Pete's priorities

Poor Peter had a tough choice to make this week, what does he care most about? Safety? Or spending money?! As we're getting older, we are both choosing to spend a bit more money and be a bit safer, but we had a meeting in the World Trade Center this week and we had to choose whether we wanted to ride on the back of our colleagues motorbikes or take a separate taxi, which might cost upto $3.

I never thought I'd see the day, but my favourite moment of this week was Pete riding on the back of Komal's motorbike on one of the busiest main roads in Kathmandu, with no helmet, hanging onto a printer!! Brilliant!

Here's the view from our meeting at the WTC, this is the road we just rode down:

HAPPY HOLI 2070!!!

Hectic Sunday around Kathmandu, celebrating Holi 2014 or 2070 in Nepali years!

The moment we stepped out the Guest House in our specially bought, cheap white tee shirts, we were immediately pelted with water bombs. Don't ask where the water has come from! Some is green from paint powder being added, some is green from who knows what!

We met up with Sundar and headed over to Kathmandu Durbar Square. What a great fun afternoon we had. Paint being thrown everywhere, everyone coming up to us and slapping paint onto our faces and heads and us doing the same to them. I think the photos speak for themselves from here.......

We spent Sunday evening scrubbing our bodies and our clothes clean before more important meetings in the morning!!

Lazy Saturday

Too many lovely places to spend a lazy Saturday after spending a brilliant Friday night at Sundar's place with Krishna, a kilo of home made Nepali chicken, and us on the back of their motorbikes!!

Late breakfast at Cafe Cheenos:

Chocolate almond cake and lemon tart at Casa opposite the UN office:

Electrifying

I've never known such difficulty with electricity as here in Nepal! During the 10 year civil war, which lasted until eight years ago, people moved into the Kathmandu Valley to be safer. This has led to a real strain on the infrastructure. There are too many people for the electricity grid. So they use load shedding where electricity is only available in each area for certain times each day. All the times in the grid below are when you don't have electricity. Our office is in group 4 and our accommodation is in group 5.

It means we have to be really clever with our work and maximise it when in each place. We often head to a nearby coffee house just to use the internet. 

Some places have back up generators which kick in when there is no electricity. In our office they can only afford a small amount of petrol for the generator, so normally there is no generator! So from midday Wednesday to 4pm Friday, you got it, no electricity!

Our accommodation got significantly better in the last week, as they got back up proper, so in the no electricity times, we have one light in the room and one plug socket for charging stuff. We don't need the candles no more!!

We don't know we're born in the UK sometimes!

Bhaktapur

The Kathmandu valley was once split into three kingdoms ruled by three separate kings who each tried to outdo the other. The result is three big squares stuffed full of elaborate temples within 10km of each other. We went to Bhaktapur at the weekend to see the third square. We had to pay US$15 each to enter the old city, which considering the average income in Nepal is US$20 a month is a high price to pay. We wanted to get our money's worth, so have extended our ticket until May at no additional cost!

This was the grandest temple. It is the tallest temple in Nepal, and is also one of the tallest buildings in Nepal which goes to show just how seriously they take their temple building, and how undeveloped the country is - the building is about 8 storeys high.

We tried to take some artistic photos of one of the other temples

And we like this one which shows just how congested the square is with temples and tourists!

There is lots of graphic erotic carvings on the temples, which we didn't expect to see. This one made us laugh!

This intricately carved "peacock window" is the most photographed window in Asia!

But we preferred "chicken window"!!!

....simple things!

We also went to pottery square to see all the pottery drying in the sun:

A deserved cup of coffee:

And this was the view from our lovely guest house Heart of Bhaktapur which was a guest house upstairs and a children's home for disabled children downstairs. All the profits from the guest house go into running the children's home. The rooms were each named after one of the children in the home, and there were photographs of the children and artwork all around the guest house. Unfortunately we didn't get to meet the children this time, but if we get to go back we certainly will do.

Test trek!

The most spectacular thing to do in Nepal is trekking and hiking. The two week trek to the Everest base camp is very popular. We fancied doing some trekking but weren't sure if we were fit enough or had enough stamina! We decided to do a short two day trek first to test the waters!

We caught a bus to a small town outside the Kathmandu valley called Dhulikhel and had a stroll round the old town.

Then we followed concrete steps (my idea of trekking!) upto a massive Buddha.

And a stunning lookout tower above Kali temple.

Then we trekked through farmland and small villages to a village called Kavre. We crossed the main road and continued trekking through more rural countryside, random temples and spectacular views of the mountains above us and the cloud below us. We really enjoyed the first two hours and were ready to sign up to Everest immediately...

....then it started raining and we lost the signs we had been following!!

It was a three hour trek and the last hour was miserable, we didn't enjoy the scenery, we were wet through, cold and couldn't find the village we were meant to walk through! We saw three cars get stuck in all the mud. We walked straight past the famous Namobuddha and up a very steep muddy footpath to the Thrangu Tashi Yangtse Monastery where I had booked us a room for the night.

The room itself was very plain and not very clean! But we got to have our supper with the monks in the dining hall of the monastery. Everyone sat cross legged on the floor and had dinner served to them from large communal stainless steel pots, about 100 monks joined us for supper! We had a mountain of rice, daal, veg curry, coleslaw and pakora and we felt we had earnt it after a hard days trekking!

There was nothing to do in the evening, so we drank tea, read, wrang the rain out of our clothes and went to bed early.

Unbeknown to us, the next morning was the first day of Tibetan New Year. We got to have breakfast at 7am inside the actual monastery. It was a simple breakfast, but the monastery itself was stunning, so bright and colourful with golden Buddhas everywhere. There was chanting, prayers, deep beating drums and clashing cymbals and after breakfast everyone got given a goody bag! It was a fantastic sight and we feel really honoured to have experienced it with the monks.

The monastery was on top of a hill and the views were incredible, that's the snowy Himalayas in the background (for our next trek!)

The next day we trekked another 2 hours through farmland and rural villages to another town called Panauti where we caught the bus back to Kathmandu.

Our legs and feet were a bit sore and we were a bit tired in the office on Monday, but we had a fantastic time, we've never done anything quite like it. We do fancy another short trek, though we've concluded we're not ready for Everest just yet!