January 9-16th
We eventually left gourmet Pokhara for Kathmandu where all our stuff was awaiting us... change of clothes, computer, sandals. It was nice to be reunited again with our things, having worn the same clothes for almost a month, but Kathmandu had lost most of its charm after being in the mountains. We did explore some of the old city which had a rustic medieval look to the narrow cobbled streets and Stuppas on every corner.
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| Typical street in central Kathmandu |
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| Statue of Ganesh |
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| Durbar Squar |
We visited the Monkey Temple, so named because of the band of monkeys prowling the temple grounds waiting for food tourist so readily provide them. The temple is perhaps the most famous in Kathmandu and tourists and Nepalese alike flock there on weekends. We took our picture with quite a few different families, all posing with us like we were rock stars or something (I think its Ben's hair!).
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| Monkey Temple |
After a week of lounging in cold Kathmandu where we began dreaming up the next, warmer leg of our trip, we said farewell to abode of snows through our airplane window headed for the beaches of Thailand...
Little did we know that Nepal would make it that easy...our flight with Air India, that had already been canceled once and re booked with a new airline was canceled on the spot and passengers were sent in all directions on any number of airlines to make their connecting flights. For us and two other weary travelers, it was not so simple..."Your flight is tomorrow not today....your flight has been canceled...we will put you on a nonstop to Bangkok with Thai air 8 hours from now...have a complimentary meal on us..." all things our Air India representative tried out on us throughout the ordeal. Finally we got boarding passes for a flight non of us had booked and then we waited for 8 hours while every flight in the Kathmandu airport was canceled due to bad weather...somehow we made it out of there and at 11:30pm we arrived, no longer cold but hot, hot and humid in the other world that is Bangkok
