Linda and Mals Asian Adventure: Kathmandu &the Kathmandu Valley

Kathmandu& the Kathmandu Valley. Arriving back in Kathmandu after a tortuous eleven hours we had no time to do anything other than look for a room.

Next morning we set about trying to arrange a 3 day Kathmandu Valley Rim Trek, listed in the Lonely Planet and other guide books as a must do ! ( hold that thought ! ).

We sorted out a porter ( who spoke excellent English and had done the trek many times ) starting to look good eh ? Next morning at 08:00 we got to meet our porter, who didn’t seem to have quite the command of English as we had expected but hey ho at least we were off on time. We started our trek at the Village of Panauti, where the first part of our trek would lead us to the Namo Buddha temple. After a steady walk along the dusty road we arrived at a footpath that lead uphill to the Namo Buddha. Excellent. We wandered for awhile before heading off toward Daulikel, our overnight stop. It was here we noticed that our porter seemed to be struggling with the small day sack he was carrying and he seemed not to know the way and as such we were walking almost entirely on main road tracks, dodging both lorries and buses, not quite the Valley rim walk were described.. Eventually after 5 more hours we arrived in Daulikel and after more confusion and a frantic call to our porter’s office we sorted out some accommodation.

Next day we had to catch a bus to the next walking trailhead, again our porter was struggling with the 5 kg pack and had no idea what bus we needed to catch. Eventually we hopped on a bus we were assured was the right one and soon after got off it, far too early and along way before the walking trail path. After one and a half hours of walking along the dusty busy tarmac road and seeing our porter repeatedly ask locals for directions we decided that another chat with “wayfarers” (that’s the highly recommended trekking office ) after an exchange of dialogue, we said that the we were not happy that the porter had even done a trek before and that we would terminate the walk after we reached Nanakot. After 5 hours ( and many breaks, due to our porter being too tired) at this point I would like to point out that his pack had been reduced to 4 kg and I was carrying the extra. We spoke to a few locals and sorted out a taxi back to Kathmandu. In short we had a good old go at Wayfarers and got all of our trek money refunded excepting the initial car fare to Panauti.

The moral of the story, don’t always rely on guide book recommendations and if possible have a good chat with any porter or guide before you set off...

Now backing Kathmandu a day earlier we tried to bring forward our flight to Bangkok but sadly the 2nd leg of our flight was fully booked so we have more days in the polluted environs of Kathmandu to endure.
Durbar Square: Kathmandu’s must see area, now 300 rupees for foreigners, another Visit Nepal initiative. We spent about an hour walking around what could have been something really special, but alas the square is used by taxi’s cars, motorbike, lorries as a short cut across city and so there is a lot of noise and pollution to encounter, had this area been paved and pedestrianised it would have been excellent, sadly dodging traffic took a lot off its appeal. We were thinking of visiting the nearby town of Bhaktapur but we hear that they are now charging 1000 rupees a head to foreigners ( was 750 ) to visit the main Durbar, so we wont be going there after all.