Kari Kobler's Mount Everest 2002 Expedition
Kari Kobler

Safe Arrival in Kathmandu: Sightseeing in the metropolis and cultural discoveries

After a short night stopover in New Dehli - our luggage, an important detail and the reason for our visit in India has joined us - we arrive the next day in the usually pulsating but now calm Kathmandu with its twisted and narrow streets and honking cars. The initial destinations are the Monkey Temple as well as the largest Stupa in Nepal. A leisurely tour of the well-known Thamel, where small shops line up tightly and offer products for daily life, is next. The tourist's gaze is captured again and again by the souvenir shops filled with handmade items such as finely knitted purses to wooden sculptures, and it is only with patient head shaking that one can turn down the offers to enter. Unfortuantely, trash that lines the streets and piles up on corners, and all efforts of the government to clean up - even with finanically backed programs - have so far failed; the funds seem to go somewhere else. The cloud of emissions and dust which sits on top of the city is only barely thinned by a light afternoon breeze, and with dry throat und crackling voice one is glad to find the local pubs which are situated in back alleys and lush yards.

Our quarters, the Hotel Astoria, a family run business owned by an alumni of the School of Gastronomy in Lausanne, impresses and spoils equally with clean rooms., friendly service, and top rate nouvelle cusine. The fabulously creamy soup of broccoli which came with the entree and the volaille aux morilles last night will certainly be a hard memory to bear when we are high on the mountain. The hotel's vegetable garden builds the greatest trust in the quality of the food, and without hesitation we felt safe about eating the freshly prepared produce.

At the break of dawn the plane to Lhasa takes off; more news to follow.

April 5, 2002 Michele Merat

Dispatches