Kathmandu comes to life

One of the things that I tried to do during my trip to Kathmandu was to take more videos, as I think they're great at showing a different perspective from photos.  I hope you enjoy them!

This was in one of the little Suzuki taxis taking us from central Kathmandu to Swayambhunath - I stuck my hand out (not too far!) of the window so that I could capture the incessant honking and noise, as well as the general feel of the city streets.

This is us at Swayambhunath, the monkey temple, attempting to increase our lucky chances.  I don't know if the fact we were throwing UK pennies in, rather than Nepalese rupees made a difference, but I did manage to hit the platform which was pretty good!
 

Another video from Swayambhunath, showing the monkeys being quite excited about having just been fed some apples by a visitor.  Mazida wanted to take one back with us...I wasn't so sure!


This video is looking out over a square in Bhaktapur.  It was just lovely being up there (we're atop a temple) and looking out over the cloud covered hills.  I also really liked the roofs covered in grass - looked like you could graze a goat on some of them!


I particularly like this one - it shows the view from the 'hippie temple' in Kathmandu's Durbar Square.  I could totally imagine how people could just spend hours and hours sitting up there, just taking in the sights.  It was so cool to see the square so alive with people - not just a staid monument area.




And finally the Boudhanath stupa.  The video is taken from the first tier of the stupa, looking down.  It was so magical there, really an amazing place.

Namaste from Nepal

As most of you know, I had the incredible luck to be able to spend three and a half days in Kathmandu after attending a conference for work in Dhaka, Bangladesh.  Dhaka itself was crazy - it took at least 90 minutes to get anywhere because of the constant traffic jams, and the city just seemed to have this incredibly frenetic pace with literally people everywhere.  The poverty was really noticeable, so hoepfully the country continues its work to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

But on to Nepal!

July is the low season for tourism as it's the monsoon season and the height of the rain.  I had thought that it would rain constantly, not having experienced monsoon conditions before, but I was pleasantly surprised.  While we did have one day where it rained most of the day, mostly it was just an occasional downpour, and on one of the days we were lucky enough to have over 30 degrees and sunshine.  The perfect antidote to an awful London summer!

On our first day we (my colleague Mazida and I) got our bearings, as we were staying in Lazimpat which is an area just north of the main tourist area which is known as Thamel, and the main central area of the city itself.  It was nice being within walking distance, but good to be away from the complete hustle and bustle of the city.  Just as in Dhaka there was incessant honking on the streets - I don't know how the cows coped!

We stayed at the loveliest guest house called Tings Tea Lounge which I would absolutely recommend as it was such a haven to come home to after a day out and about.  The food was great, as were their selection of delicious teas.  Not to mention the incredibly friendly staff - a rave all around!  Speaking of food, on the first day for dinner we found the best place to eat in Kathmandu (in our opinion at least), this Szechuan restaurant called Chang Chengs.  While it was in the Lonely Planet, it was a little out of the way, and we couldn't understand how it wasn't absolutely packed.  This enormous meal you see in the picture cost something like NZ$15 because we completely over-ordered but was soooo yum.  Another definite recommend!

On our first full day in the city we spend the day looking around Kathmandu's Durbar Square.  Durbar means palace, so it is essentially the heart of the old city of Kathmandu, full of temples, palaces and shrines everywhere you looked.  Mazida convinced me to get a guide, and I'm so glad we did.  Our guide Krishna was excellent, taking us on a three hour tour around the square and telling us more about the intricate system of Hindu gods and goddesses than I could ever remember.  But it was definitely fascinating at the time!

The Nepalese obviously have great respect for some of their previous royal families, especially the king who brought democracy to Nepal, King Tribhuvan.  The country has a really interesting history, and I didn't realise that it was so recently that the country was brought together as a single state, nor the diversity of people who are now part of Nepal.  The massacre of the royal family in 2001 was just awful, and I really hope the country can get back on its feet after its recent troubles.

After our visit around the city centre we went out to Swayambhunath, also known as the Monkey Temple as there are big troops of monkeys just hanging around.  It's a Tibetan stupa which is the name for a Buddhist temple/shrine complex.  I loved the prayer flags and the serene eyes of Buddha watching out from every direction.  It was really interesting to get above the city too (it's on a hill to the west) and see it spread out within the Kathmandu valley.

On our second day we went to Bhaktapur which is the  most ancient of the three royal cities in the Kathmandu valley.  We took Krishna with us again and it was really good to have the almost neverending series of temples explained to us, as there's no way we could work out from the guide book which was which!  But, as you can see, our temple enthusiasm was never-ending...  I really liked the quietness of Bhaktapur, as it was mostly pedestrianised, so the omnipresent threat of being run over by a rouge motorbike was (somewhat) reduced!  The view out over the mountains with the clouds rolling over them was also pretty spectacular.

On day three we visited Patan, the third main city in the valley.  We had a bit of a shocker as we thought we'd get money out when we were there (as foreigners you pay a pretty hefty fee to enter the historic areas) but the ATMs wouldn't take Mazida's card...  Fortunately however we had enough money to get back to Tings to get my cards and try getting money out at a much bigger bank which worked.  Phew...!  Patan was interesting in that there was a music video of traditional Nepalese music being filmed right on the steps of one of the temples which we watched for a while, and we also headed up the main market street to this crazy busy market at the bus station.  It was lovely and hot that day, so just being out and about and wandering in the sunshine was brilliant.

