We left the Mamata Hotel in Bhairwa at about 06:30 hrs. after being roused at 05:00 hrs. for a cuppa. Bhairahawa, spelling variation Bhairawa and also known as Siddharthanagar, is a pleasant city of about 70,000 people on the Terai plains of Nepal. It is 265 km. (165 miles) west of the capital Kathmandu and three kilometres north of the Indian border at Sunauli. Now, in daylight, the snow-capped Annapurna mountain range was visible on the horizon.
The bus today was bigger dimensionally but had just as little leg room. We sat “side-saddle” as the conductor packed a load of locals on, with the excuse that all the other buses were cancelled due to the festival. We followed the Narayani River Valley with it’s steep cultivated sides after a long fast run on a good road through the southern jungle.
The Gandaki River (also known as the Narayani and the Gandak) is one of the major rivers of Nepal and a left bank tributary of the Ganges in India. In Nepal, it is notable for its deep canyon through the Himalayas. It has a total catchment area of 46,300 square kilometres (17,900 square miles), most of it in Nepal. The basin also contains three of the world's 14 mountains over 8,000 metres (26,000 feet), namely Dhaulagiri, Manaslu and Annapurna I.
We stopped for dinner (lunch) in a typical transport café shed. Vegetable curry with rice and dhal with tea cost us 8 Nepalese Rupees. Apart from this we travelled almost non-stop, with an unplanned afternoon rest in the sun due to a puncture.
Towards evening we climbed steeply out of one valley and eventually descended into Kathmandu Valley. Kathmandu is the capital and largest city of Nepal, with a population of around 2.5 million at the moment. Also known as the city of temples, with one of the oldest pagoda design, known with Pashupatinath Temple, the city stands at an elevation of approximately 1,400 metres (4,600 feet) above sea level in the bowl-shaped Kathmandu valley in central Nepal.
The valley is historically called the "Nepal Mandala" and has been the home of Newar people, a cosmopolitan urban civilization in the Himalayas foothills. The city was the royal capital of the Kingdom of Nepal and hosts palaces, mansions and gardens of the Nepalese aristocracy.
We were dropped off in the town centre and after a brief spell with hotel tout we escaped to “Freak Street”. Wikipedia explains: Freak Street was the epicenter during the Hippie Trail from the early 1960s to late 1970s. During that time, the main attraction drawing tourists to Freak Street was the government-run hashish shops. Hippies from different parts of the world travelled to Freak Street (Basantapur) in search of legal cannabis. Direct bus services to Freak Street were also available from the airport and borders targeting the hippies looking for legal smokes.
Freak Street was a hippie nirvana since marijuana and hashish were legal and sold openly in government licensed shops. A young restless population in the west, seeking to distant itself from political and social frustration, had first-hand contact with the fascinating culture, art and architecture, and unique lifestyle that attracted hippies to Freak Street.
But in the early 1970s the government of Nepal started a round-up of hippies on Freak Street and they were physically deported to India, an action propelled largely by a directive from the government of United States of America. The government imposed a strict regulation for tourists regarding the dress codes and physical appearances. After imposing such regulations by government, the hippies felt vulnerable and the hippie movement of Nepal died out in the late 1970s. It was under this directive that the Nepali government came to ban the production and sale of hashish and marijuana in Nepal. The hippie tourism was quickly replaced with the more conventional businesses of trekking and cultural tourism.
Here all of the cheap hotels seemed to be fully booked but we unearthed a double room in the Pokhara Lodge for 25 Nepalese Rupees. Leaving our gear in the room we set out in search of an eating house. Our first port of call was a hippy haven with hazy heavy rock music and we rapidly vacated this terrestrial Hades before we got high on the hashish smoke.
Down the road we found the pleasant, if unfortunately named for English speakers, Young Dung Restaurant with low tables, a decent cheap menu and quiet sensible clientele. Nepal seems to be a marvellous place from our first impressions. The scenery is amazing and colours seem to be too vivid to be true. Smiling faces greet us beneath brightly coloured tea-cosy hats and the people seem to be fitter and healthier than in India. It is also cheap to live and the locals don’t seem to be so money-grabbing.
A wailing has just started up as the proprietor has locked his children in a cupboard. After a hearty meal of sweet’n’sour vegetables, egg fried rice and banana fritters with honey we paid up and moved on to the Blue Bird Canteen. Here we had coffee and pancakes while David Bowie entertained us with his albums “Station to Station” and “Young Americans” on the café’s cassette tape player.
This enjoyment was offset by the menagerie of wankers in fancy dress that continued to bore us with over-loud travel lore and yarns (Refer to the book “The Gap Yah Plannah” by Orlando; or “The Inbetweeners 2” movie for the modern equivalent of these travellers).
We battled with the Kathmandu street map to navigate our way to “Pig Alley” with it’s famous array of pie shops. When the first travellers arrived in the heart of Kathmandu, two areas close to Durbar Square, Maruhity Tol and Jhochhen Tol, quickly developed into key destinations. The areas were soon renamed Pig Alley and Freak Street.
Not a crumb of pie was in evidence, even in the “In and Out” Pie Shop and Restaurant, so we settled for an egg curry. We were on an orgy of gluttony to cover our initial disappointment with the mythical legend of Kathmandu. It is lucky that we always carry books with us because service in Indian and Nepalese restaurants always takes hours (with hindsight is was probably cooked painstakingly from scratch). At last our fare arrived and we polished off the bland meal in double-quick time before going back to bed in the Pokhara Lodge Hotel.
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