Namaste Nepal

10.10.06

Well, after arriving at Kathmandu and waiting inline forever to get through customs where we got talking to some cool people, we exited the building and the chaos began. Thousands of touts wanting us to jump in their taxis were screaming in our faces and we had wanted to exchange contacts deals with our new friends when we were ushered out by the airport guards into a sea of crushing touts….. First memory of Kathmandu streets is a cow standing outside a shop door peeing on the pavement and no one blinking an eye…

We only spent an afternoon organizing a bus to Besisahar and escaping the persistent attempts of our guesthouse manager trying to convince us that we needed a guide from his trekking company among a pack of lies. When it became apparent that we were NOT going to be persuaded he all of a sudden had urgent business elsewhere…

Most of these photos were taken on our last two days in Nepal when we hung out in Kathmandu. Our last day we visited the monkey temple - our first visit to a temple cos we don't care about such things, there is only one God and he does not live in a temple made by human hands... anyway we were most interested in the monkeys to tell the truth.

This is me two metres from the top where the Stupa is.

Prayer flags that you see everywhere.

Kathmandu is certainly colourful.

Monkeys are considered "Holy" and therefore run amok and allowed to eat the food offered to "gods".

View of Kathmandu.

Monkeys hanging out.

Prayer wheels for the lazy. Apparently by spinning these the words go around and its as if you prayed them.

Linemen wanted!

This is where you can buy your meat. Hmmmph, vegetarian tonight? Have another photo like this with goats heads lined up in front but decided not to put it on.... Actually we were vegetarian for like 7 days on the trail til we realised that the chickens in the hills are likely to be the best chicken meat ever - organic and free ranging. Yak meat is yummy too!

Freak St, that apparently was a hippie colony back in the day, not really interesting now at all.

Scam in action. This man put the snake around Dave's neck without asking him, he just did it, then put another one on him and got him sitting down then demanded an exorbitant amount of money.