Kathmandu, Part 1 (Mountains and Monkeys)

I know I said the Taj Mahal was next, but I changed my mind.  Our trip to Nepal was too short.  We are definitely going to have to make another trip.  We had planned on taking a trip up to Everest, but the weather was rainy and cloudy.  We did take a plane trip to see it.  We saw it peaking over the cloud cover, which was totally cool.  The picture below is as close as we could get.  Hopefully we can get back in the fall when the weather is better.

Mt. Everest (29,000ft) on the left.  Lhotse (27.900ft) is on the right. 

Some friends told us about a quaint little hotel in Kathmandu, Hotel Courtyard, in the Thamel area.  Thamel is the tourist area of Kathmandu.  While some people may want to shy away from it, we enjoyed being in the middle of restaurants, etc.  An added bonus is that there is a camera shop on every corner, which came in handy when a monkey stole my lens cap!  The owners of the hotel, Michelle and Pujan, like to keep it small and friendly.  They were wonderful hosts!  The first night we were there, they arranged an authentic Nepalese dinner at a local restaurant for all their guests.  Who would've thought a year ago that we would be having dinner in Kathmandu with people from all over the world?

Hotel Courtyard, Kathmandu, Nepal

Kathmandu Valley

There were monkeys everywhere.  I love monkeys, so I thought it was so cool to see them just running wild all around us.  They weren't the least bit bothered by the fact that we were there.

Swimming pool for monkeys

More Nepal coming....