Next
It is our last night in Nepal. While we’ll be sad to leave
the country, neither Scott nor I will miss the Thamel District of Kathmandu. Anyone
who’s been here in the past few years will understand I think – it’s just an overcrowded
tourist enclave where every other person is trying to sell you a trek, hash, a
rafting trip, or tiger balm, and the cover bands play the same songs over and
over (right now, Sweet Child of Mine is pouring through the opened doorway of
this internet café). Due to the fact that Kathmandu
is the jumping off point for most trips, we’ve spent a collective week’s worth
of nights here.
But, of course, with the bad comes to the good – the cheap
Thamel bakeries that we visit on average twice a day, the Mustang Guesthouse
that always has a clean room for us and has become a home away from home, the
reliably delicious food at OR2K (thanks for the recommendation, Jen), and… hmmm…
I’m hard-pressed to think of another good. I guess all the tourist trappings
that I find irritable would be missed if they weren’t here.
Apart from Kathmandu, Scott and I have had an interesting
time in our 30 days in Nepal.
From the warm forests and grasslands of Chitwan National Park to the cold
temperatures and astounding Himalayan views of the Khumbu Valley, from the haze
of Pokhara and Phewa Lake to the clarity and crispness of the air in the
Langtang Valley, Scott and I have tried our hardest to take in every moment. But
we’ve barely skimmed the surface of what this country has to offer. I’d like to
say we’ll both be back some day, and we might, but Scott will, for sure,
return.
Sometime in the future I’ll get around to transcribing the
journal entries I wrote while trekking in the Khumbu and Langtang and I’ll post
them along with some photos.
In the meantime, I’ll continue, when I can, to post entries
on our travels. Tomorrow morning we fly to Bangkok
via Delhi. From
there, our plan is to head north for a bit, take a boat down the Mekong into
Laos, then Cambodia, and, if there’s time, into Vietnam. We’ll see what we can
squeeze into five weeks. I’m thrilled to be returning to Southeast
Asia, the locale of my first backpacking trip over ten years ago
and several return trips between 2003 and 2005 (and home of some of the most
delicious food in the world).
But I’m also nervous to see how it’s changed. Really
nervous.