Yesterday, a group of 8 of us decided to go to Nagarkot, a town on top of the valley that overlooks both Kathmandu and the Himalayans and is reputed to have an excellent sunset and sunrise. The group was composed of myself, Muna, Robin, Santos and his wife, Prasanna (one of Muna’s friends), and Sanyog (the guy I met on the airplane) and his girlfriend.
We were supposed to leave by about 11am but only half of us were at our meeting spot and we ended up waiting for over 2 hours for everyone to show up and for us to leave. By this point, several of us were hungry for lunch and so we stopped at a restaurant about 30 minutes away from our destination. By this point it was 3pm. We ordered dal baht… and waited… and waited… and waited. We weren’t served our meal until 5pm and I think the only reason we even got it that early was that one of the girls that was with us, Bini, actually went down to the kitchen and helped them cook the food!! I wonder if this restaurant had ever served guests before…
Anyway, because we had to wait so long for our food we missed the sunset. I saw the big red setting sun for only a moment as we drove the last part of our trip. I was a little disappointed, but the clear night sky, the stars, and the silhouette of the Himalayans more than made up for it. We spent the night playing guitar, djembe, and singing again. We all went to bed pretty late, but somehow I managed to wake up exactly as the sun was rising – so, although I didn’t catch the sunset, I watched as the beautiful sunrise slowly illuminated the Himalayans, revealing a range that span the entire horizon.
Not quite as planned
