April 14, 2019

After our NY eve dinner at the Mystic Mountain hotel, we had the NY day brunch before Sagar and Zyanu picked us up for the day.   Here is the menu for the dinner last night.

The lobby was decorated for New Year.

We didn’t see a sunset or a sunrise because of the cloud cover, but we did get glimpses of the Himalayas when the clouds momentarily cleared.

Here are some shots of the hotel and some of the views. Beautiful place.

And I realized that I never posted a picture of Zyanu.

The plan for the day was to go trekking. We left the hotel close to 10 AM.  Sagar is a trekking guide, a mountain guide and a city guide and is certified in all of them.  He came equipped with trekking poles for us as we were doing a 7 K trek on a pretty rocky road downhill from the beautiful hotel.  Zyanu was going to be somewhere behind us in case we got tired part way through.  The dirt road had some traffic but not too bad, buses, cars and motorbikes were all traveling on the same road, and there were other people walking as well.  It took us through farmland on magnificent terraces.  All of the planting and harvesting is done by hand of course, these are hard working people.  Sagar says they start the children very young in having them carry large loads and building up their stamina to the extreme.  This is why the people from this area make great Gorka soldiers.

This is what the road and the terraces look like. There were markers at every kilometer. The photos don’t really show how immense and beautiful the terraces are.

Of course we spotted lots of animals on our way.  I loved this friendly goat.

So did Sagar.

And he wanted to follow Norm!

Many of the houses are plastered with cow dung on the outside.  This keeps the flies out of the house!

We did see the marijuana plants on the side of the road.

Beer bottles are turned in for 5 rupees each, we saw several piles of them.

This is a house with a corn drying kind of tree like structure next to it. They then grind the corn to make a roti bread.

We finished the trek by about noon and headed back to Kathmandu.  Lots of traffic again with people standing in the back of trucks and on the tops of buses.  This is apparently not allowed in Kathmandu city but in the outer areas you see it all the time. The buses are packed with people. And with the holiday today, the amusement park was busy and there were many people walking too.

And, of course, there were the cows in the road. This one had the traffic policeman lead him off.

You see families of 4 on motorbikes, and Norm was able to capture this picture of the dog.

We had the rest of the afternoon free, and I had booked a spa appointment – they had a “wonderful woman” special – scrub, massage, facial and steam and sauna.  I was indulged for over 2 hours and the cost with tax and tip was only $93.  Wonderful way to spend the afternoon.  Norm went to the pool until a small rain shower when he returned to the room.

Everyone is so friendly here.  The greeting is Namaste, and today people wished US a happy new year!

Sagar gave us the name of a restaurant nearby for dinner.  It is overlooking the Boudha Stupa.  We walked there, back roads that were very muddy and slippery, but an adventure for sure.  This area is on our schedule for a visit with Sagar tomorrow, so we just walked around the square and then went to the restaurant.

The walk back in the dark was interesting, should have brought the flashlight they provide in the room with us!

Tomorrow we will see some more sights in Kathmandu, including this temple.