Day 119. Kyle & Leanne joint blog.

We have journeyed to Nagarkot for the incredible sunrises over the Himalayas at a hotel built into the side of mountain called Hotel Mystic Mountain.  The main reason for the stopover in this lodge is to see the sunset and sunrise so the 5:30am wake-up call is not optional.  As we had gotten to sleep around 9pm the night before, we were already awake before the wake-up call.  The valley sits below us with dense fog clouds sitting on the valley floor but we still have an amazing view of the entire valley.  The sun rises and the light changes patterns on the valley floor fog and we realize within 20 mins it has gone from pitch black to fully light. 

As the daylight starts to stream through, a massive fog bank descends from above and enveloped the entire hotel.  Leanne was taking a time lapse video of the sunrise which captures the fog rolling up and enveloping the camera.  Kyle is half expecting some knife wielding green monster to come charging out of the fog like in the 1970’s horror movie.  Alas, no monsters and no gorillas in the mist, just plain old fog.  At least we got the pre-fog pictures. We realize that while we saw the valley, we never saw the view of the Himalayas mountains as pictured in the hotel brochure. Good thing we saw them and got 2,000 pictures of them while in Tibet. The sunrise is somewhat anticlimactic but the misty morning still makes us feel we are on top of the world! 

As soon as we arrived last night, Leanne checked to see if she could arrange a 6:30 am yoga class this morning but there is no sign of any early rising yogi.  Unfortunately, Leanne has woken up, prodded and convinced 3 of the 5 teenagers to yoga with her over the misty mountain top.   But with no yogi it’s not so Namaste!  No worries, Leanne’s iPhone to the rescue and within a few mountains we have mountain pose, sun salutations and warrior pose galore!  Thanks teens for the early rise. 

Kyle and Justin engage in a fierce game of ping pong.  Kyle is hoping all the ping-pong they watched on CCTV in China will result in a dramatic improvement in his game skills through the transference property. Unfortunately, shortly into the game, it becomes pretty clear that Kyle’s ping-pong game is no better than before arriving in China.  If only it were that easy.

One good breakfast buffet later, we are back on the road bumping away. On the road down the valley, a bus passes by us and backfires something fierce.  Our faces are all shocked from the booming loud noise. A few minutes later, we confirm it wasn’t our tire that blew and no-one was shooting at the van (never know if the Chinese government read our previous blogs and has pursued us into Nepal).

The Dashain festival is coming to an end.  For the festival, bamboo swings have been constructed all over the country.  We pass one and pull over.  A dad is playing on the swing with three kids.  Our kids are reluctant to interfere with their swing time but Deepak assures us its ok and Justin boldly steps forward to give it a shot.  One of the little girls comes up to us, excitedly jumping up and down, pointing upward and exclaiming “you can touch the sky!!!!!”  Justin takes his turn and he and the kids are thrilled.  It was a beautiful moment to see our kid immersing himself in this way.  And it was great to see her look of joy of sharing this childhood wonder. The Nepalese kids are shouting and waiving as the van pulls away.  Yes, we can see firsthand that Nepal definitely has the second happiest people in SE Asia.

Justin has been a positive force of nature on this trip and he’s always willing to do what we need done.  Blessed to have him and all the others on this journey with us.  Several people suggested to us we should wait until our kids are off at college to take this trip but we feel taking this year with them all still under our roof will give them benefits that will last a lifetime.  The open mindedness, exposure to world cultures and so much more; more than a classroom setting could provide.  

We arrive mid-morning to Nepal’s cultural city of Bhaktapur, a World Heritage site named in 1979.  The entire ancient town established originally in 8th century full of fountains, baths, temples, stupas, and the epic souvenir shops. Its architecture is purely ancient Nepalese and the government gives any resident a stipend to prepare homes in exact manner. Metals, brass and wood carving galore. What stood out were the many baths in town - some now spewing water but most not.  The baths hold standing green water not particularly inviting as the hotel pool as you would expect for 1,000 plus year old plumbing. 

The 2015 earthquake impact is still obvious here as several buildings were destroyed outright or propped up by wooden poles.  The entire town is designated World Heritage site so we enjoy strolling the streets alongside many mopeds.  We visit a painting school of Tibetan Buddhist Mandela’s and while we resisted the first one we visited, we fell hook, line and “tourist trap” sink-her at the second shop. OK well Leanne fell for this one.  We started on the second floor for demonstration then they take you to the third floor for the hard sale.  Kyle somehow escapes between floor 2 and 3 so Leanne is stuck with Smooth Salesperson Nepal Sequel number 1.  She escapes 5 minutes later only set back $52 (which is a steal since the first thing she saw was $15,000).  It turns out the painting school is actually a Tibetan refugee center.  

Leanne most likely overpays for her small painting but she’s escaped without losing too much time or her self-pride.  Her painting explains some core principles of Tibetan Buddhism, was designed or approved by the Dalia Lama and it was red and blue (Penn colors).  It had a nice message about clearing the body, speech, mind and then enlightenment / nirvana.  Who could resist nirvana? 

We take our fair share of photos of the ancient city of Bhaktapur and we head back smack dab into traffic-heavy Kathmandu.  Kyle’s rear is a bit sore from all the bumpy rides — so much so, he is excited for a plane ride tomorrow.  With the Dashain holiday ending and the visiting Chinese President in town, we expect tough traffic and the police divert us from a main thoroughfare.  We take back streets towards our next UNESCO site. 

