The Time Paul Shat His Pants, Momo and Other Tales From Nepal

Living in Saudi Arabia will test even the most patient and open-minded of world travelers.  Living in Saudi Arabia during Ramadan, with a war going on less than an hour away, and during a recent tragedy will drive you nearly insane.

Paul was lucky enough to get a few days off for Eid, the celebration of breaking the fast at the end of Ramadan and so we looked on skyscanner for the cheapest flight to get us out of the middle-east.  To our delight, one of the most affordable locations was Kathmandu, Nepal.  A few days later, strapped with our trusty REI backpacks, we left Saudi Arabia, stressed and emotionally defeated and in much need of some spiritual and cultural love.

The flight from Dubai to Kathmandu is only 4 hours and it was a welcome relief to actually get to sit in my assigned seat and not have the person next to me standing up and making me move during the plane's landing so that he can use the toilet for the umpteenth time. There are stereotypes and there are facts.  It is a fact that many people in the middle-east have no regard for assigned seating, lines, or safety-rules.

To our great dismay, the flight attendant skipped us during the alcohol purchase portion of the flight.  Living in a "dry" country, we just want to exercise our freedom and have an alcoholic beverage (that will not potentially blind us from drinking it) from time to time.  On this flight, the first thing we both did after we buckled in was take out the on-flight food and beverage menu and decide what we would both order.  I was going to have the sparkling rose and Paul was going to purchase the Jack Daniels, coke, and peanut package.  But, sadly, the cart just passed us by and even as we waved our funny looking foreign currency desperately in the air and pushed the attendant button with much determination, the FlyDubai flight attendant just kept going father and farther away until that magic cart and our dreams were lost somewhere beyond row 25.

After a very exciting landing into Kathmandu valley, purchasing our tourist visas from a fun machine, and breezing past customs we exited the airport to begin our adventure.  We grabbed a taxi, agreed upon a price which was probably around 3 times what we should have paid, and headed to our first hotel, Hotel Tibet International. Driving in Kathmandu is best described as organized chaos.  Small Suzuki taxi cabs with dented sides and missing lights, weave in and out of pedestrians, scooters, dogs and cows while honking constantly.   It was night when we arrived, but even in the darkness we could see the after effects of the earthquake in this city.   Foreign-aid tents built to help the families who were displaced after the earthquake lined the streets and fill the open fields. Groups of monkeys huddled together on the street corners eating trash and the sidewalks and streets are full of people walking, selling items, and begging.  However, even in its desperation there is still a feeling of peace and hope in Nepal.

We were greeted kindly by the hotel workers and given a welcome beverage of hot tea and a cold wet cloth to refresh ourselves with.  Hotel Tibet International is right next to Boudhanath a very famous buddhist stupa in Nepal. From our hotel roof you could see the top of the stupa and colorful prayer flags in every direction dancing in the wind.  The city of Kathmandu is massive and engulfs the entire valley, but among the edges of it are beautiful green mountains as far as the eye can see.  Our room was a suite with a separate sitting area and small kitchen, and a large bedroom with a fluffy king sized bed.  Although, our hotel was not in the center of the action, Thamel, I would recommend it to anyone staying in Kathmandu.  It is decorated in Tibetan style, it is very nice and clean, the hotel staff go above and beyond to make your stay perfect, and the food in the restaurant is good and decently priced. The first night we ate dinner in the hotel restaurant where I experienced my first momo, a delicious nepali dumpling that would be pretty much all I ate for the next three days.  We also ate some sort of yak meat pie which was also tasty.  We ended the night early by having a drink at the Yak bar in the hotel and then fell asleep like geriatrics before 11pm.

