Nepal - Chitawan - Day 3

When I woke and went out onto the balcony this morning, there was a rhino grazing directly across the river from our part of the resort. Definitely getting the jungle resort vibe. We had a slow morning only getting down to breakfast at the time we were due to leave in the car. One of the good things of the driver arrangement was that he was on our time, so he politely waited and never mentioned the delay.

We set off on the trip back with a slightly different route in mind to visit Chandragiri, a town outside Kathmandu from where you can see Everest (on a clear day!). The drive was pretty much the same as all the other car trips on my adventure in Nepal – hot, bouncy, slow, and in a too-small-for-me vehicle. But the only alternative for this trip is a bus, which would at least be large enough for me, but no more comfortable in the long-run.
Chitrawati main street (I think)

Our driver eventually stopped at a very impressive looking Fishtail Restaurant that overlooks the Trishuli River (I’ve just discovered on Google maps – there are no street signs in most of Nepal’s road system that I can see). He bought himself some breakfast (which he’d not had because we were late – I felt bad) and Ayreen and I had tea. The views from this restaurant were spectacular (but I forgot to photograph the actual restaurant). The view upstream gives a good indication of what the valley floors are like in Nepal.

The view downstream of the Trishuli River
The view upstream of the Trishuli River

We plowed on flowing the Trishuli River (I now know) until we got to Chandragiri. By now it was after 2pm, so we had lunch before deciding whether to take the cable car to the top of the local mountain (a hill in Nepal, actually) to observe Everest. However, the day was not clear – at least, not clear all the way into the Himalayas – and so we were reassured by several people that Ayreen talked to that the view would not improve from what we got at the bottom station where we ate.

The view across to Kathmandu from Chandragiri
The view of Everest from Chandragiri
Everest is hidden under the white thundercloud (centre background)
Chandragiri ending in the foothills
A sign indicating the height above sealevel of the bottom station of the cable car

After lunch, we got back in the car and were driven to my hotel. This time the car ride was typical big Asian city traffic chaos, in the heat, the dust, the pollution and the noise. So, typical really. Ayreen returned to her friend John’s home while I settled in to the Kathmandu Guest House and took some time to lodge a blog post (still days behind) as the sun went down.

My room at the Kathmandu Guest House (KGH)
Sunset over Kathmandu from the 7th floor lounge at KGH

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Magic Arabia Tour - Day 2

Image
Today started early at the Kempinski Hotel, where Ahmed collected me to drive by a circuitous route to the desert camp, where I was supposed to sleep under the stars. Turns out, plans changed, partly by design and partly by the weather. As we were leaving the hotel, Ahmed offered some options to contrast with the planned tour day, as the original plan had a long drive to visit a sinkhole before visiting a wadi and then heading into the desert. Instead, we drove more directly out to the desert by way of an ancient village, a different wadi, and then lunch with Ahmed's family, as they live relatively close to the desert camp. While driving (and there was still a lot of it on almost empty massive highways), I have tried to capture some of the landscape in Oman and failed pretty miserably. There are times when you look out across the hills/mountains in the distance and you can see four different ranges at different distances and they are all shaded lighter and lighter hues of purple. I
Read more

Accreditation Visit - Day 1

Image
Today was my first 'working day' in Oman. After taking an interview over Webex with the CIT for a board role, I met with the rest of the team (Prof Chris Johnson and Prof Marilyn Wells) to be collected by Sohar University and driven to the campus. The drive was easy and fast on big, wide, new freeway infrastructure and took about 12 minutes of the predicted up to 30 minutes. We arrived at Sohar University and it was suspiciously quiet. Sohar University (Library building) from the forecourt We were met just in front of the tent-style structures you see in the photo by our host Sanad, the Faculty Dean, Ahmad, and one of the members of the University's Quality Assurance group, Tina. They explained that it was so quiet because no students were on campus today, because of the (predicted) rain. As Tina commented, they (Oman) are not set up to deal with rain. Later inspection validated that roads don't have gutters and drains and when it rains, the water just pools or
Read more

Travelling Home

Image
My last day in Nepal was bittersweet. While it was time for me to return home to face the obligations that I’d accumulated for myself and to check progress on my home renovations, I was disappointed to be ending this lovely adventure. There is much more of Nepal to experience and spending the time in Nepal with Ayreen and her friends was making the thing just so much more rich and engaging. I normally don’t mind travelling alone – have done so for years – but I was revelling in the difference that having a social circle to engage in the new environment with was making. Ayreen had a last meal with me at Sudesh’s New Orleans restaurant before I left for the airport from the Kathmandu Guest House. The trip out to the airport was typical of cab rides in Kathmandu, but as I’d left in plenty of time, I arrived in good time and everything went as smoothly as one could expect. Importantly, as we climbed out of Kathmandu in the airplane – and it was a steep ascent! – I was looking down on Kathm
Read more