Changu Narayan

Another great hiking place in the Kathmandu Valley is around the Changu Narayan temple. Mer and I did this hike a while ago, and I'm writing about it now because I don't want to forget it or pretend like it was any less than the other hikes we went on. Anyhow, we were dropped off about 40 minutes away from the temple and then hiked up to it along a little hill ridge. The best view was from the hike, where you could see the steeples (I know that's a church word) rising above the trees. When we got there we found only a few other tourists, which I always consider a success when visiting special places. I mean, as a "foreign resident" I think you're entitled to explore the secrets of the city and be seen as cool by the natives for being one of the few foreigners to know about those secrets. Here's Changu:



Changu Narayan is supposedly the oldest temple in Nepal. Though, I've also heard that a temple in Panuati is the oldest. When I asked my landlord if Changu was the oldest temple in Nepal he said "Yes." When I asked him if the Panuati temple was the oldest, he said "Yes." So, that's helpful.

The best part of Changu besides the requisite Kali slaughter/sacrifice temple, were the dogs going around eating the wax after the candles expired:



Then we started our hike back to the city. This is when we started realizing that if we were not specifically in a hiking zone, no one would direct us to the dirt road hikes - only the main paved roads. Luckily, we found a few roundabout dirt roads on our own that led us past farms and the like. Here's a picture to prove it:



Back on the paved road we started feeling real dorky for pretending like we were hiking when we were really just walking on the main roads. Especially when there were buses going by us every ten minutes headed to our destination. So, we hopped on one of them and headed to Bodhanath Stupa.



We hung out at the Stupa for a bit and then ate at our favorite restaurant there called Tibet Kitchen. We took my Dad to this place when he was here, too. This is our standard meal there:

Potatoes with cheese sauce (Bhutanese)
Sampa (Tibetan thing that you mix yourself: wheat, tea, butter, sugar)
Brown Flour Momo's (Nepali - large dumplings)

Not healthy unless you count the Brown Flour. I do count it.

Mer wasn't ready to quit the day, so we walked over to Pashupatinath. It started getting dark and this is where Mer and I butt heads many evenings. When it gets dark, I start walking really quick and getting really nervous. When it gets dark, Mer acts like it's light out. So, while I'm trying to get to crowded places with lots of activity and light, she is just taking her sweet.....old.....time. For her part, we've never been threatened in any way at night. However, our old landlord always warned us to get home before dark and he's old, so he's wise, and must know.

Anyhow, Mer decides that it would the most awesome if we went up the back way around Pashupatinath. The back way is kinda like a hike. Which, I mean, wouldn't really be fun in darkness, but that doesn't matter! We find the back way despite a bunch of people trying to direct us to the front entrance. As we hike around the back of the temple we see a bunch of deer and monkeys playing together which, I guess, makes it worth it. Finally we come upon the temple which is all lit up with singing and dancing and people. According to some people who were there, the jolliness happens every night, but none of the Nepali's I've ever questioned have heard about it.



After getting stared at for a while, we went home.