A weekend in Kathmandu

Easter weekend saw another couple of extra days off work so to capitalise on this time, off I trotted to Kathmandu. It's a mere hour and ten minutes flight from Dhaka with a pretty impressive view of Everest from the plane window thrown in. Kathmandu is charming - laid back, touristy, hippyish and bustling all the same time. We were staying in Thamel which is the real touristy area of town, and it was a delight to be able to poke around shops and chill out in cafes. The traffic like most places nowadays is appalling, and its a very dry and dusty place, but refreshingly cool and not at all humid. I was staying at Hotel Horizon which boasted hot water and wifi - it delivered on both of these and was in a handy location, but that's about all it had to offer. I had booked a standard room but on checking in was advised to upgrade to a superior room otherwise I would have no aircon. So I did, only to find the aircon didn't work the majority of the time due to the almost constant power outages! The poor old place needed a lot of TLC, but in fairness was obscenely cheap.  

So, my time in Kathmandu was spent pottering from cafe to cafe - I particularly liked the splendidly named Phat Kath cafe- eating lovely food and drinking Everest beer, and shopping - Kathmanadu is one enormous open air North Face hiking clothes store.  One morning was spent learning to cook mo:mos - steamed Nepalese dumplings - along with a New Zealand couple who own a deli and a dairy farm, followed by lazing  in the splendidly named Garden of Dreams - what a revelation and great coffee.  Not forgetting of course the sunrise Everest viewing.  Up at 4am we were driven to the Kathmandu Valley, around one hour's drive from the city; it was surprising how quickly the town gave way to mountains.  We were quite glad it was still dark so we couldn't clearly see the vertiginous drops from the hairpin bends as we wound our way up the mountain roads in our slightly rickety minibus.

At the top it was more than a little chilly as we clambered to a viewpoint on the roof of a strategically-placed hotel - very nice as it was a great view but an odd location to choose as the roof was also home to the water tanks of the hotel which gurgled and whooshed loudly, shattering the silence, any time anyone turned on a tap in the hotel below, which was frequently.  The deal was the sun rose over the mountains to a beautiful view of Everest - tada! - except we just got a beautiful view of thick cloud.  Apparently we should have been there in September.  Never mind, the silence (when the water butts weren't gurgling) and the chill mountain air and the views of at least the near mountains, were lovely.  After a restorative coffee off we set on a trek - more like a walk in reality - through the valley.  The mountains are impossibly steep and resembled knife-edges, yet are still - somehow - terraced in order to grow rice and other crops.  In the valleys there are brick-kilns, in the forests there were jackals (we saw the former but not the latter, and there are villages perched midway up the mountains.  Apart from an infcnt of about two years of age whose only words were 'hello money' and a little girl who wanted sweets, we aroused very little curiosity, the villagers being too concerned in going around their daily business of gardening, carrying huge loads of branches on their heads and digging into the red soil to bring out terracotta to cover their stone floors, a dangerous pastime so it seems since the tunnels are often dig too deep and collapse, entombing the workers.

The rest of the day was spent staring at Hindu temples in the midday heat - the majority of the Nepalese population are Hindus, even though the place has more of a Buddhist feel to it. We partook of a traditional Nepali lunch at the ancient capital Bhaktapur, a lovely place full of old brick buildings sporting elaborately carved wooden adornments.  Lunch consisted of beaten rice, dry rice flakes with a thali-type accompaniment of various curries and pickles and the combination of the crunchy rice flakes and the curry was surprisingly pleasant.  Water supply is a real problem in Nepal, at the time of the old capital's construction massive water tanks were built but since construction of new buildings has now resulted in the water table falling to a lower level the tanks are dry - just a tiny trickle of water emerges from the spout. At one such tank we saw dozens and dozens of plastic water containers lining up waiting to be filled, and at the rate the water was trickling it surely must have taken all day and well into the next to fill them all.  The ladies at the wells in the centre of town didn't fare much better, tirelessly lowering their jerrycans into a round 6 inches of filthy, oily water which was all that remained at the bottom of the deep well.

