Or, from the sublime to the delicious via the ridiculous…

The Sublime: Distant mountains…

Here are some pictures of the mountains taken from two places in Boudha; the top of the Monastery where I am studying and the top terrace of the Stupa View Restaurant, which is a regular eatery for me.

The delicious…

The Stupa View Restaurant has very good vegetarian food: try the Elephant’s feet, the Dhal Bhat (Nepal’s national dish), or the brick-oven baked mushroom pizza, all are delicious). The staff are also very friendly and the views on each of the 3 floors (including 2 roof terraces) are AMAZING, so it is very well named!

Pizza!

Yesterday evening quite a few of us new first year students went on a group trip to the Fire and Ice Italian restaurant in Kathmandu, which was organised by our kind Student Services officer. The meal was very good; nice fresh-cooked pizzas, including one with potato fries on top which was surprisingly tasty, especially with a dash of chilli oil! I’d recommend that one for anyone missing chips (Brits) or Maccie D’s fries (Americans)! The general consensus on our table was that of the Nepal-brewed (under license) bottled lagers, the Carlsberg had slightly more bite to it than the rather fluffy local San Miguel I’d ordered. Oh well! The chap I shared the big bottle of San Miguel with is Swiss and said he didn’t mind as he only realised what beer was when he first went to Amsterdam, so I guess that means Swiss beer ain’t much cop… Chocolate yes, beer no. Anyway, we had good fun, the company was great and they are all a very nice bunch of people, so that’s great!

The other interesting thing about this meal was the taxi ride there and back. Quite some experience.

The ridiculous…

It is recommended that you take taxis here as they are relatively inexpensive and safer than buses; which range from minibuses with people hanging on outside of the sliding door; to full-size buses, with people hanging on outside of the main door. (Like I said, a busy place!).

Our little taxi convoy wound through the mad-cap traffic, at times in the middle of the road or having to negotiate brackish water-filled pot-holes or rubble that Land Rovers would definitely blink at. At one point I am sure that I heard the road hit the bottom of the car so hard I thought it would be done for but no. These taxis are all tiny Suzuki cars whose drivers must be some of the hardest working and sharpest witted people in the world. Other cars, motorbikes, bicycles, rickshaws and every form of mammal seemed to some at us from all directions and our driver handled all with aplomb and a healthy dose of loud Hindi film music. Respect!

This first glimpse of Kathmandu itself has absolutely made me want to go back for more but to my still relatively new eyes, just the driving there itself was an intense experience I wont forget for a while…

Namaste!