I spent most of it wandering around the streets of the nearby town of Bhaktapur. It’s about 15 miles outside of Kathmandu, and is the center of the woodworking and pottery craft in Nepal. Most of the intricately carved wall panels and such that adorn so many buildings here come from Bhaktapur.
But damn, it was hot today. On the long drive out and back I slumped in the front seat of the taxi and wished I had splurged for a hotel with a swimming pool. I ducked into whatever shade I could find while exploring the town. But by 1 o’clock I was completely soaked in sweat and was polishing off my third liter of water.
Have I mentioned enough that the heat and humidity are oppressive? No, I really don’t think I have. I mean it’s just really, really hot, and really, really humid. The only good thing I can say about monsoon season is that it does help to keep all but the most impervious or foolhardy tourists away. So I am getting to see a Nepal where the locals actually outnumber the foreigners at all the tourist sites. I gather that this is not the case during the high season in late fall.
Several of the taxi drivers and local guide-wannabees have bemoaned to me the paltry number of tourists in town, and no doubt they’re hurting. But I’ll put up with the hammering weather if I get to sit in a square in Bhaktapur and be the only foreigner in sight. However briefly.
Bhaktapur is less developed than either Kathmandu or Patan, and normal life is a lot less skewed to accommodate us Westerners. There’s hardly any traffic by comparison, and this time of year life pretty much happens out on the streets.
The woodcarvers do some amazing work, and have for centuries. Some of the buildings date back to the 15th century, and the carved panels and roof supports on these are some of the most elaborate I’ve seen so far.
Bhaktapur Carved Window
There is a small museum there, but it’s not much. More interesting are the workshops where you can see the craftsmen at work, and the shops where they sell their stuff. Just amazing, some of it.
This evening the trekking company scheduled a little orientation meeting, and I met many of the people with whom I’ll be going to Tibet in a couple of days.
We’ll eventually be a group of 14 or 15 (not everyone was there), and a motley group we are so far. There are two Americans, me and a younger guy named Gregg from North Carolina. I briefly met an Aussie guy named Richard, a couple of guys from Delhi whose names are not yet intelligible to me, and older Indian couple, likewise, another older Indian guy, the same. Other so far unnamed pilgrims include an older couple of Germans whose English is worse than my German, an older Italian woman who looks like Dame Edna’s sister and apparently was unaware that the trek involved some actual walking, and another three or four other people who weren’t at the orientation meeting.
I was kind of surprised at the age of some the members of the group, especially the old Indian guy, but then I remembered reading that most Hindu pilgrims ride around the mountain on yaks instead of walking. For Hindus, the trek around Mt. Kailas is something of a secondary goal. For them, immersing themselves in nearby Lake Manasarovar is the main object of their pilgrimage.
But still, great preparation for this trip wasn’t much in evidence. Among the surprises were: It’ll be cold there? What, no electricity? Oh, and this one got some side-long glances: Yaks are only semi-domesticated, they don’t cooperate much. And of course, walking?
So I think it’s probably going to be interesting. We didn’t really have a chance to socialize, so I have no idea how well we’ll all get along. But we don’t meet again until Thursday morning at 5 am. It’s a crap shoot.
Besides, one of the immutable laws of traveling in groups is that in every group there will be “the asshole.” The corollary to that law is that, if you can’t spot the asshole, it’s you.
No sphincter sightings so far.