On our final morning the general hubbub in the hotel woke me early which was no bad thing, since it allowed me to squeeze in a trip to Bhoudanath Stupa which is one of the holiest Buddhist sites in Kathmandu.  The idea is to walk around the Stupa in a clockwise direction, spinning prayer wheels as you go.  It had a wonderful and peaceful atmosphere, quite different to the Hindu temples and I'm glad I made the effort to visit it before my little holiday in Kathmandu was over....

Hot, hot hot!

Its as hot as an oven in Dhaka right now. I keep being told by the locals that its too hot, and I guess that really does mean its too hot. Its an energy sapping, torpor inducing heat. In any average year the rains would have started by now, taking the edge off the heat but this year there's no sign of rain as yet and it remains in the baking mid 40s in the daytime, early 30s at night and as humid as a Kew Gardens glasshouse.

There's one species that seems to like the heat though and that is the mosquitoes. Long having ditched my 'natural' (ie completely ineffective) repellent in favour of a local brand stuffed full of toxic chemicals, I'm less of a tasty morsel than I was but this is also helped by Anjeela, my lovely cleaner, who has an ingenious way with a mosquito net. She tucks it in so tightly there is a real art to getting in, the best way without leaving a gaping gap behind you is to dive in sideways, a bit like a jungle explorer parting giant leaves on an Amazonian trek. Once in its like being in a tent and those mozzies haven't succeeded in getting in yet, although its a challenge getting out again come morning. . .


I was privileged to be in Dhaka for the BangladeshI New Year. Falling this year on 14th April, the new year was originally places to assist with the collection of agricultural taxes. This year saw the welcoming in of year 1421 according to the Bengali calendar which is just a few years behind ours. The really great aspect to New Year was we all got an extra day off, and the day before the local office staff decorated the place with flags, balloons and tissue decorations, they brought us handmade gifts and enormous quantities of food including BangladeshI Pomfret and the not very enticing 'rice soaked all night' dish.

On the day itself, celebrations started at 6am in the park opposite with singing, music and a procession, accompanied by exhuberent drum-beating.

Even if I was denied a lie-in, there was a chance for a midweek hash starting off from Dhakas Parliament building, where the streets had been brightly painted in honour of New Year. Of we went along the river which was thronged by revellers all blaring noisily on plastic hooters, mostly dressed in red, the traditional New Year colour. The noise and seething mass of people was a true assault on the senses and an experience not to be missed......

Surprised by Dhaka

OK, so my last couple of weeks in Delhi are sadly absent from my blog, so I‘m afraid you won’t be treated to an account of my fabulous culinary tour of old Delhi’s food markets, scoffing all manner of goodies, seeing the old ornate haveli houses, now sadly crumbling, and climbing up onto the rooftops for a sneak peek at the fascinating Kabootar Baaz pigeon games.  I can’t tell you about my first Hindi wedding, the bride and groom elaborately dressed finally tying the knot just before midnight, and where my salwar kameez trousers very nearly fell down -  I can’t even relate the story of the Indian band’s cover version of Wham’s White Christmas – minus the correct words -  at a dodgy bar in Delhi.  All this became rather overshadowed as after spending five months in India relatively unscathed, I finally succumbed to Delhi belly.  And how.

Still, after a few months at home I was ready and almost raring to go on my next posting.  I knew a little of what to expect, having spent a week in Dhaka in Novemeber, but now having been here a further ten days I can say it really has been a revelation.  Dhaka has the dubious distinction of being named the worst city in the world in which to live and is home to 7 million people and there is poverty everywhere, with a yawning gap between rich and poor.  I’m lucky enough to be living in what can be loosely described as the Diplomatic Zone, which is relatively hassle-free and home to a number of expat hangouts which usually comprise a bar, pool, eating area and various activities like tennis or yoga.  There seems to be plenty going on so I won’t be bored.

