Nepal 2012/13

I’ve been to Nepal for another adventure. On the 10th December 2012 I caught the long haul flight to Kathmandu, from Manchester airport; the flight took nearly 24 hrs. The flight time is actually only 13 hours to Kathmandu, but there was a long stop over in Abu Dhabi. I was flying to Nepal to start working for a Buddhist charity called ROKPA, in a soup kitchen in the Boudhanath district of Kathmandu. Boudhanath is the Buddhist heart of Nepal and boasts one of the largest stupas in the world and is a UNESCO World Heritage site. I had a couple of days before I had to meet with my employers so went out with my camera taking shots of the area…

Kathmandu is a diverse city with all its noise and pollution, its poverty and its culture. The most striking thing about Kathmandu is its abundance of life, people carving out an existence under sometimes difficult circumstances. In Kathmandu for instance there is a load shedding system on the power. Electricity is off for fourteen hours in any one specific area then comes back on for only six on a circulatory system. Also in the winter water because of the frozen reserves in the mountains, is at a scarcity and then tap water not even drinkable when available. Despite this Kathmandu is rich in myriad ways, not rich in the sense that the people have very much (in the way of money or possessions), they have very little. What I find in Kathmandu is that people because they have so little are in fact noticeably happier – there is still a sense of community, everybody shares what they do have and mostly everybody smiles – there is a level of happiness we could only aspire to in the west.

I also went trekking. Muktinath is a sacred place both for Hindus and Buddhists. It is located in Muktinath Valley at an altitude of 3,710 meters at the foot of the Thorong La mountain pass, in the Himalayas. Hindus call the sacred place ‘Mukti Kshetra’, which means literally ‘place of salvation’. This is because it is believed that if one manages to reach the Muktinath and Vishnu temple there, one will achieve Nirvana in the next life. Muktinath is within the Mustang region of Nepal which was formerly known as the Kingdom of Lo. Mustang is divided into lower and upper Mustang with the town of Kagbeni providing the marking for the border. We began our trek from a place called Beni, located on the confluence of Kali River and Myagdi River at an altitude of 899 meters, and trekked the 90 or so Kilometers to Muktinath. The most dramatic aspect of the trek was obviously the mountain scenery of the Himalayas; but not only this the way in which the landscape changed the closer we got to Muktinath was amazing.