And then on the afternoon of day three we went to Boudhanath, another Tibetan stupa just outside Kathmandu.  This was hands down my favourite thing of the trip, as the place just had this incredible feel to it and I could have stayed there just looking at it for hours.  I loved the prayer wheels right around the edge, as well as the giant ones inside the monastery just adjacent to the stupa.  It was just so alive and interesting, yet such an obviously central part of everyday life for the people who visit it.  It really made me want to go to Tibet that's for sure.

As well as looking at all the sites we also managed to get a bit of shopping done as there was just so much on offer!  I particularly liked the gorgeous strands of what I thought were beads, but turned out to be rubies, emeralds and sapphires!  While a medium-length strand was only GBP30, it was still a bit out of my price-range.  We managed to do the entire trip, including return flights from Delhi for less than GBP300 and didn't skimp on anything, but a multi-strand emerald necklace seemed a bit extravagent for a student!  I was happy to settle for my GBP2 prayer wheel and same priced pashmina...

All in all, I absolutely loved Kathmandu and can't recommend it highly enough.  As my first visit to a South Asian country it made a massive impression on me, and I really want to go back to the region and see what else there is to see.

The rest of the photos are here, so check them out!  I'll put some videos up soon as well.

Summer lunch

Today we're finally seeing some sunshine peep through the rainclouds which is making both me (and my beans - more on them in another post!) very happy.  In its honour I decided a summery lunch was in order, and here's the result:

I cooked up some pasta (in my case it was a bit of vermicelli), chucked some baby peas in when the pasta was nearly done, and then tossed it up with some sliced lemon rind, mint (from the garden!), some fancy olive oil and lots of cracked black pepper and some sea salt flakes.  Yum!

And while I was eating it, one of my favourite summery songs came on the radio - perfect timing!

Venice and Verona

"Ooooh...what a pretty canal!" 

"Take a photo of that canal, it's lovely."

"Ah, sitting beside a canal, drinking spritz and eating aperitivo.  I could do this for the rest of my life!"

And now you have an insight into the main gist of our conversation the entire time we were in Venice!  It was one of the few European cities that was on our list that we had yet to cross off.  Knowing the exorbitant prices, we'd booked months and months ago, so had been looking forward to it for absolute yonks.  And it didn't disappoint!

Arriving late on Thursday night we managed to work out how to get on the Number 1 vaporetto down the Grand Canal to our B&B, then got back on (loved that the tickets were time delimited, not per ride) and went all the way down to Piazza San Marco to see it without the crowds and an obligatory first gelato - who cares that it was nearly midnight!

While in Venice we made sure to do lots of the main sights, including the Doge's Palace, St Mark's Basilica, the Campanile, as well as a quick trip out to Murano to see some glass blowing and to check out the lagoon.  The weather was lovely - hot enough to get a tan and wear some shorts, but not too hot that we completely melted after the cold of London!  I loved just wandering around, checking out the food (I'd done a fair bit of research, which meant we ended up eating at some delicious places, such as La Zucca, which was recommended by two different sets of people, and was an absolutely delicious treat for lunch on our last day) and just enjoying feeling the sun on our faces in the most incredible surroundings.  Another really good foodie thing we did was go to the Rialto fish market at midday on the Saturday where one particular restaurant serves up the dish of the day, plus a glass of wine for only 8 euro.  The day we were there it was a plate of lightly fried fish and other seafood - luckily both Adrian and I have come around to fish because otherwise it wouldn't have been so pleasant!

I loved the whole concept of aperitivo hour as well which, despite some early confusion about what exactly 'happy hour' means (drinks become more, rather than less expensive!), became one of our favourite things to do.  The quality and quantity of the nibbles varied dramatically between different places, but Aperol spritz has now firmly lodged itself as one of my favourite drinks.  We also went out on the Friday night we were in Venice, heading to Campo Santa Margharita which seemed to be where most of the action was, then stumbling across a pop up bar on the way home which was lots of fun.

We also added in two nights in Verona, where, luckily, we lucked in to the fact it was the first Sunday of the month, so all the sights which normally would have cost anywhere between 6-10 euros to go into, were only 1 euro!  Excellent.  This included Juliet's House, the arena (while we were there a school choir came in and sang which was really cool - we'll have to go back for an opera one time) as well as some other museums and the like.  We also walked up behind the castle to get a good view out over the city and could actually look down and see a local wedding which was interesting.

And then, of course, it was again all about the food!  Adrian finally had a horse steak, after wanting one for years, and I had a donkey ragu which was surprisingly good.  The gelato was fabulous in Verona, with my favourite flavour being 'pollen' (a bit random!) and the aperitivo was delicious.  We walked all over town, getting to know the main city area inside out.  We stayed with a super friendly Italian guy at his B&B called B&B Casa Nuvola and it was obvious he'd learned his English in Ireland as there were Guinness posters everywhere and he had the funniest Irish/Italian accent.  

All in all, I loved Venice - it was such a beautiful city and I could have happily wandered there for days.  The sights weren't as breathtaking as Rome, but the city was by far and away one of the most magic places I've ever visited.  

Check out the rest of the photos here!

Street art

I met up with Adrian for lunch today and he'd told me that he had a 'surprise' for me - some cool new street art which had appeared overnight on a building site in Bloomsbury.  They're huge street art posters, meaning that they can be made at home and then pasted up quickly.

Pretty cool don't you think!

****Update****  Apparently these are the work of Theirry Guetta who goes by the name of 'Mr. Brainwash'.  He's in town at the moment so maybe there'll be some more to spot!