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Memoirs of Trip to
Kathmandu
This time, it was my 7th Midsem break; now for Dasara festival. So where do
I go this time..? I dropped the plan of Jaisalmer (Desert in
Rajasthan), as shila, with whom I had planned to go, said he won't be
able to make it to the trip. So, myself with amital thought of Shimla and
nearby places. With prasoon, we were three and trying to find at least one
more. The only reason why shukla might not be able to come with us
could be that, he may have to go to Kathmandu where his father works
at Indian embassy. Then, why not plan to Kathmandu itself...? We did
exactly that and, finally we were a team of six people:
1. Amit Agrawal
2. Amit A Shukla
3. Neeraj Kayal
4. Prasoon Diwakar
5. Rajiv Bhatia
6. Vishwesha G (it's me..!!)
Day 0: Friday, 19th Oct, 2001:
Our ebullient team left Kanpur by 'Amritsar-Katihar Amrapali Express', which
arrived at right time -11pm; (but at (un)usual platform). For the first time
I witnessed the power cuts at railway station while waiting for the train.
We had nice time playing Dumb C for about an hour in the train, before we
went to sleep.
Day 1: Saturday, 20th Oct, 2002:
Arrived at Gorakhpur station at 6:30 a.m. We immediately left to catch bus
to 'Sonauli'. The most buses are private ones; it was a very interesting
journey even before it started. The bus conductor was behaving very rudely,
especially with Nepalese. Since it was Dasara - a big festival for
Nepalese-there were lot of Nepali commuters. They were being forced to
get into the bus. Finally he had to pay the price for this. When the
conductor was issuing tickets, one person said that he has no money and it
was conductor who forced him to get into the bus. That led to some quarrel
and conductor had to calm down for his mischief.
The crowded bus left gorakhpur at 7:30am. This journey to Indo-Nepal border
took about two and a half hours, covering a distance of about 100Kms. All
along the way we could see the fields plowed with paddy, wheat, tuar dal,
guava and also Banana - which is rarely grown in this region of country,
besides some entertaining quarrels among the crowd. Reached Sonauli at
10:15am. From this place we took a cycle rickshaw to cross the Indo-Nepal
border. This is the first time I was crossing an International border. It
was exactly 10Hrs 25 min 50sec(IST) when our cycle rickshaw entered 'Bhairawa'
on the Nepal side. Now time in my watch is 10:40:50, as Nepal has time zone:
GMT + 5:45 Hrs. The road
leading to the border is a typical Indian crowded lane. We had our luggage
checked with Nepal police. The rickshaws continued till the Bus stand. There
are no govt. buses in Nepal. All the private operators ply buses from a
common bus terminal; they have some kind of union. We got tickets to
Kathmandu Bus, scheduled to leave at 11am. In the meanwhile, as suggested by
a fellow passenger, we ran to Indian side to get the custom check (of
course, paid some tips to him) of our cameras-to avoid UP police's
harassment on our return journey.
With this our journey in Nepal started at 11am. Luckily, three of us- later
one more-got seats in the cabin, thus enabling us to enjoy the full flavor
of the journey. We could soon notice the differences with India. People with
different sort of faces; the number plates of vehicles. Very interesting was
that all two wheelers' riders wear helmet - that too colorful...! May be it
should be compulsory there or they are more concerned about their 'head'
unlike we Indians. The road was fairly good. We had the first sight of
'foggy' hills at 11:35am. It was an exalting experience for me to see the
Himalayas after a gap of two years, the last one being when I had gone to
Roopkund trek in 1999 Dasara holidays. Meanwhile
we reached 'Butwal' at 11:45am.
I was expecting to enter the hills soon. But, the we instead started
traveling parallel to the hills. The road now became was much better. I have
hardly seen such good road in India. Later in I learnt that it's Japanese
funded project. The road passes through the thick picturesque jungles of
Terai plains. I've not been to Jim-Corbett region of India; otherwise, I can
surely say that the forests here are preserved better than on the Indian
Himalayas. At around 1 pm. we started getting into the hills. But, within
some 20 minutes are so, we crossed the hill and entered another side of it;
and we are nearly in planes again for another one hour or so. The actual
climbing started from a place
called Narayan Ghat, named so as it is on banks of Narayani river.
