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comment by bhrgunatha
bhrgunatha  ·  2368 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: A few of my thousands of pictures from Nepal

How are Pokhara and Kathmandu recovering after the earthquakes in 2015? I heard there are still lots of ongoing problems.

    Got chased by monkeys.

I think everyone gets chased by monkeys.

    Traveled to Pokhara, learned it's my favorite place on the planet and that I want to stay there forever

Spent 9 days in Nepal, with a 3 day trip to Nagarkot - one of the best places I've ever visited. Lots of walking and flying kites with the locals. Your picture of the swing looks identical to one at Nagarkot, on the edge of a narrow, winding mountain path. Scared the living crap out of me because it's tall and rickety and although you swing moderately high, at the peak when you look down you can see aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall the way down to the bottom of the valleys below. Loved watching the clouds rise up from below. I could watch that forever.

Had a mystical experience there one morning which has stayed with me ever since.

Heard Nagarkot also suffered damage and landslides in the earthquake and lost buildings and several hotels - their main income. I can't imagine the cheap, dilapidated "huts" that we stayed would not have survived.





rocketyak  ·  2368 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    How are Pokhara and Kathmandu recovering after the earthquakes in 2015? I heard there are still lots of ongoing problems.
Pokhara didnt seem to be hit as badly as Kathmandu, the surrounding valley, and Bandipur. Repairs are in the works, but it's super super slow. Most of the locals we talked to linked it to corruption in the government, where money that should be going into road repairs, fixing older buildings, etc is going into people's pockets. I'm sure things will get put back together (it mostly was short of some of the world heritage sites taking an understadably long time to regroup and rebuild) but it will be a while. The flooding near Chitwan earlier this year didnt help with disaster relief funding, though from what I saw Chitwan at least has mostly recovered.

We never made it to Nagarkot! Next time. We found our swing outside Bandipur, and played on another on a hillside just outside Kathmandu. I do love those swings though... how many weird looks wpuld I get for building one in LA next to my apartment? Haha. Did you get to see/ride one of the wooden mini ferris wheels? Those things can go FAST! So much fun.