Kathmandu is definitely one of the stops on our trip that we have been most looking forward to. My mental images of the city were basically an amazing combination of magic, martial arts (I watch too many superhero movies), and monks. When we arrived and saw the city through the window of the taxi cab, I didn’t necessarily see any magic, but it certainly did seem like a pretty amazing city.
 
Our hotel was located in the tourist part of the city, Thamel. It is very obvious that tourists are meant to stay here, as almost all of the hotels and western restaurants seem to be located in the ~5 block radius that it consists of. We spent the first afternoon wandering the streets in this area and walking to Durbar Square – a UNESCO heritage site and the location of the old city palace. We were blown away by the architecture and temples, and were glad to see a lot of it still in place after the damaging earthquakes in 2015.

The second day we spent hiking up to the Swayambhunath Temple, which is a Buddhist and Hindu holy site overlooking the entire city. The view was incredible and we really were starting to feel like the city had some magic to it.

That evening we had a Nepalese cooking class, which ended up being more of an in-home culture learning experience than a cooking class. Hillary and I were able to share a dinner with two local girls around our age, and cooked some traditional appetizers as their mother prepared a large dinner for all of us. It was an amazing opportunity to hear about life in Nepal and their culture.

The third day started off with quite the bang, as we woke up at 5:30am to get on a plane and circle Mt. Everest as the sun rose over the horizon. Speechless cannot even begin to describe how I felt gazing at the Himalayas and seeing Everest towering miles away from us (it also gave a strangely calming sense of insignificance). We were even able to go one at a time into the cockpit and get a view from the pilots’ perspective. Overall, it was probably the best start to a day I’ve ever had.

Unfortunately, after the first 2.5 days, things began to take a turn as the ‘magic’ wore off. We decided to venture outside of the tourist parts of town that afternoon, and arrived at the Pashupatinath Temple. As another UNESCO heritage site, and the most holy Hindu temple in Nepal, we expected it to be another place with tourists and welcoming locals. Unfortunately, that was not the case. After purchasing tickets at the booth outside the temple, we were given a very difficult time at the entrance by two local policemen. We were then more or less harassed by a ‘tour guide’ for 15 minutes, who was trying to get us to give him the tickets that almost just got us arrested, and then were consistently given dirty looks by groups of local men as we walked around the site. It made Hillary incredible uncomfortable and put me in a very combative and irritated mood. We decided not to linger too long, and went back to our hotel for a few beers and dinner to cool off.

Day 4 did not turn out to be an improvement, as we both woke up incredibly sick with food poisoning. We had to spend the entire day in the hotel room trying to recover, and both felt rather unpleasant the whole time.
 
Overall, I thought Kathmandu had some amazing things to offer and was unlike any city I have ever visited, but I also left with a bit of a bad taste in my mouth after the experience at the temple. That being said, I’m glad we made it a stop on our trip and the Everest experience made it more than worth the hard time that afternoon.
 
Time to head to Thailand!