kathmanasi. a tale of two cities

Separated only (only?!) by 10 hours of bumpy bus travel and 5 sweaty hours on a train, the 500 odd kilometres between Kathmandu and Varanasi is actually a journey between worlds (but you can be forgiven for not knowing this).

Kathmandu sprawls in a valley surrounded by mountains. It is dry- I saw one river but when I say river I mean a wide ditch with a small pool of dirty water that the locals use as a rubbish dump.
There are temples, of course- this is Asia after all. They are dotted about the city, stone figures living forever in niches and corners and where ever there are bodhi trees. They are convenient. As they pass by, with the fluidity of years of practice, locals will ring the bells, light the candles and smear the colour; choreographed moves of a theological dance.

There are bigger, more celebrated temples too...there is one at the top of a hundred stairs, where monkeys live on ice-cream, fairy floss and stolen bananas.

Then there is Durbar Square, Kathmandu's pride and joy and a pretty interesting place to wander around. One of the nicest places in the city; where you can sit on the steps of centuries old temples and watch toddlers tentatively running through clouds of pigeons, giggling and screaming; admire the amazing haircuts of the city's youth as they pose for selfies with their friends, framed by black and red; watch tourists mingle with praying locals and men wandering around plying their wares to the masses.

Our arrival here accidently coincided with the Nepalese New Year (actually this was the reason we spent so long here...intending to be heading to India, visas in hand, 2 days after arriving in the city we got off the bus to find the offices all closed for the 4 day holiday). So Harry's last day found us sitting in a heaving Durbar Square, all of the city (it seemed) turned out and looking sharp, in order to greet 2071.

One of the arms leading into Durbar Square is Freak Street. The enclave of the hippies of the 60's and 70's, it is now a fairly sleepy street with a few guesthouses and a couple of western cafes and lots of locals going about their business. A place to sip chai under the stairs in a darkened local momo house and organic (what else?) coffee amongst pretentious neo-hippies on the steps of a tiny little cafe.

Kathmandu is a dirty, dusty, welcomingly chaotic city. You go to the post office, organise beaurocracy and GET THINGS DONE. Busy and functioning; almost like London in its faceless hordes pounding the pavement with single-minded intent but here the pavement is made out of dirt and potholes and the soundtrack is shouting and blaring horns and the people are colourful. And there are dogs and goats and monkeys.

Varanasi is unlike London in every conceivable way. It is unlike everywhere in every conceivable way. Getting things done? Not in Varanasi. It is perched on the bank of the Ganges and, while the city and its mess of honking, mooing, screeching, shouting inhabitants sprawl- Asian cities just do, they just sprawl- up out and beyond the river, this is really where it is. This is the place that turns your complaints about how loud dirty in your face insane Indian cities are into a dropped jaw and an 'ohhhh myyyyy ggggg.....' Pertinently put, it's the place that makes a visit worthwhile.

The river is god here. But then, so is almost everything else...monkeys, cows, blue, bendy, many limbed people. It's the river we are all here for though. If you want to wash your clothes, wash yourself, learn to swim, do some praying, sell a boat tour, meet with friends, pay your respects and cremate a family member, have a chai or some freshly roasted peanuts, play cricket, fly a kite, beg, meditate, sleep...go to the ghats of Varanasi. For Hindus, to die in Varanasi is to escape the (I imagine) frustrating cycles of death and rebirth; it is a site of incredible religious importance and spiritual cleansing. Secularly, it is so polluted that it is poised on the brink of death itself. Human waste (an estimated 3 billion litres dumped daily), industrial waste, crematorium waste and household waste (check this out: http://www.dw.de/indias-polluted-ganges-river-threatens-peoples-livelihoods/a-17237276 )...all of these find their way into the great Mother Ganga. Seem confusing? Welcome to India.

The steps leading down to the river are a platform that support hundreds of temples, huge and tiny and every other size, and the braided alleys of the old city hide many more. We went walking around these shaded twists and winds one morning to escape the heat and as it was early they were completely deserted. The odd cow and a few mangy dogs and us. Occasionally, though, we would round a corner and be in the middle of a sudden burst of vendors selling trinkets and garlands of flowers, families hustling to and fro, people waiting expectantly at lockers, sweet sellers and chai wallahs working hard on a Sunday morning. Then we would walk a little further into the melee and spot a darkened entrance leading into the bright orange heart of a temple and the reason for all the activity. And the next corner we took would bring deserted lanes once more, so quiet it was as if the bustle of worship we just saw was a heat-induced hallucination.
You don't have to do anything in Varanasi- although the hundreds of boatmen and various other "tour guides" will try to convince you otherwise- other than wander along the ghats and wait to be shocked or amused or incensed. It won't take long. While you're waiting you can admire the soft pink of the crumbling buildings lining the water, the occasional flashes of bright orange signifying a temple, the reds and blues and greens of the wooden boats floating patiently on the water, waiting to be useful, the cheerful brightness of the fabric stretched out on the concrete to dry and the intricate artwork painted on the concrete walls.
There is nothing utalitarian about Varanasi. It feels as if the whole place exists just to excite gasps of shock or disbelief from even the most world-weary travelers. A place that has been the same forever and will go on staying the same, unbothered by the world around it, forever. But it is a living city also, there is no doubt about that. It is tangibly alive and every aspect of humanity is on show.

hills to the left of me, mountains to the right, here i am stuck in a valley with a view...