The next morning after having a lovely breakfast on the roof top terrace of the hotel and finding a pharmacy  for the stomach problems that accompany me to any developing world I visit, we headed off to Durbar Square in Thamel to check out the ancient buildings and the infamous Freak Street.   Foreigners pay to enter Durbar Square (and any other UNESCO heritage sites in Nepal).  The fees are around $2-$10 depending where you go.  Once we bought our tickets, we were approached by an "official tour guide" who showed us his badge and asked if we would like to pay for his services.  His services were around $20 and it was completely worth the cost.  He walked us around to each of the sites explaining the significance. Many of the sites he had to show us in a pamphlet as now they were just remains of sites as the earthquake destroyed much of the sacred and historical buildings in Kathmandu.  My favorite part of this tour was going to the Kumari's castle.  Kumari is the living goddess in Nepal.  She is a child who is the manifestation of devi or the divine female energy.  As soon as the Kumari reaches puberty than she is no longer the living goddess and a new one is selected. I was intrigued by this and bombarded our poor guide with questions about how she is chosen, what she does all day and what she wears.   We were also taken to a mandala shop where we learned all about the art and tradition of mandala and, to my surprise, Paul bought a large one made by one of the masters.  He would soon forget it in the Gecko bar an hour or so later and we would return back to it via rickshaw to find that the owner had kept it safe for him, because that is how people are in Nepal--kind and good.


After another 20 minute cab ride back to our hotel, we cleaned up, and then went back again to Thamel to go get some dinner and drinks.  It was raining on our return and our taxi driver didn't know where he was going, so our ride was a bit scarier than normal.  This will be common in Kathmandu.  The taxi drivers will say they know the location you refer to, but they really don't, so it is always good to have the phone number and a map of your destination.

We went to the Everest Irish Pub where I ate more momo and there was not a single Irish person or westerner in sight.  The bartender let Paul plug in his phone to play music in the bar and we met a very friendly trekking guide named Happy who explained to us the difficulty right now for Nepali people to make a living because tourism is so sparse after the earthquake and it is not trekking season.  We left to find another more lively place to hang out. It was pouring when we left and the streets were flooding, so we took shelter in the first bar we saw.  This building ended up being five flights of small loud crowded bars.  The first was too loud and the second was too crowded. By the time we reached the top, we had just given up on looking anywhere else and decided that even though this place was more crowded than all the others we would give it a try.  As soon as we ordered our beers and tried to hide in a corner, we realized our mistake.  We had gone to an Aussie bar.

Take your worst behaved American red-neck,  put them in some tight board shorts and a plaid shirt, add fifteen beers and a Crocodile Dundee accent and you have an Aussie on holiday.  These Aussies were a bit different though--feral and drunk as usual, but nearly polite.  Neither Paul or I got into a broken beer bottle fight or had a cigarette put out on our arm, so it may be time for us to rethink our opinion of the down-underners.  After a few attempts to talk to the Aussies and to have them either pass out near us, ask us if they should jump off the balcony, or watch them awkwardly as they sit in a chair and cry while wearing a princess crown, two ladies walked in the bar and sat near us.  We started a conversation with them and 10 minutes later we had two new best friends for life.  These two travelers were British, lived in Dubai, and like us had sought a place with some soul for Eid.  After the Aussie bar shut and kicked us out, we as a group went to the only bar we could find open called OMG, a place I would never go to unless I have had a good lubrication of drinks before.  Here we stayed until 3AM, acted silly, took weird selfies and promised to meet up again before the trip was over.

The next day was rough.  The problem with being in your mid-thirties is that your body does not bounce back from a night out on town like it did when you were in your twenties. We also needed to check-out of our hotel by noon and we wouldn't be able to check-in to the new hotel until 3.  I was feeling quite alright, probably because I had consumed 5 orders of momo the day before.  Paul on the other-hand was a strange shade of green and the motion of the elevator was enough to make him have to go wait outside, dry-heaving, while I checked out of our hotel.   We still had not been to the famous buddhist stupa right next to our hotel and we had a few hours to kill, so we headed that way.  Around the stupa are many shops to buy prayer flags, prayer beads, singing bowls, and any other touristy thing you may want.  We went to the Buddha Stupa Restaurant where I had some more momo and we had a great view of the stupa and all the action in the square.  After doing some souvenir shopping for friends, we grabbed our bags, were given a khata by the hotel staff, a Tibetan tradition, and we braved our next taxi to Hotel Shambala.

