Having walked 4km out of Kathmandu to Patan where we paid an entry fee to it's Durbar Square which didn't actually have an entrance and confused us, but was a nice chilled out little village to walk around after the, now chaos (from the running traffic) of Kathmandu; Also having visited the Swayambhunath stupa on top of a hill looking over the whole of the Kathmandu Valley full of Tibetan refugees and monkeys, we thought this was impressive until, we caught a local bus from Thamel to Bouddha (after hearing the guy hanging out of the bus shout something that sounded a bit like Bouddha, we put our arm up and quickly jumped onboard.) After about half an hour, we were still on the bus, and we started to wonder whether we were actually heading the right way!! a few minutes later the guy (he had a rats tail!!...yess, the rave in Nepal) told Sarah this was our stop so off we got...50p for both of us...can't be bad!...Bouddha wasn't a very big village, all based around the massive stupa in the middle, 43m high and 1Hectare in width (Sarah quoting the free booklet we got on entrance,which she now informs me she has read twice as she was ill. She had been up all night being sick in all fairness and I did kind of drag her there...I confess :-p).
Bouddha was in the centre of a Tibetan community in a round courtyard full of nik-nak shops (not the crisps...if only)...selling all tibetan handicrafts and tibetan prayer flags hung everywhere, where ever they could hang them, they were there!
After visiting this we felt we were ready to move on from Kathmandu and move on to Pokhara before the strikes, knowing our luck started again and we would be stranded in Kathmandu.
The 7 hour bus journey was truly spectacular! (I don't like to use this word often but I feel it is appropriate when describing it) sprialling up and down the mountains as we leave the Kathmandu Valley, following the river, where the locals had built rope bridges across the river to get to the otherside, rice paddies all layered down the side of the mountains, all their houses made of any materials they could find, with massive rocks on top of the roof preventing the roof panels from sliding off. Loads of cafes and shops on the side of the road, literally on the edge of a cliff but somehow they were sturdy!..One side of us was a 500m drop off a cliff face into the white water in the river, and the other side was a huge rock face of the mountain. The mountains went on forever and the landscape was amazing!
Although this was all specatacular!....the ride itself wasn't....the bus was a bit rickety..the brakes sounded like they had given up on the first corner! our driver was overtaking everything and anything on these tiny roads with hairpin bends every 2 minutes!...half the time the road was only wide enough for 1 vehicle so we had to wait for lorries to come past before we could carry on...We were both wanting to sleep but scared we may miss something!
After our scenic bus ride we were greeted or if it happened in England it would be referred to as 'mobbed' by atleast 6 taxi drivers...one putting on a dreadful and painful Australian accent, surrounding us trying to get us to go to their special guesthouse...This went in our favour as we could pick and choose, name our price and if they couldn't do it, we had 5+ more backup options! luckily the guy with the bad Aussie accent had stopped it by now and agreed to our price...he even promised it to us there and then!...£3 a night! HOT WATER SHOWER!! and now I can officially say it has been the best! we feel like we are living like royalty...our bargaining has now reached a new level!...we are experienced!!haha
The only downfall is we aren't allowed to tell anybody the price we are paying! not even other travellers, people in the hotel...staff or guests!....he told us it was his guesthouse but we are still yet to see him again since!
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