For the past 10 years, Judy and I have said to each other, “Someday we need to go back to Nepal and see our friend Paras.” He was our guide back then and for the past 10 years our Facebook friend. And today, our wish came true. Paras was our group’s guide to two locations in Kathmandu.

First stop: The Chandragiri Hills, an entertainment complex reached by cable car. There they have lots of fun things to do. Some in our group did the zip line.

This site is also thought to be a place of historical significance. Prithvi Narayan Shah became king of the Gurkha Kingdom in 1743 at age 20 and went on to be the first king of a united country of Nepal. One of his critical moves in this endeavor was to conquer the Kathmandu valley. The valley at the time was divided into three kingdoms. The three kings were brothers

King Prithvi Narayan climbed a hill to reconnoiter and hatch a plan. That spot was the same spot where we stood today, looking out over the Kathmandu Valley. Long story short, he eventually succeeded and, after numerous other battles, the 54 kingdoms became united as one Nepal. He was coronated on September 25, 1768, just 8 years before our Declaration of Independence.

Incidentally, the Gurkha Kingdom is Paras’s home district. Prithvi Narayan’s strategy included building a strong, well-trained army. His army was not only successful at home, but Gurkha soldiers kept the British out of Nepal, unlike India where the Brits took over the place. The British were so impressed that they hired Gurkhas to serve in the British army. The Gurkha Guards remain part of the British armed forces to this day.

 We descended by van to a restaurant partway down the hill for an enjoyable poolside snacks and drinks followed by lunch. Some of us had the Nepalese “set meal,” a plate with rice in the center surrounded by pickles, lentils, chicken and a vegetable. See the picture to see what I mean.

Back down in the valley, our driver took us, following a circuitous route, to  Kirpitur, a town just south of Kathmandu and home to many Narwari people. The Narwaris speak a unique  ancient language and maintain a distinct culture.

The streets through which we walked featured numerous Buddhist stupas, many dating back to the 15th century, give or take a few. One in particular is thought to be the site of a stupa dating from much earlier times, although reconstruction in the 15th century seems to have eliminated archeological evidence.

Frequently, we came across women and sometimes men sitting (separately) in doorways, some of the women tending babies. Kids coming home from school were playing in the streets.

We saw an example of an open street-side platform which served back in the day as a place of rest for visitors coming to town. Those platforms are now used for communal gatherings of local residents.

Lots of sleeping dogs in the street, too. Paras said some might call them strays, but he prefers to think of them as guardians of that particular place.

We went to the Kirtipur Stupa built on the site where our friend King Prithvi Narayan fought two unsuccessful battles in his effort to take control of the Kathmandu valley before finally succeeding.

And, lucky travelers that we are, clouds lifted enough for us to get a good look at some of the Himalayan Mountains. Mt Dorje Lakpa was the main one we saw.

Dinner tonight was at the hotel where the rooftop restaurant had been converted into an Arabian Knights theme, complete with a chef brought in from Saudi Arabia.

Tomorrow we’re off to Chitwan for some safari action. Rebecca and Sammy’s flight into Doha was late so they won’t get to Kathmandu until 8:40 AM, hopefully in enough time to join us on the 20-minute flight to Chitwan.

I’ve booked a lot of flights in my day, but I’ve never messed one up as bad as I did our flight from Delhi to Kathmandu. I chose the wrong airline (Air India has first class and permits carry on luggage; Indigo doesn’t); I chose the wrong flight (I missed the 11 AM flight and went with the 1:30 PM instead); I didn’t get us the right seats (seats on the left get a better view of Kathmandu than the right); I missed a step in the on-line visa process and had to get us visa-on-arrival visas. I couldn’t even buy soda from a soda dispenser because it wouldn’t take a Visa card and I didn’t have exact change in rupees.

But you know what? We had a nice view of Kathmandu and the mountains. It only took a few minutes to get the visa and we waited no more than 10 minutes for our bags. And we’re hear, safe and sound.

Our main purpose for being in Kathmandu, you may recall, is to celebrate the one year anniversary of Matri, the company our son Jeff formed with his long-time friends Julie and Rob. We were met at the airport by Jeff, Julie, Julie’s husband Dino, her son Zach and Zach’s girlfriend Peyton. With Reagan, Judy and me, that makes eight in a commodious van.

The rest of the crowd arrived from the U.S. today, so they’re jet lagged. The three of us are too, having to adjust to the 15 minute time change from India to Nepal. But you can’t just crash upon arrival; you have to keep awake and active.