For the duration of this posting I’ll be living in an apartment, for the moment I’m sharing with two other ladies, they are very nice but this particular grumpy old woman is way past her days of flat sharing, so I will be glad when I get the place to myself. Situated right opposite a pleasant park so I can even get my walking in, which those who know me well will also know is one of my favourite things in life to do (apart from drinking coffee, chatting and drinking prosecco!)  The park has two lakes, the water level in both being quite low at the moment but I suspect this will change once the rainy season kicks in.  There are six seasons in Bangladesh of two months duration each, and daytime temperatures at the moment are around 38-40 degrees, night-time it is around 28, but it actually doesn’t seem as hot as all that as usually there’s a slight breeze and on top of that it’s not too humid.  Dhaka is surprisingly green and full of trees and the park despite being bang slap in the centre of the city is home to a variety of exotic-sounding birdlife – cuckoos, swifts, mynah birds, egrets, parrots and a black bird with am enormous long tail. I tend to see the same people lapping the park each evening, including an old gent in a neck brace catching the evening air as he shuffles along.  Stay after dusk and the fruit bats emerge, flapping lazily off.  This is also mozzie time and unfortunately the repellent I brought from the UK is about as effective as slapping on cold tea. I am a walking talking mosquito banquet.

As for food, there are a couple of lunch options including the local canteen and I had the bright idea of buying an egg bhuna and taking it back to the apartment with me to eat over the weekend.  Unfortunately the little foil box it was in came in a string bag type thing and as I was carrying it out of the office it started dripping bright green sauce all down the corridor (and very nearly all down my leg). I had no other bag to put it in and it was making a right mess so I’m afraid my bhuna never made it home with me….Instead that evening I decided to try the marvellous website hungrynaki.  For a modest delivery fee there are a whole range of restaurant items available at the click of a mouse. I opted for a roasted veg pizza from the splendidly named Pizza Guy – what a revelation. Unlike Indian pizzas which generally suffer from strange cheese and excessive chilli, this was the real deal.  And there you have it.  Since most of the food here is imported, it’s actually way easier to obtain familiar food items than it is in India, although it comes at a price. Halloumi at £7 a packet seems a bit steep unless I get severe withdrawal symptoms.  However I’m also getting to know the best places to buy ingredients including the splendid vegetable man at the Nordic Club where I bought a bag of unfeasibly long beans for 30p.  Curiously, when I arrived at the flat the office had, unbidden, ordered a huge box of food items to be delivered from the local expat shop: how nice I thought until I realised they had also delivered the £75 bill. Now its no secret I’m a terrible food snob and the food parcel was full of item’s I’d never eat – white bread, sugar, instant coffee, sweet cereals, spaghetti hoops – so I loaded up my bags promptly, and took it back to the shop – knees buckling as I staggered round there in the afternoon heat.  Halfway there I became aware of a commotion behind me and cries of ‘madame! madame!’ Assuming it to be a rickshaw driver touting for business I ignored it but the cries became louder and more insistent and were followed by running feet when a breathless Benglai chap presented me with an enormous lump of cheddar cheese that had dropped out of my bag onto the dusty road.

This weekend I decided to try out the local hash – a running/walking club around various locations in Dhaka. The river Fatki runs through Dhaka and naturally it is surrounded by marshes, mudflats and inlets, no doubt a haven for wildlife.  A huge construction company has started a programme of filling in these marshes with river sand, draining the land, creating first a sandy desert and then prime building land.  It was this area that we walked around.  Each plot over this vast area has been pre-sold at a cost of $70,000US and in a few years the area will be unrecognisable, just another part of the high-rise urban sprawl of Dhaka. With an estimated staggering 44% of the population of Dhaka homeless, obviously something must be done, but it seems to me to be an environmental catastrophe.  For the moment it’s magical, we walked across sandy dunes, then marshes to cultivated plots with locals old and young working the land; women with bright sarees and huge loads upon their strong shoulders, and finally along to villages cleverly built above flood level.  It was a real slice of Bangladeshi village life, and naturally we were the subject of much amusement and excitement, and the entire village turned out to watch.  As the sun set as a huge red ball and I cracked open the first cold beer I felt privileged to have seen this place before it is inevitably swallowed up in the building site that is Dhaka.