plan

We made a 17 days trip to Nepal in December 1999, just enough to get a quick impression of the beautiful country, it's friendly and colorfull inhabitants, the various landscapes and some of it's rich flora and fauna. The trip to Nepal was exellent: nice people, nice weather, very nice landscapes. Lots of walking and photographing, of course. To me it was like a strange mix of all kind of countries I visited so far, but a nice mix. Also their way of living is such a strange mixture of modern and traditional. On one hand living in the 17th century, on the other hand equiped with the same high tech as we have.

But let's start at the beginning: the first days we spended in Kathmandu and surroundings and visited a lot of Hindu and Boudist temples, the holy river where they burn their dead relatives, and other interesting places.

The second part of the trip was spend on a travel to the top of mountains, from which you had a mighty overview over the Himalayan mountain range and where you could make nice walks in the mountains around, taking photographs of the lovely sawa-like landscapes.

Than we went to Pokhara to start our "Royal Trek": a nice four days walk through the hills and mountains (daily varying altitudes between 700 to 2100 meters high, so not really difficult, even not for us, flat-bottom-walkers). Overnighting in tents, luggage carried by local porters, accompanied by sherpa's to guide us, a personal cook (group). So 14 people around to take care of us (my wife and me and six other Dutch people). Very luxury way of traveling. And very enjoyable, passing lots of small villages, each with its own characteristics. But because it was wintertime (by day 20+ degrees, by night less than 5 degrees), birdlife was not abundant and flowers were sparcely seen as well as butterflies. I did hardly see mamals and reptiles in this by agricultural use dominated landscapes, what surprised me very much.

Once back in Pokhara, we lost two days because of modern problems with striking students: we were not able to travel because of road blocks. But we got an intensive excursion programme in Chitwan, during which we saw quite a lot of the wildlife: monkey species, rhino's, alligators and so on. So at the end of the two weeks trip, we were quite satisfied. Alas, the next day we had to drive back to Kathmandu, to catch the plain back home. In general, I liked this trip very much but the next time, I would like to spend more time in the Chitwan national park in the south.