01/10/2025 – Welcome to the “City of Wooden Temples”, AKA Kathmandu
The drive from Jaipur to the Delhi airport went relatively smoothly, although we did run into fog for quite a while. And we believe this was actual water vapor fog! We arrived at the airport by about 9:45 and said our goodbyes to our guide, Joy, and our driver, Robey. They had been very good to us and we will miss them. Getting into the airport was relatively painless, although they had to throw in one new wrinkle as a goodbye to us. We checked in our bags, got our boarding passes, and headed to the security checkpoint. Kathy and I dutifully pulled all of our electronics and wires out of our packs and placed them in a separate bin and put all our belongings through the scanner. We also took everything out of our pockets, and Dave took off his belt, and put everything in the bins. The line for the women’s security was shorter and in no time, Kathy walked through the metal detectors and got patted down. But wait! At THIS particular security checkpoint, you also have to get your boarding pass stamped. Of course, Kathy had put the boarding passes in her pack before going through the metal detectors and had to yell at Dave to get them before they went through the scanner. Yikes! Now, we were through and on to the gate to await our flight. Lo! And behold! There is a McDonald’s at the food court! Now, we knew that getting a hamburger was out of the question in Hindu India, but surely they would have an Egg McMuffin or a Bacon, Egg, and Cheese Biscuit. Nope. No breakfast items at all. Breakfast was fries for Kathy and Chicken McNuggets for Dave. We sat down to eat and looked for a place to charge our phones. But wait! The outlets in India are not like those in the US and Dave put all of his cords and adapters in his checked bag to avoid having an issue at the security checkpoint. Fortunately, the airport had “magical” outlets that accepted many different types of plugs, including ours (and a chap named Jacob from the UK who sat with us and charged his phone, too!)
The flight to Kathmandu was easy and soon we were picked up by our new guide and driver. They took is straight to the hotel. It was a good thing, too, as we were pretty tired and had to get used to the time zone change. What? You didn’t know that India and Nepal are on different time zones? Yep, the 15 minute difference in time zones between the two countries will be hard to adapt to – hope we don’t get jet lag too badly! Dave did not think he was going to bother re-setting his watch for the time zone difference. Ensconced in our hotel room (a room with actual electronic key cards again, unlike the padlocks and skeleton keys from the previous two hotels), we ordered a chicken club sandwich from room service and settled in for the night. It’s another early morning tomorrow as we catch a flight to see Mount Everest and the Himalayans!
01/11/2025 – The Top of the World
Our 6:30 am pickup from the hotel was waiting for us as we picked up a boxed breakfast from the hotel. We had booked a sightseeing flight to Mount Everest as part of our trip. We were rather surprised that it was a commercial airline flight! We had to go through the domestic flight terminal and get to gate #1 for our flight. Once aboard, we had a flight attendant and about 10 rows of seats. The 18 passengers were each assigned a window seat on one side of the aircraft or the other. We took off and flew along the Himalayas before turning around and flying back. That way, each side got a good view of the highest mountains in the world. Everest was, of course, stunning. But also seeing the tiny villages dotting the landscape and the zig-zagging “roads” (or trails?) that connected them was also impressive.
After the flight, we returned to our hotel room and were met by our new guide who was going to show us around Kathmandu. We started out on foot from the hotel and visited temples, shrines, and Buddhist Monasteries. Kathmandu is a Nepali word originally meaning “City of Wooden Temples”, and we saw why. Some of them were 400 or more years old. We saw temples were people come if they have smallpox and we saw a place where people come and nail coins to a wall if they have a tooth problem. We also went to Durbar Square, which was built in 1549 as a royal palace and temple. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We then drove to the ancient Buddhist Stupa called Bouddha Stupa on top of a hill. Legends have it that this stupa has been around for 1000 years! If so, it was built 400 years after the Lord Buddha was alive. A “stupa” is a mound-like structure that contains a relic of Lord Buddha. In this one, there is said to be a tooth from the original Buddha. Talk about “long in the tooth”! After Dave was almost attacked by a monkey for getting his hand too close to its baby, we met back up with our driver and went back to the hotel. We walked around a bit in the city, found a nice restaurant to eat lunch (Cuisine alert – Afghani Mo:Mo’s are pretty good!), bought a hand-stitched t-shirt for Dave and some dessert, and went back to the hotel to rest up.
Tomorrow morning we drive to Chitwan National Park!
