Kathmandu and its Glory

Today, we spent the first half of the day touring the temples of Kathmandu. There are lots. The Hindus here are quiet devout (or at least seemed so). There are temples and shrines scattered throughout the city and so they pray on their way to work or school or wherever they are going. It's nice to see people incorporating religion into their everyday routines. I only wish I were more educated about Hindu rituals and customs because it all looks so foreign to me. The larger temples are hot spots for young people. We climbed to the top of one and found that many friends meet up to chat or have a cigarrette at the top of a temple. "Hey, I need to talk to you so meet me at the top of Ganesh Temple at 8:30 tomorrow morning," I can imagine them saying. Kind of like us and Starbucks....

Afterwards, we went up to Sambuh...(can't remember the whole name) aka Monkey Temple just right outside of Kathmandu. It was a 365 step climb up...it almost killed us. There are merchants, beggars and young couples on dates along the ascent...and monkeys of course! This temple (it was HUGE) was Buddhist. I'm still a bit confused on the relationship Hindus and Buddhists have here. For example, our hotel's reception area has pictures of Krishna and other Hindu gods and goddesses but also a photograph of the Dalai Lama and Buddha statues. In the Buddhist temple today, Hindu figurines were sold and there were lots of Hindus there (you could tell by how they looked).

Anyways, after the temple extravaganza, we came back to the hotel to rest our feet for a bit before shopping the rest of the afternoon. :) :) :) :) :) :)

On our way back to the hotel, we bumped into two other ladies from our hotel that were headed to dinner. We decided to join them and we dined at OR2K, an Israeli vegetarian totally hip rooftop restaurant. It was clearly were all the "hip" people in Nepal go....you could tell by their hairstyles, their fashion, their confidence. We sat on the cushioned floor (we left our shoes outside of course), ate pizza, listened to music from around the world, and discussed our travel stories. Afterwards, to celebrate Joanna's birthday, we headed to Helena's for cake on another rooftop cafe. There, we learned a lot about the condition of Tibet and China from our friends who had traveled there recently. No more discussion about that online..

Alas we are back in happy Hotel Ganesh Himal. :) We are planning on leaving Kathmandu tomorrow early to explore some of the sites in the surrounding valley.

nameste!