A nice day in Kathmandu
Today turned out to be a magnificent day. Woke up before the birds at 6.30 am! Alana, a nice Australian girl I met the night before wanted to use her last day visiting the monkey temple in the outskirts of Kathmandu. At the time in the morning there were just two other tourists there but it was crowded with local Buddhist. Some steep stairs took up us to the top of the hill where the monkey temple was located. Candles were lit around the temple and people had brought gifts to the gods, mostly food. In a small house which was open on the entire side towards the temple people were singing songs. A guy with a 'hanky panky' bag enjoyed the morning concert.
Back in Thamel awaited a breakfast for my hungry stomach. Afterwards a took a quick goodbye with Alana and deiced ed to rent a mountain-bike. Put it in gear and went through the easy traffic. After a while I found my destination, Patan, a city which now basically is a suburb of Kathmandu. After seeing some temple sights I had a rest and some water while a young Nepali guy approached me and started chatting. Turned out he was a first-year student in hotel management and had the day of because of new-year celebrations. His name was Ohm and was also out with his mountain bike so we decided to take a bicycle trip up to Gaiwana, a botanical garden an hour or so from Patan.
It was a tough ride for me since I still hadn't recovered from my cold. Never got to see the botanical garden but we did have a great lunch with Nepali chicken dumplings called momo's. I payed the bill without any objections or even a thank you from Ohm. Back down in Patan he even wanted some tips. It's a poor country and maybe I should have given him some money but if he wants tips he should get a job as a guide and then ask for tips.
On the ride back to Kathmandu my hands and my ass was hurting like hell but I did manage to make it back to the guest house. On the way I encountered a Maoist demonstration outside the vote-counting office. The election was the day before and the demonstration was very peaceful since it was expected a win for the Maoist.
The night was equally enjoyable. Met Line, a Norwegian girl I met together with her friend Birte in Tehran, who arrived here after three days going through Indian bureaucracy in Delhi. A few beers and an easy win for Liverpool was a good way to end the day.