Into a Different World: My Visit to Nepal 2014

Basantapur

Hello everyone,

Greetings from London, hope all of you are doing great.

Recently, I visited my home country Nepal for few weeks. To tell you exactly about my experience hmmm, it was great meeting someone we love so much. It was good feeling seeing smiles in faces. It was refreshing to smell cool morning breeze, it was blissful feeling to hear sound of bell in temples, even normal tea would feel different. I am not extremely religious person but I do like to visit temples, and I have visited my favourite ones again this time. It gives me so much peace to be there, the serenity of being in that vicinity keeps my heart at ease, mind free from anything else. The smell of scented sticks bring the different fragrance in my mood, there is so much hope and new ray of lights I find. Battling with afternoon scorching heat was one another thing, forget about putting on makeup in your face cause the amount of sweat from your body washes it away naturally. We might need umbrella to give us shade during rainfall but we do need it in that hot temperature otherwise heat in just landing straight onto your head. All those delicious food, for example momo (dumplings), sekuwa (roast meat), Thakali food, Newari food, etc teases your taste buds. We can never really find the same taste here in UK. I really loved having a evening stroll in my hometown Bhainsepati. It is so fresh and rejuvenating. I travelled in different form of public transport such as local bus, microbus and taxi and paid very very less amount of fares in buses and microbuses. Taxi fare was expensive but the fare I paid for bus and microbus was very less, I suppose less than 10p per mile. The roads were wider and cleaner than last year. Very happy to see roads to Bhainsepati in between Nakkhu Dobato (Ring Road) and Nakkhu pool pari was so smooth and nice, with road marking haha.

Sunset reflection in Fewa Lake

We packed our bags and left for unplanned journey to Pokhara, another beautiful city and a major attraction of Nepal. It was frustrating yet exciting experience to get stuck in traffic as there was a landslide which blocked the way. Our cheeky driver jumped the long queue from time to time. Again the daytime sun was releasing so much heat the I was sweating and all my veins starting swelling up. Just when I thought we got out of the landslide there was another traffic jam because a lorry has broken down. I remember the traffic updates in my car while I was driving in London streets,'' M25 is blocked clockwise at junction 9 due to a broken down lorry''. There was no escape route anywhere; one side was the fierce River Trishuli and other side was big hill. Finally, we reached Pokhara around 3 or 4 pm. It was still hot there. This could be one of the Highway story I would remember from nowonwards.

Pokhara is ever so lovely. I loved evening strolls and fresh wind blowing through the Lake Fewa. Spending time at Busy Bee, Club Amsterdam and watching football till late was so fun much. We hired a scooty and went to Sarangkot, Pame, Dam side, Davis Falls and different places, got our skin tanned. There was definite mark between what was exposed to sun and the mark which was hidden behind our clothing. I am ever so much grateful to my people who welcomed us with open heart and big wide smiles at Club Amsterdam, invited us for lunch, guided us to go to places. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention about Lake Begnaas. Thank you brother for lovely lunch at 'Air Nandoj Restaurant', that was delicious Peri-Peri chicken we had. Also thank you for lending your driver and a car; we enjoyed being chauffeured around. The water in Lake Begnaas was so clean and warm; tiny fishes came to tickle us when we had our feet dipped into the water. Roaming around Pokhara brought back all memories of being there a year before.

Begnaas Taal

This time round, I found a lot of Chinese, Indian tourists in comparision to last year. Back in 2005, the first time I went there, I did not see any Chinese or Indian tourists. To my surprise I met a lot of British tourists too. I found it a bit exciting to meet British people in my country. World Cup was not so exciting for me cause Italy lost the match.

Met so many lovely people there. This shopowner lady told me her story of how she works so hard to support her family. Waking up at 5am and get things done at home, feed son, send him to school, open the shop, do the sorting out, close the shop late and still go home and cook and do all the household chores. Hmmm people do have difficult life. People always take life for granted. There are many people deprived from many things in this world we must know that we should know the life we are living could always be somewhat better than somebody else's life. I am not talking about Bill Gates or Richard Branson or Laxmi Mittal here. :) We might not be as rich as them but I am pretty sure the freedom we have, the life without paparazzi, the life without threat, the life without millions of employees to lookafter, a freedom of speech, a life where we can laugh without any hesitation would be worth living.

One hot day, I was just roaming aroung Basantarpur (Darbar Square), went into the museum too. I enjoyed being on my own. I felt like I was tourist myself cause its been many years since I last visited that place. It was nice watching all those royal collections of Late Nepali Kings but on the other hand, I was saddened by the picture of King Birendra and his last photo. May his soul rest in peace.

I could not finish this post without mentioning about Kathmandu itself, Capital city of Nepal. Hanging around streets of Kathmandu was fun as well as hot. I enjoyed roaming around Thamel, listening to music at HardRock Cafe, having afternoon brunches at Potala Restaurant (owned by my bestie). I also visited NARAYAN HITI Royal Palace this time. I really liked how the rooms of the palace were named after the names of the districts of Nepal. Everything felt so Majestic but the charm of the palace is gone. There is no King and family to live in that place anymore. Felt a bit sad.

Now going back to topic, I must say after sometime I wanted to come back to London. Not because I wanted to come back so desperately, it was purely because I had so much work pending. Taken extra time off from work the unscheduled one, too many things to sort out, my car's battery would go flat anytime soon, and I wanted to resume back to my work sooner. Honestly speaking, I am still in holiday hangover mood. I do not feel like working at all. I do not know why I felt that I was fighting against time in Nepal. I could not sit in one place, I had to do something. If I would just sit around for 5 minutes doing nothing, I would feel like oh no I am wasting my precious time. May be I am so used to working environment now. I aimed to do so many things in Nepal but only few were done.

Saying goodbyes were hard but for me they are part of life now. I do not cry in departures cause I like to remember the special moment as smiley faces. Cheerio my country Nepal. I will visit you next time probably when the Ring Road project finishes. Hopefully, it would be smooth experience to drive around 8 lane Ring Road. :) And last but not the least, extending my thanks to all the restaurants, hotels, cafes, every other tiny places for providing FREE WiFi service to us, I got the most out of it. yayyyyyyyy

Thank you for reading!!!

Cheerio
limshaku