Back to Kathmandu

from Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat

The ride down from Syabru Besi, in the same vehicle, with the same driver, felt like a welcome and uneventful trip back to civilization.  Norsang and Sam and I had enjoyed a beer on the patio of the hotel in Syabru Besi, overlooking the Langtang Khola, comforted in the knowledge that today was not to be a day of hiking.  The passengers in the jeep were quieter than on the way up, the weather was nicer, so a window left opened longer than necessary did not seem so annoying.  Maybe, after ten days of trekking, I was less annoying/annoyable.  Nothing mattered but Kathmandu. 

They dropped me at the hotel in the Thamel district, and I gratefully said that I would see them in the morning, about 10am.  I needed some alone time. 

I was still clean from my shower the night before, so wasted no time hitting the bustling, tourist oriented main streets of the Thamel.  I took a bundle of laundry up the sidewalk to an Internet café that also did laundry and set up a pickup for the next day.  I followed the main drag up another half block to the Garden of Dreams.  This was a 1920's fantasy put together by the then king, called Kaiser Sumshu Rana.  Why he liked the title Kaiser, I will never know.  The garden is a restored version of his dream which began to decline with his death in the early 1960's.  It is adjacent to the royal household and right on the edge or in the middle of the beautiful Thamel/tourist district of Kathmandu.

 

The serenity of this beautiful little corner of a busy, noisy city was a welcome respite from the serenity of the beautiful, endless expanse of the Himalaya and the severe trails that made them accessible to humankind.

Returning to the hotel, I stopped in a jewelry shop just across the street from the garden.  The gentleman proprietor was a very good English speaker and was very current as to world affairs.  More so than I after ten days in the mountains.  He had his opinions of Obama and Bush, India, jihad, and the world in general. He served chai and we had a good talk.  He was a very good salesman. 
The next day was a tour of Kathmandu's other popular spots with Norsang, which I will cover in the next installment.