Patan

I promise to blog about the trek soon but first I wanted to let everyone know about where we are staying in Kathmandu.  For those who don’t know, I have a good friend from college who has been living in Nepal for the past 15 years.  She lives in Patan, which is technically just outside of Kathmandu to the south.  It use to be it’s own kingdom, but now it is inside of Ring Road, which circles the outside of Kathmandu.  We are staying close to her – which has been awesome and convenient.  Great to be able to see her (for instance, we ran into her last night on our way to pizza) and she has stored our extra stuff when we are out trekking.

Today was our first day of really getting a chance to explore the city.  We have been wanting to go to Dubar Square (Dubar is the name of where the king lived – so there are Dubar Squares in Patan and Kathmandu and probably elsewhere!) for awhile, but each time we were here we were too busy getting ready for trekking.  So today was the day!  After an amazing breakfast of coffee, fresh fruit, pancakes with cream and syrup (eventually our metabolisms will slow down and that will not be a wise idea….), we found Dubar square.

It took us some time to figure it all out – but since right now is festival time (Dasain – which is Nepal’s biggest festival – meaning that most people are out visiting family and many shops are closed, restaurants that are open (which aren’t many) have limited menus, and life is pretty quiet here in the city) it was much more mellow trying to get around by foot.  Normally, it is slightly scary — bikes, motos, buses, taxis and pedestrians are all headed towards us and there is honking constantly.  Not that it was silent today, but not quite as overwhelming!!!

As with all older cities (meaning older than what we have in the US) – I am amazed with the history that you find around any given corner.  Today was no different.  Yes, we were walking in the historical part of town, but the shrines – both Buddhist and Hindu – were beautiful.

But it is pretty interesting about how Buddhism and Hinduism in this area have some shared beliefs and shared icons.

Then, we found Dubar Square and wandered around there with all the other tourists for awhile.  I checked out the museum, which had some great displays explaining the differences between the Buddhist and Hindu gods and goddesses.

Following that adventure, we headed back to our guesthouse — well after a visit to the grocery store for some peanut butter, chocolate and cookies!  As I mentioned, our metabolism is still quite high….  it is good to feed just about every two hours!  But, it won’t be long before that changes…..  though with restaurants closed it is tough to be eating out all the time.

Katherine leaves on the 13th so we are planning to head out and sight see as much as possible the next few days.  As for me…. on the 14th….. who knows….

I promise to get trekking pictures up soon — it just takes forever to load the pictures but I promise that will be next!

take care –keep the comments coming!

love – AK