Day 3: Travelling

After one wonderful day in Pokahar, we took an 8 hours bus back to Kathmandu . The Gods must have decded to make it a good day because the clouds parted and we got to wach the Annapurna ridge as we left eht city. As I was mezmarized by teh bautry, I couldn't help but think of the economic status of these people and the view they have, compared to the thousand dollar apartments in Baltimore that have a view of delapidated ruins. Do the people here realize the view they have or am I just so amazed because its completely unfamiliar?

Getting back, I got to say goodbye to Marijn, still blown away by the fact that I had seen him again after so long. A classmate from JHSPH, L. is doing her internship in Nepal on infant feeding practices and malnutrition in more of the remote ethnic populations and a collegue from her work was going to take us to his home town of Dhulikhel, a small tourist town outside the city.

It was great of her collegue to be willing to drive us and he gave us a great history/current events less on the way. Dhulikhel is about 30 km east of Kathmandu and has lots of trade between Tibet and Nepal (from a highway built in 1965 by the Chinese) and an elevation of ~1550m (~5500ft), making it pretty cold at night. Recently, the desire for a rise in tourism has led to the construction of a highway from Kathmandu to Dhulikhel with some Japanese assistance. unfortunately, the Maoists often bomb the highway, destroying recent construction.

Dhulikhel is a traditional Newari town and the Newa community is one of the older ethnic communities of Kathmandu. The city name comes from the Newari word town Dhunkhyo, where Dhun means tiger and Khyo means playground. Unfortunately there are no tigers. However, the town has existed for at least five centuries and is layed out according to ancient Hindu planning (with respect to psoitioning, shape, scale, and dominance of building, temples, and public squares). Only parts of the old town still remain, but the retain the traditional window carvings of the people - a craft that seems to now be lost. The town has about ~15,000 people, 80% who are Hindu (the rest are Buddhist). The council of Dhulikhel has an 11.5$ million plan to develop tourism....which while I think is ambitious, but good for the community to create business, makes me sad that they are willing to develop it so much. One of those, you-don't-realize-it-until-it's-too-late kind of developments. L.'s collegue was alos very proud of the fact that the city's water system had multiple slow sand filters, providing the town with some of the best tap water in the Kathmandu valley.

Although we were told this was a tourist town, it wasn't anything like the Niagara Falls I have set in my mind as "toursit." After we checked into our hotel, we realize there was no power and I think we were the only people staying there (?). We decided to walk to find some dinner, but realized that the whole entire town was sleeping (it was maybe 8?) and after running into one older couple on the road who directed us towads food, we had to bang on the gate to get the security guard to let us in to eat. After dinner, we headed back to the hotel only to find ourselves locked out with the gate shut and a huge padlock wrapped in chains. There was no guard. K. climbed over the brick wall and went to find someone to let us in (despite the fact we had passed the entire family watching tv and playing cards as we left).

With that, we called it a night!