Pagodas for Shelter

Kathmandu, Nepal in the monsoon, Jul 2022

It’s that time of the year again where the Indian festivals start to pick up. Tomorrow is Durga Puja, a major festival for East India, and Anu’s family’s biggest festival. The rest of India knows it more as Dussehra and in Nepal, it’s known as Dashain.

We celebrate it by putting tika on the kids. Tika (sticking a paste of banana, uncooked rice and red powder on the forehead) is a Nepali tradition. Since Anu is partly of Gorkhali descent, that’s what they do. Since I already have some photos of our UNPLANNED 2022 stopover in Nepal sorted out in my computer, that’s what I’m gonna do. Post them, haha. And that’ll be one post done! Talk about quick-wins!

Last year, we made our first visit to our Malaysia home after 3 long years of the dratted COVID pandemic! It is the first time in 3 friggin years that we, trapped expats in the UAE, could go somewhere. Anywhere. Seeing that situation, the airlines company, decided to make a killing (when else would they recoup their losses of the COVID years??) Therefore, airfares shot up 4 friggin times of the pre-COVID fares! To keep the costs affordable, we had to make stopovers. We chose an Omani low-cost airline (SalamAir) which would take us to Dhaka, Bangladesh before getting on Biman (Bangladesh’s national carrier) to good ol’ KL. But then SalamAir cancelled our flight! YEAH, they fuckin did, a week before the flight date! – Their plane developed some technical problems, they said! (As if they had only 1 plane, ….or maybe they really did!) That drove us into a mad rush to find alternative, CHEAP, tickets to Bangladesh quickly, but there were none to be found. We eventually ended up with Jazeera Airways, a Kuwaiti low-cost airline who were famous infamous for their delays, (we found out only after we flew!) to fly to Kathmandu, Nepal where we would catch a connecting flight to Dhaka. There was a 5+ hour stopover in Kathmandu, so there should be no problem, although it would involve us going thru immigration, taking out our bags and checking in again. And then lovely Jazeera Airlines poured all that nice plan down the drain by delaying their flight by 5 fuckin hours! And thanks to them, we were in Kathmandu, in the monsoon season!

We’ve visited Nepal before, way back in the winter of 2010. And we’re back, to see how Nepal looks like, in the monsoon. Monsoon isn’t a time when tourists visit Nepal, because of landslides, rain, mud, clouds and thunderstorms. But do we have a choice? Luckily for us though, it turned out pretty good, except for our shoes getting soaking wet, and doing a marathon in Kathmandu’s airport trying to catch our flight, whatever it takes. (We failed as you could see). Here’re the pictures.


Whew, safely at our hotel, Hotel Moonlight, after the fiasco of trying to catch our flight at Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan Airport. Don’t get me wrong, everyone was nice at the airport, customs, immigration, security, passengers… They let us thru, cutting across queues and procedures. We got our on-arrival visas and cleared immigration and security in a breeze, but our bags took forever to come out. And then we embarked on a mad rush pushing the loaded trolley from the Arrival Terminal to the Departure Terminal, and this had to be done outside, on an upwards ramp. By the time we got to the check-in counter of our airline, I was red, panting and soaking with sweat. And there was NO-ONE at the counter. Or the airport office of the airline. Well, we reached at exactly the flight departure time. Later, we learnt that all the staff were at the gate assisting boarding. To cut the story short, the airline’s (Biman) manager, God bless him, booked us on the next day’s flight out, with only a cancellation / rebooking fee (of USD40 per person if I remember correctly). That’s a far cry from considering us as no-shows and getting us to book fresh new tickets!


Anu, Hotel Moonlight, Thamel, Kathmandu, Nepal – See the cloudy monsoon skies?


A bird’s eye view of densely-packed Kathmandu from our hotel. Here’s an older post with more views


A street-level view of Thamel, Kathmandu. The streets are dotted with shrines, temples and entrances to hidden courtyards


Entrance to a street-side temple – the Nardevi Temple (sez Google Maps)


A courtyard with some shrines – Yatkha Baha (thank you Google Maps, what can I do without you…)


Kathmandu’s Durbar Square – that’s where we were heading to. I remembered it as a nice place to chill out during our last visit in 2010. Wanna see how it changed after the 2015 Earthquake. Thankfully, many of the buildings are still around, or maybe re-built. There’re still signs of rubble and scaffolds in the streets, I think from the rebuilding process


A hidden god, with scary fangs!


Kathmandu’s Durbar Square in the monsoon


It’s raining. Luckily, there’re pagodas all over to hide from the rain. Doesn’t stop water from soaking our shoes though


Never mind the rain. Devotees offering prayers to Kala Bhairava, the main deity of the Newars and by extension, the protector of Kathmandu. Behind, a temple is under construction


This pagoda looks new. Must be newly reconstructed. Notice that pile of old stone rubble in the front?


Another courtyard with a stupa – Shree Ghah Chaitya (yup, sez Google Maps)


Finally, time for a Nepali dinner. We found this restaurant, the Paleti Bhanchha Ghar, between the Durbar Square and our hotel. Anu, sitting in front of a painting of the Kumari, the living child goddess of Nepali tradition

Happy Durga Puja! Happy Dussehra! Happy Dashain! And incidentally, this festival coincides with the Taoist Nine Emperor Gods Festival in Malaysia, so Happy Festival to the Malaysian Chinese celebrating this as well!