai offers protection. Unknown to us it was Saturday, by the time we arrived the temple was already bathed in marigold flowers, butter lamps, coconuts and blood. We managed to get a prime position above the temple that allowed us to watch the sacrifices. First up was a chicken, not so bad, had seen it before. Next was a goat, ok, was a little horrified as it continued to twitch. Then we saw the nearly mature calf! It's legs were tied together and it was being dragged by it's hoofs to it's death. I really didn't need to see it's throat being cut but curiosity got the better of me. I soon wished I hadn't.


Still reeling at we had seen, we moved on to to Bodhnath. A small Buddhist town close to central Katmandu, where hundreds of exiled Tibetans and a few foreign monks call home. At it's heart is the worlds largest Stuppa. Unlike the Stuppas in Tibet, Bodhnath does not contain any mummified Dali Lamas, scriptures or relics, however it was built in AD 600 and no animal were harmed.

To finish the day we visited Nepal's most important Hindu temple, Pashupatinath. We arrived at the conclusion of the Bala Chaturdashi fair. By the amount of plastic bags, barley seeds and straw covering the entire complex it must be a popular fair. As we are un-Hindu's we were not allowed to enter Pashupatinath Temple or other Hindu temples within the complex. We had to be satisfied with glimpsing at Shiva bull, Nandi golden backside from the entrance.

We wondered pass the temple towards the river and smoke. The river is called the Bagmati River, a holy river like the Ganges in Varansi, India. The smoke was coming from large stone pillars along the river. And it was human bodies that was burning! We didn't know this when standing down wind to have a nosey, until a nice young man came over to explain that on paying 10000 rupees you can have your body cremated on this holy river. Moving on quickly while brushing the ashes of the dead off us we came across these guys.....

HOLY MEN, there is nothing holy about them. They lounge around the temple all day smoking weed and charging tourist for taking their photo. Apparently, one day a year everyone is allowed to smoke weed legally on the temple grounds. The young man said there is just as much western hippies as there are locals.

For a change in pace and in hope of seeing the majestic Bengal Tiger, we traveled south to Chitwan National Park. We spent 3 days and 2 night on an island in the jungle, traveling by foot, elephant and jeep searching for a tiger. We were unsuccessful. However, the rare one horn rhino and the shy Sloth Bear with a cub was spotted.

 There is a rhino among the the bush. We were on a elephant who was vibrating! Guessing he was scared or communicating to the rhino.

On the first walking tour, the guide took us deep into the jungle to explain the 'rules of encounter'. In his broken english, we think you stand completely still or hide behind a tree if being charged by a rhino. Standing in a circle making a lot of noise will hopefully scare a sloth bear off, while looking down and backing away will, maybe, stop a tiger from having you for lunch. If all this fails we had a 60 year old man with a bad hip (a result from being attacked by a rhino) and a big stick to defend himself and us. Perfect!

I was also given the chance to bath a elephant. That was what I was lead to believe....

It was so nice to chill out in the sun with a few beers listening to the peacefulness of the jungle.

The highlight of Nepal was leaving! Somehow we had managed to get first class plane tickets. As we settled into seats with the free Kingfisher beers the plane flew at the same attitude as the Himalayas. What a magical sight, seeing the days last rays of sun illuminate the famous snowcapped peaks.

  

TIBET.....the search for enlightment

Tibet is known as the roof of the world. And so it is! Lhasa sits at 3600m above sea level, we were struggling for air. But before we get into that, the train trip from Beijing first.

It was long and our excitement about spending the next 11 days in Tibet didn't help to pass the time either. What broke our attention away from our impending adventure was the passing landscape. Central China's mountainous farmlands gave way to stunning lakes and snow capped mountains of the Tibetan plateau. Rumors were circulating about the actual time the train was arriving in Lhasa. We had heard 9pm, while the guard said it was 730pm. Needless to say we were a bit unprepared when we arrived at 6:10pm.

Oxygen was pumped into the each cabin once the train began it's climb, providing us with a false self confidence about our adjustment to high altitude. The 5 minute walk from the train to our tour guides car, left us panting like dogs on a hot summers day. Climbing the 3 flights of stairs to our room was going to be a grueling challenge. Unless, we stopped at each flight of stairs with a beer to acclimatise!!!

