Part two of vacation... We departed from Chitwan early the next morning.  What should have been a short drive unsurprisingly turned into a longer one.   I believe it was about 6 hours to our next destination, the Manakamana Temple.  It is located in Gorkha, Nepal which is only a few hours from Kathmandu.  The temple is located on the top of a mountain which is now easily accessible by cable car.  We all took the cable cars up and got some pretty great views on the way up.  There were small villages scattered all over the mountainside, many painted with the NCell logo.  NCell seems to have surpassed Coca Cola, Nike and Adidas in quantity of advertisements in Nepal.  As we rolled over the crest of the mountain we were greeted by all of the waving Kopila Valley students who had already taken their cars up.

The Kopila Valley greeting

After everyone was unloaded we had a quick snack of tangerines and then walked down an extremely busy road lined with nothing but vendors, all holding out various items and shouting their elaborate sales pitches such as, "you like, yes?"  When we got to the end of the road there was the Manakamana Temple, standing tall in the middle of an small courtyard surrounded by more vendors and small tea shops.  It was bustling with tourists, monks, vendors, monkeys, pigeons and those intending to make a sacrifice at the temple.  Manakamana is the name of a Hindu goddess who is believed to fulfill the wishes of the people.  'Mana' means the 'heart' or 'soul' and 'kamana' means 'wish'.  Apparently thousands of goats a day are sacrificed there.  We saw a good number of goats who enjoyed their first and last cable car ride that day.  I wondered if you could buy a one way ticket.  The temple itself was beautiful and clearly old.  There were burning candles or incense lining the outside of the temple and bells of all sizes that patrons could freely ring.  The line to get inside was hours long so we opted not to go in which I regret.  I was very curious to see inside.  We walked up long set of stairs, which the line of people extended up, to another peak of the mountain.  We found a flat grassy area where we sat and ate breakfast for a while.  Apparently the view from there is incredible but it was too foggy out that day unfortunately.  Maggie told us you could see the Himalayas from where we sat.  We waited some time hoping for the fog to burn off, but to no avail.  After we descended the steps, bought some trinkets for the kids and rode the cable cars back to the bottom it was time for lunch.  We ate some dal baht at a local place, dealt with a child who appeared to have bitten through his lip because of a see saw accident, then piled back onto the bus.

The vendors' street

Manakamana Temple

From our breakfast location

Back down the mountain

Before we piled back onto the bus after lunch

This is where Matt and I departed for Kathmandu.  We needed to extend our visas, were already so close to Kathmandu and had already endured the long bus drive through Nepal that I swore to myself I would not do again.  This meant of course that we had to miss the last part of the trip to Lumbini, Buddha's birthplace, but it would have been silly not to go to Kathmandu from there, having already come so far.  It was a pretty impromptu decision to depart so abruptly but I kind of like not having all of the details worked out.  Some might call that stupid but I might dare to call it adventurous.  Maggie helped us find a bus that was leaving Gorkha for Kathmandu, told us to stay in the Buddha Garden hotel in Thamel, Kathmandu (a touristy part of Kathmandu), and sent us on our way.

Part 3 coming next...



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