Festivals and Friends

Next for the fun…… having recovered from my illness and after six months of listening to very little music, we heard on the traveller grapevine that there was going to be a music festival in Pokhara, the beautiful lakeside resort in Nepal. Because I desperately needed my music/dance fix I jumped at the chance to go and managed to persuade Lucy after some perseverance. With Lucy on board I looked forward to the music, atmosphere and great weather.

The beautiful lake in Pokhara

The festival, called Mountain Madness, was oddly located on the grounds of a five star hotel.It was extremely surreal to see hoardes of scruffy looking travellers camped on the neatly mowed and maintained hotel lawn. I later discovered the reason for this is that the hotel is massively failing, is in huge debt and hence to resolve its financial issues has had to resort to hosting a massively loud festival in their vicinity. We has forty eight hours of heavy, pounding trance music which duely danced to as that's what we came for, but god I realised how much I can't stand Trance music. I'd honestly expected there to be some variety in the music but actually it was all along these lines (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIgAgo7owX8) - too much too much!

People dancing away to the mad trance music

Despite the terrible music and all of the promised 'ayuvedic massage', 'yoga camp' and 'world food' not actually being there we had alot of fun. I had my first beer for months and we had the most incredible storm I have ever seen (so much for the good weather). The lightening was so intense and frequent that at first I assumed that it must have been strobe lighting coming from the main stage. Lucy and I prided ourselves on the fact we managed to accidently fall asleep in our tent at 11.30pm on the second night when we popped back for a snack. How it happened when our tent was just 30m from the thudding, pounding music of the mainstage I can't believe. We must be hardened travellers from India as literally every guesthouse we stayed in would have some form of noise throughout the night. Indians can literally sleep anywhere and through anything. It was great waking up fresh faced and going to dance again in the morning when most of the festival goers looked, well lets say a bit worse for wear, after a whole night of trance and partying hard.

What most of the festival goers looked like after 2 days of partying!

Camping on the hotel lawn

Post festival we dashed over to Nepal's capital of Kathmandu, which I was to end up spending about 5 weeks in in total over my time in Nepal. I expected chaos, noise and havoc, but after an Indian city it is relatively calm, however I can't say it was clean, the air pollution was horrific and I've never seen such a horrible river full of trash. We came to Kathmandu as we were meeting one of our best friends from England - Kate who came to visit for two weeks. After six whole months away it was great to catch up with a friend from home and it was great to see her reactions as she was still a bit overwhelmed by the beeping horns and mad traffic that we have just learnt to ignore. Over the fortnight we explored many parts of Kathmandu and the surrounding valley -and to complete my transformation into a real traveller I brought myself a cheap, small guitar!

Kate and I drinking Cheeah (tea) in the streets of Kathmandu

We were privileged to meet a local Nepalese man who took us to see one of the three famous Kumaris (living goddess) in and around Kathmandu. Nepal is the only country in which they believe that a living person can be a god. The Kumari is bound to her house, apart from during festivals when she is taken on a throne through the streets of Kathmandu, but her feet cannot touch the ground. To become a Kumari the child must go through a series of difficult tests and fulfill a list of strict criteria, she remains the Kumari until she sheds blood, as of course gods can't bleed, which is usually at menstruation. After this she is suddenly no different from any other person and is expected to live a normal life. To me it's all crazy, it was a very strange experience but it's supposed to be an honourto meet her so we are lucky!

Meeting the renowned Kumari

We visited many sites around Kathmandu including Patan and Bhaktapur (cities with a great deal of cultural heritage and beautiful buildings) and Bodha, a quieter part of Kathmandu where there is a beautiful Buddhist stupa, complete with endless prayer flags and the chanting of this song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG_lNuNUVd4) which are imprinted in my mind forever and will always remind me of Nepal (even though technically its Tibetan!). We drank copious amounts of chai and sat talking at the guesthouse for hours about home, life, philosophy, love, nature, science - everything. Then we taught Kate the Indian mantra songs we'd learnt in Rishikesh. They're just really short songs, but they are great to sit and sing for hours on end, you just zone into the tune and lose yourself. They are going to annoy the hell out of my family, friends and neighbours on my return!

Kate, Renee and Lucy in Patan

Kate also managed to persuade us to get in touch with our adventurous side by going rafting. As yet we hadn't really done anything to get our adrenaline rushing so it was an extremely fun experience. We laughed at our pathetic attempts to row until the instructor shouted so loudly at us "LEFT SIDE FORWARD" and I felt a paddle hit me on the head. After that I started really listening. The first day was easy but the second day the rapids were actually quite a challenege. However the highlight has to be when our boat capcized (a practice run of course) and we all climbed back in only to find kate with her trousers down which, because they were so heavy and wet, she was struggling to pull up. Wow she really was the instructors favourite after that!

The three girlies at the Stupa in Bodha

I really like Kathmandu as a city. It's not too big so it is easy to explore, people are so welcoming and friendly and we found a great guesthouse to stay it. It was in an enclove tucked away from the busy street and had a peaceful garden and chillout area meaning that you didn't really feel like you were in a mad city. The only major downfall was the horrific air pollution. Apart from that I have only good things to say about our time here.

Exploring is tiring work