Nepal (Part 2)

 So where did I leave off.... oh yes.... We had just arrived in Kathmandu. 

I got to experience my first car ride there. Notice my face in the picture below. It was a sobering experience. They have traffic laws, but no one obeys them. Cars, motorcycles, and people are everywhere. Motorcycles just drive where ever they can fit and people walk out in front of moving vehicles. It wrecked my nerves. The scariest moment was as we were leaving one of our hotels later in the trip and we turned out onto the main road head first into 2 large buses!

We spent the rest of  that Monday in Thamel, which is the tourist district of Kathmandu. It was an amazing city where everything is constantly moving. Walking through the streets took some getting use to. I kept thinking the cars were going to hit me, but by the end of the trip they would zip past me with me not giving them a second thought.

Kathmandu at night.

Ignore the random lady looking like she is posing for my picture. I don't know her :)

The streets are dirty and dusty. The shop owners will throw out buckets of water to keep the roads wet and the dust down. You see people walking around with their noses covered and you think it is because they are afraid of getting the bird flu or something. But really it is just so dusty and polluted it is hard to breath. Within just a few hours I was coughing and could tell a difference in the air quality.

We ate lunch at a local pizza place. It was delicious, especially for being american pizza in another country. When we arrived back in Thamel before the trekking part of the trip, I had to eat there! I needed a little bit of home.

They are relatively small people, so Matthew looked like a giant next to them!

 I was warned about the beggars in the city and not to give them ANYTHING. We had a friend make that mistake a few years ago, and I was told it would be a really bad idea. Really there wasn't as many beggars as I had anticipated. But we did have one run in while we were out shopping. Being white and American, you tend to attract a lot of attention and the longer you stay in one place the more people start to gather around you. Matthew had been talking to a guy on the street about a drum the guy was trying to sell and which Matthew had no intention of buying. But the guy was persistent and followed us for 20+ minutes. While he was following us we had stopped at a table so our group so our group leader could try to buy a knife, and we stood there for quite some time. That is when I felt something touch me. I turned and saw a ragged women and her son trying to make their way through our group. They were filthy, extremely skinny and missing several teeth. He had a small metal bowl and was being pushed into the center of our group by his mother. At first I turned around and tried ignoring them. But every time I turned they would move and I would catch them out of the corner of my eye. We had been traveling for several days and had not really rested at this point. I was mentally and emotional exhausted by the time we saw this women and her son. At first I was OK, then I wasn't and started to cry. I could feel the crowd around us growing and pushing in. I told Matthew we had to move. The verse Matthew 25:31-46 kept playing in my head. If we stayed there much longer I probably would have given her some money. We finally got moving again and once we were away from her, I lost it. I had a hard time seeing this woman and her child struggling. I knew giving them money wouldn't help them, it would only perpetuate their situation. But it is hard to see that and just walk away. And that wasn't even the worst one we saw!

The courtyard at Hotel Mandap, the first place we stayed at. 

The first hotel we stayed in wasn't bad, it was much nicer then I had expected. We had a shower with hot water and a shower curtain (the last one I saw until we got back to the states.) By American standards, you would not want to stay there. But it was by far not the worst place we slept in!!

The next morning (Tuesday) we were up at 5 am getting ready to head out on our 14 hour bus ride.

Matthew got juice with his breakfast that was so thick with pulp the straw stood up!

The start of our bus ride up the mountain to Jiri. 

Matthew is in the back in the yellow hat. "Lets sit in the back..." he said.... "it will be fun..." he said..... it wasn't.

This guy came on our bus to give us a Hindu blessing and got really angry when he was told to get off the bus.

On our way out to Jiri, we had to stop and meet up with part of the local team that we were with. We sat on the side of the street for almost an hour. Kids were coming up to the bus trying to sell us stuff. One boy asked where we were from and when Nikki said the USA he said "Oh you're American! You are rich! Give me money!" Another boy actually tried to climb inside the window. 

Finally we got moving. The first part of the bus ride wasn't bad. A lot of up a mountain and then down a mountain. We tried to sleep, but it was hard. The further out from the city we got, the more bumpy the roads got. I sat next to the window and tried to lean against it to sleep, but my arm kept falling off the edge of the window. Matthew got to lay up on the luggage next to him and take a decent nap. Finally he woke up and I was so cranky he switched places with me so I could try and sleep. I took a 2 hour nap laid up on that luggage, and it was heavenly! 

We stopped at this nice restaurant for lunch on our way to and from Jiri. The food was really good and they had Coke (well... Pepsi...).

A goat just hangin' out in the back of a truck. This was not the strangest place we saw goats. We had seen several on top of buses.

There was a walking/swinging bridge across the street from where we ate lunch. I hate bridges. Keep that in mind.

Our drive up to Jiri was beautiful. Pictures cannot even begin to do it justice. 

I could not believe how amazingly beautiful this country is.

As the day got later and we got higher the clouds started to move in. In the following pictures that is not fog, that is cloud. We were driving through the clouds!! Crazy!

Notice the washed out background, that is still clouds.

Our bus ride turned out to only be 10 hours, so we were all thrilled that it wasn't 14 hours! We did arrive in Jiri at night. So it we ate dinner (which took 2 hours to get) and then went right to our rooms and went to bed. The next day we had a little bit of free time before we started the first conference. So we got to walk around Jiri and do some shopping!

Check back in a few days for the next part of the trip!