The printed itinerary tells you all…indeed probably more than you want to know about the relentless touring we did on the preceding day and on this one. Described as a half day of touring, our second day around these parts felt even more intensive than the day of touring the day before…perhaps because they were trying to cram it all in to half a day.
Bhaktapur, Pashupatinath and Boudhanath were the three areas involved.
We took loads and loads of photos – about 120 of them ended up in our Kathmandu album, which is, in itself, a pretty good diary of our touring, as I labelled the photos well on our return and transposed those labels onto Flickr. You can review those through the Flickr link here or the picture link below.
Here are the words from my log for 29 March, with some sample pictures, to give you a taster.
1st stop: Bounhanath – huge Buddhist stupa. Saw beautiful Buddhist temple by side. Quiet and peaceful. On next to Pashupatinath, sacred Hindu temple on the banks of stagnant but holy by Bagmati River. Amazing monkeys and sadhus (mostly fake I think) but no actual cremations to be seen
On next to Changunarayan – stunning Hindu site not far from Bhaktapur. Achuote irritated Jamie beyond even yesterday’s heights with long-winded explanations on all of Vishnu’s manifestations.
I had forgotten about our Kathmandu guide, Achuote, and his “attention to detail”. Janie tends to give guides lots of clues, to the fact that she is not interested in ALL THAT MUCH detail and that I tend to mug up in advance, from the guide books. That we like to tour at our own pace and that we prefer to ask questions rather than have everything explained in depth. The best guides get it straight away, most guides get it with just a little prompting, but occasionally we’d get a guide like Achuote who was determined to spew out every detail he had learned about everything on our itinerary.
On to Bhaktapur – went to Peacocks for lunch – on through our town old town – saw Peacock window – more temples and stupas. Durbar Square then back to car.
Got pulled over on the way home as the king was going to pass (this is becoming a habit!).
Quick stop in Thamel to get bearings and booking of Kilroy’s – back to Yak & Yeti for R&R, plus repacking. Dinner at Kilroy’s. Momos, daal baht [thali], chicken supreme with yak cheese, amazing bread and butter pudding and a chocolate thingy.
All the pictures from that intensive Kathmandu touring are in the Flickr album linked here and below: