jaro gruber ;-): 2023

soooo, let's start (and finish?) my blog with my mobile phone notes written in the tour bus and with the favorite pictures made almost entirely by my wife. why? it is much too difficult to go through all my 2,000+ pictures and select the best of them, you imagine? my wife has a much better sense for beauty and for the right moment in life aka snapshot, anyway 😄

yes, nepal is like northern india, if you asked me ... the people / religion / crazy colors / crowded cities & roads / sounds & smells / food ... maybe that's why we liked it so much despite all the economical + environmental (doNOTthrowPLASTICbesideTheROAD!) + all kinds of other problems and challenges the nepali encounter every day => enjoy my insights & pictures 😇

somewehere down the road in the kathmandu valley.

(bhaktapur, outside the unesco heritage & tourist city center)

hindu funeral ceremonies (burning of the death bodies) in kathmandu,

pashupatinath temple at the small bagmati river, unesco heritage

sadhus in the pashupatinath temple. real sadhus or just sadhus for money? who knows?

the most sadhus are older than these guys and do not beg pushy, if you asked me.

the stupa of one of the many tibetan buddhist temples

tibetan monks

mr. monkey 🐒

the main pagoda in bhaktapur durbar square (unesco heritage)

anna (1.6m) meets annapurna (8,091m)💖

anna + annapurna, left the spiky fishtail mountain (machapuchare, 6993m)

our trip

all in one

[ ] so strange: our small little alps (highest peak mt. blanc 4,808 m) look from any side much, much, much more spectacular than the himalayas (highest peak mt. everest 8,848 m) from the south in late december. unbelievable, but there is really almost no snow at the himalayan hills! just the very tops are white ☃️. i guess, like an iceberg, only the upper 1/7 is white and the rest is just grey-green-brown and dusty. maybe even only 1/10 white vs. 9/10 grey. we've been told in pokhara that the snow line from the southern side is at about 5000m, but it definitely doesnt look like that ... heaven & hell, here we go! we've had a different travel guide from the kathmandu airport to the hill area nagarkot. what did he say beside that he also admires the sadhguru like i do and that he took already part in sadhguru's isha foundation inner engineering course? due to climate change only the heights above 7000m are covered by ice and snow. my dears, thats what i've seen with my eyes and now the world fits to my new beliefs again 💓

[ ] 60 - 125 nations / tribes (newari, mustang, sherpa, khas arya (khasa), gurung, ...) => many languages, customs. main language is nepali, which is similar to hindi. the scripture probably ditto

[ ] religion: more than 80% hindu + 5% muslim + 10% buddhist (especially the tibetan refugees and their children and grandchildren, who are still not allowed to leave their refugee sites or to open businesses => so sad. there are many tibetan buddhist temples out there) + few other + traditional religions

[ ] rasant population growth from 6 millions to 30 millions in approx. 80 years since WW2

[ ] the nepalese 'gurkha' soldiers fought in WW1 + WW2 in the british army against germany and its allies. today you will find many gurkha knifes in the souvenir shops and almost everywhere the gurkha beer

[ ] nepal was and still is difficult to reach between india and tibet (our travel guide doesnt like china, so she spoke always about tibet😇) => no attacks by foreign nations => development of own 'endemic' culture possible

[ ] ruling class is hindu, population buddhist => this information by our german travel guide is NOT TRUE. well, she knew so much about religion, history and even could a little bit read nepali, so most likely it was meant for a special time in history or only for a special area in nepal and not as a current snapshot of nepal's religions, who knows? nevertheless are more than 80% nepalese hindus today

[ ] indian numbers (digits) are still in use in nepal. they have been overtaken by the arabs and india later overtook the arabic numbers instead of their own. what a strange global world out there 😎

[ ] till 2008 was nepal the last hindu monarchy in the world. after that a democratic republic as the end of monarchy was one of the major demands of the maoist rebells to end the nepalese civil war

[ ] capital kathmandu (former name kantipur) in a valley at a cross of two trading roads between 2 himmalaya mountain chains. legend has it that a hindu god (king?) cut a gap into a stone which forced the lake to drain off and opened the valley for the people ...

