Meeting friends in Pokhara and Kathmandu, June 3rd and 4th, 2013

 Phewalake in Pokhara and the colourful boats.

Hand-built bridge

Ram with his wife and their little girl

Female pilot of Buddha Air

Ethnic dance in a restaurant in KTM

Our friend Vidya then invited us to her place in KTM to show us some secrets of Nepali cooking.
This is her much used set of spices. Most important to me seemed "Cumin",  "Fenugreek" and "Nepali pepper".
Normally the spices are slightly roasted in hot oil to bring out the aroma.

Vidya's potato salad

 

After some hours in the delightful old house of Vidya's family we plunged back into the
madness of Kathmandu's traffic.

Traffic and electric lines: cumulative and unorganized to our eyes.

The air is extremely polluted

Business would soar up if traffic could be kept out of Thamel, the tourist shopping district.

Rhododendron forest between Ghorepani and Ghandruk, 1st and 2nd June, 2013

 Our lodge in Tadapani where we arrived very wet.

Leeches start to climb up our shoes as soon as we stop walking.

 

Parts of the trail have been rehabilitated

We had a rest day in Gandruk but it rained most of the time

One hour from Gandruk there is a road-head. We prefered to walk.

 

The Maoist leader Prachanda

We meet the first people from the Terai: they carry their loads on a bamboo stick.

These two kids prepared a delicious lunch for us.

 

Nepal, Birds 2

Thanks to Dr. Martin Gottschling, Büsum who corrected some of my identification errors!
These are some of the birds we saw on the trek between Ghorepani and Ghandruk:

Large-billed Crow

Rufous-forgeted Flycatcher

Black-faced Laughingthrush

Little Forktail

White-capped Water Redstart

Brown Dipper, juvenile

Great Barbet

Chestnut-bellied Nuthatch

White Eye

White-breasted Kingfisher

Spangled Drongo

Lesser Yellow-naped Woodpecker

Wolly-necked Stork

Grey Tree Pie

These now are birds from around Pokhara

Easter Cattle Egret

Cattle Egret and Great White Heron

Paddyfield Pipit

White-browed Wagtail

House Crow

Black Kite

Black Drongo and Cattle Egret with Buffalo

Cattle Egret rafting on Buffalo

Indian Pond Heron

Lesser Whitling Ducks and  Purple Swamp Hen

Little White Egret

Purple Swamp Hen

 

Common Kingfisher

Red-vented Bulbul

Oriental Magpie Robin

Egyptian Vulture

Red-wattled Lapwing

Indian Roller

 

White-throated Kingfisher