So, first stop: the Pashupatinath Temple complex, a few miles from the airport. It’s a sprawling complex of Hindu temples along the sacred Bagamati River. It’s considered the most sacred temple in all of Hinduism. It is also the site of a dozen or more cremation facilities. When someone dies, their loved ones, led by the eldest son, prepare the body for cremation. The body is placed on a pier at the edge of the Bagmati and covered with wood and burned. Hindus believe in reincarnation, so the ceremony marks another birth in the soul’s next life.

Next, our driver took us to the Bhouda Stupa, a Buddhist temple some say is the largest stupa in the world. People walk clockwise around the stupa to meditate and beseech help from above. There were a lot of people out on this pleasant (80 degree) evening. The sun was setting as we made our way around the stupa.

Buddhism, while not a religion in that it doesn’t have a god, per se, but is rather a way of living one’s life to remove the shackles and suffering of normal life. Hindu practitioners (and, in our experience, some U.S. Christians) mix the two together.

The inscription on our Bhouda Stupa ticket reads:

After visiting this holy Pashapati area, your soul, body and

Wealth have become more holy and sacred

May your footsteps always be forward towards human well being.

We had dinner at a pizza restaurant on the walk path around the stupa. Good pizza and quenched our hunger.

Imagine a dirt road, pothole-strewn, with five 18 wheelers, busses and a smattering of passenger cars and a few foolhardy motorcyclists contending for four lanes of highway. Mix in major construction sites every five miles and the occasional sacred cow meandering through the traffic and that’s the Jaipur-Delhi expressway we traveled today. Ten hours of bus travel with two stops, one being lunch at a roadside café.

The only notable sight today was what Jai calls “new New Delhi” – a neighborhood of one impressive modern high rise office or apartment complex after another. It’s a reminder that portions of India are decidedly first world. A stark contrast to dear old Pachewar that we left this morning.

So that’s it for this half of our trip. Tomorrow we fly at 1:30 PM to Kathmandu. Jeff and company will meet our flight and take us to Pashupatinath, the holiest Hindu pilgrimage site in Nepal – it’s a crematorium, as well as a temple.

If anything comes up at the Farewell Dinner, I’ll let you know tomorrow. I’m taking the rest of the night off!

It’s 3:30 in the afternoon and Judy is napping; I’m typing. Judy screams, sits upright in bed, and says “There’s something on my back!” Nightmare is, of course, my immediate guess but in 52 years of wedded bliss I’ve never heard her wake up screaming.

We’re In Pachewar, checked into our hotel and resting until 4:30 and the village walk. What to do? Chalk it up to imagination? Call someone? I’m alerted to motion on the floor to my left. It’s a mouse. Big mouse? Rat? Whatever, it’s a rodent.

I call Jai, our Chief Experience Officer, and ask him to deal with this experience. He shows up with three hotel employees, including a guy doing painting. Each armed with a broom or stick, and with evident glee, played a spirited game of whack-a-whatever. The mouse quickly succumbed, we moved rooms and all is well.

The hotel is a 300-year-old fort of the Fiefdom of Pachewar, complete with mud walls and a moat. It was presented to the present owner’s forefather in 1756 by the Maharaja of Jaipor in recognition for his service in a war. Back then, farmers, artisans and merchants payed taxes to the fiefdom, which in turn paid a portion to the maharaja. The maharaja paid the Emperor in Agra a portion and all was well. That worked until 1947 statehood when fiefdoms and maharajas loss the ability to tax. Now, it seems, running a hotel is the way to keep the family fort afloat.

The trip here from Jaipor was three hours and uneventful, passing through farming land punctuated by industrial operations, especially near cities. A $5 lunch was ready when we arrived.

The main event was an evening walk through the village, visiting shops and a business that presses rape seed to produce oil – what we would call canola oil The service is free if the customer leaves behind the solid material that has greater value when used as feed for cattle. They also grind wheat, including Millet, which is a common grain we’ve seen growing on many farms in this region of India. The most valuable part of cotton in the USA south are the seeds to produce cotton seed oil. Same deal.

There are a whole bunch of people in India, and judging by the number of kids following us around in this village of 10,000, a whole bunch more are on the way. We had a cooking demonstration over a wood-and-cow-dung fire by a woman outside her home.

