Aimlessly Ambling Across Asia: Pharping and Kathmandu, Nepal.

DECEMBER 22-27, Pharping to Indian border There was a heavy frost last night, but our room was pretty warm (somewhere above 40 degrees). We walked the pilgrim trail this morning, passing by and visiting many Hindu temples, Buddhist chortens and stupas and forests filled with prayer flags. One neat thing about Nepal is that the Hindus and Buddhists get along extremely well, well enough so that they even worship in each other's temples. The first temple we visited was a Buddhist temple. It was the most ornate temples that I have ever seen=quite spectacular! We spent the afternoon on our hotel roof basking in the warm sunshine and doing whatever each of us felt like doing, (first time that we've done this for the last 3 weeks). A Lama (Tibetan monk) named Karma Sherpa joined us for supper. He is an amazing man! Cold, bright starry night.
Nice housing complex, Pharping.

Ven. Karma Sherpa.

Buddhist temple in Pharping.

December 24
We met our new Lama friend, Karma, for breakfast at a little restaurant near the hotel. He loves to talk and has many fascinating stories to tell. I stayed at the restaurant talking with him till lunch time when Martha, Ben and Sam returned.
Back to Kathmandu to our nrw hotel, the Ganesh Himal Guest House. Nice place, much friendlier than the first one we had here in the city. Had some special "western" food for supper.

Taking gear off the bus roof.

Christmas day
Santa left chocolate in the 4 dirty socks that we hung up last night. We had a real nice hangout day. I went

Foothills of the Himalayas, from the bus.

with Karma to his. Tao training center/ashram. We all went out for our special Christmas supper. Our choice of restaurants, te Kathmandu Steak House turned out to be totally overpriced, so we found another little eatery and gorged ourself on spaghetti, pizza, fried chicken and thupka, then stopped at a bakery for dessert. No busses tomorrow, so we wait till the 27th to leave.
Boxing Day was areal hangout day yhat included Skype calls to all to wish them a merry Christmas. (We are 13.5 hours ahead of you).

Terraced hillside.

Buddhist chorten, Pharping.

DECEMBER 28
We got up at 5:30. No lights for a bit. Dragged all our gear down into the lobby to skype everyone at Katie and Joe's party before catching our bus. Really neat to talk with AND SEE everyone! It was only 36 degrees in the hotel lobby. Caught our "deluxe" (yeah right!) bus for the Indian border, an 8 hour ride (yeah, right again!!). It wasn't tooo bad, another day of extreme sports adventure careening down out of the foothills of the Himalayas with more "near miss" head-on collisions per minute than you could count on both hands.
We arrived at the brder at sunset. No problem getting out of Nepal. Getting into India, not so smooth. The immigration agent informed us that because travelled to Nepal we would have problems getting out of India. However, if we were willing to give him an extra 2,000 rupees, he would "fix" the problem for us. The speed at which he made the money disappear into his drawer indicated to me that MAYBE he was telling us a little white lie.