Hotel Shambala was nice and new and had a roof top infinity pool overlooking the city, but in hindsight we would have rather stayed at Hotel Tibet International or stayed at Kathmandu Guest House in the center of Thamel as we were constantly going back and forth.  We tried to find a restaurant for dinner but the streets were dark and we couldn't find anything open so we had to eat at the hotel restaurant, which was pretty blah and very overpriced.  We went to bed early this night as we were still worn out from the night before and the next morning we had scheduled a half day hike from Nagarkot to Changu Narayan.

The next morning we woke up at 6:45AM, got dressed for our hike, and headed down stairs to have breakfast and meet our guide. Our guide picked us up and we drove around an hour to a lookout above Nagarkot.  In theory, we were to see the Himalayas, but it was cloudy so we couldn't see them. We started our 20KM walk to Changu Narayan.  We walked through villages mainly on pedestrian paths made with rocks.  There were goats, chickens, cows, puppies, children, and barefoot old women along the way and everyone greeted us politely with hands clasped saying "namaste".  The majority of the walk was down-hill, except for the small mountain we had to climb.  Our guide was quick and we never stopped and took a break  I was walking too slow for the guide and Paul, but I wanted to enjoy the scenery and not just stare at the ground in order to walk and not fall on the uneven terrain.  It took us nearly 3 hours to get to the temple at Changu Narayan.  When we did arrive, what we found was a village destroyed, people desperate for tourists to support their economy, and the temple was closed.

 

Our guide then took us to Bhaktapur to look at more temples and get lunch.  By this time we were pretty tired from our power-walk down the mountain and there are just so many temples one can see in a day.  I was able to try Nepali Dhal Bat which was comforting after a morning of physical excursion and we ran into some Americans we had met at the airport which was a strange coincidence.  After another hour drive back where there was a traffic jam due to a cow refusing to get out of the street, we spent the rest of the afternoon in the infinity pool and then took a taxi back to Thamel for some amazing pizza at Fire and Ice Pizza.

Our final day in Kathmandu began by going to the Monkey Temple where we climbed many stairs and watched dozens of monkeys play.  In the early afternoon we met our British friends back in Thamel for the best momo of the trip. Sadly, I cannot remember the name of the restaurant.  We three girls shared three different types momo and Paul made the mistake of being different and ordered some questionable looking pork chow mein which would prove later to be the biggest mistake of the trip.   After lunch, we went and hung out with our new friends at Electric Pagoda, a very cool outdoor hookah bar.  I had a fruity drink called a Yak Attack and we shared a hookah and played games with our friends' kama sutra cards, giggling like teenagers as we made fun of the poses and body parts on them.

At some point at the Electric Pagoda Paul excused himself for quite some time.  When he returned he had a crazed look in his eyes as if something traumatic had happened.  We were running late to get back to our hotel to grab our bags in order to get to the airport on time. We quickly said goodbye to our friends who we would see a bit later as they were on the same flight as us back to Dubai.  It was raining and we were having a difficult time getting a cab in the narrow alley streets of Thamel.  Once we reached our hotel, we got our bags and went back outside in the rain to get another taxi to go to the airport.  I put my backpack in the taxi and reached for Paul's to pull it into the tiny clown sized car.  All of a sudden Paul looked at me and said, "Emergency" and ran back inside the hotel while the taxi driver and I sat in the taxi completely perplexed.  A few minutes later Paul returned to the taxi wearing basketball shorts and obviously no underpants.  He sat down in the taxi, looked at me suspiciously and said, "I have a story to tell you".

I will save you the completely graphic details that Paul shared with me, but from his horrific and hilarious recounting of the events leading up to the taxi incident, I would recommend the following when traveling abroad:
 1.  Never eat something that looks a bit off
 2.  Always carry toilet paper
 3.  Do not trust a fart if your stomach is feeling weird
 4.  Pack your underwear on the top of your bag and not the bottom, so if you do have to change your pants, you do not have to free-ball it in basketball shorts all the way to Dubai.

Even with the dramatic events that happened at the end of the trip, I would say that this trip was nearly perfect and the ending was so funny that it made it just that much better.