Our hotel is tucked away from the main drag. You enter through a gated brick archway and emerge in a square courtyard, surrounded by buildings. The hotel is at the far end, the other three sides are all residential and as such, the courtyard is often filled with friendly young children playing soccer or riding bicycles. A feature truly unique to this area are the small Hindu shrines around the perimeter of the courtyard where residents will make offerings of incense, flowers, or money, followed by a quick prayer, and at one of the shrines, the ringing of a bell. I awoke to a 5:30 am ringing and later learned the scoop. I used the courtyard for my morning 10-minute stretching and yoga ritual which I’ve no doubt made the locals curious. After breakfast, I took another walk, this time towards the river and a large wooded park. It was a busy Sunday morning with bustling traffic. Walking through the park, an elderly man told me, “No way.” He was letting me know the bridge across the river was gone. The same week we were hit by Hurricane Helene, Kathmandu had torrential rains and severe flooding. The destruction was a familiar site to us hurricane survivors but the Nepali are a hearty people, and were well on their way with the cleanup. Sad thing is, the folks who live along the river were doing so illegally in a shanty town that reminded me of the slum in one of my all-time favorite books, “Shantaram”. It was a mess but it was a mess before, built from material most would discard, and it will be rebuilt good as “new” in the very near future. Took some pics and headed back to the hotel and to hang with the boys. I got to know Matt from Santa Barbara. Great guy with an interesting life that had some parallels to mine. He owns two mesquite BBQ restaurants in Santa Barbara that he’s run since his mom passed in the 90’s. Both his sons now work there and pretty much run things. They are a close extended family which I hope might be some foreshadowing to our business and life in general. He’s been married for 33 years and like me, believes he’s the luckiest man alive. He and his wife travel a bunch and we shared the general “men are from Mars, women from Venus stuff”. Our tour guide Brett arrives later this afternoon and it looks like the original plan is intact, including the new Royal Enfield motorcycles that will carry us on our adventure through the Himalayans.
Well, Brett made it. We chatted a bit then took a nearly 10k hike to the Monkey Temple. It is festival time and the country is abuzz. This whole area is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Buddhist temples and shrines along the way are from another world. Ancient, beautiful and serene, the architecture is different than anything we see in the west. We “fueled up” on some wonderful black current ice cream from a street vendor. The “climb” up to the “Monkey Temple”, Swayambhu Maha Chaitya, was not for the faint of heart. Nearly straight up, seemingly went on forever. The preponderance beggars and vendors was a bit hard on the heart, but the view from the top was incredible. We were warned about the monkeys but after Gibraltar, these fellows were very well behaved. I think they were Buddhist. A local grabbed me at the top and gave me a lesson on the Buddha, enlightenment, the 5 flags of Earth, Sky, Water, Wind, and Fire. Of course, it came with a price. The cab ride home was a highlight. Brett negotiated the fare and our driver was a very nice elderly man of 71 who told us about his family. We stopped at a massive grocery store on the short walk back and stocked up on the raw materials for some trail mix. Came home to a nice shower, packed up, turned in at 9-ish and got my first good night of sleep in several days.
