Varanasi, India (20 Nov 2009)

This holy river was definitly cleaner than I expected. Mmm.....well it wasn't the cleanness that you would ask your hotel to do your laundry in the river. At least I wouldn't. I was amazed by so many things happening at the same time along the river, from birth to death. Although there were tons of annoying touts, I still liked this river city especially in the mist.

Crossing Nepal/India border (19 Nov 2009)

Jungle (17 Nov 2009)

Stayed in the jungle in Chitwan (Nepal) for a night hopping to hear some exotic animal roars. Unfortunately it wasn't much happening that night. Oh but at least I saw one rhino with broken horn next day during the elephant ride.

Sarangkot, Nepal

Every morning, the kids of the guest house would have their shoes brushed shine even though they knew that their shoes would get dirty again after walking on trail for 30 to 60 mins to school. I was also impressed by their nicely pressed school uniforms in this village.

Pokhara, Nepal

It was overcast since day one in this city. I wasn't aware of the Himalaya range supposed to be sitting next to the city as told until one day before dusk. Suddenly the sky cleared up a bit and the range came out of the cloud finally. It was shined orange by the setting sun.

Bandipur, Nepal

I was so happy leaving Kathmandu for this little village. People were so friendly here. I was hanging out at one of the local restaurants quite often. Sometimes I just sit on the step in front of the restaurant chatting to the owner and locals, seeing the world going by. The owner was very nice and also introduced some local nepali foods to me, curry buffalo, crispy rice and stir fry white beam plus his homemade Nepali wine. In the evening, kids started carrying empty containers to the store and have them filled with the wine for their parents. The owner said this was Nepali dinner style.

Kathmandu, Nepal (1 Nov 2009)

Never thought it was that much different from Tibet side after crossing the border, the traffic, the noise, the dusty air, the people......I didn't know where the impression I got from. I thought Kathmandu was a small city where was built on a gentle slope. I guessed I just over-fantasized this city. However I had no choice but had to stay there for more than a week for my India visa application. One day I decided to do a getaway for a resort doing two days canonying class. It was fun though.

Decending to the Nepali border

The landscape changed drastically after the bus passed at a point of Tibet-Nepal friendship highway when it came close to the border town of Tibet, Zhangmu. This was the town you wouldn't like to stick around but at least it's warmer and less dry because of the lower altitude.

The border at the Nepal side was so loose that you even needed to find the immigration office along the street once you crossed the bridge. There were people bargaining price with you for a ride to Kathmandu when the immigration officer stamping my passport. It was totally efficient and wasted no time.....

Can you really tell where the immigration office is from this picture?

Qomolangma

Qomolangma, her bloody British name is Everest. This is a story about how I got up to the base camp. Trust me it wasn't hard if you had a package of ridding a 4-wheel drive. It's reachable by car.

Due to restriction of allowing foreigners traveling in Tibet and lack of public transportation, most people would travel with expensive 4-wheel drive. I ran into another retired Hongkonger who was going the same route from Lhasa to Nepal as I liked to do, we decided not to rent a 4-wheel drive and hitched as many as public transportation as we could. It wasn't easy but still found our way along the road. We finally got stuck in a town named Baiba, a place where most cars would stop before spinning off for the base camp. We tried many ways to hitch hike whatever car we could. No luck. Finally we decided to rent motorcycles (of course with driver). Being frugal, it was the cheapest way we could find. It took us 4 hours one way. Although it wasn't a comfortable journey, it was fun alternative way. Sometimes they did real crazy short cut, I meant it was a stunt one. Qomolangma looks awesome before me.

At the place we stayed, it was our honer to meet a Tibetan who had been up to the top nine times already, NINE times my friend.