Our second day at Dhulikhel began with the early morning sunrise. As I was saying, since we came at the end of the monsoon season, everything was misty and cloudy and foggy and any other synonym you can think of for that. However, although we awoke to a very misty morning, for about an hour, the sky cleared up and we caught a view of the Himalayas to the north (the ONE picture I salvaged...). Apparently in October/November, you can see the whole range of the mountains...I.have.no.words.
The hike to NamoBuddha was a winding footpath through eons of corn fields and up and down hills. We passed two villages and small groups of children on their way to school, as well as men with huge baskets of maize and women carrying enormous bundles of kindling on her head. Often, the groups of children we passed would yell out, "One pen!" After being very confused, someone told us that often when tourists come and they pass the children, their hearts break and they want to give these poor children something. And most of the time, the only thing people have in their bags/purses/etc that they are willing to part with is a pen, so the children have collections of pens that the tourists give them on their walks. While this was probably an over-dramaticized telling, it may be true.
Pictures cannot capture the beauty of this scene.
After breakfast, we headed out on a hike to NamoBuddha - a temple approximately 3 hours away from where we were staying. The stupa is a pilgrimage site, mainly for Tibetan pilgrims on their way to Lumbini, the birthplace of Buddha. Although little is actually known about the temple, legend has it that, centuries, ago, there were three princes who love to hunt in these hills, which were overrun with tigers (see origin of the word Dhulikhel). One day, three princes were out hunting and the youngest prince found a very ill tigress nursing her cubs. Seeing the tiger on the verge of death, the prince offered himself up as food, sacrificing his life.
The hike to NamoBuddha was a winding footpath through eons of corn fields and up and down hills. We passed two villages and small groups of children on their way to school, as well as men with huge baskets of maize and women carrying enormous bundles of kindling on her head. Often, the groups of children we passed would yell out, "One pen!" After being very confused, someone told us that often when tourists come and they pass the children, their hearts break and they want to give these poor children something. And most of the time, the only thing people have in their bags/purses/etc that they are willing to part with is a pen, so the children have collections of pens that the tourists give them on their walks. While this was probably an over-dramaticized telling, it may be true.
On our leisurely walk, we befriended a French girl who was travelling alone and who brought us to a Tibetan monastery for lunch. The monastery was HUGE - much larger than the one K. and I found in Pokhara. Lunch there was amazing. We sat in a section marked visitors, removed from the rows and rows of monks, ranging from notice to beginner. There were maybe 150 monks in total, some carrying their own bowls, some with saffron cloth added to their maroon robes, and some just shuffling in with their friends and giggling - I assumed each had to do with how senior they were. One monk led hypnotic chanting through a microphone and once the bell range, younger monks came around serving everyone our of huge metal buckets. From the time we were served to the time the end-of-meal chanting began, to me, felt like 10 minutes, but I am sure it was at least 30 minutes. People had scarfed their food and I was still slowly eating - it was delicious, but I'm just slow.
After lunch, we trekked down to NamoBuddha. The temple was simple, surrounded, as always, by a prayer wheel and at the end of a footpath lined with Tibetan prayer flags. Spending some time just soaking it all in, we then headed back to Dhulikhel.
Getting back, we realized that we had missed the last bus back to Kathmandu. Through much finagling, we were able to procure a taxi for a reasonable price. Within 15 minutes of our ride, the car broke down after the decent from the bumpy hill. Despite this being the "only" taxi in the city, another car mysteriously appeared and we were able to make our way to Bodhnath, another Buddhist site, and a wonderful hotel with HOT water (!)
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