Tibet, what an amazing place. Within a couple of hours we knew we were going to enjoy our time here. Everyone is so friendly and colourful. You can't walk down the street without someone saying hello to you. Most just laughed when we replied Tashi Dele (hello in Tibetan) back. We also had to get use to being a novelty. It is very common for locals to stop what they are doing and just stare at you not matter what you are doing. It can be quite flattering, in a strange way.

At this time of year, the end of the harvest, Lhasa is alive with pilgrims from all over Tibet, who are here to pay their respects to Buddha in one or all of Lhasa's many monasteries. For the poorer pilgrims this is usually a once in a life time event. The result is a wonderful mixture of traditional culture and dress and ancient building with a city on the brink of Chinese modernism.
We could have spent hours capturing the many faces of the Tibetan people but as many believe that the camera can take a part of your soul it was very rare to come across someone who would look into the camera.

Tibet is littered with hundreds of monasteries, thankfully the Chinese Government rebuilt many after the Cultural Revaluation ended in 1966. Chairman Mao and the Red Guards barley left any of Tibet's history standing. This is clearly seen in small villages, where tourism is low. All that remains of a once thriving monastery and home to hundreds of monks is a vague brink outline of what use to be.
Our trip involved visiting 6 monasteries, I was a little bit worried we may get a little......bored. To both our surprise we didn't. Thanks mostly to our guide Kangdol. She was brilliant! We always walked away amazed at what we just saw and learnt.
The most brilliant monastery we saw was in fact a temple, as no monks lived inside. It is the Potela Palace. Built in the 7th century on Red Hill in Lhasa, the Potela Palace was not only the home of the present and past Dali Lamas but was also Tibet's government building. In the 17th century the 5th Dali Lama united Tibet and therefore became it's spiritual and political leader.
Once we conquered the stairs to the entrance of the Palace we saw the present Dali Lamas pray room, meditation room and bedroom. Amazing! It was so odd and wrong to think that as tourist was can move around freely in his home while he can not after being exiled to India in 1959. To top of our tour in the Potela Palace, we vised the 5th Dali Lamas stuppa or tomb as we would call it. Standing at 12.5m tall, weighing in at 3721kg of gold and covered in over 1000 precious stone it put all other stuppas to shame. Inside is the Dali Lamas mummified body in the meditation position.

Buddhism is not a easy religion to get your head around. I think we quite often tested our guides patience with our sometimes stupid and repetitive questions. One aspect we did struggle with was Tibetan funeral procedures. Followers can either have a sky or water burial performed for dead family members. At it's core, both burials involve a Sharman taking the body to a scared place, where he goes about chopping the flesh up and grounding down the bones with barley seeds. For a sky burial the body is feed to the vultures while in a water burial the body is feed tot he fish. If the whole body is not consumed, then it is a sign that that person had bad karma. It is also why Tibetans don't eat fish! We visited one water burial site.

We like to engage ourselves in culture rather than just always being an observer. Tibet was no exception. Due to suffering from the Man Flu (yes it is the worst kind! ) Nick was snorting and spitting like the best of them. While I quite often joined the locals in peeing on the side of the road (it was much nicer than using the toilets). All modesty went out the window when deciding what direction to point my bare backside. Towards the road always resulted in a good laugh!

Our last point of interest in our tour was Mt Everest. For me it wasn't as awe-inspiring as I thought it would be, maybe because it was bitterly cold and blowing a sandy gale. I can't say the same for Nick who just about used up a memory card capturing Mt Everest in very position possible.

We are now in Kodari, a hillside town on the Tibet / Nepal boarder, which is strangely in the middle of the mountains. Tomorrow we leave Kangdol and our driver behind and cross the boarder for Kathmandu. We loved our time here and this blog could have easily been 5 x times as long explaining to you all the aspects of the Tibetan culture that has amazed us. We may not have found enlightment, but we were often light-headed and giddy due to the high altitude mountain passes we went through to get here. And maybe sometimes due to the Lhasa beer. But we think that being light-headed is just as good.