Here we are out of China but still very much feeling the Chinese power and influence. Leanne reads in the Katmandu Post (Nepal daily newspaper in English) that China is “gifting” Nepal $56 billion for infrastructure development but there “may” be strings attached.  Kyle is not political by nature but this one elicits a “are you kidding me?  The Chinese government “gives” Nepal 56 billion rupees (that’s billion not million) and the journalists are not quite sure if there are going to be strings attached?  Ummm…yes, me thinks there are strings attached to every bill!” China has this Road and Belt Initiative in Southeast Asia to expand its power, influence and exports.  First stop, Nepal.

The Chinese President Xi Jinpeng is in Nepal (Katmandu) today for the first time in over twenty years.  Apparently, it didn’t take long for him to show up and clarify what “strings” are attached. As we arrive back in Katmandu, there are almost as many pictures of the Chinese President and his wife plastered all over the city as there were 70th anniversary signs in China.  That would be in the 1 – 3 million range (give or take).    

We visit the second largest Stupa in the world - Buddhanath Stupa. We pick up a few final souvenirs. We notice there are many Tibetan painting shops lining the perimeter of the square around the Stupa. We also notice there are Nepalese military and police forces all around with riot gear and machine guns.  Hold on, wait…this feels just like the Chinese military force in…Tibet.

Thus we are not at all surprised to learn that upon being “gifted” 56 billion and receiving the Chinese President’s visit, the Nepalese police & military have arrested 22 Tibetan refugees and activists.  Why you might ask?  They were “planning” to protest today.  Did they actually do anything?  Ummm…no, they were allegedly intending to do something.  What was that about no strings attached to 56 billion?  This hit us a little too close as many of the arrested Tibetans were from the Buddhanath Square that we visited on the very day the Chinese President was in Katmandu.  

After the final UNESCO site, we are back at the Hotel Swanky. Upon check-in, we discover that after three days away, the hotel has shocking turned into Hotel Dumpy.  Instead of our Swanky room from three nights ago, we are assigned a room in the dungeon basement which smelled of smoke, had no WiFi reception and was so small you bang your shins on the bed trying to go to the bathroom.  Talk about a Dr. Jeckle and Mr. Hyde room transformation.  Might have to rethink that Swanky nickname. 

We have a couple to-do items this afternoon not on the itinerary.  First up, we have Scouts Justin & Corey that want to go over to the Nepal Scouts building we walked by the other day. Might we catch someone there?  Not only do we catch folks there, we meet up with 15 adult leaders and the area head honcho. Turns out we walked into the Nepal scouts National Headquarters and several of these leaders went to the last Boy Scout Jamboree in the US last summer. They were so nice.  Justin & Corey are able to trade neckerchiefs and patches and build their international Scout collection to Paris, Beijing & Katmandu!   

On the other hand, Kyle took on the duties of shipping the “shed box”.  The shed box represents souvenir purchases we’d like to get home because we are trying to travel relatively light. Our guide Deepak takes a taxi with Kyle and two boxes to DHL.  Kyle’s mouth falls open as the DHL clerk quotes him USD $600 to ship the boxes back.  Kyle is muttering and cursing under his breath “no more damn souvenirs!” as he stomps out of the DHL office.

Deepak guides Kyle to the FedEx office down the street.  While the price is more in the stratosphere at USD $220, this will again prove a challenging exercise.  The clerk informs him that he must remove every single item in the two boxes, document what it is and have the two FedEx clerks inspect them and approve them. Given we had probably 250 individual items, Kyle spends two and half hours on the floor cataloging every item and explaining what it is to the clerks. Before long, the FedEx Clerk rejected pile starts to grow as they reject coins for the coin collection, perfume, cosmetics and various other “illegal to ship” items.  

Finally, when it’s all done and boxed up and ready to pay, they ask Kyle for his passport.  As you can probably guess by the way these stories go, Kyle did not bring his passport.  “But I’ve shipped boxes from five different countries and never needed a passport,” Kyle tries to plead his case. “Wait, I have electronic copy of passport,” he says as he shows it too them on his phone.  “Where’s Nepal visa?” Crap, Kyle hadn’t taken a picture of the Nepal visa we got in the passport book when we entered the country.  “No visa, no ship box!” the two clerks say in unison.

Never fear, Deepak is here to save the day.  Deepak steps in and says they can use him as the sender and his Nepal government issued id.  In the end, it works and Deepak is Kyle’s hero.

We have a farewell dinner tonight with Chet who runs the Nepal office for the tour company.  It was a very nice gesture to take us out and ask us how the week in Nepal went.  He takes us to a “hip, modernish” Nepalese restaurant down the street.  There is a large main room has a mini-dance floor and restaurant tables.  We settle down and order food and drinks.  The kids are on the tired side and we have to get up a 4:30am for our flight tomorrow so they are waiting a little restlessly for their food.

“Mom look there’s a rat over there!” one the kids blurts out pointing about 5 meters away.  Chet goes pale white and bangs his fist on his forehead and mutters something reflecting his displeasure.  Here he is, the head of the office, trying to take us out to impress us and a rat shows up to ruin his parade.  We pretend like we didn’t hear it and nudge the kids under the table.  

For us, it’s no big deal and all part of the adventure.  But it does lead to litany of bad rat jokes later on (reminiscent of the corny Split jokes in Croatia) like “they need more cats in “Katmandu to get the rats,” or “you know there’s rats in the kitchen, if you see them on the dance floor,” or “maybe they were making the sequel Ratatouille 3, the rats take Katmandu.”

In the end, the kids go home early and we talk with Chet for two hours about Nepal, his experience growing up here, daily life, the government, corruption, religion and a host of other topics.  He points out that Nepal has had 23 different governments in the last ~35 years including long periods with no official government, civil war, the ousting of two Kings and ending of the Monarchy.

Thank you Nepal - we are enamored with your food, your hospitality, your beautiful scenery, your vibrant festivals, and your calm demeanor.  You have been so kind to us - Thank you!!