Kathmandu 101

I arrived in Kathmandu yesterday late afternoon, and spent the day on an introduction to the capital of Nepal. I don’t have a lot to share yet, but here is a little about what I’ve done so far.

Getting here

Actually, getting to Kathmandu was one of the bigger adventures of this trip so far. We had to fly from Paro, Bhutan, but on Tuesdays there is no direct flight. So we had to fly to Delhi first (on Drukair, the national airline of Bhutan), and then from Delhi to Kathmandu on Air India.

We had three hours in Delhi for our connection, which should have been fine. But because we were on two different airlines and two different tickets, we had to go through immigration to enter India, pick up our luggage, proceed through customs, then check in for our Air India flight, go through exit migration, go through security, and get to our gate. Still, three hours should have been enough.

Except…

Except our flight out of Paro was delayed almost a full hour.

By the time we got to the Air India counter, it was just about 90 minutes before our flight was scheduled to depart. When I checked in, the agent asked me why I was so late. I explained, and after she issued my boarding pass, she urged me to hurry.

I left the rest of the group behind to hurry. If you know me, you know I’m not a relaxed airport person. I prefer to get to the airport early and not have to rush. So I was kind of anxious. And first I got in the wrong security line, for domestic flights. so I had to switch to the international line, which was passport control first, then security.

I went to the Business Class security line. The guard there looked at my boarding pass and said something about not being in Business Class. I told him my flight was very soon, and he let me through.

It didn’t help that our gate was the farthest one, at the end of the concourse. But I got there about a half hour before the scheduled departure time.

I asked the gate agent if they were going to close the doors soon, because I had others in my group who were behind me. He let me come around and check his monitor, and I told him which names were still coming. He assured me that there was time.

And they all made it.

And we all got to Kathmandu on schedule.

Arriving

Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu does something very strange with arrivals. I followed signs to baggage claim, and I came to a long queue. Why was there a queue to get to baggage claim?

It turns out they x‑ray every piece of carry-on baggage and every passenger before you can get to baggage claim. Why?

After our group got our bags, we went through customs, and they didn’t x‑ray our bags then. Can someone explain the logic of this?

Our trip leader, Raz, was waiting for us at the exit, and we were on our way, finally, to our hotel. There we met the four additional people on our tour who didn’t come to Bhutan with us, and we all went to dinner.

Oh, I forgot to mention: I had some great views on both flights.

I also forgot to mention: Paro Airport, which (I already decided when we arrived there) is the world’s most beautiful airport, has an art gallery in the waiting area. I added some photos of my favorite paintings to my Bhutan photo album.

Boudhanath Stupa

We started our day after breakfast with a welcome briefing. I got my OAT pin — #11, since this is my eleventh trip with OAT.

Then we headed out to visit Bhoudanath Stupa (photo at the top of the page). Here’s what Lonely Planet says about it:

The first stupa at Boudhanath was built sometime after AD 600, when the Tibetan king, Songtsen Gampo, converted to Buddhism. In terms of grace and purity of line, no other stupa in Nepal comes close to Boudhanath. From its whitewashed dome to its gilded tower painted with the all-seeing eyes of the Buddha, the monument is perfectly proportioned. Join the Tibetan pilgrims on their morning and evening koras (circumambulations) for the best atmosphere.

According to legend, the king constructed the stupa as an act of penance after unwittingly killing his father. The first stupa was wrecked by Mughal invaders in the 14th century, so the current stupa is a more recent construction.

The highly symbolic construction serves in essence as a three-dimensional reminder of the Buddha’s path towards enlightenment. The plinth represents earth, the kumbha (dome) is water, the harmika (square tower) is fire, the spire is air and the umbrella at the top is the void or ether beyond space. The 13 levels of the spire represent the stages that a human being must pass through to achieve nirvana.

Stupas were originally built to house holy relics and some claim that Boudhanath contains the relics of the past Buddha, Kashyapa, while others say it contains a piece of bone from the skeleton of Siddhartha Gautama, the historical Buddha. Around the base of the stupa are 108 small images of the Dhyani Buddha Amitabha (108 is an auspicious number in Tibet

an culture) and a ring of prayer wheels, set in groups of four or five into 147 niches.

Lonely Planet

We joined the Tibetan pilgrims on their koras (clockwise circumambulations) and enjoyed shopping in the many gift shops selling miniature prayer wheels and singing bowls.

Khenpo

But first we had a great opportunity to meet a Khenpo, the title given to a lama or an abbot. The word Khenpo means “one who gives the monks vows.”

This was the most down-to-earth Buddhist monk I’ve ever met (and in southeast Asia last year I met quite a few, not to mention the nun and the monk we met in Bhutan). He talked about posture and breathing and meditation. And he talked about letting go of anger. I loved what he said about this. You can write your anger on a stone, and it will last forever. Or you can write it on sand, and it will last maybe a month. Or you can write it on water.

Sherpa

Back at our hotel in the afternoon, we met Maya Sherpa. Sherpa, we learned, is not a name for a guide. It is a name of a family or a community.

Maya Sherpa has climbed Mount Everest three times. She’s also climbed K2, Kilimanjaro, and many other peaks over 8,000 meters. She shared with us about her experience climbing, and answered our many questions. It was fascinating and enlightening and awe-striking.

So first off, it takes about two months to complete a climb of Mount Everest. And it costs about 75,000 US dollars. The permit from the government of Nepal is $15,000. About 400 people do it each year, and there’s only a two-week window (the last two weeks of May) when it is possible to reach the summit.

Climbers spend a lot of time at Base Camp. There are four camps (C1, C2, C3, and C4) along the climb. It takes a day to get to each camp.

But you don’t just go up to each camp. You go to C1, spend the night, then return to Base Camp. You do this several times. Then you go to C2 and back to Base Camp several times. That involves spending two nights, first at C1 and then at C2. Then you do the same things with C3. By the time you’re ready to summit, you’ve spent a week to get to Base Camp and then four or five weeks to do all the training on the side of the mountain.

When you’re ready to summit, you first go to C1 and spend the night. Next day you go to C2. Third day you go to C3. Fourth day you go to C4, but you don’t spend the night. You rest a few hours and then head for the summit in the middle of the night in the dark. If you arrive before it gets light, you can’t sit around waiting, or you’ll get frostbite. Then it takes two days to get back to Base Camp.

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There’ll be a lot more from Nepal over the next two weeks. Tomorrow’s our last day in Kathmandu before we head to other parts of the country.

By the way, Kathmandu has a population of about 4 million. I was not prepared for this. I imagined a sleepy mountain town. Maybe we’ll get to one elsewhere in the next couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, I’ve posted my first set of photos from Kathmandu in my Nepal photo album. I’ll be adding more to the album as I keep going.