We decided one day to go up to the temple to visit - one reason was that Paddy had never been on a cable car before! We arrived and saw the charges - for Nepalese it was around 600rs (approx £4) for a foreigner like me it was $20 (This is one thing that annoys me about both Nepal and India and I'm sure it happens in other Asian countries - if we were to charge different prices in the UK for foreigners then I'm sure there would be riots and protests! However it is what it is - we paid the money and there was a slight benefit to this as we were able to walk straight to the front of the queue and not wait in line. Bonus!
The day itself was cloudy which I was a little bit disappointed at to be honest as I had wanted to see the view from the top of the mountain as I'm sure it would have been amazing but nevertheless we were sat in the car with another family and we were travelling up over the river, houses, trees and up into the clouds. The trip itself was going to take approx 10 minutes and whilst we were in the cloud it was hard to even see 10m out of the cable car. It seemed as if luck wasn't on my side as we kept gettin higher and higher and the cloud was still there.
Fortunantly, for me my wish had got granted and we rose through the cloud and into a beautiful sunny day. Walking off the cable which had taken us to an altitude of 1,302m in a short time and we didn't realise how many shops and resturants there were. We walked trough street upon street selling the same jewlerry,souvenirs, flowers and pictures of the temple.
As usual I had shouts at me in Nepalese saying "get her to buy this" or people getting me to try and eat at their resturant. I walked alone as paddy went to get the flowers, rice, coconut and incense which are traditionally given as gifts to the gods - mostly because he would have had to pay twice as much if I was with him!
Whist standing for this photo a random stranger - again did something that really quite annoys me - taking a picture of me without asking. Even if they had asked I would have said no. It's not as if I go and hunt down the foreign people in the uk and take pictures of them - so why do it to me?! (Rant over!?)
Even though we had arrived fairly early in the day, there was a long queue to get inside the temple - as in, so long we decided that we would offer our gifts and make our wishes outside the actual temple. Inside was a series of bells and a statue of the godess. So once we had had the coconut broken and tika put on our foreheads we lit the incense and made our wishes to the godess.
People also bring live animals such as goats or chickens up to the temple to offer to the gods. Their heads get chopped off and then the rest of the animal put in a plastic bag and taken somewhere - maybe back with the family. We saw a few of these headless goats bleeding all over the floor near the temple - where people were walking bearfoot.... Thankfully I didn't take any pictures of these animals as I don't need a reminder of that.
We stopped by this one shop to get a very photoshopped picture of the both of us with the temple in the background as a souvenir. The picture was taken in a few mintutes and we left for lunch to give the guy some time to edit it. After finding somewhere for lunch where we had some thukpa (a Tibetan noodle dish) which was nice - but took a very long time to arrive. We returned to the photo guy to be greeted by our picture which cost all of 100rs.
It was soon time to head back down the mountain - however we had timed it badly as the cable car had just closed for lunch time. Which meant we were to wait over an hour until we were able to head back down the mountain. During that time however the clouds had cleared up slightly more and we were able to see some more of the mountains in the area. I think the most left more of a mystery to the day although I'm sure the view would have been stunning if it had been clear.
Once we had waited for the cable car to reopen - again we managed to go straight to the front of the queue without waiting - whereas others had been stood waiting in line since the car shut for lunch. Whilst we were waiting we watched it get longer and longer and even longer! Overall it was an enjoyable day and worthwhile to go and visit. Now it's just time to wait and see
If our wishes do come true.....
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