I love living in Korea, but, when vacation comes around, I prefer to get as far away (culturally and geographically) as the wind and my wallet will carry me.  For a break from Seoul life, Nepal is a slam dunk.  Everything is drastically different- culture, people, food, scenery, religion, souvenirs, you name it- in a wonderful way but one that also makes you grateful when you get back to comforting old K-land.  It’s the perfect balance of serenity and madness, space and crowds, spice and smells.  Nepal is intoxicating, exotic, unique and dirt cheap… and only a $600 flight away.  So, what are you waiting for? 

The Journey

I’m pretty sure you can get to Nepal from Seoul in about 8 hours, but being a Mr. Cheapie, it took me close to 24.  The cheapest (and most arduous) route to Nepal is via Air China.  Allow me a moment to express my sincere hatred for Air China.

Everest-san is that you?

Some of us long-time travelers remember what it was like to fly in the 1990s when comedians like Seinfeld were making the big bucks complaining about airlines.  The planes were all built in the 1970s, most of them still sporting stylish ash trays, and they almost never ran on time.  You were always getting held up at the gate by a plane whose reverse didn’t work anymore, or the control tower, or switching flight crews because you got delayed past union hours…  You’d cram into a tiny seat and eat the goop Calvin’s mom makes for dinner and watch a movie on a tiny discolored screen up a couple of rows.  Since then, the airline industry (despite crippling bankruptcy) has made quiet but impressive strides.

…Except for Air China.  I’m pretty sure Air China is where those old 70s planes went to die.  My epic journey involved 4 different stops (including a surprise one in Lhasa where we were herded off the plane and through customs again) and every single leg of every flight we were delayed over one hour.  Which, when you have 8 flights, adds up.

...pretty views though.

The second bad thing about Air China is you have to fly through China.  With Chinese people.  In China, every culture clash that waegook’s complain about is multiplied by a thousand.  People cut in line like there's no tomorrow and jump up even before the plane has landed to start throwing their bags around.  Nothing wrong with China as a country, but let's just say the airport protocol is China's worst human rights violation. 

Anyway, after that grueling patience and endurance test, Kathmandu was no big deal.  Here’s a tip to avoid culture shock: make your journey so incredibly awful that any destination seems like paradise.  After 24 hours with Air China, Kabul would feel like Hawaii.  I nearly kissed the ground when I arrived in Kathmandu, settling down immediately with a beer… then realizing it was just 11am.

If you went from Air China to this garden, you'd have one, too.

Kathmandu

Kathmandu doesn’t just assault your senses, it brutally attacks them with a baseball bat.  The first sense to be totally overwhelmed is your nose.  Dust, dust everywhere mixed with a wall of delectable incense and spices.  It really makes you think…  If a place like Kathmandu, third world, with a population density of 13,500 per square km can smell so nice, why can’t Seoul’s mere 17,000?  Seoul has to be the worst smelling city per capita.  Seriously.  We have to get Koreans into incense.

Next, Kathmandu batters your ears.  The Nepalese method of driving consists of merely honking your horn constantly.  Whereas in the West, honking your horn might say, “I’m angry,” in Nepal, it says “My car is still running.”  The system is much like that of Vietnam (where most people have to get their horns replaced every year).  There are no stop lights or stop signs and very few roundabouts.  At an intersection, whoever has the most vehicles gets to go.  The motorbikes and cars, when they have amassed enough company to threaten the other direction, simply push their way out into the intersection.   I can’t be sure how the horn factors into this incomprehensible system, but, the cacophony of street traffic can make you deaf.  It seems natural selection has weeded out the quieter horns in Kathmandu leaving only the most burlesque.

Traffic on the creepy dentists' street near the god of toothaches.

Then taste, oh the tastes!  Nepal has hundreds of delectable restaurants from all over the world.  For such a small city, the variety and quality easily outstrips Seoul’s paltry foreign pickings.  But, for someone coming from Korea, the low availability of local restaurants is shocking.  It seems, Kathmandu’s restaurant culture caters only to foreigners, which is a bit of a bummer.  But Nepal’s proximity to India makes for delicious and widely available paneer, which I could eat all day every day until I die.

Next comes touch.  After Korea’s torturously hot monsoon season (which feels like you accidentally brought the sun to a wet sauna,) Nepalese monsoon season was heaven.  In the morning and evening, a calm cool sweeps over the country and hugs you like a Klondike bar.  In the afternoon, the heat peaks around a “Oh, I’d like to go to a café for a bit” kind of temperature and then brings in the rain.  Then, I’d have to wade for a bit or cringe when my flip flops flicked suspect mud up the back of my legs.

Lastly and perhaps the most important is sight.  Everywhere you look in Kathmandu there is something worth seeing.  From stupa to shrine, the top of each building to the gutter, Kathmandu sparkles with tiny details that overwhelm the imagination.  After a day of sightseeing, I couldn’t close my eyes without seeing shadows of something witnessed earlier today.  It was like flicking through a Viewmaster in my brain.  I simply was unable to process everything wonderful I’d seen that day.

Most of the things to see in the city are temple-based or simply through a walking tour of daily life.  Kathmandu means “city of wood and clay” and that’s exactly what it is- for now.  The streets (if you can call them that, more like alleys) are lined with 2-3 story buildings made of brick or wood with intricate wooden shutters.  Every building has the characteristic tilt and awkward angles of buildings that have seen better days.  On top of the old world charm of actually old buildings, residents have painted bright eye-catching colors to rival the swarms of spangled saris that weave through the streets.

Typical window carvings.  Check out the scary anything-goes wiring.

The pride of Kathmandu is Durbar Square, which is like a Greek acropolis in that every city has one and it’s covered in carvings of gods.  Kathmandu’s Durbar square boasts the wooden temple Kathmandu was named for (built out of one giant tree) as well as numerous pagoda-ed temples.  Interestingly, a Nepali architect developed the pagoda style and brought it to China, so, suck it again, China.

...so many pigeons...

The most photographed of Nepal’s pagoda temples has to be the kama sutra temple.  Each pagoda style building has load-bearing slats of wood with carved gods or demigods standing cross-legged.  On sex temples, these figures stand atop a carving of sex acts like threesomes, the wheelbarrow, and what may be bestiality (or a bad carving).  It is said that these carvings were made at a time of low birth rate when the King needed a large army.  “Now,” said my amusing Dalai Lama-hating guide, “Nepal has too many people.  Maybe we should cover it up.”

Across the way from the sex temple is the palace of the Kumari, or living goddess.  The living goddess is an incarnation of the goddess Durga.  Every ten years or so, they choose a young girl with the same family name as Buddha who has certain physical characteristics (including, memorably, the eyes of a cow).  Then, they take her into a temple and put on scary masks and kill a whole lot of animals in front of her in increments of 108.  If she cries, she is not a god.  If she doesn’t cry, she is a god (or, as my adult student joked, a  sociopath) and she moves into the palace in Durbar Square.  We were lucky enough to see the current living goddess, all of 5 years old, performing her duty of popping her head out whenever Nepali people call to her.  She gets to do that until her first menstruation, then they kick her out and find a new one.  If they can’t find a child that fits all the requirements, the tradition simply stops.

Kumari's gilded cage.

Other than the wonders of Durbar Square, there’s not too much to see in Kathmandu besides the small stupas, shrines, and hustle and bustle of daily life.  Stay tuned for part 2 of this series, featuring day trips from Kathmandu and the road from Kathmandu to Pokhara.

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