So. Where were we. We went to sleep on moving beds in Scotland and awoke into a London morning, and then before we even knew what was happening we found ourselves back in the reassuringly chaotic streets of Kathmandu. And immediately slipped back into the rhythm of Nepal, the intervening months in Europe becoming a shimmering mirage in our minds.

Our first few days were spent form filling and queuing in Kathmandu (Kathmanqueue?) and then it was time for the much more important brotherly reunion. So we dodged the rain and hail the night threw at us to meet and welcome Harry and Alex with hugs, and got ready to set off on a journey that would carry us through the heart of the Himalayas. 

We began in BesiSahar. The purpose of this town, I suppose, is to fill with relief all the trekkers who find themselves trudging out of it. Unfortunately once you leave its dusty underwhelming streets you have a good 4 hours of walking up roads along which the construction of a huge hydro-electric station (financed, I am fairly certain though I have nothing in the way of evidence except a few Chinese signs, by China) is a constant. This is not great for the morale of four trekkers who set themselves off on a 3 week trek based on the assumption of seeing some pretty spectacular natural beauty. Thankfully the last hour of our walk this first day took us up up up, into hillier, greener, more soothing pastures.

From here on in our days were one....we woke- early always as there is not a lot to do in a trekker's night once you have overdosed on card games-, then we ate, then we trekked, usually we stopped for our lunch of 'Trekker's Fuel' muesli bars (which were so highly regarded in the beginning that we would collect every spilt crumb and became so hated after two weeks that, now, to even look at the packaging turns my stomach), then we trekked a little more, then we found lodgings and we simultaneously collapsed on the bed and dove upon the menu in the manner of starving castaways. And this, essentially, is what you do when you trek in Nepal. Of course, it is all against a backdrop of some of the most impressive mountains in the world, so immediately something as mundane as going to the toilet becomes an exercise in wonderment.  

The mountains were not giving themselves away easily. This was one of the very first, very exciting peeks of the peaks that we had on our second or third day (it's all a bit of a blur now). This was also the place where we began to feel the kilometres in our legs and stopped for some impromptu street yoga, much to the amused bemusement of the locals.

Up and up we went. Every day the views produced more gasps and excited pointing from us. But one thing that is pretty much constant in the Himalayas (all Nepal in fact) is the Tibetan prayer flags. At home they flutter from the veranda of that one house on the street where the hippies live but in Nepal they adorn everything from temples to Bodhi trees to bridges. I can't work out if their presence on those uncertain bridges which join two river valley walls, the river rushing far far below, is an appeal for safe passage or purely aesthetic...

As well as prayer flags, there are these. Name? I don't know. But they are stone and they have a seam of prayer wheels- which are to be spun sequentially, all of them, in a clockwise direction- all down the middle. There are often flat black or white stones carved with beautiful Nepali script scattered about the place too. 

On our way up to the widest pass in the world we decided we may as well take a little detour to visit the highest lake in the world. A tour of superlatives. Later we will add: the longest time without a shower, the highest altitude we have achieved, the happiest I have ever been to catch a Nepalese bus. But for now we are on our way to the lake. And we saw this very stylish yak, with flowers in its ears. 

We walked across this incredibly dangerous section of 'path'; essentially about a foot of slightly less steep gravel where miss-step ends in probable death. This was the scariest part of our entire trek. Pretty cool picture though. And worth it. The lake, although frozen into an oval of white, was set amongst the most perfect, whitest, cleanest (still on the tour see?) mountains I've ever seen. We were almost completely surrounded by them. We heard an avalanche. And after a very arduous climb- remember we were at an altitude of about 5000 metres, which in human speak means every 5 or 6 steps we had to stop to catch our breath- and some biscuits by the frozen oval, we rewarded ourselves with some impro-skiing (toboganning without a toboggan) back down the slopes, reducing what was a 1 hour climb into a 5 minute thrill. The wet jeans were totally worth it. My body objected a little to the extremes I was subjecting it to and gave me an afternoon of altitude sickness after our return from the lake, but it was very good preparation for taking on the pass a few days hence.

A few days hence: 5000 metres is quite high; it gets quite cold. This is what we found adorning our guesthouse when we arrived at High Camp, the final stop before Thorung La; world's widest pass and 5500 metres above sea level. This night was probably the coldest I have ever been while sleeping. I wore all my clothes. Even gloves.

