Hong Kong - Day 28

 Hotel: Motto by Hilton, Sheung Wan

Our flight from Kathmandu arrived in Hong Kong at 6am local time which was about 3:15am Kathmandu time. It was way too early to check into our hotel, and neither of us had much more than 1-2 hours of sleep. Solution: we checked our bags at the airport and went to see nearby sights. It was a morning of planes, trains, busses, and cable cars.

It took us a while to figure out the local transportation system, but we made it early to Ngong Ping 360, the cable car to the top of the peak on Lantau Island. The views of the forest, harbors, and coastal buildings were beautiful, and clouds swirled over the giant Tian Tan Buddha at the top of a hill. We were a little dismayed at how Disneyfied the area was, funneling visitors past many gift shops and restaurants. Though enormous it seemed like the Buddha and adjacent monastery were all a little plastic feeling and had been built for the purpose of bringing tourists to the shops, a contrast to all the ancient shrines and monasteries we visited in Nepal. Still it was a beautiful side trip as an intro to Hong Kong. 

We picked up our luggage at the airport and caught the AirPort Express train to Hong Kong with one train change to reach our hotel near Sheung Wan. It was warm and humid by the time we reached our hotel in a lively neighborhood. Our comfortable room on the 25th floor has a dizzying view of skyscrapers and the harbor. We had a welcome shower before heading out to explore.

We walked down to the harbor using side streets and a pedestrian walkway, exploring some shopping malls we bumped into and looking at passing ships and ferries. Everything is very clean and bustling with lots of shops that appear to be busy. This is a contrast to the tourist area of Kathmandu which has a multitude of shops, but it appeared that many didn’t make any sales. The city looks prosperous here and impoverished there. We like them both very much, but there’s quite a contrast.

After dinner we took an early night.

Nepal Day 27 - Kathmandu

 We are on our way to Hong Kong late tonight. 

After rain most of last night and yesterday, we were glad to see the sun shining this morning. We spent our morning wandering through some market streets, then we showered and checked out of our hotel. After dinner at a local Smashing Burger, we took a final walk and returned to our hotel to wait for our airport transfer.  

The airport seemed insanely busy with many more people standing outside than could have scheduled flights. Once inside, we made our way through all the checks, and we settled into some chairs. Our flight wasn’t scheduled until 11pm, so it was a short overnight flight to Hong Kong.

Nepal Day 26 - Kathmandu

 We had a plan to go rafting today on the Trushilli River, but something we ate yesterday did not agree with us, and the long bus ride made our trip a no-go. Instead we had another day of leisure in Kathmandu.  We hung around the hotel, watched monkeys from a hotel window, and stayed in Thamel. We have an evening flight to Hong Kong tomorrow.

Nepal Day 25 - Kathmandu

 Today was pretty low key. We shopped a little to prepare for our rafting trip tomorrow(water shoes, a dry bag), had a relaxed lunch at the Avocado Cafe, wandered thru the insanely busy Ason Bazaar where a wide array of goods is for sale along a maze of alleys. At 2pm we met Amanda from the trekking agency. At 6pm we met Sagar to pay for our last hotel night.

Nepal Day 24 - Kathmandu - Mountain biking

 We had breakfast, then picked up some to-go coffee on our way to Himalayan Single Tracks. We weren’t due there until 8am, but the bikes were already loaded across the tailgate of a Mahindra Bolero, part suv and part pickup truck. We met Mani, our guide, and piled into the car for the drive to Nagarkot, a hill area on the edge of Kathmandu. As usual, the Kathmandu traffic was impressively chaotic. Motorcycles are everywhere, cars move in and out of lanes with no visible reason why, people are honking everywhere, it appears to be legit to pull into the oncoming lane, up to two cars abreast, in order to pass. It’s amazing we aren’t seeing fender benders all the time.

As we drove up the hill to Nakargot (a town, but maybe also the name of the hill), houses were spread out with large terraced yards or even acreage for farming. The hillside was steep in places with multistory homes precariously placed. In areas it was forested.