This Nepali hills are quite similar to Kumaon hills of Indian Himalayas, but
the major difference was that the roads were not as tortuous as in Kumaon.
Moreover within a short span of time we started going along the Trishuli
river valley. So on an average our altitude gain was very less. Hence we
felt the journey to be pretty much like the journey in plains. We could
observe lots of interesting things on the way. We crossed numerous bridges
on the way and many of them were arch shaped. And all the bridges,
irrespective of their size were given a name, like Hanuman Khola, etc. Khola
meaning a bridge. Apart from this, we saw a number of narrow hanging bridges
across the river. But the most
interesting were the rope bridges : with a rope tied on two banks of
the river, several people sit on a basket type of thing, used as a trolley,
and
pull along the rope to reach the other end. Meanwhile the bus stopped for
evening tea; we had tea and chaow-chaow, a nepali snacks very similar to
Maggie. Finally after a last stretch of climb, we entered the Kathmandu
valley
(1300 mts) at 7pm.
From bus stand we directly went to Amit Shukla's house. After being received
with great hospitality, we had dinner with PTI journalist, a native of
Nepal, Mr. Shirish and Amit's father, Mr. R.S.Shukla. Mr.Shirish was
struggling to talk to us in Hindi. But, later we learnt that he has
stammering problem in all languages. After delicious dinner, we were taken
to Annapurna CASINO (at a * * * * * hotel). There are four Casinos in
Kathmandu, all owned by Indians. Interestingly, its illegal for the natives
to play in the Casinos. It's a major attraction for foreign tourists,
especially Indians, as betting is banned in India. We tried our (un)luck at
some games and had fun. I myself did not dare to loose any money. But,
played a game of 10 Nepali Rupees (Exchange : Indian 10 Rs = Nepali 16
Rs). But others lost more. I was clever. As I had read in
Feynman's lecture that Casino's are very intelligently designed to loot the
money. My physics education helped me not to loose money..!! This much was
for the day. We had a nice sleep.
Day 2: Sunday, 21st Oct, 2002 :
After breakfast, at 9am, we left to see places in Kathmandu. Firstly, we
went to the famous Pasupatinath temple. It's on the bank of river Vagmati or
Bhagmati river (In Nepal, all 'v' is in general is used as 'bh'; even the
English word such as 'reserve' when written in Nepali script becomes 'reserbh').
The entrance in this temple is restricted to Hindus only, like some temples
in India. The first of such kind of temple I've seen.
After darshana, we spent about an hour around the temple. The temple is not
that clean. There were lots of enthusiastic monkeys jumping here & there;
also a lots of pigeons. This temple dates back to Mahabharata times. This
was the place where Arjuna defeated Shiva to get Pashupatastra. There are
different stories regarding its renovation. One being that, Adi
Shankaracharya did it, like he did in badrinath & kedarnath. But, there
seems less evidence to support such a hypothesis. Second one being, it was
4th Shankaracharya who did it. Both such theories are supported by the fact
that the pooja is done by South Indian 'Smarta/Bhattara Brahmins'. In fact,
it is must that the Poojari should
be born in south of Vindhya Mountains. Even the Raja of Nepal cannot enter
the 'Garbhagriha' of the temple. Like most other places in Nepal,
'Pashubali' is offered to Shiva here.
Next, we went to 'Boudhastupa' - a world heritage site and one of the
largest stupa in the world, about 32 mts in height and huge circumference.
It was a grand structure. From there we left to 'Swayambhu Stupa'. After a
long journey, we found that it was just a big Buddha Murthy. We returned
disappointed. Actually, we should have climbed few steps from that lace to
reach stupa. As we were tired by then, we couldn't think even that and
returned. After lunch and some rest, we went to 'Bishal Bazaar' and spent
more than two hours, to buy Deodorants..!!!! (I didn't even do that).
This evening's dinner was something special; especially for me. We had
invitation from Mr. Gururaj Rao , Vice Chancery, Indian embassy; if u
can guess rightly he is a Kannadiga. So, I had delicious South Indian meals
after about 3 months.
