{"id":10529,"date":"2016-11-10T08:22:37","date_gmt":"2016-11-10T02:37:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dorjegurung.com\/blog\/?p=10529"},"modified":"2024-05-04T06:49:16","modified_gmt":"2024-05-04T01:04:16","slug":"mermaid-mountains-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/2016\/11\/mermaid-mountains-and-more\/","title":{"rendered":"Mermaid, Mountains And More"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Annapurna<\/a>
Panoramic shot of Annapurna mountain range from Tansen, a little city on a hill, Southwest of Pokhara.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

During the biggest national festival of Dassain, this past October, my brother and I hit the highways of Nepal. (Being a Buddhist, and NOT a Hindu, my family and I really don’t celebrate the festival.) For me, it was the first time I braved our highways, which are filled with our out-of-control traffic and poorly maintained roads and infrastructure — such as the bridge in Mugling — among other things. (You can find more about that in the blog post On The Road\u2026Not Taken\u2026Before\u2026In Nepal<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Our first stop was Besisahar, the gateway to Annapurna Circuit, the most popular trekking route in Nepal. It was on the way that I passed the Mugling bridge. My first and last visit to Besisahar — what used to be a small village then — was also in October, though back in 1997, to do the Circuit. It is a decent sized town now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Besisahar.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We stayed at a hotel with a swimming pool and a water fountain adorned with a mermaid statue surrounded by dolphins!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The<\/a>
Besisahar’s very own Little Mermaid?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The view from the hotel room in the morning was spectacular.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Lamjung Himal!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The plan had been to continue on to Ghale Gaun from there but we ended up going to Pokhara instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Pokhara, I visited a number of places including my usual: Sarangkot (to greet the Annapurna Mountain range). Sarangkot is a small hill from where you can get excellent views of the Annapurna Mountain Range. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see it because of bad weather. But the structure below caught my eye when I was there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
It might not look like it but this concrete structure, when completed, will be a Shiva Temple!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I also spotted an old car, the kind of which used to ply the streets of the city when we used to live here<\/a>. An old Toyota Corolla that was brought into the city in the fifties and sixties and were the only cars around for a long time!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Vintage Toyota Corolla! Looks like new AND appears to be running, still! Pokhara is no Cuba when it comes to keeping old cars running but it does what it can.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I also paid a visit to the street where we used to live before we moved to Kathmandu. I discovered that pretty much every house in the neighborhood had been rebuilt except the two we had lived in!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
We were living in the three-storey pinkish-orange house on the left, with light blue window frames, before we moved to Kathmandu. That’s the house with the limited basic amenities I describe in Turtles Can Fly?<\/a> Before we moved to that house, we lived in a room in the long two-story yellow house with the blue window frames two houses down,<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Next stop was Tansen, a small town on a hill South-West of Pokhara.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
The hill town of Tansen.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There, we saw the biggest Trident in Asia!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
The biggest trident (trishul<\/em>) in Asia. The temple behind it is Bhairavsthan Temple.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The shots used to create the panorama of the Annapurna mountain range at the top was taken from the temple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The town also has the largest gate in the country!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Tansen Durbar (Palace) gate, the biggest in the country.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Next stop, Lumbini, the birth place of Sidhartha Gautam, the historical Buddha<\/a>. Having read about the different monasteries built in Lumbini in homage to the Buddha, I was curious to see what I have always referred to as our “Disney Land,” albeit a religious one!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
One of the number of monasteries in the compound. This is a Tibetan Buddhist one.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And somewhere in the Southern plains, near Lumbini, I came across this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
The graffiti reads “Madhes Tharuhut Sarkar” (Madhes Tharu Government).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There you have it!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo blog of the Dassain Holidays (October) road trip.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":10540,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"#Mermaid #Mountains And More. #RoadTrip #Nepal","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[43],"tags":[389,131,390],"class_list":["post-10529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel","tag-annapurna-mountain-range","tag-nepal-travel","tag-road-trip"],"blocksy_meta":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/dt-ghr-mermaid-besisahar-9547-feat-image.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2Jbro-2JP","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10529\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}