Alex and Rory: Nepal- Kathmandu Part 1

We arrived in Kathmandu expecting it to be cool- some of the other passengers on the plane put on long sleeve tops before getting off the plane, only to take them off again while standing in line. H1N1 was f huge concern and long lines of people waited to get through the screening. There was a giant posting regarding H1N1 posted... listing the countries from which people would need to be screened- it seemed pretty comprehensive... as in everyone would have to go through the screening

Afterwards immigration-- we did not pre-purchase our visa and planned to purchase them on arrival- which we did but after a long and painful time in the airport- between the kids (and adults) being exhausted after our 230am wakeup and transport- and accidentally leaving our pictures behind in Delhi and having to purchase new photos, pay for the visas after a lot of pain and agony from multiple money conversions, surly government officials tring to make a few bucks off of us and screaming children... we finally made it through immigration. We were THRILLED to see an elderly baggage handler with ALL of our bags on a cart who got us past the bag check to the smiling friendly Namaste and white scarf greeting of the hosts from Social Tours/Blue Yonder...

They took us to our hotel- Hotel Tibet- full of charm and after some time to "freshen up" the took us to dinner at a place that offered traditional Nepalese dinner, live music and dancing. Alex loved the music and dancing and asked if we could go back there again. I have a few short videos of it and will try to put together a video post at some point.

The next day we were supposed to start with a tour of Kathmandu- however there was a "surprise holiday"- the young Maoist group was protesting- stores were clsed and no motor vehicles were allowed on the streets- in fact there were burning tires at some interesction to prevent vehicles from passing. At one point we saw a small family on a motorbike, they were stopped by protesters who allowed them to proceed because they were bringing the child to the hospital, otherwise, our guide said they would have burned the motorbike!

Instead we got to do a walking tour of the city- it was great- no motor vehicles, relatively uncrowded, no pollution, little noise and lots of interesting things to see.

Alex and Angela (me) went to see the movie Planet Earth for mother's day. Alex was fascinated with the cranes that flew over the Himalayas and wanted to see the cranes... at the beginning of the walking tour we went by the old palace and walked beneath giant trees filled with cranes and enormous bats...

Lots of interesting old architecture in Kathmandu and other areas in the Kathmandu valley

We walked along a dental street- where there were lots of dentist offices and... a dental shrine. People come to the dental shrine and hammer in/attach coins to the shrine in prayer that their dental problem will go away...

More interesting streets in Kathmandu

Interestingly there are Tibetan Buddhist and Hindu shrines everywhere- wherever there is one, the other will also be... we were told that Buddhists and Hindi alike worship at either!

Kathmandu Durbar Square (there are three Durbar squares in Nepal- Kathmandu, Bhaktapur (we will post pics of that one too) and Pattan). This is the square opposite the old palace- a former central square of sorts... a world heritage site. Palaces and temples are located here- some pics- will post more about the temples etc in the next post- this one if getting pretty long.