The stress of Kathmandu? Yes, even while living
a way more relaxed way of life here than in Hungary, it might happen that one
(or me) get stressed, annoyed or a little mad. And no, it’s not because of the
crowd, the dust, the crazy traffic, the unpredictability of what you are gonna
experience or how people are gonna react – by the time you have been living
here for almost 4 months, you get to love this craziness of the city and
actually it even becomes hard to imagine how a ’simple’ life is gonna be
getting home pretty soon, just in a month. It’s hard to imagine not to have to
jump away from cars, see the cows lying down or crossing the street as well as
it seems too simple to just to go to the supermarket and ’simply’ do the
shopping without bargaining. No, this craziness of Kathmandu is what makes you
fell in love with the city and Nepal.
But the paradox is that stress actually occurs,
when you forget to adapt your expectations to the reality here: you forget for
a second about their relaxed way of life with all its unpredictability –
meaning that this is not a place to plan. It’s a place where weddings might be
arranged in 5 days, where workshop dates might be fixed 2 days before the event
and where it still might occur that eventually nobody is gonna show up. Due to
the way of organization and the lack of planning... Which is OK, it’s ’normal’,
no reason, to worry, to get annoyed or mad about it, right? Or maybe there is?
Well, if you still forget to take off the glass of your European habits and
expectations, then preparing for no reason can be stressful. At least it
happened to me, thank to which on the other side I got to discover the area of
Chobar.
So one day, when I felt that the cup is really
full, I decided to escape to the hillside area bordering the city of Kathmandu,
Chobar. Taking no phone, and no camera with me in this special case, I walked
from our district of Sanepa to Chobar, just to climb up the hills to the small
local villages on the top and walk down and around on the other side, just
sitting down every now and then to let me realize where I really am, that I’m
in the middle of an amazing landscape, in an amazing country where I should
enjoy my last months instead of sticking to my ‘glasses’ brought from home. Well,
this worked pretty well. It’s amazing that just after walking about one hour,
you can find a place like this, where you can absolutely feel in another world,
out of the city, away from your annoying thoughts, just in the middle of the
nature.
Later I discovered another place with a pretty
similar atmosphere where although at that time I had no particular reason for
an escape but I felt the same kind of calmness just at the other edge of the
city: in Kopan monastery. This monastery is situated about 45 minutes of
walking distance from Boudanath which is by the way one of my favorite and most
inspiring place in Kathmandu. After getting to the village of Kopan there’s a
little hill to climb, on the top of which you will find a small Buddhist
monastery. Besides the precious view and atmosphere, they also offer
discussions and classes about Buddha Dharma. Unfortunately since the classes are
in the morning (10am) I haven’t got a chance to attend them yet – so I guess
this is going to be a nice reason to go back there somewhen pretty soon. Until
then here are some pictures for you taken at Kopan monastery, enjoy them as
much as I did being there! :)
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