Day 3: Monday, 22nd Oct, 2002:
We went to a place called 'Palanchowk' to see a 'Bhagvati' temple, where
special pooja was being offered as a part of Durga pooja of Dasara. Uncle
and Mr. Ramasheesh accompanied us. I just avoided seeing a hen being
sacrificed in front of me. But, the route leading to this place, at least
the first half of it, was fantastic. We passed through 'Dhulikhel', a
fantastic viewpoint near Kathmandu, known for its sunset & sunrise views and
moreover suggested by Guruji (Mr. Ratin Chakraborty, a famous mountaineer
and nature photographer from Calcutta) to visit. But, we could see none of
the peaks as it was completely covered by clouds. The landscape throughout
this route was pleasure to watch. We returned from this place at around 4'o
clock. We directly went to 'Bhat Bhateni', a 'super market', but no
bargaining is possible here. We did some purchasing here. This was a very
impressive market; We get good quality goods for low prices. All of us
mostly purchased clothes.
For the next day, myself, prasoon and shukla decided to trek to Shivpuri
(2732 mts), the second highest peak of the valley, and the rest of us would
go for shopping in city.
Day 4: Tuesday, 23rd Oct, 2002 :
We chalked out details. By now, everyone was coming to this mini trek. We
left at around 9:30. It was a bright sunny day. I feared that all of us
would sweat it out while climbing. Because of no availability of exact
information on how to reach the base of our trek, we ended up in 'Nagarjuna
reserve forest', instead of Shivpuri. Luckily, this also had a trail of
about five kilometers to climb. We started at 10:30am. Being a thick forest,
we at any instant of time, didn't feel the heat of sun. The trail was quite
steep. Our young, but inexperienced, enthusiastic team minus one person who
dropped himself at some plateau region in between, reached the top 'Jamocho'(7000
ft) after twohours. Everyone felt exalted after reaching the top. We had a
complete view of huge Khatmandu Valley from this place. (I am reminded of a
story about this valley. This place was covered by hills from all
directions. Hence a huge water body. It was Lord Srikrsna who broke the hill
on one side, to make way for water. Result is this huge valley for human
habitation.But, Buddhists say it was Manjushree who did this job). Had there
been no clouds, we could have had seen a whole range of Himalayas - from
Annapurna east to Mount Everest. It seems the cloud gods didn't favor us
again. Nevertheless it brought some meaning to our trip Himalayan Kingdom.
We came down at around 3pm. Again in the evening we went for last trip of
shopping. This time I did some purchasing worth about Rs 700. This evening
we had dinner at a Businessman's house; by name some Mittal. Basically an
Indian, has been in Nepal since quite long. He runs a private airways.
Day 5: Wedneday,24th Oct,2002:
Started our return journey. At last, we could see some of the snow clad
mountains with some clouds, though reluctantly, making way for us. The
valley, hills, made us feel not to go back. We had not seen this
part of valley, hills leading to Khatmandu, on our onward journey, as it was
dark by that time. Again the same river Trishuli, beautiful valley. But,
even if you come hundred times, you can never get bored. That's the beauty
of Himalayas in particular, and nature in general. Throughout this article,
I've not attemted to describe such beauty. Its pretty difficult to say the
beauty in words, and by no means other than seeing them with naked eyes,
will one get the excitement. One should
surely visit Himalayas,at least once in ones life.
After this trip, I cannot claim to have seen the Nepal. This was just a
beginning to later expeditions, that -I'm sure- would carry to this
Himalayan Kingdom. But, this was something special compared to any other
trip that I've taken so far and also those which I may take in future.
This is so because of the luxury we enjoyed in this trip. In fact, I
was more preveliged than anyone else in the group, as Uncle always made sure
that whereever we go, we used to get food without Onions and Garlic. That is
something remarkable about this trip, apart from generous hospitality we
received at their house.
Eagerly waiting for my next one, in Holi Holidays in march
Hopefully to Sikkim...........................................
Yours truly,
Vishwesha G
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