Beijing......as planned.

We boarded the tran-seiberian train at Ulan Baatar heading for Beijing. A 36hr train journey through the Gobi Desert and the mountain range of Northern China. We figured the best approach would be to watch the Gobi and Mongolia slip away in the dinning car with a few beers.

It was a great plan until we were asked to leave, quite some time later as we were at the Chinese boarder.

We found ourselves a wee bit tipsy and absolutely busting for the toilet. As you may imagine - well do go there!! - the toilets are pretty basic. All waste is simply dropped on to the tracks, so the toilets are closed at stations. As the Chinese and Immigration did their thing I paced the corridors whilst jammy Nick, after much gesticulating, was given a large empty Coke bottle, true class!

After reliving himself the train guard very nicely disposed of the bottle for him. Thankfully the boarder formalities didn't take too long and we were moving again. It was at that moment we realized that our Chinese room/cabin mate was missing. We were sharing a cabin with two others and after our passports had been taken away to be processed he simply packed up his bag and did a runner, we never saw him again.

Not only did we loss our Chinese cabin mate, but we also lost the trains wheels (or as nick likes to call them, bogeys). Interestingly, the train track size is different between Mongoliaand China. Instead of simply changing trains, we were asked to stay onboard while a massive 8 post hydraulic lift raised each carriage individually in order to replace the Mongolian wheels for Chinese bogeys.

 I was too busy to witness these events...

We awoke the next morning a bit fluffy around the edges as the train snaked it's way through the mountain ranges and along some river.

Our first task in Beijing was to check out the Forbidden City. Built in 1406 it was theImperial Palace during the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Home to 24 Emperors until 1911. A truly amazing place with 8707 rooms and countless temples and gateways. We have no doubt that new emperors were left very frustrated trying to find his concubines.

The Emperors also had a summer palace, strangely enough called the Summer Palace. We found it to be more impressive and beautiful as the large grounds contained a massive lake and gardens.

South of the Forbidden City is the Temple of Heaven. Again it was built during the Ming and Qing dynasties for Emperors to perform their seasonally religious duties. Nowadays, apart from being a major tourist hotspot, The Temple of Heaven is also used by retired Chinese folk as a area to participate in all form of activities, weird and wonderful. We saw rows of ballroom dancing, line of line dancers, young want-to-be pop singer singing to their adoring grandma fans and old boys spinning around and around a parallel bar! 

Next on the agenda was Mitianyu, the less touristy part of the Great Wall of China. Though the path to the entrance was jammed packed with stalls selling all forms of tack. It did however, lack the bus loads of tourists. How to describe the Great Wall? It is a mind blowing structure built under great intentions (to prevent Chaggis Khan from ransackingbeijing) but completely useless.

The wall isn't one complete structure that stretches from east to west but made up of several sections with large gaps in-between. Which is of course how Chaggis Khan invaded Beijing. The Mitianyu section of the wall winds it way across very ruggered terrain, which made the walk along the wall quite challenging. We got some amazing photo's through the haze of Beijing's pollution.

Not being a massive fan of Chinese food to begin with, Nick and I were over it. No matter how pretty the pictures of sea cucumbers and shark fin soup looked, they still did not look eatable.

The exception was Pure Lotus Vegetarian. A flashy modern restaurant run by funky monks. Everything about the place was so damn cool. From the metre long menu's, to the e-collected serving dishes to your fruit being served in a bowl of dry ice. The only downside was no alcohol was served.

It's now back on the train for the 3 days trip to Lhasa, Tibet. Beijing most certainly opened our eyes to Chinese culture and way of life, however we are very much looking forward to less crowds, cleaner air and hopefully less spitting.

Mongolia......FINALLY

It's bloody cold here: was our first impression as we quickly marched out of the airport. Our hasty exit was caused by the immigration prick, who was making his presence strongly known while we were passing through customs. We both decided to wear different clothing on this trip in an attempt to de-size ourselves. We looked something like this:
MUPPETS!