[ ] it feels like india for me as the influence of indian culture over the centuries is more present than the tibetan. i've linked our north india journey somewhere at the beginning of this blog post, so let's jump to southern india here, if you wanna more of the indian culture, my dear readers

[ ] himalaya is a young massif which still works and thus mt. everest grows every year by 1,7 mm (who the hell knows that for sure?)

[ ] huge earthquakes every 100 years, the last one in 2015

[ ] chinese money, chinese influence, chinese silk road (airport pokhara, bridges, a 4 lines highway to tibet which is sooo different and 1,000 times better than the usual nepalese roads, ...)

[ ] so much plastic waste everywhere, thus again: doNOTthrowPLASTICbesideTheROAD!

[ ] even if getting better, nepal is still a poor country. people try to educate their children and bring them abroad, mostly to the USA. as students or as refugees. for an illegal border cross to USA charge specialized agencies about 41 thousand euros. or dollars? well, it is almost the same as the current exchange rate is 1€ = $1.09. it is a lot as an good income is about 600$ per month.

[ ] very high taxes on cars, alcohol & the like. a new car costs approx 3x more than the same car in india or usa. nevertheless there are many cars and motorbikes + traffic jams in kathmandu. hooh? yes, the people take loans and deposit their land & houses as a security for the banks. the interest rates for loans in nepal exceeds 11% p.a., which is just a next challenge for the people out there. do you wonder, that exploited nepalese workers we have met in qatar and in the airplane (who often earn just 250€ per month net (i.e. 1,000 QAR, qatar riyal) and who sleep in a room with 4-5 other workers and get only 300 QAR for food on top and who are transported to their work each day and who paid their strange agencies 1,000 - 2,000 EUR for qatari work permit in the first place) whish the corrupt nepalese maoists to step down and the king to come back to power? i do not wonder at all ...

[ ] chitwan NP = rhino + crocodile + water bird + etc. => we've missed that nature paradise as my wife was struggling of lumbago. it is pity, of course ... but there is a positive site of that coin as well. huhhh? we came closer to ganeesh! no, i do not mean the son of shiva + parvati. i mean our nepalese travel guide, who booked all the flights by buddha air to our after next station pokhara, all the airport pick-ups, hotel and who supported us not only organisationally, but more important, mentally. thanks, dear ganeesh👍. it was also interesting to spend all christmas day alone with my wife & her pain in a hotel room thousands km away from home and hundreds km away from our travel group, you see?

just to make that story complete, our nepalese bus driver was vishnu and the bus boy ganesh, too. what abt a recap of the major hindu gods, my dears? okay, lets go back to northern india 😁

[ ] lumbini, southeast nepal = birth place of lord buddha

[] our stops: kathmandu (thamel area), patan (part of lalitpur), [chitwan,] pokhara, nagarkot, changunarayan, bhaktapur, panauti, kathmandu

[ ] we've visited 7 UNESCO heritage sites

[ ] lowest elevation 59m, highest elevation 8848m, average elevation 3265m above the sea level

[ ] if you have any idea why is the nepali calendar 56 years and 8 months ahead of western europe, just let me know. will you? december 28th, 2023 = september 3rd, 2080.

[ ] my final insight? the offer is here in nepal almost always much higher than the demand

[ ] DAN-YA-VAD = thank you in nepali and THANK YOU, nepal 💗

few more pictures:

changunarayan unesco heritage site

nagarkot

in a school class today => if you have any idea why is the nepali calendar 56 years + 8 months

ahead of europe, just let me know. will you? december 28th, 2023 = september 3rd, 2080

rural nepal

mouse sitting in front of the ganeesha tempel,

thalis were always a good idea

two monkeys, 👼+ 🐒

many monkeys

tibetan prayer wheels. prayer mills?

the poorest of the poor ...

working class

kathmandu, roof top restaurant. nice.

monkey family

monkey family aka two of us

bhaktapur unesco heritage

electricity in nepal, no comments ...

i've to cry ... one or two homeless and really poor families lived in this empty and not yet occupied parcel between two houses. they've burned trash a did not really care that they've kindled a tree .. my dears, there were already so few trees and so few green areas in kathmandu ...