September 18, 2006 - Touring the City of Kathmandu

This is Leila Silveira, after what I should definitely call a very full day! We met early this morning for our city tour and everyone was ready and excited to go. Of course we had the jetlag comments; 1:00 AM some of the members woke up ready to go. Finally at 8:00 AM we left for our first visit, Swayambhunath, also known as the monkey temple. We saw some entertaining scenes of the monkeys playing with each other and fighting for any piece of food that one might be carrying and not paying enough attention to.                      

Then we visited Pashupati, which is the most famous Hindu temple in Nepal and is also one of the seven World Heritage of Mankind sites of Unesco in Kathmandu Valley.

Pashupati is situated on the banks of river Bagmati, the holy men are one of the biggest attraction. Always ready to do something special for a small donation.  I should mention that in Kathmandu at this moment, the weather is very clear and very, very hot so hydrating ourselves was really important, the mix of jet lag with the heat was quite tough.  Still, we kept going to our next visit, Bodnath, where there is the biggest stupa in the world and in my opinion is a must for any visitor to Nepal.

We then finished our program with a great lunch at the Hyatt, which is very close to Bodnath, and where they had a fantastic buffet. After several hours walking in the heat, the AC restaurant was the perfect place to relax and to eat quite a lot. Their salad bar was great as well as the hot entrée. The desert was their weakness. We all tried the “American brownie” really looking forward to our home version. Far from the truth, the cake was dried and not exactly tasty. After learning that Karen is a fantastic pastry chef, she started to joke that maybe she should stay in Kathmandu and start working for the Hyatt in their bakery department!

Then our friend Tsering joined us and took us for a great visit to her family Tibetan carpet factory, which is always a great success among our members. It is an amazing experience to learn everything that is involved in making a carpet; we couldn’t watch one of the machines since today was Machine’s god holiday, which for all of us was a surprise. They had the machines all dressed up for the occasion. But the main attraction was the women who actually make the carpets. We all enjoyed watching and Cami had actually tears in her eyes just by watching the perfection of their work.

We all finally got back to our hotel at 6:00 PM after a very long day. Some of the members rested at the hotel but Cami, Maria, Karen and I still had a mission to accomplish. Last minute shopping in Thamel!  After finding everything we needed we finished our day the best way possible with a foot massage….now all we need to do is pack and get ready since we will be leaving the hotel at 5:30 AM to start our mountain adventure. 

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