In a sea of Chinese and Mongolians all dressed in black and grey, we really could not have stood out more as tourist attempting to enter Mongolia, again. Our cunning plan worked however, as we got through.
It was an early start the following day to begin our 3 day 2 night Ger to Ger tour. It began with a 3 hour bus trip to Bulgan region, north west of UB. Mongolian public transport is ummm interesting. Firstly, the bus is packed to the rafters, the driver doesn't always have to drive on the right side of the road or even on the road and cheesy Mongolian comedy shows blasted from the TV while the inside of the windows completely ice over.
 
                                           


Mr and Mrs Byambatogtoh and eight year old son, Batgerei were our first nomadic host family. Most Mongolians outside of UB speak very little English and our Mongolian was non-existent. We were going to spend the next 3 days learning Mongolian quickly or doing lots of sign language.

Nomad-ism is a male orientated society that has many social and cultural rules. Nick is always the first to enter the Ger, as he is old and male. On entering the ger you must head in the western (as in direction not culture) or visitors side of the ger. Never point your feet in the direction of the alter (which is always north) and never receive any food with your left hand.

Nomads are herders with sheep being the most common livestock. Mr Byambatogtoh had 80 sheep, 5 camels and 1 horse. The wives roles are to look after the family ger. Which basically means keeping the stove going, cooking and constantly cleaning the snow and mud off the floor.
Batgerei was a laugh. He could speak a good amount of English, with his favorite saying being 'come on and play a mean game of chess’.

Part of the Ger to Ger experience was to take part in Nomadic life. I helped Mrs Byambatogtoh prepare Bansh, a boiled meat dumpling, while Nick collected dung. Instead of firewood, camel, sheep and horse dung is used to fuel the stove.

We were constantly blown away by the beautiful vast surrounding landscape.

Day 2 involved a 2 hour camel ride to Mr Idertsogt ger, our second host family via the local worshipped site of Khadagt.

 

We tried so hard to learn and remember everyone’s names, but come on, they didn't make it easy for us. I was happy to find out that 'buggy' was going to show us Swan Lake and the Sand Dunes in a blizzard! The 21km round trip was by horseback. 5 km into the journey our backsides were hurting. 10km in, we were wishing the -10c temp would numb the pain. Mongolian saddles are not like any other in the world. They are small and made of wood. Poor Nick even had a metal bar to add to comfort. I saw his butt, ugly! His riding sores were not pretty either. P.S The lake was frozen and there was no F'n swans.
[photos 8 and 9 please]

We returned to the ger tired, sore and hungry. Our sleep was restless as Mr Idertogt snored like a dieing chainsaw. This forced Nick into my undersized single bed in an attempt to distance himself from the racket. Impossible in a ger. I was happy for the extra warmth as the fire had gone out and the temp inside the ger was -20c.
We were expecting to see the nomadic Mongols living as they have done for centuries with no running water, oil lambs and dung fueled stoves. So it was a bit of a shock to see a satellite dish and solar panels outside each ger. Overall, we loved the Mongolian experience. We would have liked to stay longer but both agreed that next time it might be better in the summer.

Beijing...round one

Our first encounter with the Mongols at immigration did nothing to deter our determination to see Mongolia.

By 9am the next morning we were queing outside the Mongolian Embassy appying for our Visas. With relative ease we filled out a rapid visa application and was told to come back at 4pm the following day. With the rest of the day open we decided the best plan of action was to explore Tian'anmen Square. On making our way to the square we were joined by two very polite english speaking chinese girls. After 10minutes of constant questioning we found ourselves in a 'student art' shop. By the time I realised we were being scammed and trying to back out of the shop, it was all to late. Zinta was already up to her neck in the scam, by buying two average chinese artworks because the one of the very polite english speaking chinese girls was the surpose artist. Oh well, lesson learnt. We now have a code word to let each other know if we start to get caught out. It is a bit more subtle than yelling RUN!
We did finally make it to Tian'anmen Square once we had escaped the scammers and passed through the secuirty checkpoint. It's a massive open area in the shape of a square!!!! Apart from having a dead guy (Chairman Mao's Morseleum) in the middle and 'the' national falg on the north side, that's about it.

    

One thing we did find interesting was the food on offer at the street markets.

The next day we successfully obtained our Mongolian Visas. Hurrah!! It was off to the airport to fly back to UB.