Well, to catch up a little bit about the trips
that I haven’t written about yet, I decided to write a bit about a beautiful
place just in the neighbourhood of Kathmandu: Sundarijal waterfall.
Sundarijal waterfall is located about 5-10 km
from Kathmandu – not too far but it doesn’t mean that you can get there very
fast considering Nepalese transportation. Anyway, when we decided to visit
Sundarija, we took a bus from Ratnapark, from old bus park. The bus was
wandering around the streets of Kathmandu playing the usual video game while
managing between the other cars until we finally left the city behind to still
drive a bit through some more quiet villages. We arrived after about 1.5 hour
bus drive. Getting to the village by the feet of the hills, we decided to take
a lunch at a small local place – our usual chawmin (pasta with vegetables) for
around 30 Rupees (10 Eurocents). It’s really nice to visit these local places:
both for getting to know the real Nepalese lifestyle and both for our wallet as
well. Here we even got a chance to try the famous local spirit, the raksy (I’m
not sure, this is the right way to write it though – you can never see this in a
menu). It reminded me more of kind of a dry wine, not the tastiest spirit that
I have tried, but it was still a nice experience.
After having lunch unfortunately we had to
split our team, since our French friend had so bad stomach problems (not
because of the raksy though J) that she had to go back to the
city to the hospital... Because of this it was only our half team that starting
walking up on the again endless-looking stairs to the forest which turned out
to belong to Shivapuri National Park as well. It was only at the top of all the
steps that we got to know that there is also an entrance fee for foreigners in
the area (200 Rs). Still, it was worth paying for it, because the waterfall
itself was pretty cool – even though at this time of the year, just before the
monsoon there wasn’t so much water in it. We even found some “secret” way
through a little cave to climb up to almost the top of the waterfall and enjoy
a beautiful view over Kathmandu valley. From here we still walked higher up
through the forest and then by hillsides so that we could again have a rest at
a family-house-looking resting place where had some real nice Nepalese milk tea
while the owners also brought a guitar and a traditional Nepalese instrument
for us to play while enjoying the view and the tea.
Having spent the day in the hills, we walked
back to the village just in time to catch the very last bus going back to
Kathmandu. Taking the last bus also meant that again we had a real experience
about Nepalese-style traffic: the bus was already so full when we got there
that I could hardly imagine how we can still fit in there – but we managed. And
what is more, after this the conductor of the bus was running up and down
around the bus from outside, ordering the people already standing like salmons
in the can to stand closer and closer and give room for more passengers. It’s
amazing how they can make the impossible possible like this and fit like more
than 50 people in a small-small bus. After again about more than one hour of
bus ride with the conditions mentioned above and after having watched the
sunset from there, we finally arrived back to busy Kathmandu and after this
beautiful day we went to see our friends stuck in the hospital in the
meanwhile.
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