At the top of the hill we unloaded bikes and took a run down a dirt road. We adjusted saddle positions and seat heights. The bikes are full suspension Trance X bikes with dropper posts. Sarah’s front brake seemed shot and her suspension so stiff it felt rigid. Still, we were largely coasting downhill, and the bikes seem pretty good for rentals here. Mani had brought his own bike which he had gotten from the US.

Our driver met us at the bottom of the road and drove us back to the top. We came down another two track with good views of terraced fields. For our third ride, we headed down leaf-covered singletrack with some hidden roots and rocks. It was shady and beautiful, and we were getting used to the bikes. 

We pedalled down a paved road to the main town area where we stopped for a dal bhat lunch, then we took a long, paved downhill to Bhaktapur. There we left our bikes with the driver, and we walked thru the historic center. Bhaktapur is a city of bricks which gives the center a distinctive look. Beautiful tempes and alleyways full of souvenir shops were charming. We saw pottery areas, and a thangka painting school. After a long walk, we exited the center, jumped back in our car, and were agin amazed by the chaos of traffic.

After dropping off the bikes and saying goodbye to Mani, we booked a short rafting trip on the Trishuli for Wednesday. We showered and relaxed at the hotel until dinner.

Nepal Day 23 - Kathmandu

 We have more several days in Kathmandu. Because mountain flights are so often cancelled, we wanted slack time to ensure we didn’t miss our international flight. Since we had no delays with our mountain flight, we have the opportunity to explore the Kathmandu Valley.

After breakfast, we found our way to Himalayan Singletracks and booked a mountain bike ride for tomorrow. Then we took a taxi through the insane Kathmandu traffic to the unesco world heritage site of Patan, aka Lalitpur. We hired a guide for a tour of the old city though he mainly sat in the museum courtyards and rambled on about animal sacrifices and stream-of-consciousness stories. After lunch in the museum courtyard, we walked thru the exhibits of the museum, a beautiful collection of ancient representations of gods and goddesses, both Hindu and Buddhist.

We walked thru some shopping streets in Patan, a crowded, chaotic series of shops open to the air with all manner of goods being sold. Motorcycles and cars squeezed thru the pedestrians, honking their horns. 

After stopping for a cold drink and happy cookies, we caught a taxi back to Kathmandu. We had a pizza dinner and an early night.

Nepal Day 22 - Lukla to Kathmandu

 We woke to our alarms before sunup, and the dining room was open early for our breakfast. Along with Bire we carried our bags down to the airport where we followed a chaotic process to X-ray carry ons, weigh bags ( the folks in front of us were all over weight, no problem), and line up for our flight. Nobody really stands in lines, but it all came together. 

Since the season is slow, we are flying direct to Kathmandu instead of Ramechhap plus a 4 hour jeep ride on winding roads, a pleasant surprise. We had the first flight of the day on Tara Air. Getting in the first wave of flights greatly reduces your chances of postponement due to clouds as the flight is visual. Ed had the seat right behind the cockpit. By 7:30am, we had landed in Kathmandu and grabbed a taxi to Thamel, the tourist district where our hotel is.

Since it was early and our room wasn’t ready, we dropped our bags and wandered around town: finding a working ATM (not easy), 2nd breakfast at the Pumpernickel Bakery, walking to some shops, lunch of pizza at the Roadhouse Cafe, ice cream at Silk, water bottles at the Thamel Mart, check in and showers and clean clothes (heaven). In the afternoon we organized laundry of our trekking clothes and went to the Garden of Peace. It was absolutely packed, primarily with young Nepali women in small groups taking photos of each other or selfies, inspecting the photos, and presumably uploading to social media. We could barely move around the beautiful gardens without getting in the way of someone’s photo.

We had smash burgers near our hotel and had an early evening. We saw monkeys on a ledge of a nearby building, a reason to be cautious about open windows. Our room was hot and stuffy. Presumably the AC is limited at the front desk, something to inquire about tomorrow, quite a change from our freezing rooms on trek.