First experience of Kathmandu and Traveller's Diahorrea

Written by Amanda Hudy - GapBreak 2009 Nepal

Things have been interesting over here. Yesterday for example, I came down with a bout of Traveller's Diahorrea, which I suspect I picked up from this cafe we ate dinner at on Friday night. Now the food at this cafe was delicious, but it took them more than an hour to give us our meals - I believe this was because of all the variety we ordered. I ordered a Tibetan dish called Thenduk which is basically a vegetarian soup with flat pasta pieces and spices - really good, but ultimately deadly. For those who don't know, TD involves the obvious as well as belching, cause your stomach is making all this gas and because I just so happened to have had goat as an appetiser on Friday night - I couldn't say no to their invitation to try some - I ended up burping up goat as well.



Today I am feeling much better however, and I look forward to going to the monkey temple in Kathmandu. For those who are wondering, the hotel I am staying at provides free internet access to those staying here, so that's why you are hearing from me so soon. Tomorrow we leave for the remote village, so you will find that I will probably not write again for a while.

As for the past four days, life for me has consisted of language lessons, getting to know Nepal from speakers and looking around the various districts of Nepal. On Friday we went to several areas with a tour guide in the Patan region. Here we visited the old palace and went into a hidden Buddhist temple. After this we went to Boudha temple which is an amazing buddhist temple that I'm sure many of you will recognise. Its white at the top and has prayer flags hanging from it. Here we visited a Thanka art school, which is basically a school where people create art works centred on Buddha. This place was amazing especially when we were talked through the meanings behind some of them. After we had had a good look at the temple, visited a buddhist prayer temple and spun those prayer thingys we took a taxi back to Thamel - the place where we have our orientation. Those taxi rides are insane. There are no seatbelts, you literally pile in as many people as you can - forget about the number of seats. The roads are really bad so its a really bumpy ride and you don't have lane marking - none of you will complain about traffic again.

The smell of Kathmandu is also really unique. Depending on where you are - there are good smells and bad smells. Good smells include spices and this lemony soap smell that many people use to clean things with, whilst bad smells include the obvious - i.e.: human waste. I'm finding that as time goes on, the constant smell of people cooking is starting to make me nautious, I don't know why - probably because of my TD yesterday, but its so overpowering. You can't really escape it, not even when you need fresh air.

So that's all I can really say about the past 4 days. The food has been nice, but I'm still getting the hang of eating with my hands. The markets are nice as well, but I still have to build up some courage to bargain properly - what I wouldn't give for just a regular store. I also have to get used to people spitting on the road - just spitting you know like right in front of you, and of course the beggers and the child beggers, and the intersections with no rules and the many many many tiny Szusukis - I swear, the traffic of Kathmandu can be summed up in one word - SZUSUKI!

Being on the other side of the world really makes you appreciate the treasures you have at home.

Love from Amanda