Last Days In Katmandu

Day Four & 5 In Nepal .......

The climate here is quite dry and sunny during most of the day so it's been quite easy to cruise around the city by foot only employing taxis when we know the walk is a long one through congested and smoggy main streets of this Nepali capital.

Once the insanity of Holi passed - oh and it seems that one of the things I left out about Holi is that it's not just about the tossing of water it's also about the hucking of handfuls of colored pigment on everyone in your immediate proximity - we started to take in Kathmandu to the full extent.

Daqy before yesterday we took a taxi to Patan, one of the three cities in Kathmandu. Patan's Durbar Square is packed with temples and they serve as excellent examples of Newari architecture. Like Kathmandu's Durbar Square it was also filled fruit, vegetable, grain, clothing, and souvenir vendors all trying to sway you into coughing up rupees for their particular product. But the atmosphere in Patan is much more mellow than in Kathmandu. The more relaxed environment allowed us the opportunity to chill out and really take in the place.

The temples resemble pagodas you might see in other parts of Asia but they are dark in color which to my eye sets them apart from structures seen elsewhere.

Yesterday after shopping like there was no tomorrow we made it over to Baktapur - this the last little city in Kathmandu we'd left to visit. Baktapur lays southeast of Kathmandu and the taxi ride to and from was probably the most interesting part of the trip. The journey really is the destination as is said.

This particular journey took us outside the metropolitan Kathmandu and in through more mixed neighborhoods where you could see crop fields and some livestock here and there. Buildings were in varied states - some being raised and some falling down. People sat outside in the dirty and dusty sometimes unpaved streets selling produce, giving haircuts or just mulling around their motorcycles. Have I mentioned the vast number of motorcycles in this city? It's insane.

This morning I find myself still in the midst of processing what I've experienced during this trip seeing as how we leave for Bangkok in a few hours and this will be the first leg of the journey home.

I didn't have a lot of expectations except that it would be something very different from most of the other traveling I've done. And to some extent that is/was true. Traveling is still traveling - it's about being foreign and how you choose to work with that, what you choose to focus on and what comes up for you in the process.

During the course of our time away I've had the strangest dreams; many latent and old fears have come to life. Early on I was annoyed; here I was on vacation, relaxing and all this ancient crud decided to make its way to the surface of my subconscious mind. After the 2nd night of this I just decided to embrace it hoping that in there somewhere would be good information for me to work with. There's a sentiment in Buddhism - open the doors and let everything in - because what you resist will persist. Maybe that too is what traveling is all about - not resisting what is different or foreign to you - but letting it in and embracing the knowledge of whatever shows up.

Pics will be posted as soon as I can get somewhere to dump all the data from my camera.

Namaste!