Photos of our Fabulous Adventure
Early to rise and met the group at breakfast around 7am. I just love the open courtyard and their breakfasts are varied and good. A woman by the name of Candy, from the US, is the new Food & Beverage manager and is great at ensuring all is well with the guests. She has lived here for 5 years and started at the hotel several months ago. She is a delight, as are all the staff here. Just love this hotel!
At 9am we gather in the lobby, ready for our next adventure. We are off to the surrounding hills a short distance east of Kathmandu to the village of Nagarkot. Bikesh arrives and has decided on a wee itinerary change. Instead of driving to the Hotel and then hiking, we will drive to Salinadi and hike from there to Nagarkot. This should take us about 3 hours, and with a little adjustment to our backpacks, we are off.
Mr. Prem, our delightful driver, is ready and waiting for us and we leave the Thamel area with ease as there seems to be very little traffic – amazing! A few minutes later we turn into a side street and Bikesh explains, we have a little problem. Yikes I think to myself, is something wrong with the van? It was actually not a ‘problem’, however, we are going ‘off-roading’ and the undercarriage of the van is too low, so we need to change to a vehicle with higher road clearance. This brought cheers from the group as they are quite the adventurers.
Minutes later we are in a large Toyota van and continuing our journey. Traffic is slow but not anything like the last couple of days as the Dashain Festival starts today and most people are already out of town. Not too long and the buildings thin out and the beautiful terraced hills dotted with small villages and farms come in to view – absolutely beautiful. The road however is not so beautiful 😳. At times the potholes and washboard seem the size of a small car. I was sitting near the back and at one point felt I was in the rodeo riding a bucking bronco. What a ride.
We climb steeply and slowly around hairpin turns to the top of the ridge constantly honking to warn oncoming vehicles. We finally arrive at a small village and enter a small “cafe” for lemon tea and what looked like churros – a small donut like Nepali pastry. Very tasty, and hit the spot after our roller coaster ride. Our ride that was to take little over an hour, took over 2 hours.
We now start our walk towards Nagarkot on a narrow country road that follows the ridge and meet several motorcycles and the odd truck. It is challenging walking on it let alone driving. The views over the terraced hills are stunning, and the sounds of the forest, birds chirping, the constant hum of crickets, goats bleating and the laughter of children is heavenly. The sounds are interrupted by the occasional ‘car’ or ‘bike’ holler from one of the group.
The walk is rolling hills and as the day wears on it gets warmer and begins to feel like the hike that doesn’t end. We find a shady spot with a bench next to a house that is closed up so we take advantage, sit down and retrieve our water bottles. Within seconds a young man rolls up the metal door and voila, a shop appears! We purchase chips, cookies, water and Fanta – a brisk little business for him.
Onwards and upwards. Bikesh tells us of a short cut, however they are doing roadwork after the last monsoon (a never ending job) and have obliterated our shortcut. So we continue to wind up and up further to Nagarkot village. It is a nice little village and much more populated than I realized, with little shops here, there & everywhere. Shops in every nook & cranny selling everything from foods to tailored clothing.
Finally we arrive at the Club Himalaya Hotel (at the far end of the village of course!) and it is an oasis. Ascending the last few flights of stairs we arrive into a huge open air lobby that is so beautiful and so relaxing. While I get our room keys, the staff serve us a welcome drink and we relax. Our beautiful rooms are located overlooking the valley towards the Himalaya range. Pity the clouds are hiding these beautiful giants.
We are too late for the buffet lunch, however the hotel provides us with a great snack of sandwiches, pakora, fries and a small salad. We were under the impression it would be finger food, however they brought us each our own plates – very tasty indeed.
Time to relax and enjoy the resort and we all scattered, some for a walk, others for a swim or to shop. Lois & I headed out the front of the hotel to get a few sunset shots. The clouds were covering the sun but we managed a few nice photos. A sweet old man followed us around as he was trying to sell his posters of the Himalayan Mountains – he led us to the stupa just behind the hotel and then down the lane to the best sunset location. We started to cave and when he pointed out that our hotel was in the photo, we were both sold – two posters please!
Once the sun disappeared we wandered and happened upon a great little handicraft gift shop. Lois W. is dangerous to follow around as she finds the coolest things to buy and we both made our wallets a little bit lighter. The young man behind the desk, Jeewan (his name means life) was delightful. The second you asked ‘what is the price on this?’, he would punch it out on his giant calculator to show you. His fingers were working at top speed as we shopped the store, and had to work even faster when all of the group made their way in to the shop – a virtual shopping frenzy. It was great fun!
While the majority of us were in the shop, Cathy, Tammy & Shane were perusing the small village down the road. Upon their return Cathy literally could hardly contain her excitement – she found a tailor that would sew a pair of custom made Nepali dress pants for her within 3 hours. She was over the moon.
Shopping wares safely in our rooms, it was Happy Hour time and we met in their lobby bar for drinks. Lois wanted to try a Nepali liquor and when it arrived we each took a taste and the consensus was – it takes like rocket fuel – eeewwww.
It’s 7:30pm and our dinner buffet is served. What an incredible spread with foods of every description. And just as we were winding down, the staff turned down the lights, played a great birthday song and came over to our table singing & popping balloons. It was Margaret’s 80th birthday 2 weeks ago and Cathy’s birthday is coming up in 2 weeks. I was so pleased as we only requested the cake a couple of hours before dinner. Luckily I thought to bring candles and balloons of which they kindly blew up for us.
It was the ‘icing’ on the cake for a most incredible day. Time for a good night sleep.