The kids were lots of fun, willing to be photographed as were their parents and grandparents. In fact, everyone we met was very welcoming. The kids  didn’t beg but the one word of English they all knew was “present.” They weren’t obnoxious when we said “no.”

Tomorrow’s a long trip of nine hours back to Delhi. Then Sunday it’s off to Kathmandu for the second half of this adventure. Stay tuned!

We’re in Pachewar with a couple of hours before setting out on our walk about town, so here are some of the details I lost the other day concerning our trip to Jaipor.

1.    The Imperial Palace at Sikri

While Akbar, Emperor #3, built the palace at Sikri and founded the town of Sikri, his predecessors, Emperor #1 (Babur) and #2 (Humayun) came here to get away from the noise and population of Akra, a feeling with which we can sympathize. No honking tuk tuks back then but still. . .

Akbar was desperate for a male heir so the dynasty could continue. Girls didn’t count. A Hindu seer of some sort at Sikri foresaw the birth of his first son, the one who would later be killed by som #2. In celebration he had built a religious shrine upon the birth of his son to wife #3, his favorite. Two years later he commissioned the walled palace. He moved the entire Mughal imperial operation to Sitri, 20 miles or so west of Akra, which he abandoned as the imperial palace.

Some call him Akbar the Great. He was, for a Muslim, quite liberal in his outlook. He expanded and consolidated control of the various Mughal domains on the subcontinent. He tolerated other religions and even went so far as to marry a Hindu and a Christian. He had a dozen or more wives and a passel of consorts. Some of the wives he took as diplomatic moves to bring loyalty to fiefdoms and kingdoms to the Mughal empire. He even created his own religion in a move to unify religion across the disparate regions of the empire.

After 14 years, he moved the imperial headquarters back to Akra. Poor water supply is the excuse. Some say he simply tired of Sitri. The palace was deserted and grew over in a jungle of vegetation. The Brits unearthed it in the 19th century.

2.    The Stepwell at Chand Bahri

This one had us all stumped until Jai filled us in. As you can see in the pictures, a stepwell is a square hole in the ground, 100 feet or so on a side, that tapers inward 13 stories down to form an inverted pyramid. At the bottom is a pool of water fed from underground artesian springs. Three sides of the hole are made up of sandstone blocks that form stairs leading to the bottom.

The fourth side, to the north, has several levels of rooms that are the royal bathing chambers: boys on the left, girls on the right. Water was lifted up on ropes and buckets. Commoners had to climb down and up the stairs to get water.

Jai said he has climbed the stairs many times back when it was allowed. Reagan said she’d do it, but I would die a thousand deaths watching her. I’d die only one death if I tried it.

This stepwell is the largest in India and was constructed by the Hindus in the 9th century. A Hindu temple was built later next door. The Muslims arrived and tore down the temple. They oppose any form of idolatry and images. They did, however need water in this arid part of the country so they left the well intact. They also defaced the carved decorative images on pillars and whatnot.

3.    Anoothi

Anoothi is an organization that trains disadvantaged women in the traditional arts of making Indian textile products. They taught us how block printing is done to create patterns on fabric that can be made into table cloths, napkins, dresses, bags, t-shirts and do-dads – we bought one of each.

Women who come here in some cases are living in poverty or abusive relationships. Others, however, are escaping traditional roles in farming communities. We had a discussion with the women of Anoothi about life as a farm wife. “Women work harder than men,” one said. “Oh boy, here we go again. I’ve heard this one back home,” thought I to myself. But they went on to say that farm women not only cook, clean house and tend kids daily but they also tend the crops.

Men, you see, are only involved in farming at the time of planting and the time of harvest. The rest of the time they sit at a coffee shop smoking and talking with their friends. In fact, we’ve seen many such establishments, outdoor snack bars, with a half dozen men sitting around in the middle of the day. Some of that is due to unemployment, Jai confirmed, but some of them are idle farmers.

I’m not sure how well it translated to Hindi, but I recited my Grandfather Libby’s saying, “One thing every farmer should know: never plant more than your wife can hoe.” I will say that my grandfather was a gentleman farmer. I never saw my grandmother lift her hand to pull a weed.

4.    Not much to say about the roof top dinner except to say the temperature was mild, the moon full, bugs absent, the food good and the company quite pleasant. We’re starting to get the hang of ordering Indian restaurant food without pulling the fire alarm.

 

That’s it, then. My first version, being fresher in my mind, was better but this will have to do.