This is where we were though. The cold is secondary when you wake up to this.

And this. This is the famous pass.

We are triumphant. We have done it. Now all that remains between us and civilisation is a very steep descent and another couple of days. We celebrated (how else?) with water and Trekkers Fuel (whenever I say this in my head it is written in lightning and surrounded by exclamaton marks).

We've done the pass. We're bad-ass. 

Then we started the journey down. The lower we got, the warmer it was and the more the scenery began to resemble what I imagine Grand Canyon country to be. It was less spectacular than what we had just left, but quite beautiful still. We were in good spirits too. In acknowledgement of the feat we had just pulled off, we were on our way to enjoy some juicy yak burgers at a place called (in what can only be described as a stroke of genius) YakDonalds. Our expectations weren't actually that high...the visit was mostly because we couldn't let a pun that good pass us by. Happily the burgers were delicious. I am now a fan of yak in all their incarnations.  

I also like goats. Because they are so nimble and their horns are so very funny. These goats we met while wandering around a little village famous for its apple products (we sampled crumble, pie, juice, brandy and cider), on our way back to civilisation. The walk back down was quite pretty...lots of blossoming trees, the mountains still in the background, tiny villages perched here and there. But there was no denying that there was certainly less enthusiasm among our group. We had done the pass, the hard part was over, we were no longer in mountains and, to be honest, we were fairly sick of walking.  

So beautiful though the mountains undeniably are, we happily caught a bus down to Pokhara to enjoy beers, momos (dumplings), chocolates and sunsets on the lake, three days after crossing the pass. 

Satisfied in the knowledge that we had walked 208 kilometres in thirteen days.

And I will leave you with this...remember, always go clockwise...

bonny streets and and windy hills.

The night we returned to England from Cyprus was dark and foggy and near to the witching hour, the perfect night for ghostly intervention. We had none of that however; just a whole lot of hassle with immigration as we tiredly tried to convince the Ultimate Decider that we would not work illegally and that we were, in fact, only going to be in the country six more days. After all the questions and checks were made we were free and back into Blackpool for a few days before we headed a little further north to the bonny city of Edinburgh.

Because we hate the cold, we only gave ourselves a couple of days in this pretty, literary city. But we used them well. We walked and walked, across cobblestones and over hills, reading quotes of the cities souls anywhere they could be carved. We found the sun, one day, and this farmly view was discovered on top of another hill just minutes from a busy city intersection. 

We found the windiest place in Edinburgh- possibly the known world- and after spending about 45 minutes climbing to it, made sure there was photographic proof, stood around making weather chat for 5 minutes and then scurried back down to somewhere we could actually see again. 

We came across the most nightmarish version of Puss in Boots I could never have imagined in a toy museum full of nostalgia (we were both in fits though neither of us is rightfully old enough to fondly recall the items we saw). Proceed with caution; forever hereafter your Puss in Boots will be fanged...

We walked also in the evenings. Edinburgh is like Adelaide's Scottish older sister. They are both big enough to be interesting but small enough that a walk from one side to the other isn't off-puttingly daunting and guaranteed to end in blisters. Edinburgh is the elder simply becuse she is; these footpaths are seeped in history, museums abound. There's a castle, for goodness sake. We could even ignore the odd, pervasive smell of what I can only describe as dog food that followed us about. It wasn't us. I can only assume it was from the smoking brewery.

We discovered the ultimate way to eat pig whilst we were here. Here's what you do:

Step 1. Be very hungry and be outside, hopefully in a misting rain under skies that promise worse to come.

Step 2. See that shop that has half a cooked pig in the window? It has a knife sticking out of it's back, I know. Don't be scared. Go inside.

Step 3. Order the biggest hunk of bread and watch, salivating, as the friendly pink-shirted girl stuffs it with slow-cooked pulled pork. Get very excited as she tops it with stuffing and apple sauce.

Step 4. Now you are sitting with it in your hand. You know what to do...try to go slow...indigestion is imminent. It'll be the happiest indigestion you will ever have.

We also made a self discovery whilst in this city of the north. Apparently- and this is a difficult thing for self-proclaimed world travelers to admit- we are not as open minded as we imagined. Because we have reached that stage in our travels where a check of the bank balance comes with tightly crossed fingers and immediate denial of reality, we needed to find a free place to stay in Edinburgh. And because it was a last minute journey, the only person to accept our desparate pleas for shelter told us we were very welcome, so long as we had no problem with his being a nudist. We considered. Two seconds later we replied positively; this will be fine, we thought, we're cool with this. And hey, free room! Hahaha. Turns out you can't really know how okay you are with this scenario til you are in a tiny living room, trying to appear casual as you stare fixedly at the ceiling whilst being offered tea by a naked stranger who is in the midst of preparing his evening meal...

  

  

And these are some lights we found in a garden. Don't know why. They were oddly mesmerising though.