The seventies Hippy Trail 6

8-5-1974
Katmandu, Nepal

Hiya,

Well here I am in Nepal, which is a city living in the past. All the buildings are ancient and there are crowded , narrow dirty streets which look like Jerusalem. They have bazaars and open air markets where you can buy anything - from fruit, tomatoes, to seed and handcrafts, antiques to black market money. There are a lot of hippies here and they look really weird with fancy pants and turbans and they look very grubby.

Kathmandu Nepal

The Katmandu Valley is surrounded by hills and has many farms with small towns and farm houses scattered around. Katmandu, the capital is about the size of Pelican! The river here is only about two foot deep but I think it is the dry season and like most Asian rivers is filthy - makes the Hunter River look like a sparkling fresh mountain stream.

While flying across India we passed over the delta of the Ganges and it is the hugest widest river and delta I have ever seen. It is really huge - the deltas spread out for almost a hundred miles, I reckon. We flew direct to Kathmandu from Bangkok by Royal Nepal Airlines - they even gave you free grog on the plane which I took advantage of. I very rarely booze up now. I cannot afford it. It is about the only thing which is not cheap in Asia.

Pokhara Nepal

Tomorrow we are going to Pokhara about one hundred miles west and there we can go trekking into the the foot hills of the Himalayas and see lofty snow-covered mountains - "the roof of the world". Then we will go to India where there is supposed to be a train strike and riots in Delhi. I hope that we do not get stuck there. It is summer there now and the temperature there gets up to 115 degrees Fahrenheit. whew! We can always fly if the worst comes to the worst but I think we will be all right.

I have been thinking of trying to climb Mount Everest but it takes twenty eight days trekking just to get to the base camp! ha ha. I will just settle for looking at it, thanks. Continued next page...

Nepal Resources

Next Stage on the overland trail to Europe

In Kathmandu the International Guest House is a good place to stay and is nice and quiet with polite staff and the garden area is a lovely place to chill out and relax after a harried day in town. The Hotel Lai Lai is also a good hotel in Kathmandu.
In Pokhara the Hotel Fewa is very close to the lake and the rooms are quite cheap. Also, the Snowland Hotel is well priced and the people running it are very nice and friendly and the service is fabulous. The Tibet Guest House in Pokhara is a reasonable place to stay.
If you want to go rafting in Pokhara then the seti river is fairly easy to try. There is also the possibility of rafting on the Trisuli River. The best time to go would be in the Autumn.
You can fly from Kathmandu to Pokhara and the cost is about seventy dollars. To get to Delhi from Pokhara you take a bus to Sunauli on the indian border. Then take another bus to Gorakhpur and catch the train from there to Delhi.

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